High Lofted Fairway Woods

[Don Golfo]

Why is there such stigma around high lofted Fairway Woods (7,9 & 11W)? A lot of golfers seem happy to put hybrids in their bags, but lofted Woods are a no go area. I struggle to understand this as the principal behind both clubs is the same, i.e. replace hard to hit irons with a more forgiving longer alternative.  The flatter lie and the larger head of the FW brings many advantages over equivalent hybrids and irons; not least better forgiveness and a reduced tendency to hook the ball. It is a shame to see these valuable clubs seem to be going out of fashion.

[mcanadiens]

Don't know.

I was given a 7W at some point last year and still haven't put it in the bag. Think I may do that if the weather breaks some time soon.

It's a good time to experiment.

[saevel25]

42 minutes ago, Don Golfo said:

A lot of golfers seem happy to put hybrids in their bags, but lofted Woods are a no go area.

I wouldn't say they are no go.

42 minutes ago, Don Golfo said:

The flatter lie and the larger head of the FW brings many advantages over equivalent hybrids and irons; not least better forgiveness and a reduced tendency to hook the ball.

That is a bit of a misconception really. Golf companies have fixed the hook tendency.

I wouldn't say a fairway wood is significantly more forgiving than a hybrid. The shallower clubhead can make a fairway wood harder to hit off the ground, and harder to get the ball up in the air. I find hybrids fly higher and just as accurate as fairway woods off the ground. Hybrids tend to have a shorter golf shaft, which can help with consistency.

I find hybrids to be a superior club really. Also, hybrids are really good out of the rough. They are more versatile.

[Piz]

I used to carry a 9 wood but ditched it in favor of a hybrid.  I have nothing against high-lofted woods and believe they can be beneficial for people who have difficulty getting adequate height on long approaches.  Could be that many golfers, like myself, find hybrids more to their liking.

[Don Golfo]

8 hours ago, saevel25 said:

That is a bit of a misconception really. Golf companies have fixed the hook tendency.

I know that some companies are distributing more weight to the toe of hybrids and reducing offset, but a lot aren’t.  To a certain extent though I probably have a built in expectation that shots are going to go left.

[Don Golfo]

8 hours ago, saevel25 said:

I wouldn't say a fairway wood is significantly more forgiving than a hybrid. The shallower clubhead can make a fairway wood harder to hit off the ground, and harder to get the ball up in the air. I find hybrids fly higher and just as accurate as fairway woods off the ground. Hybrids tend to have a shorter golf shaft, which can help with consistency

I guess it depends on your definition of forgiving? In a FW more weight is moved away from the neutral axes of the club head. That reduces the tendency of the club to twist and roll on a miss hit when compared to a hybrid.  The larger faces should also preserve ball speed more effectively on a miss hit?  On the flip side the longer sole can make turf interaction more difficult reducing forgiveness in that sense.  The lower centre of gravity should actually produce a higher launch in a FW not lower? The shorter shaft should make the hybrid more consistent and accurate as you say.

[Patch]

I think some male golfers might relate high lofted fairway woods to female golfers. It maybe a gender issue. I know my 7W has been referred to by friends as a "sissy" club. 

Another issue might be that hybrids are thought of as a new improvement over fairway metals. Some will argue that hybrids replaced fairway metals as being easier to hit for the novice golfer. In other words, "marketing".

[dennyjones]

23 hours ago, saevel25 said:

I find hybrids fly higher and just as accurate as fairway woods off the ground. Hybrids tend to have a shorter golf shaft, which can help with consistency.

I find hybrids to be a superior club really. Also, hybrids are really good out of the rough. They are more versatile.

This..

[saevel25]

15 hours ago, Don Golfo said:

I know that some companies are distributing more weight to the toe of hybrids and reducing offset, but a lot aren’t.  To a certain extent though I probably have a built in expectation that shots are going to go left.

Swingpath and clubface control matters way more than club design.

I haven't found a hybrid that actually causes a hook. Do clubs have some sort of bias, sure. I am not fearful of hooking a club off the course.

15 hours ago, Don Golfo said:

I guess it depends on your definition of forgiving? In a FW more weight is moved away from the neutral axes of the club head. That reduces the tendency of the club to twist and roll on a miss hit when compared to a hybrid.  

You also have to consider that a hybrid golf head might way more than a fairway wood. The increase in mass will resist clubhead twisting as well. You also are only talking about a very small amount of CG change.

15 hours ago, Don Golfo said:

 The larger faces should also preserve ball speed more effectively on a miss hit?

Is a fairway wood face that much larger than a hybrids?

Go to Cobra's website and bounce between looking at the hybrid and the fairway woods. The clubface area looks nearly identical. The only difference is how the shape of the club.

15 hours ago, Don Golfo said:

The lower centre of gravity should actually produce a higher launch in a FW not lower?

I would say that the CG isn't that much lower. The profile of the hybrid isn't that far off from a fairway wood. I would say that a fairway wood has the CG pulled further back.

Let's say a hybrid produces a similar ball flight to a fairway wood. The biggest design advantage is that it is that the sole design on the club makes it easier to hit out of many more lies.

Let's say a golfer hits the fairway 30% of the time. It's extremely hard for an amateur to hit a fairway wood out of the rough. So, why get a club that you can only use 30% of the time? Why limit the distance you can advance the ball out of the rough?

[Don Golfo]

Agree with a lot of that. Good to debate.

[Foot Wedge]

10 hours ago, Patch said:

I think some male golfers might relate high lofted fairway woods to female golfers. It maybe a gender issue. I know my 7W has been referred to by friends as a "sissy" club. 

And some male golfers are ego-driven jabronis.  My friend smokes his 7 wood and stumbled upon it once he gave up on trying to figure out how to hit his hybrid.  He just uses what works for him, stigmas be damned.

