To Strike Your Woods Pure - Do This Before Every Swing (So Easy)

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Transcript Summary- Fairway woods and hybrids make up around 25% of the average golfer’s shots, according to Shot Scope, so becoming more consistent with them can make a big difference to your scores. A lot of golfers struggle with tops, thins or inconsistent ground contact, so I want to show you two simple things: one to improve your strike and one to help you create more speed.

If you’re topping the ball, the club is generally coming in too steeply and striking the top of the ball. If you’re thinning it, you can be hitting the ground early, causing the club to bounce and come back up into the ball. What we really want with a fairway wood or hybrid is a much flatter, sweeping strike where the club glides along the ground and uses the full face.

One of the simplest ways to improve this is to focus on where you finish. With a fairway wood, I want to feel that my trail shoulder stays lower than my lead shoulder through the strike. Your eyes, ears and shoulders should all have that same angle. Start with a really short swing and simply rehearse that feeling of sweeping the club along the ground and finishing in the correct position. It’s a great drill to use before you play as a warm-up too.

When you get this right, you can create a really solid strike with very little effort. I was able to hit the ball around 200 yards with what felt like almost a putting motion, simply because the club was gliding beautifully along the ground and striking the ball correctly.

The next step is adding some speed. With one of my students, Robert, he was struggling with a slice, so I got him to open the clubface by around 30–40 degrees. That might sound completely backwards if you slice the ball, but it forces you to find a way to square the clubface through impact. It encourages the arms and club to rotate naturally instead of trying to control the clubface.

The important thing is that you give up some control to create more speed. Rather than trying to hold everything in position, allow the club to swing freely and naturally through the ball. Once Robert had the feeling of where he wanted the club to finish, his strike improved and he started creating more speed. He even added around 14 yards while making what felt like a very simple swing.

Once you understand that feeling, you can gradually extend the swing. Your body now knows where it needs to get to, so you can start moving more freely through the shot rather than getting stuck in the position that causes the slice or the poor strike.

So, if you struggle with your fairway woods or hybrids, start with those short rehearsals. Focus on that low trail shoulder, the sweeping sensation and allowing the club to glide along the ground. If you’re a slicer, try the open-face drill to encourage the club to square naturally and create more speed.

And if you’re not sure exactly what’s causing your poor strike, my Swing Coach app can help. You can try it for 14 days, and it will analyse your swing, identify what you’re doing and give you a simple drill specifically for you. It also tracks your swings so you can monitor your practice and improvement.

Full Transcript- How often do you pull out your fairway wood and your hybrid? According to Shot Scope, my watch, the average golfer pulls out a fairway wood and hybrid 25% of their shots. So, you need to be pretty good at hitting them if you want to lower your scores. But like some of my students, they can be a bit tricky. Sometimes you might hit few tops, some thins. You just want to strike woods consistently. So, I want to help you with that with a couple of simple golf tips. one that's going to help you with your ball striking and the second one which is going to add a little bit more power to these shots. So, let's just have a look at strike just generally so you can kind of understand what's potentially happening if you're struggling to strike your fairway woods. Now, I'm not sure whether you top the ball, thin the ball, or just struggle with maybe consistent ground contact, but let's just show you what's happening. If you happen to top the golf ball, what's generally happen is the club is coming down on the ball quite steeply, hits the top of the golf ball here and gets that ball almost rolling along the ground. That would be a top shot. If you're thinning the ball, sometimes you might find that you're hitting the ground early and the club's actually bouncing and and is coming upwards. So, it's a different type of golf swing, but that would be a thin shot. They go on the ground, both of them, but both are hitting different parts of the club. One's hitting the bottom and one's hitting the top. What we want to try and achieve is a strike where the club is coming beautifully in like this. Can you see how it's quite a flat strike? The club's coming in quite flat. It's not coming in too steep. It's not hitting up on the ball. It's actually coming in really flat into this ball here. So, it's hitting the full face of that 3-wood or hybrid, whatever you're using. So, how do you achieve that? Well, the best way to look at this is if I get myself set up here, okay? And if I was topping the golf ball, if I chose to top the golf ball on purpose, I'd want to try to do this. Well, straight away, what do you notice what I've done with my posture, my even my starting position to top it, I've moved over here. That's where I see a lot of people. I'd make a swing that would come down on the golf ball. This shoulder is very, very high. And I'd finish probably very, very low. In fact, let me hit a shot just doing that. There's a top shot along the ground. Okay. I finish very very low with a ve um high right shoulder and the ball look has just rolled along the ground. I want loft on this wood. I want that ball sailing. I want distance with this wood. So I need to create a shot that hits the full face. And the simplest way I know to do this and what's been helping a lot of my students recently, not just with fairwoods, but irons and driver is knowing where to finish. So, if you look at here, if I want to hit now the full face of this fairway wood, can you see, can you see where my trail shoulder is? It's low, isn't it? Compared to my lead shoulder, my eyes are at this angle, my ears are at this angle, and my shoulder at this angle. This is a really great thing to visualize when you're hitting any shot with a fair or hybrid off the ground. Now, what I always say to my students to start with is start with a very, very short swing just to kind of feel this. And you can do this on a golf course. It could even be like your little warm-up before you play. So, you get yourself set up here. And straight away, notice my posture is all going to change to try to create. Look, look at my shoulder here. Just a small shot hit swing to here. I'm going to pivot and I'm going to sweep there and I'm going to imagine that finish position. And can you hear that sound? It's like the full sole plate of that fairywood is gliding along the ground. I'm not dumping it in the ground and the back of the uh club is not lifting up like this. I am gliding it beautifully along the ground. So, let's start with that first of all to help you with your contact and then we'll talk about how you can add the distance to this. So, I get myself set up. I want ball position. Hopefully, the camera angle is good. I try and have my ball position a good about a club width inside my lead heel. Okay. And then all I'm going to do, I'm going to do a little rehearsal where I'm doing a practice swing, feeling that glide and feeling that finish position where my eyes, my ears, my shoulders are all there. Okay. So, wonderful, wonderful drill.

