- Welcome back to sunny Naples Florida.
I'm Adam Bazalgette.
Two-time PGA Teacher of The Year award winner down here.
Founder of Scratch Golf Academy.
Today's subject, I think one that's of interest
to a lot of people is how to hit your fairway woods higher?
Stay tuned.
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So how to hit your fairway woods higher?
Well I'm going to show you three definitive things
that make the difference in this.
We'll chat about it, try to get your thinking
a little more clear, try to help you out a little bit,
and hopefully, you can make some progress.
If you like the video, please subscribe to the channel,
leave a comment.
Would love to get you more free content coming your way
and of course scratchgolfacademy.com is my home website.
We have courses in every aspect of the game,
and you can also learn there how you can do
a one on one video lesson online with me.
So let's get started.
Okay so let's talk about those three definitive things.
We're going to flesh them out a little bit.
We're going to give you some very broad glossed over
ideas on technique.
We're going to try to get you or I'll try to help you
organize your thinking, so that you've really got
your main straight, then you can play around a little bit,
and of course I hope make some progress.
Now number one is what we call dynamic loft.
That means at impact what is the true loft of the golf club?
That would have more loft than that.
Not saying I recommend hitting a ball like that.
Club choice would have an effect on that and what not.
So what is the loft at impact?
We're going to get into that.
Secondly you've got to have a solid hit,
and as you'll see in a minute,
the way you get solid hit depending on the lie
affects your ability to use the loft of the golf club.
We'll get into that just a little minute,
but it's dynamic loft, solid hit.
And the final component speed.
There's no doubt about it.
The faster the ball comes off the club,
the higher it will apex.
So ball going at say 140 miles an hour
under the exact same conditions as one going 115
will apex and get out there higher.
We'll touch on that a little bit as we go.
Now just a quick word.
A lot of senior golfers or just higher handicaps juniors
for that matter as well and ladies that don't have
quite as much club head speed,
wind up using a lot of fairway woods in the course
of their round, and they're very very important clubs.
And certainly if you're coming into Greens Affair,
would you need a decent amount of height,
getting your clubs, picking extra clubs in that area
and having your clubs customized a little bit
can really help, certainly having slightly
more lofted fairway clubs.
They make strong woods and less lofted woods now.
Shaft flex would make a difference.
Not only shaft flex but kick point in the shaft flex.
Every club shaft has a point at which
it bends the most, and if the kick point's lower,
it kicks the club head more this way
than if it's higher.
So kick point would make a difference
and in some instances, some of these companies Adams has
done this, make them very low-profile woods,
very short top to bottom,
and that effectively moves the center of gravity
down a little bit lower,
and when that's the case, it's easier to get the ball
effectively higher on the face,
which gives it more loft.
So it's well worth looking into if you're a golfer
that hits a lot of fairway woods
customizing with the help of a professional,
someone that knows what they're doing,
you're set a bit because that will affect the loft
you have an impact.
The shaft and the loft you choose etcetera etcetera.
So have a look into that.
In fact I planned to Scratch Golf Academy
sometime in the future get a real club fitting expert
and partner with him and have him give us advice
as to how to become good at selecting clubs
and picking clubs, and what to look for,
but that's for another time.
Let's check out solid contact
and we're going to have to look at a close-up for that.
Okay so solid contact.
This is a three-wood, has a medium depth to the face,
but you've got to hit this ball up by the middle
or preferably fractionally above the middle,
to really get height on it.
I promise you, these clubs have a little bit of this
on them and when you hit them low on the club face,
there's a little bit less loft there,
and the ball will, the low contact will tilt the club
a bit as you hit it.
You're not going to hit it very high down here.
So we've got to have good contact.
The lie is a huge, huge variable in that.
That lie right there is an absolute cherry.
I can be down in the grass enough in all this cushion
and with no forward lean of the club
can get solid contact there.
That would give me more dynamic loft,
but just a few inches away is a lie that's,
there's nothing wrong with that lie.
It's not in a divot or anything,
but with that lie, if I come in to level or this way
I'm going to hit it too low on the club to get high
decent loft, so I would have to have a little bit more
forward lean there as I do that for solid hit.
And it might involve geez I need to pick a more lofted
fairway wood to get reasonable loft off that line.
Now this is kind of white and black here.
They come in all varieties.
That's a lot more subtle but favorable.
This may be in a day or after a little rain,
a little bit more growth, a little
softer might play differently.
