Finding the fairway has been a really big part of my career to date. When I was growing up, I used to play mostly one course and it was quite narrow off the tee so in those circumstances it’s easier to focus on the fairway. But growing up and starting to travel more, you start to see courses that are more open. For me, at the beginning, it was quite a challenge because I wasn’t used to it. It’s something I’ve developed through the years.
Finding the short grass from the tee box in golf is massively important as it’s a way to build momentum through tour round as well. If you’re always in the trees or in the rough, you’re pretty much scrambling for par all the time. It makes it really hard to build psychological momentum into the round. The more fairways you hit, usually the more birdies chance you’ll end up creating.
The first part of process to finding more fairways starts away from the ball. Especially for amateurs and their usual courses where the fairways are quite wide, it’s important to pick part of the fairway and be specific as you can be. It can be a flower in the distance, or a tree trunk, anything really. You see a lot of players lifting their club, pointing towards their target, and that’s what they are doing most of the time. The narrower the target is, the narrower the misses are as well.
Over the ball, have the target in mind, but then set up. In the tournaments I play, I put my right on the grip and club behind the ball, then I set my feet into position. That’s a good way to be consistent especially with your left foot in relation to the ball. The ball should be in line with the left heel when hitting a driver.
If you’re in a tight match or you just need to find a fairway, my last suggestion to amateurs would be to grip down on the club a bit more than usual. This is something I’ve done since I was a kid. This helps to keep better control of the clubface, and you see a lot of top players do this.
