Your interest or lack of interest in this section is likely based on your current skill level. If you are a shorter hitter or play a lot of very long golf courses, you most likely are hitting a lot of fairway woods and/or hybrids into the greens. Even if you are a longer than average hitter, you will eventually play enough "reachable" par-fives that will have you desiring a level of skill with the longer clubs that you may not currently have at your disposal. The golf gods, being the kind and fair deities that we've come to know and love, will often have a hand in "equalling" the playing field... how else do you explain a diminutive Paul Runyan (125 pounds, soaking wet) beating the long-hitting, sweet-swinging Sam Snead, 8 and 7 in the 1938 PGA Championship at Shawnee-on-Delaware? History tells us that on some holes, Snead would be hitting a 7 or 8 iron into a green - hoping to get inside of the ball that Runyan had already hit with his 3 or 4-wood. Runyan knew very early on that he was never going to be able to keep up off the tee with most of his contemporaries, so he built a hall of fame career out of superior short game play and pin-point accuracy with his fairway woods.
There are numerous such stories over the years where David beat Goliath so if you are a little older now, or a little out of shape or just not a very strong swinger - take heart - know that you can compete by focusing your attention on the things that you CAN control, like short game and accuracy. I think that the people who are most adept at hitting distant targets are those who have developed a certain kind of "tunnel vision"... in theory, they can block out everything to the left and right and thereby, foreshorten the distance to the target in their mind's eye - in essence, what you or I might see when staring at a green 120 yards away with a pitching wedge in hand is similar to what the Paul Runyan's of the world see when 220 yards out and getting ready to carve their 3-wood's into birdie range.
So how do we go about hitting more greens and tight fairways with our fairway woods and long-iron/hybrids? Since it is my contention that both long and short hitters, if they happen to be above average golfers, both use similar swing mechanics when hitting the longer clubs... the disparity in accuracy falls into two categories. A long hitter may be able to hit his 3-wood 270 yards while the best a shorter hitter might hope for could be just 195 yards. Here again, the percentages come into play. Can any world-class archer expect to be as accurate at an 80 yard target as he is at a 30 yard target? It's just not practical and not likely. By the same token, if I can become exceptionally accurate at that 195 yards, I just might find myself competing with the long-knocker who just happens to be off by a few degrees. Additionally, when you have played for any length of time and have had to hit tons of long clubs into your targets (and have been able to maintain the mentality that you are not at a disadvantage and can rise to, even relish the challenge of neutralizing your opponent's obvious distance advantage with superior accuracy), you have developed that magical tunnel vision that makes every shot seem like a wedge shot into the green - and when you have such a day and can beat your longer hitting opponent, the taste is epecially sweet.
MECHANICS:(notice that I am including hybrids in this section assuming that they are the least-lofted hybrids - 14, 16, 18 degrees etc... if you replaced your 5, 6, 7 or even ALL of your irons with hybrids, treat those higher-lofted hybrids the same as you would the irons discussed in the section on iron play)
I won't delve too much into the minutiae regarding the suble differences between hitting a long club from the deck as opposed to off of a tee, except to say that a less than perfect lie from the fairway or rough, will possibly require a little more of a "hitting down" action than will a nicely teed up ball. A tee shot or approach shot with a fairway wood is not too different from a driver swing. You need to play the ball well up in your stance - maybe an inch inside the left heel or an inch further back than for the driver and instead of catching the ball at the "very bottom" of it's arc, you may want to strive for a very slightly descending blow with the fairway woods - ALTHOUGH - from a tee or from a perfect fairway lie, there is nothing wrong with catching the ball just as the club is shallowing out - in other words, you hit a nice solid high flying shot but don't take a divot.
You must fight the tendency to "try and help the ball get airborne" with the longer woods, especially the 3-wood, because it appears that the face is just not angled enough to give you sufficient launch - YOU'VE GOT TO TRUST IT - there is plenty of loft to get the ball airborne (if you continually "thin" your fairway woods or hit low, weak fades/slices, you've got to remember some of "The Right Stuff" - maintaining that side-on feeling - the club must approach the ball from "inside" the target line and we must not BREAK THAT PANE OF GLASS). As with all clubs while practicing, I can not overstress the importance of HITTING TO A SPECIFIC TARGET. It is very easy to stand there with a 1-iron hybrid or 3-wood and just try blasting the ball somewhere off into the distance (as most people do when hitting their driver)... AVOID THIS AT ALL COST! How can you judge your level or quantify your practice results without comparing where your ball ends up in relation to where you "wanted it to go"? To quote Mr. Harvey Penick... "Take Dead Aim" - always - from this day forward - on every shot, regardless of it's importance - even when taking a practice swing, aim at a pinpoint spot on the ground.
Nothing is gained from haphazard, lazy and half-hearted effort at "improvement" (you might be getting a little exercise, but you are not truly "practicing"). If you are getting less than desired results with your fairway woods, experiment with the following in order to find the correct order of things. Ball position - try slightly up in your stance but don't be afraid to experiment with the ball farther back... weight distribution - ideally, the weight should be about evenly distributed or very slightly favoring your left foot... grip pressure - something as simple as gripping a little more firmly with the last few fingers of your left hand may turn those mis-hits into successfully-struck shots... the club itself - more and more tour pros are going to 14, 13 or even 12 degrees of loft in their 3-woods - this is not for the feint of heart - it takes a very mechanically sound swing and lots of clubhead speed to get the desired results out of such clubs... that is why so many players can successfully hit 5, 6, 7 and 9 woods - they "appear" easy to hit because of their built-in loft and therefore we seem to make better swings... a few mishits with a 13 degree 3-wood and we will start questioning everything about our swing's and our game's - when in reality, we have no reason to do so - leave these clubs to the guys you watch on television.
Finally, you might want to address the physical attributes of your fairway woods. Do they have "deep" faces (great from the tee but difficult from the fairway), shallow faces (easier to get airborne but sketchy off the tee) and last but not least - length and stiffness of shaft. If all of your clubs have stiff flexes in the shafts and you hit them fairly well - but still struggle with the 3 or 4-wood, you may want to consider going to a "weaker" flex or one with a "softer tip" in order to give you the best launch conditions. As I stated in another section, I think the perfect 3-wood is the hardest club of all to find but if you go about it logically, put your ego aside and maybe seek a little help from a fitting expert, you just might find you are as accurate with your 3-wood or 4-wood as you are with your 7-iron... the game will then be SUCH a joy!
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Fairway Woods/Hybrids
