FIND MORE FAIRWAYS
Golf Monthly Top 50 Coach Keith Wood shares his thoughts on how to find the short grass more often from the tee
We’re often told golf is now a power game all about distance. There is much truth in that, with tour pros hitting it miles and being less concerned about accuracy than they once were. But Brandel Chamblee recently cited how Daniel Berger had changed his game to focus more on driving accuracy. In 2014/15, Berger ranked 18th for distance at 302 yards and 104th for accuracy; now he’s 164th for distance at 290 yards but 14th for accuracy. He was successful in 2014/15, but also missed the cut in 14 out of 31 events. Now, he rarely misses a weekend and has made $4+ million the last two seasons and taken up residence in the world’s top 20.
At club level, distance and recovery skills fall significantly below tour level, so most of us need to be on the short grass as often as possible to score well. Here, Top 50 Coach Keith Wood picks out a number of things to focus on when seeking to up your ‘fairways hit’ stats…
1Your comfortable club First, get a clear idea of what you want to do on a hole. This hole has ditches and trees both right and left before turning right and up to the green. It’s not long – about 320 yards – so some golfers may not need their longest club to hit it far enough to make the corner and see the green.
But on every hole, you should be leaning towards your most comfortable club anyway – the one with which you are most confident of finding the fairway – because golf is much simpler from the short grass, even if you can’t then reach the green in regulation. This is where your handicap comes in!
Make sure you know what a hole does via a yardage chart or app or by lasering the distances to key points. On this hole, you perhaps ideally want to find the fairway at around 200 yards, so pick your most comfortable club to achieve that goal. For some, it may be a long-iron, hybrid or 5-wood, while for others it may be a 3-wood or driver. It’s different for everyone, but always choose the club you’re most comfortable with to help you find the target, especially when it’s a real must-hit fairway.
2Your comfortable shape
Part of your club-decision process revolves around your comfortable shot shape, too. Here, for example, if you’re a fader, you can aim at the left edge of the tree at the far end of the fairway and let it drift right. But the most important thing is to guarantee that fade, so focus any swing thoughts on ensuring that happens.
These might be to make sure you hold the face off a little bit more, or rotate aggressively through the ball so the club can’t pass you and close the face. If your shape is the other way, those thoughts might be making sure you don’t get ahead of the ball. Either way, I would advise against trying to hit a shape that doesn’t come naturally. Things often go wrong when you try to manufacture a shape that’s just not comfortable.
3Put yourself at ease
Think about where to tee it up to put yourself most at ease. Here, I don’t think you’d tee up on the right even if you are a fader, as the overhanging trees are a distraction visually and could also come into play if you start the ball further right than intended. Teeing off further left not only eliminates that particular risk, but also eases the visual pressure because you can now see more of the fairway around the corner, too. Tee it up where it creates the least anxiety for you. You have to hit this fairway, so the last thing you want to do is tee it up on the right where all you can see are trees, ditches and narrowness!
4 Think alignment
Alignment is key, so good discipline at set-up is very important. Shoulders, hips, knees and feet must all be set parallel to your chosen target line. Clearly, in a competition you can’t lay down alignment sticks, as here, to check, but your chances of hitting the fairway will increase significantly if you’re correctly aligned, so it’s worth taking time to ensure you really are aiming where you want to hit it.
5 Commit fully
Finally, the danger can be that you become too ‘steery’ when your focus is on hitting the fairway, as everything gets a bit tight and anxious and the swing can easily become too short both back and through. What you actually want is a syrupy, full-to-full swing, so once you’ve taken all the above steps, commit fully and swing with confidence.