To Strike Your Woods Always Do This Before Every Swing

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Transcript Summary- 

How would it feel to stand over a fairway wood or a hybrid and know — really know — that you’re going to strike it cleanly and consistently every single time? I’m sure you’ve hit a few that have come right out of the middle, and they’ve felt amazing. But you want to do that more often, don’t you? You want to stop those horrible tops, thins, or even those fat shots that ruin a good round.

In this week’s video, I’m going to share with you something I gave to one of my students, George, just yesterday. We were out here on the golf course, and he wanted to hit his fairway woods further and more consistently. I gave him a simple routine — it only takes a few seconds before each shot — that trains two key elements that are absolutely vital if you want to strike your fairway woods well. It made a huge difference to George, and I can’t wait to share it with you because it’s so important.

Now, if you’re new to the channel and this is one of the first lessons you’ve seen from me, please consider subscribing. I release videos like this every week to help you improve your golf. And don’t worry about remembering all the details — everything I share here will be in a free downloadable practice guide linked in the description below.

Alright, let’s help you fall in love with your fairway woods.

Before we jump into the drill that helped George so much, I want to go through a few simple setup checks — things most golfers overlook. First, take a moment to actually look at the lie. For example, right here, the ball is sitting slightly above my feet. Now, if I grip the club normally and stand as I would on flat ground, the ground’s effectively closer to me — meaning even with a great swing, I could easily hit it fat. So, I simply grip down the club a touch to adjust.

If the ball’s below your feet, it’s the opposite. You’ll want to bend a little more from your hips so you’re closer to the ground. These little adjustments make a massive difference. None of what I’m about to share will work if you don’t first cater for the lie.

Next, let’s talk about ball position. With a fairway wood, we want to hit slightly down on the ball — not as steeply as with an iron. If your irons are roughly in the middle of your stance, your fairway wood should be about a clubhead inside your lead heel — just a touch behind the low point of your swing. Too far forward and you’ll catch it on the upswing and risk topping it. Too far back and you’ll hit down too steeply and struggle to get the ball airborne.

Now that we’ve got that sorted, let’s move into the drill.

To strike the ball consistently, you need to control your swing’s circle — the radius. If the radius keeps changing during your swing, your contact is going to be all over the place. That’s exactly what George was doing — as his arms separated during the swing, the club would lift away from the ball, leading to those dreaded tops.

Here’s what I want you to do. Take your setup and notice the distance between your arms — relaxed, not tense. That’s your swing radius. As you swing back and through, your job is to maintain that same distance. Don’t let your arms separate or collapse. Keep them softly connected.

Now, I don’t want you forcing your arms together — that just adds tension. Simply pay attention to whether your arms are spreading apart during the motion. Start with some small half swings, keeping that radius constant. You’ll immediately feel how much more solid the strike becomes.

With George, we took it one step further. I introduced him to what I call my “reverse engineer” method. Before each shot, I had him set up, hold the club out in front, then tilt to the side slightly — that tilt sets up a proper downward strike and keeps the head centred. From there, all he did was turn through to the target while keeping the arms intact. Just doing that a couple of times before hitting made a huge difference to his consistency.

Now, there’s one more simple drill I want to show you that not only helps with your fairway woods and hybrids but works for every club in your bag.

If you think about that swing circle again, you’ll realise that height control — particularly your head height — is critical. If your head is bobbing up and down, your circle moves, and your strike becomes inconsistent. So, I want you to grab a driver or an alignment stick and place it vertically as a reference beside your head. Make a few slow swings, paying attention to keeping your head at roughly the same height all the way through.

You’ll notice I’m tilted slightly towards the ball at setup, and that tilt stays constant through the swing. I’m not lifting up or dropping down — just rotating around that stable angle. Keeping that inclination to the ground gives you a far greater chance of striking the ball cleanly every time.

So, to recap:

1. Control the radius of your swing — keep the distance between your arms consistent.

2. Control your head height — keep your inclination to the ground steady throughout the swing.

Work on those two things and you’ll start striking your fairway woods and hybrids far more solidly and consistently.

