How to crush your 3 wood! Beginner and Advanced Explained

How to crush your 3 wood! Beginner and Advanced Explained

How to smash your fairway woods and in particular your 3 wood.

Why is the 3 wood such a difficult club to fit?

How can you make the perfect 3 wood for your game?

How can you understand more about your golf and equipment to maximize your 3 wood’s performance?

Today’s video highlights what you should be looking out for when testing fairway woods, what you can do to produce different ball flights with this club, and how to use it most effectively.

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My 2025 What’s In The Bag

Qi35 LS 9.5 – 60g KBS PROTO
Qi35 15° Tommy Fleetwood 3° Sleeve – 70g KBS PROTO
Qi10 7 Wood – 80g KBS PROTO

Taylormade Kingdom Mitchell 04/02/2025
.
P770 4 – 60/23
P7CB 5 – 60/26
P7CB 6 – 60/30
P7CB 7- 61/34
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P7CB 9 – 62/42
P7CB PW – 62.5/46
MG4 52 – 62.5/52
MG4 56 – 63/56
MG4 60 – 63/60

KBS TOUR V110 4 – 52°
KBS 610 120 – 56° / 60°

Spider ZT Long Putter

Qi35 – https://imp.i366014.net/c/3447262/251…
P770 – https://imp.i366014.net/c/3447262/210…
P7CB – https://imp.i366014.net/c/3447262/210…
MG4 – https://imp.i366014.net/c/3447262/177…
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TP5X PIX – https://imp.i366014.net/c/3447262/126…

