Fairway wood striking video

Golf Monthly Top 25 coach Barnet Puttich has some tips to help you with your fairway wood striking to help you reach more par 5's in two.

strike fairway woods

Golf Monthly Top 25 coach Barney Puttick has some tips to help you with your fairway wood striking to help you reach more par 5's in two.

Try these tips if you regularly struggle to hit a wood from the fairway and you find yourself lacking consistenct and distance from long range.

Many golfers are scared of this shot, but you should see the fairway wood shot off the ground as inviting rather than intimidating.

The key to good fairway wood striking is to clip the ball off the turf with a sweeping motion. One of the best ways of working on this is to use an idea first thought of by the great Ben Hogan.

Hogan came up with the image of a pane of glass running from the ball up through the shoulders at address.

The idea was to swing the club underneath that pane of glass. By keeping this image in your head, particularly when hitting this type of shot, it will help you shallow out the plane of the club as it comes through the ball, producing the required sweeping contact.

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You can take this idea a step further when practising by placing an alignment stick in the ground parallel with the shaft of the club at address, as I’ve done here.

This will really help you get the right feel for the ideal swing, and it should produce the desired results from the fairway time after time.

Tops tips

  • The key to hitting fairway woods well is to try and clip the ball off the turf.
  • Imagine a pain of glass running from the ball up through the shoulders at setup.
  • The idea is to swing the club underneath the pane of glass.
  • This should help you shallow out the plane of the club as it comes through the ball.
  • This should result in the desired sweeping contact.
  • To take this a step further, place an alignment stick in the ground parallel with the club shaft at address.
Thomas Patrick Clarke
Sports Digital Editor


Tom Clarke joined Golf Monthly as a sub editor in 2009 being promoted to content editor in 2012 and then senior content editor in 2014, before becoming Sports Digital Editor for the Sport Vertical within Future in 2022. Tom currently looks after all the digital products that Golf Monthly produce including Strategy and Content Planning for the website and social media - Tom also assists the Cycling, Football, Rugby and Marine titles at Future. Tom plays off 16 and lists Augusta National (name drop), Old Head and Le Touessrok as the favourite courses he has played. Tom is an avid viewer of all golf content with a particularly in depth knowledge of the pro tour.