How to hit Fairway Woods Correctly?

by Kevin
(Illinois, America)

Hello Bo,

I have a hard time hitting all my woods, especially my 3 and 5 woods. Can you please explain all the steps necessary to make a great Fairway Wood shot?

Thanks so much and may god bless you! ^_^

-Kevin

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Kevin,

How to hit your fairway woods correctly comes down to understanding that these clubs are the longest in your bag off the ground.

As a result of these clubs being longer than the other clubs in your bag, you have to accommodate by changing your swing and how you position your body.

To put this in perspective you will need to think of your clubs as a radius that swings around an arc. The shorter the club (wedge) the shorter the distance it travels around the arc. The longer the club (fairway woods) the longer the distance the club has to travel around the arc.

Fairway Wood	Wedge

A good way to think of these two swings would be what David Orr refers to them as a "Corvette vs. a School Bus going around a mountain curve." The Corvette (wedge) goes around a sharp mountain curve faster than the School Bus (fairway woods).

If you notice the above pictures you can see that the angle the wedge approaches the ball at the bottom of the arc is steeper than the angle approach of the fairway wood.

This is why the swing for a wedge and fairway wood are different. The wedge has a hitting down motion while the fairway wood is more of a sweeping motion.

For fairway woods the ball position needs to be toward the front of your stance so you can accommodate the sweeping motion at impact. If ball position is too far back then you will be in danger of hitting down on the ball causing too much back spin that will produce less than optimized distance. However, it can be just as devastating by placing a ball too far forward in the stance as this can produce nasty slices.

A good rule of thumb would be to have the ball position straight out from your left heel or straight out from left shoulder. A good example would be the picture above.

Once you have this setup you can follow the sequence steps outlined in Driver Distance to use for fairway woods.

I hope this information helps and if you have any further questions regarding how to hit fairway woods correctly, please don't hesitate to comment below.

Bo