How to strike your woods

Golf Monthly Top 25 coach Clive Tucker helps you to strike your woods to achieve more consistent shots to the green.

Golf Monthly Top 25 coach Clive Tucker helps you to strike your woods to achieve more consistent shots to the green.

The key to striking your fairway woods well is to return the shaft through impact to the position it was in at address. This is a neutral position without too much lean - this will help you pick the ball up sweetly off the deck for a better strike and flight.

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Our beginners guide to fairway wood play will help you set all the basics at address. But once you have these in place, you need to think about your swing and how you are delivering the club to the golf ball. To help illustrate the point I’ve placed an alignment stick in the ground to mimic the shaft angle I’m looking for.

If my hands are ahead of the stick at impact, I’ll take a divot and hit a push.

If my hands are behind the position of the stick I’ll strike the ball thin and hit a pull - this article will explain why.

So you are looking for a neutral shaft angle through impact and it really helps when you are practising to place a stick in the ground as I have done. This will improve your visualisation for the move we are looking to create.

To help you get this right, ensure your posture remains set from address through to impact - another important element to solid fairway wood play.

Work on getting the timing of the release right and you should find the ideal shallow angle of attack and sweeping strike for better, stronger flying fairway wood shots. Ten minutes on the practice range using this drill should certainly help improve your fairway wood game.