Gary Player: Stop making this mistake and start hitting more fairways

Welcome to Play Smart, a regular GOLF.com game-improvement column that will help you become a smarter, better golfer.

Power might be king in the current era of golf, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore accuracy off the tee. If you can’t find the short grass at a decent clip, it won’t matter how far you hit the ball.

Hitting fairways at a higher percentage doesn’t always require making swing changes. In fact, by making some simple adjustments in your setup, you can easily up your fairways hit without making any changes to your swing.

Gary Player recently published a fascinating post on this subject on X, which you can see below. In it, he explains that a huge mistake he sees recreational players make is trying to hit the ball straight. It may seem like a counterintuitive line of thinking, but once you break it down, it makes a ton of sense.

Fix this flaw to hit more fairways

Think about the last round of golf you played. How many shots did you hit that would qualify as straight? Now, how many of those shots came with the driver?

If you’re like most recreational golfers, you likely didn’t hit many shots dead straight. As Player said in his post, Ben Hogan used to say the straight ball was a “fluke.” That’s where the trouble starts for the weekend warriors. They always set up for the straight shot.

Trying to hit a straight shot isn’t bad course management, but it’s also not the smartest strategy. Most golfers have a typical shot shape, whether that be right-to-left or left-to-right, and a majority of shots with the driver move in that direction. You should use that knowledge to your advantage.

When you set up for the straight shot, you are giving yourself maximal room for error on either side of the fairway. However, if you know your shot is going to be moving in a predicable direction, aiming with that in mind will make the fairway effectively larger.

For example, if you’re a righty and you fade the ball, line up down the left side of the fairway. So long as the ball moves in its typical direction, you’ll have made the fairway twice as large compared to when you aimed down the middle. If you normally draw the ball, line up down the right.

“If you aim up the middle, you then you cut the fairway in half,” Player says. “This means a shot that draws too much ends up in the rough on the left and a ball that fades too much ends up in the right rough. The game is tough enough, so try to give yourself as much advantage as possible.”

It’s a small tweak, but one that can pay huge dividends if you implement it correctly.