Welcome to another edition of the Fully Equipped Mailbag, sponsored by Cleveland/Srixon Golf, an interactive GOLF.com series in which we field your hard-hitting gear questions.
After not playing golf for many years, I’m ready to play again and will be buying a new full set of clubs soon. What’s the optimal set makeup for most golfers these days? – Rich N., Ohio
One of the greatest things about playing golf is the option we have to spec out our gear pretty much anyway we want within the 14-club limit. There are no rules regarding how many drivers, woods, irons or wedges you can carry, and you can change your set makeup as often as you want (as long as it’s not in the middle of a round.)
Answering your question is a bit more complicated, though. Truth is, there is no one optimal setup for everyone. But, if we had to lend an example of what a modern set looks like these days, it’d probably look something like this:
- Driver
- 3-wood
- Two hybrids
- 4-iron though 9-iron
- Pitching wedge
- Sand wedge
- Lob wedge
- Putter
Depending on how long it’s been since you last played (welcome back, by the way!), the line between better player sets and beginner sets has blurred. For example, there was a time when better players wouldn’t dare carry a hybrid and average players steered clear from hard-to-hit lob wedges. Newfound technologies have neutralized both ends of the bag, as hybrids are more playable than ever, and lob wedges have become much easier to hit.
To find out what you need in your setup, make an honest assessment of your strengths and weaknesses at the long and short ends of the bag. Odds are the middle of the set (the irons) will stay pretty much the same. But the rest of your set is more fluid, and depending on your needs, those are the clubs you ought to focus on come time to make modifications.
Srixon ZX irons
Longer clubs
For most of us, finding the optimal mix of long clubs isn’t all that complicated. The most important thing to do is to make sure you don’t have any overlaps in how they perform—and going by 4-degree loft increments alone isn’t enough. Case in point — it’s possible to have a 19-degree 5-wood that produces roughly the same distance as your 17-degree 2-hybrid. Lofts alone can be misleading in the wood vs hybrid arena, making a launch monitor analysis your best bet to space out your distances from club to club. And by the way, if you don’t have clubs of your own to compare, most club-fitting facilities have dozens of clubs you can try in every category.
