Getting the ball in the fairway is the first step to attacking a green in regulation — it makes the approach to the green much more straightforward and you can generally count on a good lie unless you get unlucky.
Missing the fairway can unleash many problems: trees, rough and a potentially bad angle for your next shot. For many players, a good round can be immediately derailed when they start spraying it off the tee.
So, if hitting the fairway is a top priority, what can you do to increase your chances of success off the tee? Instructor Tim Gillis, who teaches at John’s Island Club in Vero Beach, Fla., has a simple setup strategy.
3 simple setup tips to hit more fairways
According to Gillis, there are three things players can do to give themselves a better chance of hitting the fairway: choke up, tee the ball a little lower and move the ball a touch back in the stance.
“When you grip down on the club, you’re effectively shortening it, so that helps you gain a little bit of control,” Gillis said. “And teeing it lower, I think a lot of times when amateur golfers tee the ball up too high, their path starts to change, and when their path starts to change, they start to roll the face in certain directions to offset the misses that they have. That makes it really hard to control, and you kind of end up on a never-ending cycle of what you’re doing.”
Gillis recommends choking down by as much as an inch, depending on how much control you need.
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“Then, bring that tee height down about a quarter of an inch — not very much — and move the ball just a touch back in your stance,” Gillis continued. “This, again, helps with control because when you tee the ball down, you’ll have a more consistent path through the ball. You’re not going to be swinging up and releasing. You’ll have little bit more of a controlled arc, and when you start to move the ball back in your stance, it’s easier for you to catch it early in the arc and not have to manipulate the face.”
These three setup tweaks — choking down, teeing down and moving the ball back — work in unison to increase your control of the clubface through impact.
“A lot of times people get that ball too far forward and they’re kind of reaching for it,” Gillis said. “And that causes a lot of tendencies to roll the face and lose a lot of control.”
Give Gillis’ tip a try, and see how many more fairways you hit in your next round.
Golf.com Editor
As a four-year member of Columbia’s inaugural class of female varsity golfers, Jessica can out-birdie everyone on the masthead. She can out-hustle them in the office, too, where she’s primarily responsible for producing both print and online features, and overseeing major special projects, such as GOLF’s inaugural Style Issue, which debuted in February 2018. Her original interview series, “A Round With,” debuted in November of 2015, and appeared in both in the magazine and in video form on GOLF.com.
