When you're hitting a fairway wood, you've got a lot of real estate to cover to get to your target. Your first instinct is probably to give it a little more power because you're worried about coming up short.
I think of all my iron shots as punches - not punch shots, but how much pressure I'm applying to the hit.
I'm not someone who looks to swing the ball away majorly.
When I want a long ball, I spin my hips faster.
For the most part, when you play a full shot from the primary rough at your course, you're gauging how close to a standard shot you can hit based on your lie in the grass.
Swinging harder with a longer club almost always leads to bad shots.
The ultimate judge of your swing is the flight of the ball.
I almost never hit a shot all out, and I make a conscious effort to swing my long clubs just as I do my wedges. Keep this in mind when hitting your fairway woods.
I don't hit it as far as a lot of guys do, so I have to be in the right spot in the fairway to score, and that means driving it well. The two biggest keys for me are to make a good transition and to keep my hands ahead of the clubhead through impact. I want to feel as if my swing is two swings: one going back and another coming down.
We've been trying to get my body and head moving toward the target on the downswing. I have a tendency to hang back and not release the club.
The key is to hit the ball first, then the sand. Even if you catch it a bit thin, you'll still get plenty of run. Hitting it fat is what you want to avoid.
I have one idiosyncrasy that helps my driving accuracy. I grip down on the club. This makes it easier to control the clubface.
Your longest drives will come when you feel you're swinging at 75 percent.
A lot of times guys have the tendency to try to kick it too hard or over-kick it. Just like a golf swing, the harder you try to hit it the less chance you have at it going straight.
So as long as my shoulders are level and I pull through with my hips, the ball should go where it's supposed to go.
I love watching Anthony Kim play, but I'm not a fan of the way he grips down a good two inches on his full-swing shots. Choking down lightens the club's swing weight and effectively makes the shaft stiffer. It also makes it difficult to hit the ball high enough for all situations.
At the heart of every slice is an open clubface. And it usually goes with a steep swing that cuts across the ball from out to in.
Sometimes my backswing gets long, and I get in bad positions. The club also can get behind me coming down, so I have to flip my hands to catch up to my body.
The biggest mistake is trying to pinch down on the ball and ripping out a big divot, often hitting the ground before the ball. You'll dig up some turf, but you won't create much backspin.
For so many years, I was watching my tee shots slide hard to the right. I used to think I was hitting a draw at times, and the ball was still curving to the right! I still prefer to play a little fade, but I've had to recalibrate my visuals.
I know most players do, but I always keep both eyes opened. I still do it. I see two shafts, the real one and the transparent one. I look for what's on the inside edge of the transparent one.
Most tall golfers don't have a lot of success. You have trouble getting steep on the ball too much. Stance, posture, all those things can be bad.
I rely on my ball striking more than anything.
I love to play three-quarter iron shots. They take a lot of extra movement out of the swing, which increases my chance of hitting it solid with the face square to the target.
I think, obviously, there's a bunch of technology with TrackMan, and all of the different launch monitors, that help tell you what is best. But, for me, it's a lot about what is going to come out from that initial window of hitting that ball.
