How to Stop Topping Fairway Woods With This Simple Lesson

This video offers practical golf tips for seniors to address a common issue: topping the golf ball with fairway woods. Learn effective strategies to stop topping fairway woods and enhance your senior golf swing. Implement these methods to improve ball striking and enjoy a more consistent game.

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As an older golfer, there’s one specific reason you’re topping your fairway woods. Today, I’m going to tell you what that is. But more importantly, I’m going to give you three ways to fix it. Here’s what you got to understand. As an older golfer with slower swing speed, what causes the ball to get up in the air is two things. The ball gets in the air when we have loft on the face and we have swing speed. As our swing speed comes down, it makes it more difficult for the golf ball to get in the air. And fairywoods have the least amount of loft on them. That’s why you struggle getting the golf ball in the air. Now, there’s three things that happen when we don’t get the golf ball in the air. The first thing is is we pull up our head. We lose our posture. So, it looks something like this. I got my main man Nick behind the camera. Nick, give him a thumbs up. All right, Nick gave me a thumbs up. Make sure you give us a thumbs up as well. So, the first thing that golfers do to try to get the ball in the air because they don’t have the swing speed is they lift their body up. They take their head and they try to pull up and get the ball up in the air. Now, when you come up and out of it, of course, the club comes with you and you hit the top of the golf ball. Here’s the feel I want you to have. If you think that’s the move that you’re doing, what I want you to feel is that when you finish your golf swing, I want you to feel like your trail eye, which is your right eye for a right-handed golfer, is a little bit lower than your lead eye. Everybody see that? So, here’s my eyes, right? I want my right eye, my trail eye to be a little bit lower than my lead eye. When my eyes are positioned like this, then I maintain my posture. If my eyes are level like this, my head comes up. I have had very little success in my 30 plus years of coaching golf by telling people to keep their head down or their head still. Okay? Just doesn’t work. I don’t know if that if that works for you, I maybe great, but for most golfers, it just does not work. But when we focus on the eyes, of course, we instinctively change the head position, but it’s a much easier concept. If you feel like you’re trying to lift the ball in the air and you’re topping it when you finish your golf swing, make sure your trail eye, your right eye for a right-handed golfer, is a little bit lower than your lead eye, and you’ll naturally stay in posture. All right. Number two is we tend to fall back. If you finish your swing and your weight’s on your back foot, like I’ll go ahead and hit one here. All right. I got to try this new this new fairway wood out that we designed. How was that, Nick? Did I over ex Nick? Uh uh. Yeah, thumbs down. That was almost over exaggerated, right? But you get the idea. When you finish your swing, if all of your weight’s on your back foot because you’re trying to lift the ball up in the air, what happens? The bottom of the swing goes backwards. And when the bottom of the swing goes backwards, much like you saw, and I kind of overexaggerated it, I know. Then, of course, you’re bottoming out here, and you’re literally going over the top of the golf ball. If you feel like that’s you, here’s what I want you to do. When you finish your swing, I just simply want your knees to touch. I’m going to get my eye position. Good. Trail eye down, lead eye up a little bit, knees touch. Let’s see what happens here. Okay, that was better. All right. Notice my trail eye down a little bit. Notice my knees touching. When your knees touch, your weight naturally goes forward. The third thing that I see golfers do is they tend to swing the club back low and inside and then up. They swing their lead arm back and inside and then their arms go up. They try to get the ball in the air with their arms. So, we saw how we tried to get the ball in the air with our head. Doesn’t work. We saw how we tried to get the ball in the air with our weight. Third thing is we try to get the ball in the air with our arms. Doesn’t work. When your arms go low and to the inside and then they work up, once again, the bottom of the swing works backwards. This is the whole concept. Quite honestly, I didn’t even plan on talking about this, but around the vertical line swing. It’s why we wrote the book, The Bad Lie. But what I want you to feel if if you feel like your hands are too high and you’re underneath it this way, what I want you to feel is when you take the club back, make sure your lead arm works back and then it works up. Let me demonstrate that again. Back and then up. Because when the lead arm works back and it works up, the bottom of the swing naturally goes forward. So, let me see if I can tie these three together. I’m going to get my trail eye a little lower than my lead eye. I’m gonna get my knees to touch and then Nick can tell me if I get my lead arm up. If I can do those three things, I can hit that ball solid. Here we go. Okay, Nick, how did it look? How’s the lead arm? Okay, Nick gave me a thumbs up. Make sure you give us thumbs up. Hey, now that we got more height on your fairway woods, check out my next video. And if you want to personally work with me and our golf team on your game, check out vlscoaching.com.