Ball Position with Fairway Woods Part 3

Many golfers make the mistake of thinking that they can use the same ball position for their fairway woods that they use with the driver. While that would be a simple way to approach these shots, you would be making a mistake that will make it more difficult to produce quality shots. Your fairway woods are shorter and more upright than your driver, meaning you need to adjust your ball position slightly to get into a good spot.

For the average fairway wood shot from a good lie, moving the ball back two inches should put it in a nice spot. The biggest reason for moving the ball back is that you don't want to catch your fairway woods on the upswing as you do with the driver. While hitting up on your driver is preferred for optimal trajectory, you should be trying to strike your fairway woods with a 'flat' impact angle. That means the club head should not be moving up or down at impact – it should be traveling parallel with the ground. The ball position that will make it easiest to keep your club head moving flat along the ground through impact is one where the ball is around three inches back from your left heel.

The story changes slightly when you draw a less-than-perfect lie, however. If you find your ball in some short rough, or even in a fairway divot, you will need to move the ball back in your stance to counteract that poor lie. Place the ball just slightly forward from the middle of your stance so that you can hit down aggressively on the shot. Hitting down through the ball is the best way to deal with a bad lie, and that really won't be possible if you keep the ball forward in your stance at address.

Just as with the driver, you will want to experiment with various ball positions while using your fairway woods until you have picked out the best spot to play from with each of these clubs. Since your three wood is slightly different than your five wood or any other fairway wood you happen to use, each individual club is going to need to have a specific ball position of its own. Again, as mentioned above, this is a rather mundane detail of the game which will have a major impact on your ability to produce consistent, quality shots.