16 minutes ago, Don Golfo said:

Agree with a lot of that. Good to debate.

It's a good debate especially in this particular segment of clubs that is extremely personal.  At this range of the bag (higher lofted FWs, hybrids, driving irons) people get so picky about looks, length, feel, needs based on courses/player ability, etc etc that it's really tough to objectively say what is best for someone.  In my opinion it's a fun segment of the bag.

[Buckeyebowman]

I forget where I read it and who wrote it, but I once read that there are a whole lot of golfers who could play better if they would only carry 7,9, and 11 woods in their bags and told negative commentators to shove it! I think it may have been Feherty. 

As far as FW's go, I think a lot depends upon the individual design. I used to game an Orlimar Tri-Metal 3W. The face of that club may have been 3/4" high at it's deepest! You might think this would make it easy to get a ball up in the air. It did not! I could hit it about as high as the gutters on a ranch house, and it cost me a lot of distance. 

My buddy had a TM RBZ 3W that he couldn't hit, so I asked him to bring it along the next time we played so I could give it a tryout. Suddenly, the height and distance were back. I asked what he wanted for it, and he just gave it to me! Turns out he got it as a Christmas gift, so it didn't cost him anything. 

You need to play the clubs that work for you, and to hell with what anybody else thinks. 

[Lihu]

12 hours ago, Buckeyebowman said:

I forget where I read it and who wrote it, but I once read that there are a whole lot of golfers who could play better if they would only carry 7,9, and 11 woods in their bags and told negative commentators to shove it! I think it may have been Feherty. 

If this is really the case, I would think a lot more sets of clubs would be sold with all woods and hybrids?

Especially to new players who have no preconceived notions of playing blades 🤪

[boogielicious]

21 hours ago, Lihu said:

If this is really the case, I would think a lot more sets of clubs would be sold with all woods and hybrids?

Especially to new players who have no preconceived notions of playing blades 🤪

They were trending that way a while ago, if you can recall. My wife's first set had hybrids down to the 7 iron.

But then the iron head tech got better for SGI clubs. They can get the COR and MOI now on the irons to approach the hybrids. Most SGI irons now have faces set up similar to hybrids.

[Buckeyebowman]

14 hours ago, boogielicious said:

They were trending that way a while ago, if you can recall. My wife's first set had hybrids down to the 7 iron.

But then the iron head tech got better for SGI clubs. They can get the COR and MOI now on the irons to approach the hybrids. Most SGI irons now have faces set up similar to hybrids.

So true! The manufacturers figured out how to make hollow iron heads and fill them with "elastic microspheres" and such materials! This was a definite game changer. It fed right into the phobia some guys have of showing up with a bag full of head covers! 

[Don Golfo]

On 11/29/2018 at 3:11 PM, Lihu said:

If this is really the case, I would think a lot more sets of clubs would be sold with all woods and hybrids?

 

Quite a lot are heading that way, Cleveland HB (all hybrids), Ping G700 (all larger hollow heads), Wilson D350 (lots of hybrids), Tour Edge Iron Woods (all hybrids). I don’t think anybody probably needs a full set of hybrids. The real question is why have you got 3,4 & 5 irons in your bag when 7,9 and 11 woods might give you a better result most of the time? Most guys will say I can hit a 3 iron no problem! However, when you watch them play you typically see: 1) They strike them ok but they come out low and roll a long way; 2) They strike them well some of the time, but have a high proportion of poor shots; 3) They never get used and sit in the bag gleaming. The situation might improve a little with their 4 and 5 irons, but not massively. One factor is the increasingly strong lofts on irons.  Many new 5 irons have a loft of around 23 degrees and some are even 21 degrees. What that means in reality is that the 3-5 irons in a modern set are more or less at least equivalent to 2-4 irons in traditional set.  If a golfer can’t consistently hit his long irons to achieve a peak apex of 90-100 foot (25-30m) then he can’t stop the ball on a green and maybe woods or hybrids might be a better option. 

[boogielicious]

8 hours ago, Buckeyebowman said:

So true! The manufacturers figured out how to make hollow iron heads and fill them with "elastic microspheres" and such materials! This was a definite game changer. It fed right into the phobia some guys have of showing up with a bag full of head covers! 

I tried out a 5 hybrid once on the course. It looked really weird to have a bag full of head covers. I'm now just down to a 3H with a 5W and driver.

[Lihu]

7 hours ago, Don Golfo said:

Quite a lot are heading that way, Cleveland HB (all hybrids), Ping G700 (all larger hollow heads), Wilson D350 (lots of hybrids), Tour Edge Iron Woods (all hybrids). I don’t think anybody probably needs a full set of hybrids. The real question is why have you got 3,4 & 5 irons in your bag when 7,9 and 11 woods might give you a better result most of the time? Most guys will say I can hit a 3 iron no problem! However, when you watch them play you typically see: 1) They strike them ok but they come out low and roll a long way; 2) They strike them well some of the time, but have a high proportion of poor shots; 3) They never get used and sit in the bag gleaming. The situation might improve a little with their 4 and 5 irons, but not massively. One factor is the increasingly strong lofts on irons.  Many new 5 irons have a loft of around 23 degrees and some are even 21 degrees. What that means in reality is that the 3-5 irons in a modern set are more or less at least equivalent to 2-4 irons in traditional set.  If a golfer can’t consistently hit his long irons to achieve a peak apex of 90-100 foot (25-30m) then he can’t stop the ball on a green and maybe woods or hybrids might be a better option. 

Agree with everything you stated, but I think most people only keep a 3i (modern 5i as you mentioned) for low punch shots out of trees or something? I’ve never met anyone who thinks they hit it well!