If you enjoyed this lesson and want to see how these same principles apply to your driver, check out the video linked right here. And if you know someone who struggles with their fairway woods, do them a favour and share this video with them.

And as always, if you’d like more personalised help from me, head over to dannymaude.com, where I can guide you step by step. Thanks so much for watching, and until next week — have a wonderful golfing week.

Full Transcript- How'd it feel if you knew that when you stood over a fairway wood or a hybrid, you had confidence that you were going to strike it consistently? I'm sure you've struck one or two really, really well, but you want to do it on a regular basis. You want to stop those horrible tops or thins or even fat shots that just ruin a round of golf. Well, in this video, what I want to do is I want to share with you something I've just shared with George, a researcher of mine yesterday. We were actually here on the golf course and he wanted to basically hit his fairway woods a little bit further and improve his consistency. And I gave him a little routine to do just for a few seconds before each shot to train two massively important elements that are required to strike fairway woods really really well. I can't wait to share it with you. It's super super important. Before I do though, look, if you're new to the channel, it's one of your first lessons of mine, please consider subscribing. I release videos like this one every single week to try and help you improve your game. Plus, you never have to remember a thing. Everything we put here, I'll put into a free downloadable practice guide in the description box below. So, let's now help you fall in love with fairway woods. Now, before I share with you the drill that I gave uh George, which was brilliant, actually really helped his ball striking, let's just do some simple stuff which often people miss. Before you hit any shot off a fairway, just have a look at it. Right now, what you notice about here, I don't know if you can see this on camera, the ball is away above my feet. Now, a lot of people miss this. And if you do, if I was to grip the club normally and stand normally, the chances are when I swing, I'm because the ground's closer to me, I might fat it even with a great golf swing. So, I pay attention to that before I go. And I might just go down the grip a little bit. Simple stuff, yes, but people miss it. If I turn around here and I have the ball way below my feet, I might and I and I don't pay attention to that, I'm going to maybe top the golf ball from here, right? What I need to do is I need to make sure I've got an adjustment of where I just bend a little bit more forward so I'm much closer to the ground giving me a more consistent or better option but a better chance of actually striking that ground. So simple stuff but really pay attention to it. I think none of what I'm about to say work works if you don't cater for the lie that you're on. Now one final thing before we go into the actual drill. Just notice your ball position with a fairway wood. Unlike an iron, we want to strike down on fairway woods, but not quite as much. So, whereas an iron, we might have it fairly central in our stance. Um, with a wood, we're going to have it maybe a club width inside our lead heel. And the best way to look at this is if you take the center of your golf swing here, which is your lead shield. This is the center of the circle. We want the ball look maybe just a head width just behind that center here. Hopefully, the camera angle's showing you that. But simple as that. We want that kind of ball just there. So, we're actually going to strike slightly down on it. If it's too far forward, the club starts to come upwards and that could lead to a top. If it's too far backwards, the club's coming down. You might feel it's a nice strike, but the ball won't get up in the air because there's just no loft on that golf club. So, that setup initially, keep it super super simple. Cater for the lie. Let's get stuck into the drill. So, if you want to be consistent with any club in your bag, the one thing you've got to control is your circle, right? Is it consistent? Is it repeatable? And there's certain elements of that circle. The radius of that circle is unbelievably important. Most of the time when people string with ball striking, the radius of this circle is tending to change rapidly during the golf swing. For instance, here, look, a lot of George was doing this actually yesterday. Once those arms start to spread apart, that club is starting to raise and move away from the golf ball here. If those arms don't get back to where they came from, we're into top territory. This is when people you start seeing people doing this. Some people don't control the radius. They move up and they're down. So the the circle's all over the place. So we're going to cover two things that you need to do to be able to control this time and time again to improve that quality of contact. Super simple. The first thing I want you to do is just pay attention to it. Get yourself set here. And you'll notice here my arms here. I've got a like a distance between my arms here. Now my arms are relaxed, by the way. Super super relaxed. Now from here I've I've got the radius of the swing. My job is to can I just maintain it all the way back to here. All the way back and I'm through. Look, I've still got look the radius of the swing. What you don't see me doing is spreading these apart massively here, coming through here and spreading them apart here. That radius is intact all the way back and all the way through. Now, what I don't want you to do, and George started doing this initially, is push them together and squeeze them together really tight. That just adds unnecessary tension. Just simply pay attention to those arms and notice if for to start with, notice if your arms are spreading apart. And we'll play a couple of little small shots here just to kind of get the feeling of this.

