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4 Tips to Make Better Contact with Fairway Woods

If you’re struggling to hit your fairway woods and are looking for some golf swing tips to help you improve ball striking with your fairway woods, then check out this video above and the following tips in today’s article!

#1: Correct Your Setup for the Fairway Wood

For fairway woods, we need to move the golf ball position back about one ball position from where we traditionally line up the ball for the golf driver. This ball position is still forward of the center point in your stance but it’s not all the way forward like we do with the driver.

Moving the ball back slightly in your stance will help you create that downward angle of attach into the golf ball. One issue that could be occurring in your swing is your fairway wood is bottoming out behind the ball, causing it to hit the ground before the ball. This can lead to chunks and poor contact with the ball.

Moving the ball back slightly in your stance will help that clubhead and ball work together better to strike ball first, then take a divot (make contact with the ground after the ball is hit).

#2: Downward Angle of Attack

Don’t try to swing up with your fairway wood. It’s common for golfers to feel the need to help the golf ball up into the air.

But in reality, the opposite is true. You need to swing down on the ball, not up. Swinging down on the ball creates a downward angle of attack the clubhead takes into the ball allowing it to hit ball first, then divot. It creates much crisper contact on the golf ball.

Trying to swing up and help the ball, leads to dropping the clubhead down behind the ball, leading to chunks, and poor ball striking.

During setup, make sure your stance is level. Your shoulders should be level (parallel to the ground) and not tilting like you do with your driver.

With driver, we tilt the shoulders to help us swing up on the golf ball, sweeping it off the tee. But with fairway woods we want level shoulders so we can swing the club downward into the ball for crisp contact.

#3: Swing Around Your Body

If you have too steep of an angle down into the golf ball, this can also cause you ball striking problems with your fairway woods.

In this case, you need to work on flattening the swing plane. You’ll still swing the club on a downward angle of attack like you do with irons and wedges, but the swing plane will be more flat.

A flatter swing plane is one that goes more around the body and not so much up and down vertically.

#4: Overcrowding the Golf Ball Can Lead to Poor Contact

A steep golf swing is caused by lifting the club head up vertically during the backswing high into the air rather than rotating it around the body more horizontally.

During the setup, the golfer is likely standing too close to the golf ball and this forces them to have a steeper swing plane.

To fix this, practice setting up to the golf ball a little further away than normal to give the ball some space and not overcrowd it with your stance. This will pull your arms out away from your body a little bit as they have to extend further out to reach the golf ball.

Work on hitting fairway wood shots with a flatter swing plane and you’ll find you make better contact with your fairway woods.

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