Golf Bad Lie, Can I Hit A Fairway Wood Out Of Bad Lies (Video) - by Pete Styles
Golf Bad Lie, Can I Hit A Fairway Wood Out Of Bad Lies (Video) - by Pete Styles

Can you hit a fairway wood from a bad lie on the golf course? You can whether it’s smart to do so I’d leave that up to you. There’s no rules in golf that say you can’t do certain things in terms of your club selection, but it’s really got to be the course management and the experience of your previous shots that kicks in to determine whether it’s the smart play or not. And it’s difficult really to assess the condition or the quality of the bad lie unless you are right on top of it looking down on it. So when you arrive at your golf ball and you are looking down the fairway the course management brain needs to take over here, and we need to be looking at is the shot worth taking on is it far enough, is it wide enough.

And then also assess the lie don’t just look as though it’s 250 yards that I need my three wood then walk over to the ball and setup and go now that’s not very friendly that’s a horrible lie, and my bag is all the way over there and the lads are waiting for me to play otherwise I will get on I’ll hit it because you’ve got the wrong club in your hands and it’s going to be a very difficult shot to get the back of the golf club into the back of the ball with enough speed and enough loft to get the ball up into the air. So if when you arrive at the ball it really doesn’t look like the ball is sitting very well, you need to start considering a more lofted club simply a more lofted club has a better profile to slice through the ground, hit -- to hitting down a little bit steeper and producing enough loft that the ball would still come out high enough. So more loft is your friend when the ball is in a bad lie. If you decide that the lie isn’t so bad and I can play it and I need to play it because I’ve got a long way to go, just nudge the ball back a little bit, so it’s not so far forwards ahead of the center. But if it’s behind the middle of your stance and you are having to dig down that much, you’ve probably got the wrong club it’s not really going to work too well. So ball position would be slightly ahead of the center a normal sort of seven or eight time ball position would work quite well. We could position a bit of body weight on the left side lean on the left side of the down swing as well as be quite steep quite aggressive and try and chop the club down into the back of the ball. Any elements of trying to lean back and scoop the ball does not work with the fairway wood from a bad lie, you’ll just exacerbate the bad lie you hit more turf before the golf ball so we are going to keep into that left side we are going to swing nice and steep and chop it forward. And it feels like I’m punching that one I’m really sort of hitting down I’m punching the ball forwards. Now clearly playing from a range map that’s going to look pretty good it’s going to come out quite well, but the hope is as long as the lie was semi reasonable that ball would have worked and it would have come out. Only way you can get to grips with the shot it’s to go and play this, go and take out on the golf course or the practice ground put a few balls in different lies and just see when the lie becomes too difficult to play and therefore how a lofted, a lofted iron is going to help get underneath the ball better than a fairway wood. 2014-11-06

Can you hit a fairway wood from a bad lie on the golf course? You can whether it’s smart to do so I’d leave that up to you. There’s no rules in golf that say you can’t do certain things in terms of your club selection, but it’s really got to be the course management and the experience of your previous shots that kicks in to determine whether it’s the smart play or not. And it’s difficult really to assess the condition or the quality of the bad lie unless you are right on top of it looking down on it. So when you arrive at your golf ball and you are looking down the fairway the course management brain needs to take over here, and we need to be looking at is the shot worth taking on is it far enough, is it wide enough.

And then also assess the lie don’t just look as though it’s 250 yards that I need my three wood then walk over to the ball and setup and go now that’s not very friendly that’s a horrible lie, and my bag is all the way over there and the lads are waiting for me to play otherwise I will get on I’ll hit it because you’ve got the wrong club in your hands and it’s going to be a very difficult shot to get the back of the golf club into the back of the ball with enough speed and enough loft to get the ball up into the air. So if when you arrive at the ball it really doesn’t look like the ball is sitting very well, you need to start considering a more lofted club simply a more lofted club has a better profile to slice through the ground, hit — to hitting down a little bit steeper and producing enough loft that the ball would still come out high enough.

So more loft is your friend when the ball is in a bad lie. If you decide that the lie isn’t so bad and I can play it and I need to play it because I’ve got a long way to go, just nudge the ball back a little bit, so it’s not so far forwards ahead of the center. But if it’s behind the middle of your stance and you are having to dig down that much, you’ve probably got the wrong club it’s not really going to work too well. So ball position would be slightly ahead of the center a normal sort of seven or eight time ball position would work quite well. We could position a bit of body weight on the left side lean on the left side of the down swing as well as be quite steep quite aggressive and try and chop the club down into the back of the ball.

Any elements of trying to lean back and scoop the ball does not work with the fairway wood from a bad lie, you’ll just exacerbate the bad lie you hit more turf before the golf ball so we are going to keep into that left side we are going to swing nice and steep and chop it forward. And it feels like I’m punching that one I’m really sort of hitting down I’m punching the ball forwards. Now clearly playing from a range map that’s going to look pretty good it’s going to come out quite well, but the hope is as long as the lie was semi reasonable that ball would have worked and it would have come out. Only way you can get to grips with the shot it’s to go and play this, go and take out on the golf course or the practice ground put a few balls in different lies and just see when the lie becomes too difficult to play and therefore how a lofted, a lofted iron is going to help get underneath the ball better than a fairway wood.