Sand Golf: Full Swing Fairway Woods

Video Transcript

"We've got a long sand shot, I've got my 3 wood here. The lip of the sand trap isn't that high, so I feel that I could comfortably get the ball over that. Because I am reasonably far away from my target, whether it's the green or just a long par 4 or a long par 5. So the sand shot with the fairway wood is a nice shot to be able to hit because if you can recover a good distance out of here then you might have a good chance of saving par or better on this hole, while limiting your damage to a bogey. So, your 3 wood is probably your longest club you are going to hit out of the sand. I don't advise hitting driver out of the sand because there is not enough loft on it. So you won't really be able to get the ball in the air much. But the 3 wood has got some loft on it, so I'm going to look at my target, I'm going to say, "OK, there is my line." So I'm going to line up with my line of flight and be parallel to it, if I want to hit a straight ball. If I want to fade it a little bit I'll open the face and open my stance a little bit, but for our purposes here we're going to hit this ball straight. So I've got a nice lie, I'm going to get set up nicely and I'm going to be really relaxed because if I'm tense at all I'm going to get too much sand and hit a bad shot. So I'm going to be just nice and easy, breathe real easy, (swings club). And that was a really good shot out of the sand. So, this shot, if you practice at the range, your long fairway woods out of the sand, you'll be amazed at how quickly your wood play improves because this is hard hitting out of this versus hitting out of the sand and if you can do this consistently hitting out of the fairway will be a snap. So put some time into your fairway woods in the bunker and you will see a great, great dividend paid for your efforts."