Listen to that. So, I've clipped it off there. Look, I've just bruised the ground there. There's nothing there. Now, just have a look at how far that's gone. Oh, it has picked up. So, that there has gone 200 yards and I've just putted that. Look at that there. Look, 200 yards. And I've really just tapped that down the fairway with a what feels like just a a basic putting motion at the moment. Just chipping it down there. Now, with Robert, my student this week, he um he kind of when he did this, first of all, he made it quite wooden. And that's the danger with a drill like this. If you're not careful, what you might do is think, "Oh, I've got to force this position." You don't need to force that position. And Robert was slicing the um his not just his fairways, but his driver too. [clears throat] And if you happen to be struggling with uh direction and strike, this could really really help. But it is counterintuitive. So once I'd got in a sense he got an idea of the destination he was going to, that already improved how the club was attacking the golf ball, but he didn't have enough zip at the golf ball. That face was wide open. So, what do you think I got him to do? This will surprise you. If you happen to slice the golf ball, this is incredible. I got him to get his um fairy wood and I got him to open the fairway wood 30 40°. I know. Why would you do that if somebody's slicing it? Well, when somebody is when that's open like this and you now have to kind of find a way to square that up, you create a beautiful motion of the arms where the club now look is turning down to the golf ball. So, it does two things. You're getting the correct motion. The club face is actually closing down, which is wonderful by the way through the impact area. It really helps you straighten it up. But it's also an incredible speed generator because most of the time, be honest, I do too. We try to control the club, don't we? We want to kind of [snorts] hold in position and and and and do this. That is too perfect to being too perfect. You're trying to control it. We want to give up to get control. We give it up. So, I got himself set. He's now got this visualization of where he's heading to. Okay. The key thing here, this shoulder is low through the impact area, not high. Now from here he's opens up the face. Now watch this one. So all I'm going to do now is visualize that club squaring up. Did he overdo it once or twice? Yeah, of course he did. But now he had speed.

Look at that beautiful little draw. And can you see here? Look how the club has just bruised the ground, clipped the ball off, and that one has just gone against the tap. Look, an extra 14 yards. Yeah. So, that's gone another 14 yards. And I've just tapping that ball. Now, if I wanted to then start to extend this golf swing, my body now knows, look, the trail shoulders low. That is how we catch that or catch that ball nice and cleanly off the fairway. From this position, I can just start find a way to work that shoulder around. Yes, it's going to go higher, but now it knows where to get to so it can move through the shot as opposed to the slices of the world. They've learned or you may have felt this position without realizing that's your top and that's what kills you. Okay, so get yourself set. Do maybe a few standing rehearsals knowing where you're going. If you're a slice of open that face, really get that face, head swinging beautifully, freely through the shot, but I'm still finishing. Look at this angle and start to enjoy ripping those fairy woods with that lovely sweeping sound off the fairway.

Just like that. So again, that's fairywoods for you. Okay. I love hitting fairywoods. Once you get that sensation of that club sweeping beautifully off the ground, I catch the I actually catch the ball then the ground. So I come slightly down on it. I like that feeling. But for a lot of people who are excessively coming down on the golf ball, this sweeping feeling is often a really good one. Particularly if you happen to be in the slice family. Now, you might be asking, well, which one am I? Am I somebody who leans back? Am I somebody who comes down steeply? That is where my swing coach app comes in. Uh you can try it out for 14 days. Scan the QR code here or look pin or pin it to the top comment below this video. It will literally tell you exactly what you're doing and then immediately within seconds then share with you a simple drill. the drill that's for you specifically to start to improve. More important, it will monitor every swing that you do. So, it will keep a track um of your practice. I'll also put like a free downloadable practice guide somewhere around here. Maybe I'll pin that to the top comment as well. Now, if you like this and you want um some help with your irions and your driver, I use this similar drill with them, too. It's absolutely brilliant. I I'll put a link somewhere here. But until next week, have a wonderful golfing week.