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.