Tyler Ferrell is the only person in the world named to Golf Digest's list of Best Young Teachers in
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Many amateur golfers struggle with their fairway woods and can encounter issues such as thin contact or poor trajectory. To help with this, I will often tell my students to think "back wheels" first. Or in other words, I want the back portion of the sole to brush the ground just before impact. This will create a more vertical shaft angle and contact that is higher on the face. Remember, a fairway wood has a convex or curved face just as a driver does, so in order to create distance and the proper launch conditions, we have to make contact higher on the face. Players can also work on their side-tilt/axis-tilt at impact to help with this pattern as well.
Playlists: Fix Your Slice, Beginner Program, Get More Distance, Fix Your Hook
Tags: Poor Contact, Not Straight Enough, Fairway Wood, Drill, Intermediate
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This drill video is back wheels first for the three wood.
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So the three wood can cause problems or I guess I should say any fairway wood, but the
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three wood in particular can cause problems for a lot of amateurs.
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They tend to hit it really low on the face and they tend to have a little bit exaggerated
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slice to the pattern partly because of that low face contact.
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Well when I ask my students with the three wood should the club hit the ground, most of
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the time they're not sure and I'd say more often than not the guests is no that they
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think that you're just trying to pick it.
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And so what ends up happening is they tend to hit with too much shaft lean but the club
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coming up and they'll hit it on the bottom of the club.
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Now just like the driver the three wood has a curve face.
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So let's say that this is a 15 degree loft rate in the middle.
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If you go down to the bottom it may be five degrees less than that.
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So if you're hitting it and it's launching really low in those spin and no energy transfer
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there's a very good chance that you're hitting it low on the face.
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If you're not hitting the ground then that that almost guarantees that you're hitting
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it low on the face.
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So what I challenge golfers to do or my students to do is let's try and get contact with
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the ground but I don't want my three wood to knife into the ground with the leading
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edge.
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Similar to using the bounce on a pitch shot you want the shaft to be a little bit more
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vertical.
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So in order to determine if you have the shaft more vertical you'll be able to tell if
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the club is hitting the back wheels first and kind of sliding on the ground or if it's
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hitting more the front wheels first and digging into the ground like that.
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So what I mean is if we look at the sole of the club we're going to try to get the backside
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to hit into the ground not the front side.
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You see that in order to do that I'm going to have the shaft a little bit more vertical.
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So we'll work through progressions of nine to three and then ultimately up to full swings.
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But the whole goal here is I'm trying to hit the back edge into the ground and just
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feel the club kind of slide through impact instead of having a very abrasive leading edge
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feel.
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So in demonstrating first we'll try to get a little nine to three style trying to get
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the back edge of the club to hit the ground kind of like that.
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So there you'll be able to see that there's some scuff mark there and the scuff mark
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started just before the golf ball let's say half inch before the golf ball.
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I don't want you to hit the ground a few inches behind the golf ball but we do want
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to hit the ground in order to get high enough face contact.
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You can see if we kind of zoom in on the club there you can see that the contact because
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of the club hit the ground the contact is higher up on the face that's going to give
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me a lot more lunch.
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Golfers who tend to really struggle with the three would tend to not hit the ground and
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launch it really low.
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Okay so once you've got the feeling with more than nine to three then we can take it
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on to more of a full swing still trying to get that feeling of the back edge hitting
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into the ground.
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Now just with any of our low point drills the two main factors to how the club hits
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the ground or where is my upper body in space where my sternum and how straight are my
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arms.
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So in order to make sure that I hit the back at like first I'm going to make sure that
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I have enough side bend and axis tilt so my upper body is behind the golf ball and
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then I'm going to make sure that my arms are extending through the shot instead of before
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impact.
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Most of the golfers who struggle with the three would tend to have a little bit more of
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this lunge and maybe more of a scoop with the arms or more of a kind of a late cask getting
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they club down like this.
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We're going to get most of that down from the side bend and then we'll feel those arms
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kind of bring the club through so that the back edge brushes the ground and stays low
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to the ground for a long period of time.
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So we'll do one more, one more three would here.
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So that one was pretty good as far as the ground contact you can see the little bit of
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a scuff mark right next to the ball.
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If you're not sure where the scuff mark is you can always use a line or some type of tea or
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put another golf ball there so you have an indicator as far as where you hit the ground.
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If you're struggling with a three would make sure you're making ground contact with
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the right part of the club.
