Tyler Ferrell is the only person in the world named to Golf Digest's list of Best Young Teachers in
America AND its list of Best Golf Fitness Professionals in America.
Meet your new instructor.
Get More Distance
Subscribe now to watch the full video.
Many amateur golfers struggle with their fairway woods and can encounter issues such as thin contact or poor trajectory. To help with this, I will often tell my students to think "back wheels" first. Or in other words, I want the back portion of the sole to brush the ground just before impact. This will create a more vertical shaft angle and contact that is higher on the face. Remember, a fairway wood has a convex or curved face just as a driver does, so in order to create distance and the proper launch conditions, we have to make contact higher on the face. Players can also work on their side-tilt/axis-tilt at impact to help with this pattern as well.
Tags: Poor Contact, Not Straight Enough, Fairway Wood, Drill, Intermediate
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:04,000
This drill video is back wheels first for the three wood.
00:00:04,000 --> 00:00:08,000
So the three wood can cause problems or I guess I should say any fairway wood, but the
00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:11,000
three wood in particular can cause problems for a lot of amateurs.
00:00:11,000 --> 00:00:16,000
They tend to hit it really low on the face and they tend to have a little bit exaggerated
00:00:16,000 --> 00:00:20,000
slice to the pattern partly because of that low face contact.
00:00:20,000 --> 00:00:26,000
Well when I ask my students with the three wood should the club hit the ground, most of
00:00:26,000 --> 00:00:30,000
the time they're not sure and I'd say more often than not the guests is no that they
00:00:30,000 --> 00:00:33,000
think that you're just trying to pick it.
00:00:33,000 --> 00:00:38,000
And so what ends up happening is they tend to hit with too much shaft lean but the club
00:00:38,000 --> 00:00:41,000
coming up and they'll hit it on the bottom of the club.
00:00:41,000 --> 00:00:45,000
Now just like the driver the three wood has a curve face.
00:00:45,000 --> 00:00:49,000
So let's say that this is a 15 degree loft rate in the middle.
00:00:49,000 --> 00:00:53,000
If you go down to the bottom it may be five degrees less than that.
00:00:53,000 --> 00:00:58,000
So if you're hitting it and it's launching really low in those spin and no energy transfer
00:00:58,000 --> 00:01:02,000
there's a very good chance that you're hitting it low on the face.
00:01:02,000 --> 00:01:06,000
If you're not hitting the ground then that that almost guarantees that you're hitting
00:01:06,000 --> 00:01:08,000
it low on the face.
00:01:08,000 --> 00:01:14,000
So what I challenge golfers to do or my students to do is let's try and get contact with
00:01:14,000 --> 00:01:18,000
the ground but I don't want my three wood to knife into the ground with the leading
00:01:18,000 --> 00:01:19,000
edge.
00:01:20,000 --> 00:01:26,000
Similar to using the bounce on a pitch shot you want the shaft to be a little bit more
00:01:26,000 --> 00:01:27,000
vertical.
00:01:27,000 --> 00:01:33,000
So in order to determine if you have the shaft more vertical you'll be able to tell if
00:01:33,000 --> 00:01:39,000
the club is hitting the back wheels first and kind of sliding on the ground or if it's
00:01:39,000 --> 00:01:43,000
hitting more the front wheels first and digging into the ground like that.
00:01:43,000 --> 00:01:49,000
So what I mean is if we look at the sole of the club we're going to try to get the backside
00:01:49,000 --> 00:01:52,000
to hit into the ground not the front side.
00:01:52,000 --> 00:01:56,000
You see that in order to do that I'm going to have the shaft a little bit more vertical.
00:01:56,000 --> 00:02:02,000
So we'll work through progressions of nine to three and then ultimately up to full swings.
00:02:02,000 --> 00:02:07,000
But the whole goal here is I'm trying to hit the back edge into the ground and just
00:02:07,000 --> 00:02:13,000
feel the club kind of slide through impact instead of having a very abrasive leading edge
00:02:13,000 --> 00:02:14,000
feel.
00:02:14,000 --> 00:02:19,000
So in demonstrating first we'll try to get a little nine to three style trying to get
00:02:19,000 --> 00:02:26,000
the back edge of the club to hit the ground kind of like that.
00:02:26,000 --> 00:02:31,000
So there you'll be able to see that there's some scuff mark there and the scuff mark
00:02:31,000 --> 00:02:37,000
started just before the golf ball let's say half inch before the golf ball.
00:02:37,000 --> 00:02:42,000
I don't want you to hit the ground a few inches behind the golf ball but we do want
00:02:42,000 --> 00:02:46,000
to hit the ground in order to get high enough face contact.
00:02:46,000 --> 00:02:53,000
You can see if we kind of zoom in on the club there you can see that the contact because
00:02:53,000 --> 00:02:56,000
of the club hit the ground the contact is higher up on the face that's going to give
00:02:56,000 --> 00:02:58,000
me a lot more lunch.
00:02:58,000 --> 00:03:03,000
Golfers who tend to really struggle with the three would tend to not hit the ground and
00:03:03,000 --> 00:03:04,000
launch it really low.
00:03:04,000 --> 00:03:08,000
Okay so once you've got the feeling with more than nine to three then we can take it
00:03:08,000 --> 00:03:13,000
on to more of a full swing still trying to get that feeling of the back edge hitting
00:03:13,000 --> 00:03:18,000
into the ground.
00:03:18,000 --> 00:03:23,000
Now just with any of our low point drills the two main factors to how the club hits
00:03:23,000 --> 00:03:28,000
the ground or where is my upper body in space where my sternum and how straight are my
00:03:28,000 --> 00:03:29,000
arms.
00:03:29,000 --> 00:03:33,000
So in order to make sure that I hit the back at like first I'm going to make sure that
00:03:33,000 --> 00:03:39,000
I have enough side bend and axis tilt so my upper body is behind the golf ball and
00:03:39,000 --> 00:03:45,000
then I'm going to make sure that my arms are extending through the shot instead of before
00:03:45,000 --> 00:03:46,000
impact.
00:03:46,000 --> 00:03:49,000
Most of the golfers who struggle with the three would tend to have a little bit more of
00:03:49,000 --> 00:03:55,000
this lunge and maybe more of a scoop with the arms or more of a kind of a late cask getting
00:03:55,000 --> 00:03:57,000
they club down like this.
00:03:57,000 --> 00:04:02,000
We're going to get most of that down from the side bend and then we'll feel those arms
00:04:02,000 --> 00:04:07,000
kind of bring the club through so that the back edge brushes the ground and stays low
00:04:07,000 --> 00:04:09,000
to the ground for a long period of time.
00:04:09,000 --> 00:04:17,000
So we'll do one more, one more three would here.
00:04:17,000 --> 00:04:21,000
So that one was pretty good as far as the ground contact you can see the little bit of
00:04:21,000 --> 00:04:23,000
a scuff mark right next to the ball.
00:04:23,000 --> 00:04:29,000
If you're not sure where the scuff mark is you can always use a line or some type of tea or
00:04:29,000 --> 00:04:32,000
put another golf ball there so you have an indicator as far as where you hit the ground.
00:04:32,000 --> 00:04:35,000
If you're struggling with a three would make sure you're making ground contact with
00:04:35,000 --> 00:04:36,000
the right part of the club.
