Jason Day Teaches YOU the Fairway Finder

All right, lads. Today we’re going to work on one of my favorite shots off the T- box. It’s called the flighted shot. I use it with a 3-wood and a driver. And I’m going to show you guys how I do it. The reason why I learned this shot was I was at the US Open at Pebble Beach and I’m playing the six hole and at the US Open it’s very difficult. Obviously they they narrow fairways in the rough is thick. There’s just trouble everywhere typically. and six at pebble. It goes down a long way. 10 to 15 yards downhill. And I was just hitting these moon balls with threewoods off the tea box. There’s wind going everywhere cuz you’re right on the ocean and there’s it’s very difficult to hit. And Steve Williams, who was cing for me at the time, turned to me and said, “What are you doing? Get it on the ground.” And I am like, “Well, I’m just trying to hit the fairway.” So, you know, later that afternoon after the practice round, um, he explained to me that’s kind of what him and Tiger used to work on, getting these fairway finders or these flighted shots because in case you do feel uncomfortable in certain situations, you can kind of step back to it, get something low and running on the ground to be able to get it on the fairway, give yourself a chance of hitting the green. If I’m telling you a a technique of how I do the flighted shots, we’re going to narrow the stance. I’m not going to be standing there with a big wide stance having a nice stable base because what that promotes is a nice big full swing. What we want to do is we want to bring some speed off that club speed. So we want a slower swing, right, to not only hit it lower, but also create a little less spin. So once it hits the ground, it starts rolling. So, we want less or a narrower base because then you can’t do you can’t have a big full swing where you’re swinging off balance from there. We’re also going to push our weight forward instead of being back here because obviously if you’re back on your right foot, you’re going to promote hitting up. So, what I envision is usually a wall going straight down my left shoulder, my left body, my left leg. And I’m it’s almost like I’m trying to nudge into that wall so that I can start to feel a little bit more pressure through my quad. Kind of feeling a little bit more leftsided. And then once I get in, I want to make sure that I uh grip down on the club a little bit more. And from there, we’re we’re gonna get left, have a little bit more narrow stance, grip down, and as we take the club back, because we’re swinging it shorter, we want to make sure that this all turns together and that you you feel like this right side of your body or the center line of your body gets more forward of the ball. So that way, you’re covering the shot a little bit more. And then that’s going to promote that low shot that you’re going to see. a really quick way of learning this because you are taking a lot of speed off the shot. You’re not hitting you’re not going to be hitting a full full shot. What I want you guys to do is I want you to go to the range, go through all those technical aspects that I was just talking about, and then I want you to get in there, narrow stance, feeling more leftsided, grip down. We want to when we turn, we want to make sure we stay on the left side as coming through. We’re going to cover the ball a little bit more, but what we’re going to do is we’re only going to try and hit 100 yards. And we’re going to try and hit it low. And we’re going to hit full swing 100 yards. So, it’s going to be very soft swings. So, we’re going to go in there. And we’re just going to That was about 100 yards. We’re just going to hit these low shots. And we’re going to keep doing it over and over and over and over again to ramp that up. 99 carry. No, no. 100 yards. 99 carry. So, that’s good. So, 99 carry, we got 2,000 spin on it. All right. Um, we got 6’2 in of height or apex on that on that flight. As obviously as we go along, hit it more and more further, the height will come up gradually. But we want to make sure that we keep this thing down because if you’re playing British Open, something I used a lot at Royal Liverpool, I I the every bunker it seemed was at 280 and I would hit this 3-wood and it would fly about 230 yards in the air, go really low and then run all the way to about 275. So I was short of those bunkers all day long and I I was only in one that week and I was because I hit a driver. But I finished second that week and I utilized this shot a lot. So, we’re going to just slowly ramp this up now. So, we’re going to try and hit it a little bit harder, which is nice. That should be about 110 to 120 somewhere in that region. Uh 126. So, 126 carry, which is great. We got eight 8’2 inches of height, 1,800 spin, and uh very nice straight ball flight. So, like I said before, for people that haven’t used this technique a lot, you’re going to have to probably sit there for a day or two and just hit like some nice threewoods, try and go 100 yards, 120, 140, 100, and work your way up. You don’t want this shot to go 270 yards in the air and and roll because you you physically won’t be able to do it. I typically try and get it around 220 to 240. Get something low, get something running when we have really firm conditions. And when you’re covering it a lot better and you’re hitting it straight, you’re going to hit more