Hit Your Fairway Woods Solid
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If you have struggled with hitting your fairway woods solidly, this video is perfect for you. I'll show you what the 2 causes of your mishits are and I will show you a game plan to start hitting your fairway woods just like the pros.
- Maintain your spine angle through the entire swing.
- Do not try and help the ball in the air.
- Keep your setup and swing the same as you would any other club.
- Start launching the ball like a pro.
That was not very good, was it? If you've ever battled with that shot and had a really difficult time hitting your fairway woods, never really had a clear solution on what's the problem and how to fix it, well, today's video is gonna be perfect for you.
Hi everyone, I'm Rotary Swing Instructor Chris Tyler. Today's video is purposed around teaching you how to start hitting your fairway woods much more solidly, much more consistently and how to get the ball launching in the air, just like a tour player. Let's go ahead and get started.
Okay everyone, so the purpose of today's video is to give you a really good game plan on how to start hitting your fairway woods much more solid. I know that top shot that I showed you in the intro can be extremely frustrating and a lot of students ask us, "Why does that keep happening?", "Why do I keep topping the golf ball?", "Why do I have such a hard time with my fairway woods, but I can hit my irons great?"
Well, in today's video I'm going to go through the main causes of this, and more importantly, I'm gonna give you a couple of good ways to correct it so you can start hitting your golf ball much more solidly. So let's go ahead and look at the causes of this problem first. Now that we've identified what the problem is, if it's a top golf shot, or even hitting it solid to begin with, now let's go after the causes of this.
The first main cause that you'll see is a change of the angle to the spine. Okay, so if I'm set up with my setup position, you can see that there's an angle to my spine and down in the hitting area, the spine is going to be much more vertical. Okay, that's the first. Now the second is too much axis tilt. So both of these actually have to do with the position of your spine, believe it or not. So, the first one again was spine angle starting to change, starting to move more vertical. The second one is gonna be too much axis tilt or secondary axis tilt down in the hitting area.
Okay, why does that happen though? Why do we have too much secondary axis tilt down in the hitting area? Well, our brain is really good about trying to figure out ways to try to help the ball in the air, and that feels natural to us, is to try and lean back to help give the golf ball lift. What that's doing, is it's actually starting to create more of a ascending blow on the golf ball, so it's starting to club on it's way up, rather than down. Believe it or not, with a three wood or a fairway wood, you still want to hit down on the golf ball.
Tour players on average usually hit down on it, maybe three to four degrees, that's the angle of attack, three to four degrees. Sometimes as extreme as five degrees, but right in between three and four degrees is kind of that middle point.
So in order to hit down on the golf ball, what do we need to do? In order to maintain our spine angle, what do we have to do? Well we have to understand what's causing those things to happen. So aside from trying help the ball in the air, you see most of my weight is leaning over here on my right side, that's gonna start the club moving up, it's gonna be really hard to make sure I transfer my weight and at the same time, my spine is moving to a vertical position.
You can see that what's causing this is a lot of trail side push. Okay, that's bringing the hips forward, it's making the spine go vertical, can also from a face on perspective, make the spine lean. So the best way to correct this, this is actually a great drill, I want you to try this out ... You can stand up in your house or whatever it may be, and put your tush up against a wall. And what I want to do is about maybe a hundred to three hundred reps, and I don't want you putting any holes in the walls okay, so I don't want anybody's loved ones calling me and saying, "My husband or wife has put holes all in my walls," so just go easy with this. I want you to stick your tush lightly up against a wall and I just want you to make some good swings back and forth and I want you to try to keep your right tush or your trail tush against the wall as you're swinging over to three o'clock.
Okay, what this is gonna do, is gonna give you the sensation of keeping your chest down. Now obviously in a real world situation, in a high speed situation, we would have a slight bump of the hips on the way down, so our tush would go back, it would probably go through the wall. But what I'm trying to do here, is I'm trying to give you a feel of how the chest is gonna need to be over the golf ball and the hips are gonna need to stay back. So this is a great drill for you if you've had a lot of really extension in you golf swing, try it out. Stick you tush right up against the wall, okay, now as you're swinging through, I want you to try and keep your right tush back and touching the wall. Make sure you're shifting your weight at the same time. So when you go back ... I actually break this up into three pieces. I'll shift to my right, I'll swing out and I'll shift left and then I'll release. Okay, keep my right tush back, you can see that I actually hit down through the shot.
So after you've corrected that, after you've done about a hundred to three hundred reps, now we've got to identify what we want to do to not stop trying to help the golf ball in the air. Okay, so that, the biggest thing I can tell you to help you out with that, is it's kind of like a ... If you've watched Justin Rose on TV lately, he's got a move where he actually holds his back to the target as long as he can while he's shifting his weight. What that's allowing him to do, it's allowing him to be more patient with his upper body. Because the chances are, we try to spin really hard, and that spinning really hard is what's going to create that secondary axis to tilt.
So what I want you to try to do here, is I want you to try to keep your back to the target as long as possible while you're shifting your weight over to that left side. And once you get your weight over to that left side, keep everything else exactly the same. So if you've been struggling with fairway woods, the big point is that you want to keep it simple stupid. I know we've all heard that expression, is KISS, keep it simple, don't make any drastic changes. Understand that the problem is that your hips are coming forward or you're trying to help the ball in the air. Think of it as like a seven or an eight iron in your hands. Don't over swing, don't get tense in your arms to try to hit the golf ball. All of those things can be the main causes to this really nagging issue.
So a couple videos to help you out with this. If you've struggled with too much secondary tilt, is gonna be the "Level Shoulders Drill." And these videos, I'm gonna put over to the right hand side of the video player, underneath the recommended videos. So the first one, if you've battled with too much tilt, either hitting the ground before the ball, or you've been topping it a lot, check out "Level Shoulders", it's a great video to help you out. The second video I want you to check out, is "Sitting Into the Left Side", and the third video is "Losing the Tush Line". Those videos are gonna help you correct this problem and you will not battle with topping the golf ball any longer.
Marcel
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Marcel
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Marcel
Chris (Certified RST Instructor)
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