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They’re such good golf clubs when you get them. I have one of my favorite golf clubs in my hand. It is the Fairway Wood. The 3-wood in particular. In today’s video, we’re going to talk about how you get the most out of this club. It is a club that can do so much if leveraged correctly. This can be your fairway finder, your second shot layup on par fives, your second shot go for on par fives. It can be your shaper left to right. It can be your hunter right to left. it can land soft and it can get out there moving. I’m going to cover all of the tips that I have used for shot shaping a 3-wood, but also what you should look for if you’re in the market to buy a 3-wood or if you just want to get this club into your bag for next season. Watch this video first cuz it’s going to really help you when it comes to making 3-wood choices. They’re such good golf clubs when you get them. Oh, maintenance guy went out there. Almost caught it in the back. Thank goodness that didn’t happen. That would have been problems as we started the video. He’s shifted. He’s moved. I didn’t see him in my defense. This is how do you crush your fairway woods and in particular the 3-wood. Now, there’s a couple of things that are interesting about this one that I want to cover on equipment that’s very relative to you and all of us out there. The 7wood. Let’s just bring it into the conversation. Absolutely love this thing. I’ve had it in the bag a while. Check out the lengths there. So, this is 42 1/2 USGA ruler and this one’s up at 43 and 1/2 USGA ruler. A buddy of mine who works with the college kids here at Tailor Made plays his a little bit shorter. Had a go of it. Really like that. Length on this golf club is really important. Now, on tour, these are extremely difficult to fit. Why? Because they’ve got to do so many things. You got to be able to like that hit them off the floor. You got to be able to put them off a teg. You got to be able to hit the high crusher. Sometimes you might want to shape it. Been doing a lot with decade golf recently. Shape it one way. I’ll touch on that later in the video. As I’m capturing these shots on full swing, I’m going to show you my dispersion chart of the 3-wood as well. So, it’s another thing that I want you to take note of when you test 3-woods. The next piece, this is just a black KBS golf shaft. It’s a tour driven 70 Cat 5. You’re talking gibberish now. What do you mean? It basically means it’s softer in the tip section. Why does that matter in the driver? This shaft is firmer in the tip section down here. What does that mean? It means because I use it off a tea, it’s going to launch and spin slightly differently to how the three-way would 3-wood would, if you can say that. Having the softer tip allows the golf ball to get some launch. You need to have a little bit of give in the tip for dynamic loft. Dynamic loft is loft on the blade at impact. That last shot only launched at 8.7. It comes back to when something launches half the loft on the blade is generally pretty good, especially with wedges, but that’s another video. So, if the club is off the floor, the 3-wood behind it, the softer tip shaft, now it can still be X flex. You just want something with a bit of give down at the bottom, which will allow that dynamic loft to move and add and get the ball into the air. That’s a key thing when it comes to setting up your throughwood, how it shouldn’t always be the same as your driver. Now, for me, and again, I talked about decade. Think about the miss profile. You can get this from any data product you use. You’ve heard me talk about clipped. Now, I’m talking about other products in that area, even with your arcros. When it comes to the miss profile, you probably want to set the face angle, which comes with the loft sleeve. So, for me, I like the face to be slightly open. I like the club lie angle to be a little bit flat. It can all be done via a loft sleeve on the Tailor Made products. That way, you set the club up to work for you. That’s the detail of the 3-wood and the golf club and the things to look out for. Swing weight I’ve talked about in detail. It has to match up with the set. Wedges, you want to be heavier. your fairway woods. I’m happy for him to match them to your driver and your irons dependent on player. Usually around D3, D4. Now, let’s talk about technique. Just before we turn this on, I roll back here to check my alignment. And I’m going at the rock out there. And the reason I’ve gone to the right side of my to aim is because one of the things I like to do is line up the T-bug on top of the crown with my intermediate target, which for me is through the T in trotty golf. Once you’ve done that and lined yourself up parallel left, now all you have to do is swing free and let rip and hit over that. This is a good tip for the 3-wood because it takes away all the noise that’s out on the shot you might be facing. Sometimes a driving range shot is pretty easy, but if all I’m doing is hitting over the tea in trotty golf, then why would it be any more different to the golf course? Because I’m just hitting it over the tea. So, first tip when it comes to hitting the shot once you got the right equipment is just hit over an intermediate target. Make sure you set up parallel to that inter intermediate target. Parallel left being with your feet aiming slightly left of the intended final target. Next piece, and it’s worth noting, I’ve got a full swing kit on here. Attack angle down three. Q I think talks a lot about fairwoods with me and asks a lot of good questions. Truthfully, the reason I’m pretty good with a 3-wood is because I hit down on it. Most of you people out there will hit down if you’re slicers. Where you get into problems is if you try and help the 3-wood in the air. This one is actually a 16.5 bent a bit stronger because of this the huzzle on it. This is the one I game. But if you notice, I’m not trying to back up on this club. I’m trying to keep my body moving forward and I’m trying to just whack it over that tea. So everything is hit moving forward. Again, there was turf interaction down slightly on the attack angle again. And you could see from the ball flight for the key. Let me look at the spin rate and help you out. There you go. 3700. What does it mean? Troty, your three would spin about 35 off the floor. 37, by the way, is just a fraction more than that. Because of the profile of the club, because it’s off the floor, because I’m hitting down on it, it gives you that spinny soft flight, which is why it’s easier to hit straighter than the driver, providing you don’t back up. Ball position is a big deal when it comes to 3-wood. So, look at the to aim alignment sticks. If I pop this down inside the left heel underneath the armpit with the handle staying in line with the left pocket is pretty much normal for me. And you know what? That might be a bit far back for most people. If there’s trouble on the left and I want to hit it lower, then I move back. That would be about as daring as I got, but I leave the handle, and you can definitely see it from your angle in front of the alignment stick. Now, say I’ve got to hit it high. Then I’ll go inside of left heel like that. But now I’ll start with the handle a little bit further back and I’ll aim a little bit further left. and that will help me hit a higher ball flight, but it may drift a little bit from left to right for the right-handed golfer. So, play around with ball position. Don’t be afraid of turf interaction and leave that handle where it is in line with left pocket, lead pocket, unless you want to hit a super high one and then drift it back and see if you can play it back here. I can’t. I hate that, but you might be able to. Okay, so you want to shape your 3-wood. Okay, good for you. First off, what I would say is like let’s get one consistent shape that we hit and then adjust our targets according to the shape. Shaping a golf ball is brilliant. It takes one side of the fairway or the green out by that. What do you mean you I mean one miss. So for the draw and that’s the rightander that moves right to left. We start more towards you in the camera and then draw onto our target out there. You got to have the to aim down which are these sticks. And then you got to have your ball to