Fairway wood question?

I'm still pretty new to golf and I have a couple of questions on fairway woods. Maybe someone can help me out.

I don't have any fairway woods in my bag right now. I started off with a new driver, then irons and a reasonable putter. I'm now in a position to purchase some fairway woods.

What woods should I purchase? What distance do they carry?

I'm having a very hard time reaching the green from 180-200 yards with my 3 or 4 iron. I know a wood would help me but I don't know what to buy. Any advice would be appreciated, TIA.

Dan

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Footjoy
Titleist NXT

"It's never too late to be what you might have been."
George Eliot

I suggest replacing your 3 and 4 irons with hybrids and using them for those distance shots. A single hybrid, lofted 21 degrees or so, may be all you need.

A lot of people, myself included, find a hybrid much easier to hit than either a long iron or fairway wood. There is research that shows that even people who can hit the long irons well hit hybrids 16 yards longer, on average.

Totally agree. I love my H4, even from the rough. But I still can't get 180yd with it and my current set comes with a 4W whose head is still quite huge. I am looking at getting a fairway wood with a smaller head too...

To answer your question, you should buy a FW 3 or 4 degrees weaker than your 3 iron. Therefore, if your 3 iron is 22º, buy an 18 or 19º wood (so probably 5 wood). You could also then buy a 15 or 16º wood (3 wood) as well.

Personally, I'd make sure I had a ton of wedges first (I play PW, GW, SW, LW, XLW), a full set of irons (hybrids 3-5), driver and putter. Depending on the course, I'll sub out the XLW for a 3W.

More loft makes it easier to use a fairway wood off the fairway so in that case a 5W and 7W would be best. If it's distance off the tee that you need then I'd go with a 3W and 5W combination.

Distance wise, relative to your driver the 3W will be anything between 20 and 50 yards shorter depending on how long and how well you hit the driver. 3-woods these days are like drivers of a few years back so they hit the ball a long way. You can knock another 20 yards off for a 5W and another 20 yards again for the 7 wood.

I hit my 4 iron about the same distance (190), I have a 15 Degree 3 wood which I hit about 240, and a 2H(think is similar to a 5 wood) that goes about 220.

As for what woods depends upon how much your looking to spend.

Bob

Can someone help tabulate the standard distance discrepancies between the clubs? I'm a bit confused and think there could be some overlap in clubs? Let's assume that I hit my 5i about 150yds?

5i -> 150yd
4i
3i
7W
5W
4W
3W
1W
4H

Thanks for the input. I think I'm going to start with a 18 or 19 degree 5w like Lowpost suggested. I've talked to a couple of friends and this sounds like the fairway wood for me.

Nice distance site Ricky.

One other question for lowpost. I've got a PW, SW and really cheap lob wedge. I want to get a good LW, maybe a Titleist Vokey but I think it may spin too much for me. What's a good LW and what is an XLW? TIA

Dan

You don't have to spend a lot of money to get good wedges. For the price of a Vokey, I can probably build you a set of wedges that would play just as well.

An XLW is an Extra Loft Wedge, and usually refers to a 64º wedge. Another club you might consider is a Gap Wedge to fill between your PW and SW. 52º should probably do it, assuming your SW is 56º.

Thanks Ricky, that's very useful But I'm also wondering if there are any overlaps here, like do people really get a 7W or a 9W, and so many degrees of hybrids etc. Surely there are some clashes with the irons? Or do people keep them for certain scenarios, or depending on whether they prefer to use woods or irons, etc?

I have a friend who uses no irons at all, other than wedges! He found that he could hit the woods better, so he carries woods, from driver all the way to 11W (or more; not sure), and he plays in the low 80s.

Some people find that regular irons are better out of the rough, but some of the hybrids now are pretty good for that as well. I used to carry a regular 5 iron, and I hit pretty well with it, but I replaced it with a hybrid because (a) I hit as well with the bybrid or better; (b) I found the heavy head on the hybrid was even better out of the rough; and (c) the hybrid's rounded sole was *much* better for getting a nice hit out of fairway bunkers. So I couldn't think of a reason to keep the regular 5 iron around.

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Todd
Philadelphia, PA
USA

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[quote=Simon Woo]I'm also wondering if there are any overlaps here, like do people really get a 7W or a 9W, and so many degrees of hybrids etc. Surely there are some clashes with the irons? QUOTE]

Yes, Simon, there are clashes. So you swap them out. Like if you carry a 7W, you probably don't carry a 3 iron. 9W would most likely take the place of your 4i, and 11W your 5i.

Now, because the rules state you can only have 14 clubs, it's possible to duplicate clubs (like carry an 11W or 5H and a 5i) for different situations (you may have to give up your 3W or your 64º wedge, however). But more often than not, you'll learn that one club will get the job done sufficiently for all situations (like a 5H is great out of bunkers, the rough, the fairway and the tee).

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http://www.csgnetwork.com/golfclubdistancecalce.html do you want to check your distance go to the page above.
they are pretty good

while we're on the point of fairway woods, i think the best fairway wood is the ping g5 7 wood, i am useless with my long irons so i use that all the time from the rough or fairway i easily hit 200yards with pin point accuracy. it has replaced my 3 and 4 iron, and it has made the best improvement to my game i bought my g5 set.