There's nothing difficult about this geometry
where solid hit is and how the shaft lean affects that
but you've got to develop a little bit of an eye for it,
so that when you set the club down there,
you sort of know kind of what ball position
and shaft lean is going to work to give
you a solid contact.
Getting good at this, reading this stuff
and how you can make solid contact is a key, key component
and it really isn't that difficult.
Now let me just say one little word of caution.
As we see in the very cushion lie,
you can hit it with the handle not as far forward.
It gives you more loft, but we're never advocating
scooping or getting the club behind your left arm.
You want apply pressure to the ball very well that way,
I promise you.
You'll never see a baseball player hit a home run like this.
So what you can do in that case is play
the ball more forward if the lie allows
and a little bit more like a driver,
feel a bit more behind it.
So hey you're still releasing into a solid line,
but because of your relationship to the golf ball
it creates something more of a level hit there
at the bottom.
So just a little word of caution if you like there.
In ball position, subtle changes can really help this.
If it's a tight lie, as we showed you,
you need more shaft lean,
play it just a wee bit further back.
Point number three got to have club head speed.
Listen some of these Tour Pros have a hundred and five six
miles an hour of speed with their three-wood.
If you hit it solidly at that speed even on a strong
13 degree three with that thing's going to get up there
pretty high, so how can you maximize your speed?
Now that's really the topic for other videos.
Got a few videos on that
but let me give you a couple of words that I hope would be
helpful to you.
It takes everything in the human body.
I mean it takes lower body motion, coil, torque,
length of backswing, wrist cock,
they're all factors in speed,
but all of us, or many of us, let's say have one slightly
dominant physical characteristic
that we feel is a strength for us
and we should play to that.
A couple of examples of that Jack Nicklaus,
boyhood idol for me and probably a lot of you,
played basketball in college, very thick and strong.
He felt like his legs were a real sporting asset for him.
So if you look at him, a lot of leg movement there,
huge whip of the legs here.
And he used it to generate a lot of club head speed
obviously with the success he had.
Payne Stewart would come to mind to me as a guy of just sort
of medium build, a little bit taller than me,
a little bit taller than average, but kind of medium.
Actually worked at a facility he represented
in the mid 1980s,
and he was just coming into his prime then,
came into the Pro Shop once,
noticed I was a new employee, stuck his hand out,
introduced himself to me, which I thought was really nice.
Made my day I'll tell you that,
but got to be around him a little bit
and an impressive player, but how did he create speed?
If you'll remember his swing,
a lot of length big long arm swing,
and he was flexible enough,
he could maintain great integrity of his left arm
and all that good stuff and still do that,
but the length of his golf swing and the flow of it
with his coordination and balance gave him a lot of speed
and helped him to be a pretty long hitter.
And you might say Sergio Garcia maybe Ben Hogan
of yesteryear obviously gifted with super, super
flexible wrists and thumbs.
And they're able to use this incredible loading
of the wrists to create a lot of lash
and whip down there.
So if you feel like you've got something physically
that's a dominant characteristic
or you can play to that strength,
I'm not saying come up with some crazy swing
but accentuate that just a little bit in your swing,
and I think you can find a little extra speed.
As I say, we've touched on this in other videos on speed,
but remember if you're going to experiment,
and if you're going to make progress alone.
And most of the time you're not going to have a teacher
with you, the clearer your thinking is
and the better you think,
the more you'll make progress and the less trouble
you'll get into.
One final little example.
If you're still with this video,
my brother and brother-in-law
both went to the Royal Academy of Art in London.
And they both said that some of the great painters
of several hundred years ago,
had to apprentice for, I think it was seven years
of just copying great paintings, great masters works.
No original stuff till seven years
of copying the great stuff.
What that was was train your mind,
what's out there, once you're good,
once you have real deep knowledge,
once you know the principles,
then you're in a position to start to experiment.
Out of that came the Impressionists and other things,
but don't just jump out and try anything
without knowledge, so I hope that this
video gives you a little clearer understanding.
Gotta have solid hit, gotta have dynamic loft,
the lie affects that, the club choice,
the way your club set is made up,
and of course you've got to have speed.
If you'll do those three things
or if you'll do one or two of them better,
I bet you'll hit your fairway woods higher.
I hope that was helpful for you.
I hope that crystallizes your thinking a little bit,
helps you how to hit a fairway wood higher.
Again scratchgolfacademy.com is my website.
I have courses in every aspect of the game.
You can also learn there how we do one-on-one
instruction online together.
And if you like this video, we'd love to have you
subscribe to the youtube channel.
Leave a comment if you have a request,
and as always I really appreciate your time.
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