This Technique Makes Fairway Woods & Hybrids So Easy!

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Transcript Summary -

So, a few days ago, I asked the community here on YouTube, “What would you love to know about hitting your fairway woods?” And what became really clear is there’s something most golfers simply aren’t being told when it comes to hitting hybrids and fairway woods. If you struggle to get them up in the air, top them now and again, or just want a consistent setup every single time, today’s lesson is going to be a real eye-opener for you.

Now, before we dive in, if you’re new here, I release videos like this every single week to help you play better golf — and you don’t even need to remember anything because I put it all into a free practice guide linked in the description below. Data from Shot Scope shows that amateurs use fairway woods and hybrids about 25% of the time. So if we can get you striking them better, it’s going to make a huge difference to your game.

Here’s where most golfers go wrong: every swing has a low point, or bottom of the arc. For pros, that low point is always way forward — opposite their lead foot — and it’s incredibly consistent. For higher handicaps, it tends to drift all over the place, which is why strikes become inconsistent. Now, with irons, we can “cheat” a little by moving the ball back to the middle of the stance. There’s enough loft on the club to still get the ball airborne, and it helps us make ball-first contact. But you can’t do this with a 3-wood. A 3-wood only has about 15 degrees of loft, so if you move the ball too far back, you de-loft the club completely and the ball just won’t get in the air.

This is where loft becomes your friend. Instead of jumping straight into a 3-wood, I often start my students with a 5-wood or 7-wood. These clubs have more loft, which means you can move the ball a touch further back in your stance to give yourself a bigger margin for error — while still launching it nicely off the turf. Even I sometimes struggle with a 3-wood, because it’s simply not as forgiving unless you’ve got total control of your low point.

So, the process is simple: while you’re developing your swing, use higher-lofted fairway woods. Position the ball just ahead of centre, let the loft do the work, and focus on gradually learning how to move the bottom of your swing further forward. One of the best ways to feel this is by placing a tee peg next to the ball and noticing where your club actually strikes the ground. You want that strike consistently after the ball — not before it. The key is moving your body more laterally through impact, not just throwing your chest forward.

So the rule of thumb is this: if you want consistency, use loft. Stick with 5-woods, 7-woods, or even 9-woods while you’re building the skill of controlling your low point. As that develops, you can then take full advantage of the 3-wood. I promise you, if you follow this, your scores will tumble — and you’ll start striking your fairway woods with far more confidence.

Full Transcript- So, a few days ago, I asked the community here on YouTube, "What would you love to know about how to hit your fairway woods?" And it was apparent that there's something that nobody's really telling you when it comes to hitting your hybrids and your fairway woods. And if you happen to be somebody who maybe struggles to get fairs up in the air, maybe you top the ball now and then, you want to have some more consistent contact, or you just kind of want to know how to set up to them every single time. In this golf lesson video, I'm going to show you everything you need to know about how to hit your hybrids and your fairways consistently off the ground. Now, before I do though, if you're new to the channel, some your first lessons of mine, please consider subscribing. I release videos just like this one every single week to try and help you improve your game. Plus, you never have to remember a thing. Everything we do here, I'll put into a free downloadable practice guide in the description box below. So, I think today's video is going to be a real eye opener for you. In fact, data from Shot Scope shows that amateur golfers use their fairway woods and hybrids 25% of the time on average. So, if I can help you today become more consistent with these clubs, it's going to super super help. Now, you'll notice I've got an iron in my hands first. And the reason why I want to show you because one of the questions I got asked is is what is the difference between like setups between hybrids and fairway woods? Why can I hit my hybrids better than my fairway woods and so on? So, I want to show you something super super important or introduce you to a concept. So, in every golf swing, there is a bottom to your golf swing, right? And a bottom I mean by this is you can see here as I'm swinging there's an arc to this club and there's a bottom to this arc. Now, with great players, the bottom of their arc is always forward. I mean, way forward in the sense, almost opposite their their lead foot here. What we've noticed is that the higher handicap you are, the further this bottom of the arc is further and further this way. It's also very, very inconsistent. The best players don't just get it way forward every time. They also naturally get it there every single time within half a degree. It's incredible. So, being able to control the bottom of your swing is absolutely paramount when it comes to hitting your hybrids and your fairway woods. Now, to maximize your distance and your consistency, we want to make sure that we strike the ball first every time. We don't want any form of ground contact behind the golf ball. That ruins your strike consistency and your distance. So, what we do is this. If the bottom of the swing is here, right opposite our lead foot with an iron, what we do is is to make sure we hit the ball first, we kind of cheat it a little bit. We don't put the ball there, do we? We move the ball to the middle of our stance. So, in theory, we're cheating the system a little bit. By moving it to the middle of our stance, we're increasing the likelihood that we're going to strike the ball first. If the ball was forward in our stance, you can see here, we've more likely, that's the reducing the margin of error. We're more like we could, if we just move back just a little bit, strike the ground behind the golf ball. So that's why ball position is super important with irons. We move it to the middle of our stance. But this is really important. Very few people are aware of this. We can do that with irons. You can do that with irons because when you move the ball to the middle of your stance, I've got an eight here. What do you notice about the face, it's still pointing to the sky. So, if I strike a ball in the middle of my stance, beautiful. The ball's still going to go up in the air, right? Without even thinking, even though I'm coming down on it, there's enough loft in that club to get the ball there bomb. problem happens. However, if we then grab a 3-wood in an ideal world, what would we do? We've just said, look, if we can move the ball back in our stance, we increase our margin of error, don't we? Because if if the ball's further forward, we're more likely to strike the ground behind the golf ball. So, we move the ball to our center of our stance. What's the problem now?

