HOW TO STRIKE YOUR FAIRWAY WOODS

Full Transcript

Hey everybody Danny Maude here head professional at the Canterbury Golf Club in Kent I've got a question for you have you ever wanted to know why sometimes it's so difficult to hit your fairy Woods pure have you found that on a regular basis you're topping them along the ground or thinning them and really struggling to get them up in the air or even just not hitting them as far as you'd like and sometimes if you're picking out a 3-wood you find out if five wasn't seven words or even going further than your three wouldn't and you want to know why we're in this week's training we're going to cover those things we're going to cover how do you actually strike a fairway wood what is the actual way of actually striking a fairy wood we're also going to show you some of the common problems like we see and reasons why people top the ball thin the ball I'm going to give you a really simple exercise simple drill that you can start and use today to start really improving the way you strike them so let's get started so the first thing is what is happening when people thin the ball top the ball or really struggle to get the ball up in the air or let me show you something so what tends to happen when you're not striking it is the club itself okay swings like this right there's a bottom part of the color of it well I miss probably swinging it can still swing like this and there's a the bottom part of the arc your Club is bottoming out too soon before the golf ball and the club starting to rise now so you're hitting the ball on the way up what we want to be doing we actually want to be striking the ball on the way down now there's plenty of YouTube videos out there teaching do I hit fair was I know it can be a bit controversial some people think that you should actually hit level with it I just found that you know hitting trying to hit level is just too difficult for most people and even the best players in the world try to get a more descending blow onto their fairway woods because the balls lying on the ground we want to hit the ball with the face of the club if that club is rising is anything upwards what you're doing is is the bottom part of the golf clubs actually striking the golf ball here and no part of the face is hitting it but watch this if that shaft angle is slightly leaning forward this way as a poster this way watch this thanks to the club now is more likely to hit the golf ball than if the chef leaning backwards the bottom part hits all right so we want a slightly more descending blow now that brings in to the next problem many people many amateurs and many members at golf clubs they don't generate enough club head speed to sometimes hit a 3-wood in fact it's ending in my shop where we're not selling many three woods nowhere near as many through as we did you know maybe a decade ago one of the things that I would recommend now if you're really struggling to eat fair woods and I encourage your hits lay down on it go up to a five would admit sometimes make that the longest fair would you have in your bag okay almost ditch the tree wood because you'll probably find that the firewood goes further than the free wood it certainly will go at least the same distance pretty stuff it would be a lot easier to hit so some of you are probably using three woods when you really shouldn't be so unless you're hitting it maybe two three wood movie 230 you know probably you know look at maybe moving to a to a five wood or even a seven wood for some people who aren't hitting it over 200 yards you know really to to get that ball up in the air and get the carry all right so we're gonna from this position here and we're teach you now how we're going to start to get you striking down on the ground now one of I've got a little a little is very basic drill but it works really really well it's working so well with some of my clients to help them strike their favor words and just involves I've got a white whiteboard marker pen here but you can use a sticker light aybe you name it you can use anything and what it is if we want to encourage you to strike slightly down on the golf ball so to do this and to test whether you're actually doing this in practice is you can just put a little line on the front part of this golf club here like this alright and also put a line maybe at the back of the golf club here as well alright and what we want to try to do is those people who are generally topping the golf ball the front part of the golf club actually probably seen generally misses the ground right yet the back part of the golf club hits the ground so you're more likely here to rub off the blue marker pen here on this side if you're topping it and you and and leave the marker pen on the front part because it's not getting any contact with the ground whatsoever so what you can do with this is you can practice all right just doing some swings where you get that descending blur we're trying to rub off the blue marker on the front part of the golf club now as you can see here is completely gone yet the blue marker on the back isn't for those people who are hitting up on the golf ball too much and topping or thinning it they hit up with like this and the back of the golf club is hitting the ground and as you can see we're starting to rub it off quite a bit there so what we're gonna do from this position is it's a real simple exercise we're gonna start to hit some shots put some paper at the bottom here or a blue mark and what do you want ever you want to do what we're gonna do is we're gonna start to practice nice and small starting to strike downwards into the golf ball not upwards down towards the golf ball not upwards now some of you may ask well how much down to hit is it like an iron shot no it's not this is the difference between a fairy would in an iron shot is the fairway wood the ball position is slightly closer to the left heel it's not as close as the driver which be on the left heel if we're two or three inches inside so watch this so the club is still coming down but it's not heading upwards right with an iron the ball generally for most of cups is reasonably central and therefore we're coming down quite steeply initially with an iron shot and as we get to the bottom of the AK here the glut Club starts to rise up so with this fair wood here we push the ball just in between in between a driver swing and an iron swing we want it to catch it just on the way down but not completely on the way down as we do it would be doing if we were hitting an iron shot so let's see one of these in full flow now the way to work on this I would say initially is work on it slowly don't try and hit in big big shots you'll notice if you if you followed any my training before you know making any particular change in any of your technique he's really tricky and I found that when I'm coaching people they they go into full swing mode straightaway after they've got a new bit of knowledge and these too difficult it's too difficult to change something at impact at that speed so sometimes when you go and practice this put some blue tape on put a bit of paper on here and then just do some very very gentle swings just seen if you can feel the fleeting part of that Club brushing the ground first also maybe just for your awareness so you can hit the back part the golf club just so you can feel the difference between the two alright once you've got a little bit of that going on don't 1 you could do is you could just almost chip your favor would you do it for almost a few motions when you just do this just your chipping down on it all right almost like it this motion here now this is purely just to get that sensation of striking the face on very tiny shots you won't get any of this because you weren't creating a club head speed to create the backspin all right but what you do is once you've done a little bit of this what you then do is just gradually build it up just string it slightly more descending into the golf ball hey presto that strike starting to to really pay off I'm starting to hit the middle of the face now and the ball started to creep up in the air alright so in summary here's what's tending to happen for golfers who thin and top the ball they tend to hit up on the golf ball way too much alright secondly they're using usually not enough loft to these in three words as opposed to move five words or seven words and the the misconception that if 3-wood were should go further than a five would for most people it doesn't because there's not enough loft on the 3-wood just give you an idea I'm using a 16 degree 3-wood at the moment right I don't use 14 or 15 degrees all right I've got this is a four and a half but it's set up to a 16 and I because I want loft I want Lofty's lust is how I get the cow is how I get my distance all right so if you're struggling with distance loft up maybe push the 3-wood away go with your firewood and then start working on this all right so we've got how you strike it we've got this type of Club you're using how you go about working on this well we showed you use the marker drill alright let's put a marker at the front of club start to wipe that marker off wipe it off get the front part of the golf club coming into the ground before the back path all right work on a very slow to start off with no full swings because it's really difficult to do this in full march and start off with nice slow swings and gradually build it up and give it some patience thank you for being here if you've got any questions please leave your comments in the comment box below and if you know anyone who may be struggling with that failures who could really benefit from this please do share alright until next time have a great golfing week thanks so much for watching and there's two things you can do right now for me if you're enjoying these videos you enjoying the training subscribe to the channel I really appreciate it and if you want some tips and 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