As golfers, we can still be confused about the best makeup on the top of the bag. Moortown Assistant Professional Eddie Hammond explains what to consider when you look for some woods that accompany the driver.
Mixed or fairway wood?
From a coach's point of view, you know the type of golfers you can hit the ball, they can tilt the axis forward and occupy the separation. They will always be the one who might be more suitable for hybrids.
However, golfers who swept and pick the ball and have shallower attack angles and are a bit scoop and a little flick will likely fit the fairway better.
You also need to remember that when you buy a club from a shelf, the 19° hybrid and the 19° fairway will be different. The heads in fairway wood are larger in size and the shafts are longer in length. These are two things that directly move the ball further, so you need to take that into account, too.
3 wood
There is still something about this that the golfer thinks you should have 3 wood in the bag, but not many people can generate club head speed to get the ball speed to launch the modern 3 wood loft.
A few years ago, 3 woods dropped to 14/14.5˚, but now they seem to be recovering a little. Manufacturers are trying and trying out other factors through soles and how to weld them and other factors, but still have a strong loft.
However, we see more people now going into 5 and 7 wood instead of the old-fashioned 3-5 combo. Titleist will do a great job, they put the loft on top instead of the number of woods. So they do a 16.5°, technically 4 wood, and do 15°. Personally, I've been doing lows at 16.5° and I actually hit 18° further.
So we can't see 3 wood, and those that still carry 3 wood usually carry it to use a t-shirt.
Mini Driver
We saw the transfer from pro to amateur game as Tommy Fleetwood shot in the Ryder Cup.
Personally, I still think the right 460cc driver should tick all the boxes. Most manufacturers have a choice of products to meet all the necessary requirements. Most offer low launch/spin heads, draw bias weighting, maximum forgiveness (fast ball speed for the face) options, and a lightweight high launch/spin head.
About Eddie Hammond
Eddie is the lead assistant professional in Moortown, Yorkshire. He was originally from Sheffield, and he moved to Moretown in 2005