So, keeping those arms look nice and close together. It really gets me controlling that radius. You can see I've barely taken any mark on the ground there. I've really controlled it fantastically well. Now with George, he doesn't have a huge amount of time to practice most of his golf course golf course. Golf takes place out on the golf course and not on the range. So what I wanted to do with George is said, "Look, pay attention to the distance of your rounds." But what I want you to do just before your shots, maybe spend a few seconds going through this drill. And you know what? It worked an absolute treat. So take a look at this. All I did with George said, "Look, we want to control that radius. Your arms are spreading apart massively. I I I basically introduced you to my reverse engineer method, which is ultimately this. You get yourself set here. Put the club in front of you. You could do this before each shot. Tilt to the side. What that does that do? That makes sure that you're striking the ground just slightly ahead of the golf ball. But it also adds a little bit of tilt here. And then from here, look, simply just turn to the target. My arms are intact. Everything's intact. Just learn that feeling. And look here. Look, my head has remained center. By the way, from here, as I move my back to the golf ball, can you see how all of this now is much much more stable than somebody who is going up armsy wristy makes sense, right? So, get yourself set, hold it up, tilt, turn. Get a feeling. Just a couple of swings, small ones to start with. really sensing that feeling going back and through. And all you're doing, look, is controlling that radius. Look at my arms. Look, they're still, look, if I move them all the way back now, they're still look nice and close together. And this is controlling that radius, which gives me the opportunity, and certainly did with George, to improve that consistency of try strike time and time again. Now, there's one more drill I'd love to share with you that won't just help your hybrids and your fairwoods, but every single club in the bag, and you can take it straight to the golf course. Let's have a look. So, you've got the first thing that's going to help you get clean contact, which is controlling the distance those arms are apart throughout your entire swing. Super, super helpful. The second thing is height, right? So, if your head is moving up and down excessively side to side, you think of it this way. We want a circle that's swinging like this. So, we want our head pretty much staying at the same kind of height pretty much all the way through the shot. So, we look after the circle. If the head's moving up and down, the circle's going to move up and down. It's going to make it difficult, right? So, all I've got here is a driver stuck out my bag as a pure reference point. So, I get myself set up like this, okay? With my head reasonably close to the um the driver, but just as pure as a reference. So my the idea is if we were going to do that drill for instance, I might go here and look here. My head is still angled forward. I've got a tilt in my shoulders here. I'm tilted to the ground. Why? Because this is a tilted circle. What I haven't done is gone this way. Yeah. So all I'm doing is a head cover out your bag. Make a few swings. Make sure that the head stays at roughly the same height all the way through the shot. So you keep your inclination to the ground and that's going to give you a great opportunity to strike that ball cleanly time and time again. Let's have a look at this in action.

Simple as that. So two things. Control the radius of your swing by just controlling the distance between your arms. Don't tense them together. Just pay attention to it. Right? Simple as that. And then pay attention to your head position. Your head is allowed to move. The key is as though keep it in at the same level so that you can keep the inclination to the ground and that will improve your contact. Work on those couple of things and you should start to see that strike with your fairwoods and your hybrids off the ground so much better. If you enjoy this video and you want to actually see me hitting driver like this, click this video out right here. Yeah. And if you know somebody who's struggling with fairy woods or hybrids off the ground, maybe share this video. And of course, look, if you're new to the channel, press that subscribe button right here. If you like more personalized advice from me, head on over to dannymod.com where I'll look after you over there. But until next week, have a wonderful golfing.