fairways that way. So, we’re going to ramp it up again. So, once again, narrow sand, lean left. We want to make sure that we stay left and then just cover it. Grip down on the club. Shot. So, starting to ramp it up now. that carried 195 uh spun at 2400 2396 uh the spin rate and then the apex was 19 ft in the air. So once I start and that rolled out to what 220 so we had in these conditions 95 to what 25 yards 25 yards a roll of roll. Now, when you’re playing firm conditions like a British Open and you hit a shot like that, potentially that could be another 60 to 100 yards of run depending on how firm it is. 100%. So, do you add any shaft lean with this shot? I don’t personally don’t, but you can. And it also depends on how you set your body up. So, if I was kind of more neutral, then you can pro potentially get more sharp lane with it, which means that you’re turning those wrists down and getting the shaft to kind of push forward. The only problem that I have with that is some people confuse shaft lean um two different ways. They either go, okay, I do it the correct way, and then they they lean the club nice and forward, they have the face turned down, or they go and drag the handle. And once you drag the handle, the club face is typically open. You’re going to hit a lot of right balls. Then you’re going to go, “Okay, I don’t want to hit right ball.” You start pulling across it. You start getting a lot of toes. And then you get get that quick duck hook left. So for me, I said I make sure that I get the setup correct. Like I said before, narrow stance. We want to make sure that we’re on the left side because we want to promote that driving of the golf ball low. And from there, I don’t really try and change anything other than I’m already left side. I stay left sided and I just cover and then I don’t have to lean the club as much. So nice. Once again, we’ll ramp it up. I’ll hit it. Try and hit it about 230 yards. That might have gone just short of that, but that’s nice. Yeah. 213 yards. So, we’re still we’re slowly ramping it up. Um, but it’s a very straight shot. As you guys would probably see, the traces are going very straight, which is nice. So, that went about 213 yards carry, 240 yards, uh, total, 2400 spin, and 26T of apex. So, when you’re in trouble and you need something to get on the fairway, what do you usually do? You don’t stand up there typically and go, I want to bomb it as far as I can. Some people do and it works. But what you want to do is you want to get it on the ground really really quick and you get that thing running up the fairway. And if you can if you can get something covering correctly and you get something running up the fairway, there’s less chance if it starts to run off the fairway, there’s less chance of it going into the into the trees into a hazard just because at some point it’s going to hit the rough and that’s going to slow down. If you were to land it way up there, there’s more chance of it bouncing into the other stuff when there’s more obstacles for it to go through like fairway and rough and sand and all that stuff. Less opportunity for it to go into uh some trouble. One thing that we have to um be cautious of when you’re trying to learn this shot is making sure that the arms and the body all kind of rotate, I guess you would say, very similar to one another. You don’t want something where you’re ripping it and the arms lagging behind because obviously that’s going to create more speed and power. But with this shot, you want to feel like the arms and the body are kind of turning as one. So that way you have better control of not only the bottom of your arc, so coming into the ball, but also more club face and stability control coming through impact. Because if you’re going like going up to the top and then you start to rip, the arms are delayed, it’s it’s really hard to time, especially when you’re trying to hit a very specialty shot like this where you’re taking a lot of speed off the full swing shot. So, typically on my 3-wood, I hit it about 275 yards at about 110 to 120 yards of apex. And you know, obviously the last few shots that I’ve hit, 213 yards, rolling out to 240 with 26 ft of of apex. Uh, that’s a that’s a special specialty shot. So, we want to make sure once we get all the technical aspects right that we’re going in here and we’re just trying to make sure that the arms and body rotate as one through the impact impact zone. So, ramp it up again. That was nice. That was lovely. Perfect. That was good. Two 243 y. Now, this is a this is probably the shot that I actually hit typically in tournament golf when I need to get something on the fairway. 