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One of the common questions we get is "how do I adjust my swing for my hybrids, or for my 3 wood?" It leads me to this video here.
It's important to realize that there is no one magic swing that will work for every club. As you become a more accomplished player, your swing will have a tendency toward more of a wedge swing, or more of a driver swing. But, just like the tour pros, you can learn the simple adjustments that you need to make, AND the swing faults, or tendencies, that you can get away with. Here is a quick summary of the normal adjustments.
Full Wedge Swing
- Power of the swing - upper body driven
- Path - more left and more steep
- Clubface - more of an open club face
- Ball Position - more centered or just ahead of center
- Stance Width - more narrow
- Grip Strength - more of a weak grip, especially trail hand
- Pivot - can get away with more of a reverse pivot or upper body moving toward target in backswing
- Lead arm motion - more of a chop across the rib cage
- Swing faults that help (or at least you can get away with) - forward lunge, lift, and cast
- Timing of face rotation - can be later in the swing
Driver Swing
- Power of the swing - lower body driven
- Path - more right and more shallow
- Clubface - more of an closed club face
- Ball Position - more forward, can be ahead of left shoulder
- Stance Width - more wide
- Grip Strength - more of a strong grip, especially trail hand
- Pivot - can get away with more of a hang back style pivot
- Lead arm motion - more of a lift off the rib cage
- Swing faults that help (or at least you can get away with) - sway and early extension
- Timing of face rotation - better to close earlier in downswing
If you struggle more with one area of your game, you can use that as a sign of what kind of swing you tend to make, and how you might best spend your practice time.
Tags: Not Enough Distance, Driver, Fairway Wood, Member Question, Intermediate, Beginner
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This concept video is discussing the spectrum from wedges to driver.
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So I had a question about adjusting your stock full swing for hybrids and three-wood.
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And it really leads into this video, basically.
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It's important to understand that there's not one magic setup, because if there was one magic
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setup, then you'd have hard time adjusting for up-illized, downhill-lies, ball above your
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feet, thicker rough, thinner rough.
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Like everything works in the spectrum, hopefully built around your stock swing.
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Well, in the driver versus iron videos, I explained that some of the big differences are
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going to be my stance width is going to help contribute to where my upper body is in space.
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So with an iron, compared to the top of swing, my upper body is going to be a little bit
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closer to the target.
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So it's getting a little bit more covering the golf ball.
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And this perit helps produce a negative angle of attack.
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With a driver, I'm going to have a little wider stance.
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So when I press with my lower body, it's going to cause my upper body to be actually behind
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where it was at the top of the swing.
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We're actually moving further away from the target.
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That helps me have more of a neutral zero or even positive angle of attack, which helps with
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distance.
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So a three-wood or a hybrid are somewhere in the spectrum of hitting, let's say, four,
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five, six degrees down at the upper end, compared to driver hitting a couple degrees
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up.
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A three-wood is going to be pretty close to the neutral.
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I think the tour average is somewhere around one degree down.
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So it's going to be closer to this driver's end of the spectrum.
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But know that you can get away with a little bit more of an iron-based swing because
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you're setting up because you're hitting a little bit more down.
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So it's going to have slightly narrower stance than driver ball positions just a hair
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back.
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But the big thing is I'm going to be swinging closer to the driver's wing than the iron
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swing.
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I'll discuss a few of the ones that are key, but I'll put a list up here as far as the
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differences in this continuum.
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So as I get towards a wedge, I can have more of my weight or pressure on the front foot.
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I'm going to have narrower stance.
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I can work in more of a chop motion.
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I can have a little bit more of an open club facing getaway with it.
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Those are some of my favorites.
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I can have more of a cast sequence.
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That's one of the big ones.
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When it gets to a driver, most of those things would be a lot of trouble.
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The three-woods are going to be just slightly less trouble.
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So a lot of golfers who are really good with their wedges and struggle a lot with their
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driver have more of a swing where their upper body gets on top and they cast a little bit.
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And so using a three-wood which is a little bit closer to the wedge is a good band aid
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to help them get away with, especially if hitting the driver ultimately leads to really poor
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ball flight where now I'm hitting it into the trees and I'm having a hard time recovery.
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Well, when I get to the driver or if I get to the three-wood, I'm now looking at a wider stance.
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It's better to get shallow so it's better to almost hang back a little bit.
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I can get away with early extension again because I'm going for this shallow path.
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I can get away with having more of a closed club face because I'm going to be swinging
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a little bit more into out.
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There's the cast is a big-time problem.
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The early extension and the sway are not going to be as big a problem because I'm going
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to have a little bit more of this lateral movement towards the target on the lower body
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side.
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So there's this spectrum in the arm motion through the ball is a little bit more of this
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lift off my ribcage instead of a chop across my ribcage.
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So we could come up with a simple recipe as far as if your stance is this wide.
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You should play the ball position here.
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Really, I think that takes a lot of the athleticism and the variability that you're
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going to see on the course out of it.
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It's important to know that when you're hitting a three-wood, it's going to be closer
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to the driver swing.
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When you're taking these practice swings, you don't want the clubs to really slam into
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the ground.
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You want it to really just brush the ground more like so.
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Just for fun, we'll demonstrate my version of the three-wood, which hopefully works
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out pretty well in here.
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So the three-wood is going to incorporate a lot of the same stock moves that we discuss
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with the driver as well as the irons.
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One of the big differences is just kind of controlling this a little bit more.
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I'm not going to swing quite as hard as I would with a driver because I don't have that
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vertical margin of error.
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I still have to get this to really brush the ground.
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Other than that, it's going to be the same as your stock full swing.
