Earlier this year I attended LIV Chicago for what was my first GOLF.com assignment. My job mostly was to follow the team around, get introduced to people and make some content as needed. For one of those pieces, I spoke to one of my new colleagues, Maddi MacClurg, about Henrik Stenson’s legendary Callaway Diablo Octane 3-wood, which he has used for much of his career.
This led Maddi and I into a longer discussion about the idea of what clubs can stay in your bag forever, and what clubs you’d be wise to replace whether you like it or not. (By the way, in Stenson’s case, while he has stayed loyal to the Diablo Octane, he has swapped out heads. And from what he told Maddi, he’s still on eBay every now and then looking for new ones.)
My feelings are that outside of putters, which I think everyone agrees have an endless shelf life, the only other clubs that you can use in perpetuity are lob wedges and fairway woods. Everything else is hard to make an argument that you shouldn’t replace every few years in pursuit of performance. That’s because some clubs are built to fill a role and others are built to deliver a performance boost.
For this installment of Bag Builders, let’s dive into the idea of selecting clubs for purpose vs. performance.
Why some clubs have a defined role
The fairway wood and the lob wedge are the two most “do a job” clubs in the bag. A good lob wedge can be a safety blanket for any player, and a reliable fairway wood can make a huge difference on the tee box in high-stress situations. Both clubs need to inspire confidence; they need to feel automatic. There can’t be any feeling of pressure or work. They just have to do the job they are meant to do, and they need to do them effortlessly. That’s why we see players in lob wedges for years, or with a single fairway wood for an entire career.
Once you’ve found the perfect shape, bounce, loft and grind combination in a lob wedge, it feels perfect in your hands. At any level of golf, feeling supremely confident over delicate short games shots is invaluable. Look at the PGA Tour, where players may change their sand wedge and gap wedge options, but they’re more likely to hold onto their lob wedge for a couple of years, only replacing it with a duplicate when the grooves wear out. If grooves didn’t wear down, I would venture to say that some players would never switch their lobbers.
That said, the wedge market does change a lot. It seems like every week we’re seeing Aaron Dill come out with a new tour grind for Vokey. Every time an OEM releases a new wedge lineup, they are releasing a new grind option. The amount of stock options that a player has available to them in today’s game is nearly immeasurable. Side note: My two favorites this year have been the Cobra T Grind and the Mizuno X Grind.
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A good fairway wood is so hard to find
The problem with fairway woods, specifically a 3-wood, is they’re not easy to hit. That last club before you get to your driver can be a pain point for many golfers. They don’t launch easily, can be unforgiving and I know many golfers who are more timid hitting their fairway wood than any other club in their bags, particularly when hitting them off the deck. I am one of these players. I hate playing fairway woods. Until 45 days ago, I didn’t carry a fairway wood for about two years because I couldn’t swing one with any confidence. It was actually my conversation with Maddi at LIV Chicago that sparked my desire to try and find one — and thankfully I’ve actually found a couple. One of them even made it into my bag during my most important weekend of golf of the year.
The thing to remember about 3-woods is that it’s rare for their roles to change. Once I find a 3-wood that goes 250 yards off the deck and 265 off the tee, I’m done. I’ll use that exact wood at that exact distance until I’m playing the forward tees. Whatever ends up filling that slot for me over the next five months is going to be the golden child in my bag. I just want one to work with the effort I’m willing to put in. While I may be more confident in finding that club than I ever have been, that doesn’t mean I’m not fighting an uphill battle. So similar to Stenson and his nearly two decades with the same fairway wood head, I’m not going to go through all the trouble to put one in the gamer set without committing to it long-term.
What’s right for you?
At the end of the day, your bag is made up of 14 tools that all need to do a job. In my mind, three of those tools can be permanent fixtures, but the other 11 should be checked on every so often. Heck, even the three staples need to be monitored on occasion. We’ve all got a back-up roster of putters (and likely other clubs, too), and you shouldn’t be afraid to challenge your starters. You might be shocked at what you think is a role player, and what’s actually holding you back.
The best way to test if your clubs’ roles have changed is by getting fit. Find a True Spec club-fitting location near you.