243 y, 2400 uh spin rate, 47 ft in the air. That is a very very nice flighted shot. Something that’s going to stay out of the wind. Something that’s going to get on the ground and make sure it runs, especially in dry conditions. You’ll you’ll use that a lot in this case. So total was 268 yards in conditions like this. So right now we’re going to bring Brucey in. Coming in. Coming in, Brucey. We’re going to bring Brucey in. We’re going to try and teach him the shot. So we’re going to start out slow. And Brucey doesn’t utilize the shot at all. Um I need it. He He needs it. We got a tea there for you, Brucey. So, you were just sitting there listening. Yep. Um, so we’re going to start out and try and time something and go 100 yards. Okay. Okay. Narrower stance. Yep. We want to feel like there’s a wall going down. So, we want more weight left. Yep. And from there, we want to grip down. Grip down. Love that. And then from there, we’re just going to time it. So, stand a little closer. You can stand a little bit closer cuz you’re gripping down. Y. Okay. and weight there. Weight there. And then we’re just position. That’s perfect there. As long as you can feel like you can cover it. It doesn’t really matter. You can put the ball position back further if you want or you can put it up put up f uh further back or further is fine. Yeah. And distance on this first one. You’re on that. We just we just want to try and cover the water there. So, we want to do full swing, cover the water, and make sure we control it because this is it’s it’s important to be able to control the short one, the soft swings first, and then it’s easy to control uh speed after that. Okay. So, there’s a feel 120 y. Yep. Wait left. Yep. Good down. There you go. So, just keep hitting them. Yep. So, that was 110 y, 11 ft of apex. Nice. Yeah, it’s great. So, just ramp it up a little bit more. So, start to kind of cover it a little bit more. So, if you could carry this like 150 yards. Okay. Yep. Do you do you feel like you’re trying to do anything else other than like just having a No, I think you I think you um set it right with the setup. Yeah. Get the setup right. Get on the left side. Then you don’t have to do anything with the swing. Yeah. you. And then you’re just timing it with your body and your arms going together and the turn turn feel [Music] Oh, just so when so that is one thing that happens Talon is that when you first try and do this shot is that it will feel out of sync and out of time. Um, and these are the shots that we want to do in practice because once we learn to be able to time everything together, then that’s when you’ll start to hit more hit better shots on the driving range and then you’ll be able to take it out. So, right now he’s just trying to work out the timing of having a full swing that’s going super slow. Yeah. So, I’ll try that 150 again. Yep. What do you need to do? Feel like you need to do then? Uh, that was like in between. I mean, I felt like the shorter one was a little easier, but um I think get the timing better with my body. Body. Yeah, I’m going to use body. [Applause] [Music] There you go. That was lovely. Wow, she’s running 154 yards of carry, which is fantastic. 1900 spin, 16 ft of apex. So, we’re going to ramp that up and try and get it somewhere in 200 yard range. Typically, if I was teaching this and we had a lot lot more time, we’re obviously trying to cram this in, I would go, okay, we’re going to hit at 100 yards and we’re going to hit 10 balls at 100 yards. Then we go to 150 yards and we hit 10 balls there and we go to 200 yards and try and hit 10 balls there. And we just go back and forth and we go back down to 100 yards, go 150, 200. Then we keep going back and forth just to make sure that you can get the timing of 100 yard swing to a 200 yard swing, back to a 150. So, you’re always throwing it around so that when you’re going out there and you’re playing uh competitive golf that you go, “Oh, okay. I need to get this on the fairway, but I don’t want to go past 260 or Okay.” or I need to get this on the fairway, but I don’t want to go past 240. So, you have those swings and you know what those swings feel like. All right, Brucey. 200 yards. The body feel really helped me there. So, rotate more rotation. Keep rotating the body. Yep. 200. That’s really nice. Probably didn’t get quite to 200. Probably a little It was low. So one No, it didn’t get quite to 200. 195.7. So 2700 spin and 21 ft of apex. Now when we talk about 21 ft, like that is not very much at all. Like I mean that’s very low. That’s definitely going to stay out of the wind. Uh and it’s going to run. So what was my total there? Um 220. So you had a you had 25 yards of bounce and that’s I think that’s running more than that. That’s just what Trackman predicted. But yeah, that’s just like an algorithm that Trackman will have is just based off like that type of shot. That’s kind of what they think would how far it would roll. If you are, like I said before, if you were in dry conditions like a British Open style like golf course, that thing could run 50 to 100 yards depending. So let’s just ramp that up. Let’s go two try and go 220 to 240. So like it’s pretty dang full. Yeah. But you’re trying to make sure you keep it low. Work on the uh the technical aspects that we that we talked about and make sure you get the rotation with the hands through. Yep. Oh, Bruce, that is lovely there. I needed that in my match against bat. Oh, it it did. It was like 230, but it it didn’t get it. It like showed the number. But you Can we hit it again? Yeah, dude. This shot I can’t wait to work on this. What did I get? Really? So, what did I get? This is great information. Rico R. Rick need that needs it for sure. So, that went 230. That went that went 230. Oh, Bruce. That is lovely there. I mean, that that wind is straight back into us. Uh 200 220 yards of carry. uh 2700 spin and 29 feet of apex. So, I know that he can hit that a little bit harder. But the good thing is is what you guys need to understand is that when you’re feeling under the pump, when you’re feeling just a little bit uncomfortable and you’re like, I just don’t feel like I can get driver on the fairway. This is a shot that you can fall back on. Tiger did it great. And that’s where I learned it from Steve Williams, uh who catted for Tiger for many, many years. won a lot of majors, won a lot of championships with him, and this is something that you can utilize when you’re feeling uncomfortable and you need to find a fairway is this type of shot. All right, one more. Brucey, give it give it a little bit more pepper. Okay. Okay. And same height. What was the height on that one? Does that come out? 29 ft. Oh, that’s money. 