There's no loft on the golf club. There's only 15 degrees of loft on a 3 wood. If you move the ball back in your stance like this and have all the shaft lane, suddenly there's no loft. So, we don't have the luxury like an iron of moving the ball back in our stance. We must therefore have the ball further forward in our stance if you want to hit a 3-wood well. But the problem with that then becomes this. If you don't have control over the bottom of your swing like a tall player and every so often it starts to drift back like here, you will strike the ground behind the golf ball and you will fat it, you'll top it, you'll thin it. You can see here, look, if my bottom my my swing starts to drift backwards here, I'm now look the club's working. Look, almost above the ball. There's my top. There's my uh thin shot. So, we don't have the luxury of moving the ball back. So before we work on hitting teaching you how to hit a 3-wood, what I'm going to do is I'm going to go and take a 7 wood. So when I'm developing and helping players get better and better, I think it's a process. And remember, just like irons, loft is your friend. So what I've got now is I've got a 7 wood, which has 20 degrees of loft on. Now what I do is I want to help my students increase the margin of error. So, what I do is if I can get that ball further back in their stance, I know I'm going to help them more likely strike their fairways better. So, rather than have it on the instep here, I've got 7 wood. 7 wood's got more loft on it. So, I'm going to move that ball back now another inch or two. Now, look, if I move it back in my stance just to about just ahead of center, I've still got enough loft on that 7 woods to get the ball airborne and I'm going to increase the chances of you striking the ball brilliantly well. So, let's have a look at this in action. So, let's set a 7 wood. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to get the low point here. Make sure by putting the ball position just ahead of center. I now know I've got seven wood. This ball's still going to come out low because I'm still I've almost reduced this 7 wood now to a 3-wood, but it gives me the margin of error. So, I can hit this almost like a 3-wood.

So, take a look at this. What you're going to see, look, is a low point. Look, 4.1 in after the golf ball. Carried it 240 yards with a 7wood. And what it does for me is it gives me and you a massive margin of error. Loft is your friend. So, as an amateur golfer, my bet is that you don't have complete control over the bottom of your swing. It moves around a little bit, unlike a tour pro. So, if we can kind of bear that in mind and just give you a bit of a helping hand by just moving that ball back, giving you more chance of striking it, that's what loft gives you. Seven woods, nine woods, even five woods, you can probably just about get away with. That's what we want to get to first. And look, even for someone like myself, look, 3-wood, we've just said, we have to have the ball forward. It's the only way we can get the ball up in the air. But you therefore need to recognize that if you're going to use 3-wood and the ball's forward, you need to be an expert at controlling the bottom of your swing. So, let me show you how you can start to do that while we're learning this. Use loft as as your friend. Move the ball back to cater for that right while you're developing this skill. Now, to move the low point forward, I spend most of my time teaching people this because, like I said, there's a massive correlation with quality of player. The further it's forward, the better player you naturally will be. All you've got to think of is this is the first thing is to pay attention. I get people to put a tee peg in the ground next to their golf ball. And I get them to make a few swings and notice where that club is actually striking the ground relative to that golf ball. Now, there are two ways to get the bottom of your swing later. The first way is the incorrect way. Most people do it like this. They throw their torso over here. Good players, they keep their head in the middle of their stance and they work on getting forward whilst keeping their head centered. So, they have to move more this way laterally. The trail side moves forward. Look how everything's going this way. The foot's banking. Everything's working. Look forward through the impact area. That's how I get forward in my swing. That's how I control my low point. These are simple things you can do. And what I would often do with players is is so your body can feel this. I would make some swings where you fall backwards. So you feel where the low point is there. And then look, just gradually move that low point further and further forward. And it, you'll notice I even just felt my toe wanting to pop out here because the more that toe goes forward, the more mobility I've got to stretch and go forward. But at no stage am I getting my low point or the bottom swing forward this way. All right. So, rule of thumb, use loft. Loft is your friend. Don't try and use 3-wood if you haven't got control of the bottom of this swing. It's a hard club for us all to hit. We want loft. If we move the uh the ball back in our stance, use 5-woods, 7-woods, nine words. Smash them. And in the meantime, develop the bottom of your swing here by pushing it further and further forward. So, let's have a look at me hitting 3 wood.

So, I didn't kind of strike that that great. And there you go. Look, look, I I did get it a little bit too far behind the golf ball, so my margin wasn't great. Very similar club head speed and almost the same carry as I got with 7 wood. So you can see, look, even for a professional like myself, it's not easy club to hit. So while you're developing your swing and improving it, use loft because of course I'm going to hit one or two really, really good, but I want consistency with your fairway woods. So while you're developing that, getting that bottom of your swing further and further forward as you're learning to kind of feel what that's like by noticing where that club is striking on the ground relative to that tee we mentioned. Just keep playing with that, making sure your head stays back as you're doing it. You're not trying to get it that way. As you're developing that and you're becoming better at it, you'll become better at moving the ball further forward and then taking advantage of clubs like 3-wood. But until you get there, stick with five woods, stick with seven woods, and stick with 9 woods. I promise you, your scores will tumble. And in the meantime, in the background, you're building that skill of pushing that low point forward. By the way, if you'd love some help getting that low point further forward, check this video out right here. If you enjoyed this video, give it a thumbs up, share it with a friend, and of course, look, if you're new to the channel, press that subscribe button down below, and I'll pin a link to the practice plan in the uh the top comment below this one, so you don't have to remember a thing. But until next week, have a wonderful golfing.