target. I talk in the content of this video about sending it over the hashtag in trotty golf where you can extend that out. Put an intermediate marker. I’ve used a T. Set your body up. So, not parallel left now almost slightly towards you guys. And then you want to swing towards you guys. But the importance is if I hit with the face and look there slight adjustments. I’ll exaggerate them. open, that ball’s going to come off towards you and go right of you. If I set swing through and hit this now with the ball slightly square to closed, it’s got to be one degree or half a degree closed from whatever path this comes through, that’s going to draw. Now, if the face the face will always win, we know that from looking at data. So, I have to to hit the draw have the face moving left to the target. It has to be on an angle in relation to my path. That’s why face to path is so important that it’s slightly closed. So the simple tip to do it is in your down swing with the ball positioned back slightly the handle forward the body aimed towards you as you swing through and this would be the tip I would do. This is the one I’m feeling for my draw at the moment. I want you to feel from this position as the hand comes down the T in tailor made on my glove whatever you have is falling. And I picture sometimes Q standing there with the camera. So, I’ll do it this way. As I’m in transition, you’re not pulling on your grandma’s toilet chain like this. If she had one, she was very old. You’re not doing this. What you’re doing, what? That’s not it. Your T-bug or knuckles towards Q. Okay. That way. Because then what that does, look at the face. Face to path comes through as I rotate. And the face is going to be close to the path. You’ve seen this with Justin Rose. It’s not going to be the fix for everyone, but I guarantee you that most of you down there are yanking on something looking like a total idiot with the face open and then early extending and releasing. Whereas, if you simply fish pump your buddy with the T-Bug pointing that way, can’t go wrong. That’s the draw. Okay, so the fade, let’s explain it again like we just did the draw. To simplify this again with the to aim, there’s my ball to target line. My path ideally coming slightly this way with the face this way being left of you for the righthander with the face if that’s square to the path being open to the path. All these shapes, by the way, if you don’t hit the middle, then it will override with center of gravity. I’m not going to get into that now. A centered strike helps. So to hit this, we want to be attack angle more down. So, I’m going to stick this in here. That’s your attack angle. By being more down, that squeezes the ball out to the right more. Face slightly open and held. Ball position slightly more forward and then down and left. So, what would be if you could give me one little tip for how to hit a fade? And again, there are millions of different ways to do this, but one small one would simply be to take the left side of your shirt, tuck it under there. All right? So, get it across like that so it looks horrific. Set up slightly left. And as you come down, squeeze that shirt as if there’s water in it and you’re ringing it out and follow through this way and try and get the right arm for the righthander across your chest and the left arm this way. And if you’ve done that correctly, the face isn’t releasing. That’s releasing. So, it’s down, left, hold, squeeze, finish. Alex Norin, look at that divot. There’s the ball. That move there is a great feel. And you’ll hit little fades. No better feeling being on top of a fade. It’s the best feeling in golf to be fair. One of them certainly. I mean, hole in one’s pretty good. Little flex there. Q. Hole in one. So, you had a hole in one. Q. There you go. Q’s not had one. So he doesn’t know, he just thinks fades are the best feeling in golf. Hole in one’s a pretty good one, too. Down and left and you hit that shape. So it’s having the trust. That one would have launched a bit lower, four 6.8. So it’s having the trust that you can move forward on a 3-wood, swing down and left, hold the face, and it’ll be in play. Now, the final piece that I want you to start thinking about, I’m going to talk more about this, I think, as the next few months come. Full Swing offers this dispersion screen. You can see I’ve warmed up today with the 56 and the 52. And then it throws in a oval shape to give you furthest, right, your shortest, your longest. As I moved up, I hit some pitching wedges. Look at the graph. Some of them are left. Now into the 3-wood. The center line, the gray line is my intended line. I haven’t hit one of these balls left. If we go to the furthest right one, and you can see it on the launch monitor. This is why you should practice with a launch monitor. 13 right is the side carry. The left furthest left ball will highlight zero yards left. So if I zoom out and you look at that target and again this is all Scott Faucet and decade my target line today with this club and this is what you have to think about when it comes to hitting your three-woods. Now we only have a four six ball graph to go off but if you do your practice session I guarantee you my driver would be wider than that but we know and it’s excellent. I mean, it’s better than tour quality, but again, it’s only six balls. But from that small graph, 13 yards right is the dispersion. So therefore, today I would aim take my dispersion and aim slightly left in order to miss on the green or miss in the fairway. 3-wood goes a lot straighter for the simple reason that we have more loft on it. It’s more spin loft, which is a combination of attack angle, dynamic loft, how the ball gets comes off the blade, how how the club is delivered. Because the spin loft is higher on this club versus your driver, you’re going to hit it straighter. The next place you can use this obviously is off the tea. You don’t want to be teeing it high like that. This is a shallow profile. You’re going to be steep on this, remember, because of the nature of the club. It’s shorter shaft, softer tip. Don’t tee the thing super high. Nice low tee. Literally just having half the ball. That could even be a little bit low. Depends on the shot you want to hit, but half the ball up above the crown. And then it’s the same motion. Ball position slightly forward. Whack it over the troty golf face. So you’ll see from the shot tracer apex is higher. You can see from the land that was a bit further and you can see from the full swing this carry number because this is what you gain. 221 was the previous shot. 240 carry into breeze slightly today. So only hit a few golf shots. You saw that 240 carry. you gain. But if we look in the more de into the detail, then the spin rate has dropped to 3,260 and the launch has gone to 9. So when you use a T, let’s have a look at our right carry as well as we’ve been talking about that our side total was only three yards right of our rock. So it was within the tolerance levels that I’ve hit already. But by teeing the ball up, yes, you gain yardage, no problem. But you also gain apex, launch, and reduce spin, which are all things that make you even stronger with the driver. So, if you master the 3-wood and you master it off a tee and you do it the right way, providing your attack angle doesn’t get too backed up and trying to help it in the air, all these things can help you deliver the driver. So, not only is it a versatile club for lots of different golf shots, it’s also a club that can help you master the driver. Now, I know a lot of you out there get intimidated by the small look of it, but trust me, once you’ve hit it out the middle and hit it pure a few times, it’s going to become your best friend. If you like what you’re seeing in here or you’ve got questions, just fire them in. There’s tons of 3-woods on the market. I can’t speak to you with enough volume as to how important it is to get custom fit. That soft tip is important. The relationship of how much you tip the club between the head is important. The head weight is important, and the length is also important. Subscribe if you like what you’re seeing. We’ve got a ton more stuff coming. It’s all on here and it’s deep in the archive. So, be sure to dive into it before you go out and buy your next golf club. [Music]