29 ft. Okay. So, so make sure like the the biggest thing for you is just making sure you time the body and the arm. Yeah. You’ve got the uh technical stuff right. Just match it. Okay. So, that one went a little bit left. This is perfect because we don’t want to hit it perfect every single time. We got to suck a little bit before we get better. Y in the rough, though. Yeah. Which is And that’s a perfect uh example of a miss. Like if you can hit something where you hit a bad shot but it’s going in the rough, it’s better to just be in the rough than in the trees left or in the hazard right or whatever it is. So, okay, give it a little bit more. What do you need to do? What do you need to do there? I just I just mish hit that one. Okay, which was a good result. Just one yard off the fairway. Yeah, that is so nice. That’s like shaking his head behind the camera. I’m not getting the I’m not getting the carry cuz I’m Yeah, you’re not getting the carry cuz you’re getting it so low. Yeah. So, okay. So, that went 213 yards. Let’s Let’s Let’s not try and hit it as low. Less 28 ft. Yeah. Okay. I need to get to 45 ft. So, shots are so pure. Yeah, they’re pure. Less weight on the left. You can either do it two ways. You can tell he can either do it two ways. You can either push the ball position, have the same weight, have the same setup, but put the ball position up a little bit further. or you take less weight off the left hand side and you stand a little bit more neutral and that way you can elevate the the the flight a little bit more. So, whatever you feel comfortable with. What do you um I think I’m going to do I’m going to do a ball position and it’s set before I hit. Oh, Brucey. I’d take that. I think everyone would take that. 242 yards, 2600 spin, height, 51 ft in the air, which is perfect. So, we did a little adjustment. He was hitting it a little bit too low. Straight but low. Um, you changed the ball position, so you pushed it up a little bit more instead. Yeah, just just half an inch probably to to an inch. Yeah. And that elevated enough to go from 28 ft in the air to 50 ft in the air. So, pretty much almost doubled it. Um, but that way he can get a little bit more distance under it. Get it out there 240 yards where he can get something still running, but it’s getting on the ground pretty quick. So, I mean, this is this is a perfect perfect flighted 3-wood shot off the off the T- box. 270 total. Yeah, that’s 270. It’s great. It’s mint. 270 total. If you can hit something like that, I that that’s essentially what I do when I’m not feeling comfortable or I need to get something on the fairway. I just bunt something down there. 240 runs to 270. It’s it’s great. How can that elevate the viewers game on a tight hole when they can’t hit driver and they can fall back on something? So, I think I think the misconception uh that a lot of people fall into or read into is that it’s better to get driver all the way down there somewhere closer in some instances. is yes, but if you get to a hole that you just know you’ve struggled in the past and getting it on the fairway is much more important than let’s say for instance you you’ve struggled with a a you know a hole that has h has left all of a sudden you keep hitting it in there and then you blow one right. getting in on the fairway. Give yourself an opportunity. Even though it is a longer shot into the green that may get you enough to the point where you’re making par, you’re getting through the actual hole, something that could potentially cause your round to stop momentum or stop moving forward. It’s important to get that shot on the fairway. 100%. I like that. I think this worked well for me in five balls. So, I missed Oh, thanks for that. That was gnarly. So, I think I missed That’s wild. one to two fairways. Yeah, of all those, but one of them was my second shot with it. Um, and all the others were absolutely money straight down the middle and one that I tow hit on the toe just missed the fairway by a yard. That’s what we want you to do is we want you to be able to fall back on a shot that you can go to a hole where you feel uncomfortable and you have in the past where you have a set specific type of technique that we can give you to be able to control a shot out there, get yourself on the fairway, get through the hole that you know you need to get through and keep that round going forward. If you have watched this video and utilized the techniques and gone out and taken it to a a round of golf and it has helped your game, drop a comment. Please let us know how that helped you and let us know how it goes because we would love to hear your feedback. I know it works for me. It’s worked for me at a very, very high level. I know it’s going to work for you guys. It’s just going to take a little bit of practice, but I believe that you guys can handle this,