For many beginner golfers, hitting a wood off the fairway can be both a pleasure and a frustration.
While a lot of players feel much more comfortable using a wood on the fairway rather than a long iron, that doesn’t mean the shot goes to plan every time. However, today we have some great tips to help you with the consistency of your fairway wood shots.
There are three different sections to this tip and they involve various parts of the shot. The first of which is the ball position.
When using a club such as a 3 wood on the fairway, the correct ball position is vital to the success of the shot. The ball position you choose will depend greatly on the lie you are dealing with on the fairway.
If the ball is sitting nicely on the fairway, almost as if it is on a tee then you will have the ball more forward in your stance. If you have a tight lie, you will want to move the ball back a little bit, just back from the centre of your stance as if you are going to take a little divot out of the fairway.
Next, we need to check the angle of our attack when playing a fairway wood shot.
The club needs to attack the ball on a shallow path to have a good chance of making a great contact. To help achieve this, you must be in the correct position at address. Place just a little more of your weight on your back foot and tilt your shoulders so your leading shoulder is slightly higher than your back shoulder.
This will encourage a sweeping action which is what you want when playing a fairway wood.
To practice this step, try hitting some shots with the ball teed up slightly, as this will help in preventing you from hitting down on the ball and encourage more of a sweeping motion in your shot.
Perhaps the biggest mistake many beginner golfers make when using a wood off the fairway is leaning back through impact with the ball.
The reason this happens so often is because players are thinking about making a shallow angle of attack and a sweeping strike of the golf ball. This leads to unnecessary adjustments such as leaning back on impact.
To try and prevent this from happening to you, place the base of your golf bag where the golf ball would be at address. As you make your swing, the base of the bag will give some resistance and at this point you can check where you are in terms of body position at impact.
At impact with the base of the bag, your club shaft should still be leaning slightly forward, despite the need to make a sweeping strike of the ball.
Use these three tips when practicing your fairway wood shots and your consistency should improve when using a wood on the fairway during a round.
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