Why You Need This: Today you'll learn to "RIP Your 3 Wood From the Fairway Every Time"

There's a common misperception about hitting woods from the fairway that could be robbing you of a ton of yardage.

If you tend to struggle to make solid contact when hitting your woods off the ground (no tee)...

...then this simple change could take hitting this type of shot from a weakness...

...to a major strength in your game.

Because you'll be hitting your fairway woods more consistently and a lot farther...

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    Quentin Patterson    

Video Duration: 9:05

Video Transcription:

Clay Ballard: Do you feel like it’s almost impossible to hit a really solid 3 wood off the ground? You tend to maybe hit a little behind the ball, you thin it, you just can’t get the club on the golf ball for some reason.

Well, there’s actually a couple secrets to this that I’m going to go over in this video. Once you know the right way to do this, then it makes it really easy to hit that 3 wood.

I’ve got Q here, he’s manning the FlightScope, going to read some of our numbers and talk about the differences between hitting it the right way and the wrong way.

Let’s go ahead and get started.

Now this is something that’s incredibly common. What I see most of the time is when you have a 3 wood and it’s on the ground, a lot of times you feel like I need to get it a little bit more up in the air, or maybe I need to hit it harder.

Either one of those thoughts makes it really easy to start flipping and losing a little bit of forward shaft lean and to actually ground out and be hitting kind of behind the golf ball.

Another misconception in there, and you hear this all the time, is that we should sweep our fairway woods off the ground.

When you start thinking that, it’s very easy again to hit too far behind the golf ball and two things are going to happen.

Either you brush a little bit of ground back here, and then it kind of drop kick it, it’s not really a solid hit. Or, if you barely miss the ground, you hit it a little bit thin. There’s really no way to get down into the golf ball and hit it solid.

Well in reality, you want to hit down on it and have a negative angle of attack. You actually want to take a little bit of a divot when you’re hitting a 3 wood.

Let me go ahead and demonstrate this with a couple of shots. This first one I’m going to feel like I pick the ball clean. I brush it, or I sweep it off the ground.

You’ll notice just behind the golf ball you may even see a couple blades of grass move back here behind the golf ball, because I’m actually grounding out too far behind the golf ball.

Let’s give this a try. So that one. Good swing, I swung hard. Made pretty solid contact as far as left and right on the face, it was on the middle of the face, but it felt really thin. It really just didn’t pop off there.

Now I’m swinging fast, so it’s probably still going to go pretty far when I do it that way. What were the numbers on that one, Q?

Quentin Patterson: Club head speed was about 105 miles per hour, and total distance was 276.

Clay: The carry distance was probably a little shorter, how far did that ball roll out?

Quentin: It was about 240 on the carry distance.

Clay: So 240 in the air, that’s usually the main number we’re looking at, that’s where you’re going to fly it if you’re going to carry it on the green.

So 105 miles an hour swing speed, that’s pretty fast swing speed. I should be able to carry the ball more than 240.

Maybe you’re currently swinging 80 miles an hour with a 3 wood, 90, 100, doesn’t matter what it is.

Using the same principle it’s going to go farther, you might even swing a little bit faster doing it the right way. Let’s try this again.

Now what I’m going to do is, is instead of feeling like I’m going to sweep the ball, I actually feel like I’m going to hit down on the golf ball. I want to hit a little bit of a divot in front of this ball here.

What that’s going to do, is that’s going to bring the contact higher up on the face. If I’m sweeping with the ground, then I’m kind of off the ground here, I’m going to be thin every single time.

If I’m hitting down, I can get higher up on the club face, I’m going to get higher ball speed and better contacts. Let’s go ahead and try this one out to where I feel like I take a little bit of a divot on this one.

There we go, nice and solid. Almost the exact same line, so it’s probably going to show up to the right on the FlightScope, because I’ve got my FlightScope lined up down the corner.

I know that one flew quite a bit farther. What was the number on that one, Q?

Quentin: Club head speed went up to 109 miles an hour, and the carry went up to 260.5.

Clay: So 20 yards father in the air, it probably rolled out even more than that. What was the total on that one?

Quentin: Total was about 279.

Clay: OK, so I got a little bit more carry. I had better spin on that, better launch angle on that. Everything was a little bit better quality of shot.

You’ll notice right here that I have a little divot, I actually took out the grass in front of that golf ball on that last shot. If I would have swept that golf ball, it would have been thin, it would have been like the first one.

