 Hi, I'm PGA Goff professional Brian Haas here for the T tournament sponsored by the VA and the DAV Today we're going to cover the long game. So the top end of your golf bag We're going to cover how you hit your driver compared to how you hit your fairway woods and hybrid One of the big issues that I see in players is that they treat their driver and their fairway woods Exactly the same way and they're really completely different from each other the driver We want to hit in an upward motion. So when when the ball is sitting up on a tee We want to swing up at the ball and get the get the ball in the upward swing That keeps the spin low and allows the driver to create shots that are going to be more More straight and direct toward the target when you hit down at a driver You create more spin which creates more movement in the golf ball left and right when we get to our fairway woods We want to treat those a little bit more like our irons. We want to hit down at those We need the ball to climb up the face. It's not sitting on a tee So it's very important that we we get into a downward motion with that club and and we treat it a little bit more like an iron So when we're teeing up a driver the big thing that we want to look for is that we're getting the ball halfway above the club head So what I didn't do is put a ball in my hand Pull one out here So as we're teeing up that ball We want to make sure that that ball is getting halfway above that club head in the in the tee up position That allows us that the position of the club to come up and hit upward at the ball and In the sense of an iron or or a fairway wood that ball sitting on the ground So if we hit up at a ball that's sitting on the ground that ball is going to roll downward We need to hit downward on the ball which makes the ball climb up the face of the club And that is the biggest difference between a fairway wood and a driver So a lot of players are always asking how do I hit my driver farther? Most players have the capability to hit that ball farther than they currently do and it's typically by length of swing so if a player gets his driver into into a good position in a current position if they maintain that same speed but Carry the driver length as long as they possibly can the farther you take that club head the farther the ball will go So if your driver is currently stopping in in a 45 degree position and we move the club head to a parallel position You will gain speed that's consistent with every club in your bag But mostly players are asking about how do I hit my driver farther? That's a great way to get started So the driver and getting back to swinging up at a driver as opposed to down at a driver You can see I have the the ball teed halfway above my club head And in this case we want to make sure that we get our body in a good tilted position So that we can give ourselves an opportunity to swing up at the ball Because the ball sits on a tee that is our the best benefit we can have so again It's a game of physics and we want to make sure that we're using the physics to our advantage The more I swing up at this ball that's sitting on a tee the less spin i'll get so the less curvature of the ball I will get so in that case i'm going to get that ball halfway above my club head I'm going to get my body tilted back to the to the right side just a little bit So that I can get myself in a position to where my club is going to swing upward toward the ball So get myself set find my target Get myself tilted And then go ahead and swing up through the ball And that's how a driver should be hit The fairway wood on the other hand is is more is played more like an iron It is a downward motion that makes the ball climb up So now we want to get ourselves into a strong position to where we're going to mean Get to our left and lean to our left a little bit through impact So taking a small divot or a brush of the turf is an important aspect of hitting your fairway wood So a lot of players as our speeds get slower A three wood is very difficult to hit So it takes a little bit more high speed to hit a three wood that's in that 15 degree range of loft So a lot of players will need a little bit more loft So it's okay that you play with a call it a four wood or a five wood when we're getting into more 17 18 19 or 20 degrees of loft Everything in those loft categories including a hybrid all need to be hit down at so that the ball will climb up the face So unlike a driver, we want to make sure we get our body to the left a little bit And stand very neutral get the ball just barely forward of center So not too far forward so that we don't hit on top of it We don't want the ball to go down into the ground So we're going to get into a strong position Hold that position to our left and we want the club to come downward and through the ball in that position So again, the the driver is going to be an upswing and your fairway woods are all going to be a downward swing