Fairway Woods Instruction-Tips for Success

Using a fairway wood from challenging lies, can be difficult at times, for this reason, some golfers choose to avoid this club. The three wood is the longest club in your bag after the driver, so avoiding it’s use would mean you are sacrificing some distance, and perhaps the chance to hit shorter iron shots into the green.

Fairway woods instruction, requires a swing which is a sweeping motion, that hits the ball as the club head moves parallel to the ground, unlike iron shots, which are used to strike the golf ball on a downward swing.

Take a wide stance, as you would using the driver, position the golfball opposite the inside of your left heel and distribute your weight evenly and comfortably on the balls of your feet.

Begin your backswing on a relatively low path that shaves the grass, and try to remember to maintain your right shoulder level to the ground and to pull through the swing with your left hand. Just repeat the shallow path in your downswing.

Try to maintain your head position, your upper torso should be behind the golf ball, make sure to extend your arms toward the target in the follow through.

Trying to assist the ball into the air won’t help. Don’t feel that you need to try, the 3 wood isn’t meant to go sky high, just keep the club head on an even track through the impact zone. The fairway woods and the three wood have enough loft to send the golfball on it’s way.

If you need to generate a shot with more loft, say for example to hit over water etc, try playing the ball a little further forward in your stance and lower your hands slightly in the address position. Then put a bit more weight over your back foot by leaning the spine away from the target.

These slight position changes will encourage a better swing, and enable you to sweep the golf ball off the fairway and add a little more loft to the shot.

For a more piercing ball flight, with lower trajectory, simply do the opposite. What I mean is, place the ball similar to where you would normally hit an iron shot from, about two golf balls back towards the middle of your stance, and place your weight a little more on your front leg.

These slight changes will help to take the loft off the club at impact and produce the low ball flight you need to enable the golfball to run up to and hopefully onto the green.

When you are trying to hit different shots with your fairway woods, different ball flights, I believe it is a much simpler, safer and it is more beneficial to change your stance rather than change your golf swing, adjusting your swing, as opposed to adjusting your stance for differing shots will only lead to more problems.

Hitting a 3 Wood from a Tight Lie-Fairway Wood Instruction:

1. Play your ball back of your stance

2. Sweep your golfball from the fairway

3. Strike your golfball with a descending blow

4. Adjust your weight to your lead side

5/ Swing through the ball

The key to hitting different shots and taking strokes off your game with your fairway wood is to adjust your stance, not your swing, to achieve the lofts you need.

Remembering these few things, like don’t expect to hit that perfect shot, it may never happen, so just relax, don’t allow stress and tension to creep into your game. Always tee up on the same side of trouble, hitting away from it, aim for a clear and definite target in the distance. Please don’t stress about hitting it long, focus on your accuracy then in time distance will come.

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