How To Hit A Fairway Wood, What Is The Perfect Alignment (Video) - by Pete Styles
How To Hit A Fairway Wood, What Is The Perfect Alignment (Video) - by Pete Styles

Often your Fairway Wood shots, they’ve got quite tough job to do because they’ve got to go a long way. But they've got to be quite accurate, because you're aiming your fairway wood to stay on a narrow fairway, or possibly even to reach onto a green. And the area around the front of the green bunkers in the way, pond in the way, quite a narrow entrance to a lot of greens. So therefore you're alignment with your Fairway Wood shots is incredibly important.

Now it's going to be a similar alignment to how you've hit your iron shots, how you've hit your driver. Just with the -- we just need to really focus on getting it bang on accurate. So make sure you've picked a dead -- dead straight and aiming right at a target. Consider the role of the Fairway as it comes up to towards the green. Any wind direction or any sort of fault that you have in your game on that day. If you're slicing the ball all the time you might start to allow for that within you're alignment. Once you’ve picked the point that you want to aim straight at. Here's a couple of things you can make sure that’s helping you aim that straight. First you want to make sure that the clubfaces that square. So I place the club head behind then golf ball, I'm checking down my target line to make sure it's lined up really accurate, really straight. Good way of checking that is get my feet nicely lined up with my target, then lift the club head up. And if the club head sits vertically straight up to the camera there, I know the clubface is on line when I bring it back down. If that clubface is sitting to like I say 1:00 position. Bring that down face is open, ball going to go off line. If it's closed this way bring it down, that ball is going to go off line as well. So if clubface bang on line. Feet dead on my target line, looking down my target line check everything's lined up. And then get ready to pull the trigger from there. Now one issue I see with a lot of golfers when they're setting up with their Fairway Woods is their feet and their clubface are online, but their shoulders are misaligned. The problem here particularly because the ball position is quite a long way forwards with the Fairway Wood, so if I have that club right in the center of my stance, my shoulders are nicely aligned at target. If I have the club moving further forward towards the golf ball there and I allow that to happen by turning or twisting my body. My shoulders now point too far off line. For the right handed golfer they point left. So if I stand there with my ball forwards in my stance, I'm looking at it, my club's looking at it, my shoulders are now off line. I swing down that left side and I end up slicing the golf ball back on to the Fairway. So once you’ve got the ball forwards in the stance and the feet nicely lined, just double check the shoulder alignment. Quick checkpoint; there with the Fairway Wood hold the club over the shoulders; look down the line that’s pointing at my target. Now I'm ready to pull the trigger and ready to go. 2014-11-05

Often your Fairway Wood shots, they’ve got quite tough job to do because they’ve got to go a long way. But they've got to be quite accurate, because you're aiming your fairway wood to stay on a narrow fairway, or possibly even to reach onto a green. And the area around the front of the green bunkers in the way, pond in the way, quite a narrow entrance to a lot of greens. So therefore you're alignment with your Fairway Wood shots is incredibly important.

Now it's going to be a similar alignment to how you've hit your iron shots, how you've hit your driver. Just with the — we just need to really focus on getting it bang on accurate. So make sure you've picked a dead — dead straight and aiming right at a target. Consider the role of the Fairway as it comes up to towards the green. Any wind direction or any sort of fault that you have in your game on that day. If you're slicing the ball all the time you might start to allow for that within you're alignment.

Once you’ve picked the point that you want to aim straight at. Here's a couple of things you can make sure that’s helping you aim that straight. First you want to make sure that the clubfaces that square. So I place the club head behind then golf ball, I'm checking down my target line to make sure it's lined up really accurate, really straight. Good way of checking that is get my feet nicely lined up with my target, then lift the club head up.

And if the club head sits vertically straight up to the camera there, I know the clubface is on line when I bring it back down. If that clubface is sitting to like I say 1:00 position. Bring that down face is open, ball going to go off line. If it's closed this way bring it down, that ball is going to go off line as well. So if clubface bang on line. Feet dead on my target line, looking down my target line check everything's lined up. And then get ready to pull the trigger from there. Now one issue I see with a lot of golfers when they're setting up with their Fairway Woods is their feet and their clubface are online, but their shoulders are misaligned.

The problem here particularly because the ball position is quite a long way forwards with the Fairway Wood, so if I have that club right in the center of my stance, my shoulders are nicely aligned at target. If I have the club moving further forward towards the golf ball there and I allow that to happen by turning or twisting my body. My shoulders now point too far off line. For the right handed golfer they point left.

So if I stand there with my ball forwards in my stance, I'm looking at it, my club's looking at it, my shoulders are now off line. I swing down that left side and I end up slicing the golf ball back on to the Fairway. So once you’ve got the ball forwards in the stance and the feet nicely lined, just double check the shoulder alignment.

Quick checkpoint; there with the Fairway Wood hold the club over the shoulders; look down the line that’s pointing at my target. Now I'm ready to pull the trigger and ready to go.