If you excluded those two it would be similar to driver. But why hit 3-wood with a similar distribution to driver and lower FW % if I’m hitting it 30 yards less?
3 Likes
One of the biggest “revelations” I had as a golfer was I needed to make sure I was confident in my driver… I want to hit it as much as possible and only NOT hit it when distance is going to hurt me. The article is great and backs up my thought process… but I keep going back to one simple picture from Trackman.
Speed directly correlates to lower scores… If you aren’t confident with your driver, figure out why and get confident with your driver.
2 Likes
Where do you account for the 30 yard gain with driver?
Agree entirely. I was just curious. The only reason to hit 3 wood is if it gives you more room/stops short of a hazard or some such
1 Like
It’s in the 3 wood formula - that the 30 yards costs 0.3 strokes.
“+ 100% chance of lost distance (-0.3) whether fairway or rough.” You could put it instead in the Driver formula as +0.3.
Doesn’t surprise me. In some respect driver is the most forgiving club in the bag as it has the biggest head. I only hit 3-wood if driver reaches trouble and 3-wood doesn’t.
2 Likes
Only time I hit 3W off tee is when driver goes too far. I don’t hit 3W to try to hit a narrow fairway that I think I might miss with driver. For that I might go down to 3i, but even then 3i is not straight enough to “know” it’s going in the fairway, so might as well do driver!
I don’t really do 3W into par 5s either. Pretty rare I have more than 250 into a 5, and even if I did I’d probably hit 3i. Too much can go wrong with 3W off turf and I never practice it!
1 Like
Haha yeah I’m pretty horrific hitting 3W off the deck as well. I have a 2-hybrid as my “go far” club though.
The 3 Wood is the hardest club to fit and trust for a whole lot of golfers, me included. The numbers from the study don’t surprise me.
Also keep in mind for decades now the golf club makers have focused on designing and testing Drivers, not 3 Woods. Therefore Drivers are much better designed and we should not be surprised; the dispersion is way better.
2 Likes
Interesting article, Jon. I have joined the ranks of those who stopped hitting their 3 wood from the tee of tight holes. I’ve actually found 2 other techniques that have helped me more. (1) Gripping down an extra inch or two on the driver and then swinging normally and (2) Hitting my 3 hybrid off the tee.
These might not be for everybody, but they’re working better for me than a 3 wood does.
1 Like
I’m a huge advocate of hitting a safe driver off the tee… it’s the most forgiving club in the bag, so finding a way to make it work makes sense to me…
When I was playing in 20+ mph winds, I was hitting a 3/4 low ball that just went straight… I found it super helpful.
2 Likes
Ah! Where do you get a 2 hybrid? Have often wished for a 3- iron also.
1 Like
Great stuff.
Awesome data on the dispersion. It looks like you hit one outlier way right with the 3wood which drove the larger dispersion. Eliminating that one shot would make your dispersion look a little more cone like (though the outstanding points you make in the article would still be supported)
Even eliminating for the outlier it doesn’t appear you are more accurate off of a tee with the three wood
And to your point the gear effect / moi probably produces outliers so that’s kinda the point
Sounds like a tough tee shot. This kind of seems like a close spot in a poker game. If it is really close to a coin flip, then you aren’t giving up much EV either way.
I am not sure if you can get an answer without knowing dispersion of 3w and driver and running a full EV calc with assumptions on dispersion from 220 and 200 and assuming some sort of penalty from bunker and grass.
Right - I don’t think I see others hitting 3 wood often, but I think some of that is ignorance and the tree that used to block the long grass was recently taken out.
As I said, if that long grass was find the ball more often than not or a hazard (i mean penalty area), then I’d hit driver all day since worst case you’re hitting 3 from there and can still reach. Since it’s a lost ball back to the tee and it’s a par 5 so the bunkers aren’t really a full shot penalty (can still have reasonable look at birdie from under 150 into green), I think it may be 3 wood for me in most circumstances. Have to think about it more and see how I start feeling with the new driver.
Other note - those yardages are from one of the middle length tees where most of our competitive play is from. From the tips it’s driver all day.
1 Like
If you hit the “penalty” with the 3 wood, you still have a great chance to advance the ball to a scoring zone where you average something like 4.5 to get down.
If the bad outcome is par, that doesn’t seem far off from good strategy
Also, sounds like you are longer than the average player. Certainly that has to matter from the strokes gained perspective
More room and less penal
I’m working on embracing the big stick, my distance (~260 yds)and dispersion is getting better. I don’t have a 3-wood, just a Mizuno 3i UDI which I can send 232 yds. So, for me off the tee I use my driver on par 5s and on par 4s I use my 3i. My accuracy and dispersion are just about the same with both. So the article is spot on.
3 Likes