Dan Boever, Pinnacle Long Drive Team Elite Member

For several years I have started my golf show with a very serious, “Today, we are going to cover the “57 Keys to Distance.’” That is usually followed by dead quiet, as people pray I am surely not serious. The blank stares are worth the 30 seconds of total quiet. I got this information from a February, 1996, article in Golf Digest entitled “57 Keys to Distance,” and I have it laminated and stuck inside my golf bag. We are all looking for the keys to longer, more powerful drives.

By April 1, 2004, I will have been asked, “So tell me, what is the key for hitting it longer,” nearly a thousand times. When a 68-year-old woman weighing in at 78 pounds asks you about “the key,” you know it is an epidemic of sizable proportion. Are the answers so tough to find? Don’t people know that daily on the Golf Channel and monthly in scores of golf magazines they can find the answers they are looking for?

My contention is that most of us already know the answers, in the same way we really know what it takes to lose weight. Yeah, sure, I know all about diet and exercise, but what can I do to lose fifty pounds by next week!

For the most part, we know what long hitters do. We know what we do when we catch it on the sweet spot and the ball disappears before our eyes. We all need to be reminded from time to time (daily) of what it takes to perform at our very best. We want to hit it longer more often. Longer is good, but “longer more often” is better.  

So, 57 keys to distance, what are they? The article consisted of 57 PGA, LPGA and SR PGA touring pros giving their advice for more distance. It wasn’t really 57 keys, because so many said the same thing over and over. It was a broken record of advice – take it back slower, finish your back swing, relax your arms and shoulders, don’t try to kill it, hit it solid, tee it higher, widen your stance, blah, blah, blah.

Wow, eight years later nothing has changed. I’ll bet 57 new players would say much the same today—simple reminders that will be just as effective eight years from now in 2012. Can that be possible?

• Tee it higher
• Widen your stance
• Take it back slower
• Finish your back swing
• Relax your arms and shoulders
• Don’t try to kill it hit it solid
• Play the Pinnacle Maximum Velocity or Pinnacle Exception (I added this; shameless I know.)

No one can handle 57 keys floating around in their head when they are trying to make a good swing. We are all different but we all need to do some basics if we are going to increase our yardage off the tee box.

Read more from Dan Boever!