Add 30 yards to your drives with long drive coach Lee Cox

Lee Cox is a leading long drive coach

Golf coach and long drive specialist Lee Cox is the man the game’s biggest hitters turn to in the hunt for extra yards off the tee, and he’s yet to meet an amateur he can’t help it further…

Every golfer wants to hit the ball further. Confidently striding past your playing partner’s tee shot, knowing your ball is 30 yards further, is one of the most satisfying feelings in the game.

But extra yards are good for more than just your ego. “Distance is far more of an indicator of success than accuracy,” says Sean Foley, who has coached Tiger Woods, Lee Westwood and Justin Rose. “If I have the choice of giving someone five extra miles per hour in clubhead speed or have him hit the corresponding amount of more fairways, net earnings will increase more from the extra swing speed.”

He’s right. The straightest drivers on the PGA Tour lag well behind the longest hitters. Bryson DeChambeau ranked only 178th in accuracy last season, hitting 54.18% of fairways. But the fact he ranked first in driving distance (323.7 yards) helped him gain the most strokes off the tee (+1.162 shots per round).

And those stats translate into cash. The 10 longest hitters on Tour earned £42m between them. The 10 straightest took less than half of that. Tell me again how it’s all about keeping it on the fairway…

And this influence of distance isn’t limited to tour pros. Regression analysis done by Hunt Golf Analytics found a 5mph increase in clubhead speed correlates to a 3.6-shot drop in handicap.

Reading this, you’re probably itching to add swing speed and yards. Whether you’re struggling to get your driver past the 150-yard mark or eyeing a career on the World Long Drive circuit, one man has become the go-to guru for distance.

That man is Lee Cox. He coached Joe Miller to two World Long Drive Championships, James Tait to his first win in the World Long Drive Series and guided Mike Gays to a World Para Long Drive Championship. He’s the man the game’s biggest hitters enlist to help them hit it further, but he’s equally adept at working with amateurs, particularly as there is typically more room for improvement with someone swinging at 90mph than a supreme athlete who can generate 150mph or more.

I went to see him at his studio at The Shire in Barnet, hoping he could turn me into the kind of guy who draws gasps at the driving range, or at least help me reach a few more par 5s in two.

The first thing I realised is that Lee Cox isn’t like most golf coaches…

Read the rest of the feature and Lee Cox’s four power secrets on the Today’s Golfer Members’ Website.