So you’re probably going to pick up a solid 15 or 20 yards on your 3 wood by making sure that you hit that divot.

Now another big key to this is when we’re trying to help our swing speed, we’re trying to push with our hands and arms to really accelerate this club.

A lot of people will have the misconception that they take this right palm and that pushes the club forward to hep accelerate the club. That’s actually not happening in a great golf swing.

I want to have this right hand angled back, and it’s the turning of my body that actually gets this club to whip on through there. It’s the pulling up that gets the club to really whip on through.

So if I have a good angle of lag, so imagine this club is lagging back here and I take this grip and I pull straight up on it, watch what happens to the club head.

It whips forward, that kind of whipping through contact that allows you to really get the high club head speed.

It’s not pushing the club with the right hand this way, it’s actually turning the body and letting it whip through.

This is also another thing that allows you to get higher swing speeds when you feel like you’re hitting down. So what should be happening here, is when I start my swing everything is moving down.

I have a lot of club head speed. If I was to let go of this club, it would just shoot straight down into the ground. All of that momentum is heading down toward the turf.

Then at the last second, or as I clear my body more, my hands are going to work back up and in. So as my left hip, my left shoulder rotate open, watch my left hand, it pulls back up and in.

That changes that momentum to where now it whips through there. So again, I have to get that downward momentum. I have to feel like I’m going to hit down into the ground.

I’m not worried about taking a divot too big with a 3 wood, it rarely ever happens. The second piece of that is, once I get that momentum, I get the intention of hitting down, then I clear the body out of the way.

I want to get my left side of my body just to turn through as much as I can, and that’s how you get good contact and those really, really high club head speeds.

So if I want to kick it up a notch, maybe I want to really hit one far with this 3 wood, I’m going to make sure that I clear even harder with the left side of my body and that I make sure I hit down, or have the intention of throwing the club down even yarder.

Let’s go ahead and try this one, I’m going to get a little faster club head speed and I’m going to see if I can just get one almost 300 yards with this 3 wood. Let’s give it a whirl.

All right, Q, wanted to get a little bit more divot on that one to be honest, but it was still pretty solid. Probably not going to be the 300 that I wanted, what were the numbers on that one?

Quentin: Pretty close, you got up to 298 total distance and 113 on the club head speed.

Clay: Yes, so the club head speed was a lot faster, and again all I felt like I did there was made sure that I had the intention of swinging down and clearing the left side of the body. That gets that whip that you’re seeing on through there.

Now, one last thing that’s going to also help with this, I have to make sure that I load up in the backswing.

So many times when I see a player trying to get more club head speed, hit this good 3 wood, they’re having this short swing, making it really compact to try to guide the ball.

They’re trying to place the ball on the club. If I’m going to hit one really hard, I’m going to really wind up. I want to feel like my back turns to the target and then I really rotate all the way on through.

Let’s go ahead and try one more here, where I really load up. Here, I’m going to feel like my left shoulder gets completely behind the golf ball. It loads up my chest and allows me to get what I call a Power Turn.

Let’s go ahead and do another one here and see how this one goes when I focus on my backswing turn.

There we go, killed that one. So that was really nice, solid hit. Again, had a little bit of a divot in front. What was the distance on that one, Q?

Quentin: So distance was 307 yards, and club head speed was 112 miles per hour.

Clay: All right, so probably not going to do much better than that. I can’t guarantee that you’re going to hit a 300-yard 3 wood.

What I can guarantee is that if you follow these principles, you’re going to be able to add 20 maybe even 30 yards to what you’re currently hitting your 3 wood right now.

The big piece of this, is from the left shoulder and really loading up. If I don’t load up, none of the other stuff is going to work. I’m not going to have the power when I clear out of the way.

Again, that’s what I call the Power Turn in the Top Speed Golf System. You want to follow that by going to the Instruction tab at the top of your screen. Go into the Top Speed Golf System, and then go into the Power Turn.

Once you start working through those levels, level one, level two, level three, you’re going to start swinging longer and swinging more powerful without even realizing that you’re doing it.

So you do these drills, then you show up to the range the next day, you show up to the golf course the next day, your very first swing is more loaded up and more powerful.

So follow those steps, I guarantee if you do that you’re going to pick up some great yardage, you’re going to have a lot more fun playing golf.

I can’t wait to share with you some of my secrets in there to getting you loaded up more, that way you can really crank those 3 woods.

I’ll see you in the Power Turn.