I found the decreasing lofts and increasing club lengths over time very interesting! All to sell more golf clubs - "my new 6-iron is longer", because it's now a 5, with 6 stamped on it!

Data doesn't lie. Some people fail to leave their ego in the car, which results in higher scores.

This was very helpful information for someone who just recently returned to golf after a well over a decade out of the game. It's nice to get some perspective on my own distances as they're a lot higher than I typically lead myself to believe.

I’m a 12 hcp and hit 5 iron 200, 4 iron 210, 3i 220, 5 wood 230, don’t even bother with a 3w anymore but that one was around 240-250, Driver is 260-290. I play about once a month. I don’t agree hcp is correlated to distance but do agree your distance determines which tees to play.

I’d say the difference is how often they top it at different handicaps.

Really well presented as usual. I think there is a debate regarding putting a 1-iron in the bag and a 4-wood to replace the 3&5. Golf is funny isn’t it? We end up going round in circles and arriving at the same place that we started from 😂

Excellent, really valuable & helpful advice. For slow swing speeds a 3 wood can produce less distance than a 5 wood. I have subscribed as I welcome good sensible recommendations. Thank you.

good stuff, keep it coming. Good to see my 5 wood is where it should be, but i wouldn't touch a 3 wood with a barge pole, in fact i would probably hit a barge pole better.

People really need to pay attention to how far they are hitting all of their clubs particularly at the top of their bag because that is where redundancies are more likely to happen with lower swing speeds. Knowing how far you hit all of your clubs is a tremendous value

Thank you for this useful information.

I recently discovered that I hit my 5 wood farther and more accurately than my 3 wood. It frees up space for a 4 iron which has come in really handy. I hit my 5 wood around 200 yards with a swing speed in the mid 80's, I wonder where he got these stats.

206-176. That’s my Performance Average vs Average for 3 Wood this season. (40 Tee/84 Off The Deck). I’m in the upper end of that 16-20 HCP. I roll with ShotScope not Arccos, but I believe they offer similar data where you can track how far the productive shots roll out to vs how far all shots go. These two numbers are helpful to reign in my expectations. I’m gonna rip 225 as often as I clunk a 60 yarder. However, those raw 3W numbers are 10 yards more than my 5 Wood. It’s then 7 Wood where recently there isn’t much separation in distance between 5W-7W because my 7 Wood has a cut down driver shaft that’s a touch lighter, but still the same brand Project X Cypher shaft as in my 5 wood. For this reason I currently have a D-3W-7W bag to simplify the club selection process. Living in SoCal I’ve had the weather cooperate to where I’ve hit 3W-5W-7W all 100+ times on purpose. It’s really helpful to have some kind of stat tracking sensors/watches/apps for comparison purposes not just for distance, but for the various accuracy stats and strokes gained data for Tee, Approach, Short Game & Putting (if you take the time to enter how far your putts were on the green by stepping them off). Middle of the road swing speed and sometimes bogey golfer I realize the 3W-7W gives me great separation, but if I wanted to seek consistent launch while simplifying the process even more I could probably shoot the same scores with a D-5W-5 Hybrid. My guess is the target audience of this video doesn’t really need 14 clubs in the bag while seeking improvement. I’m at 10 clubs, despite owning way more than 14.😂 It helps the mental process, but I digress.

Swing speed is more of a factor with distance than HDCP. As I have gotten older my HDCP is basically the same but the swing speed has dropped as has my carry distances.

I'm a high handicapper (23index) I used to hit my 5 wood around 200-210 yards, but some days I just really struggled with it. I only ever used it from the tee when the green was too close for a driver. I've recently retired my 5 wood, because I now use cleveland xl halo irons... No need for a fairway wood when I've now got the supergiving and consistent options of xl halo long irons...

Great video, very informative 👍🏾👏🏾

Very interesting and somewhat reassuring.

Can you explain the relationship to the two charts? I'm confused. According to the first table, a scratch to 5 handicap hits a five wood a total distance of 175 yards off the deck. According to the second table, a swing speed of 80 mph with a 5 wood results in a carry of 164, and probably a total distance of 180 or so. Should I reach the conclusion that a scratch to 5 handicap, on average, uses a swing speed of only 80 mph with a 5 wood? I would have guessed a lot higher, and thus, longer carry.

The 3 Wood is useless to me since I hit my 3 Hybrid much more accurately and with very little loss on distance. I just go Driver, 3 Hybrid, Irons. No more woods

Just a quick question, I get that the faster the swing speed and more distance is going to directly reduce scores, but I’m playing off a 17 right now and my driver swing speed is about 90. I’m not going to get loads faster, so will I ever be able to be a single digit player with a slower speed. I’m not hitting driver 250. I’m in my 50’s….only down hill from here.

Don't know where these numbers are recorded. I hit my 3w 195 - 210 Meters off the deck. And I'm a 58 y old 17 hcp. My driver goes 240 Meters, give or take. The yardages mentionned are those I get with my 7w.

0 hdcp for sure hit further than 200yrs or so. PGA player is about 250-265 5 wood should be +- 210-230yrds

3w 265yds, 5w 240. it also depends on deg. 6i 190yd. i don't know where ya got stats from.

Wow. I wish it was that simple. I hit my 9 wood (27*) 215-220 yards

What about when your driver is literally broken? 230 carry with average deviation of 15 yards on the track man with the 5 wood.... 240 yard carry with the driver with a 90 yard dead hook? Mos frustrating time of gold I have ever been stuck in.

Are these numbers including the number of fat shots that 20+ handicappers hit that bring these numbers down so low? There’s no way I’m hitting my 8-iron farther than they’re hitting 5-Ws. As a high handicapper myself, I find these numbers to be baffling. When I hit my 5-wood poorly, it still goes 175+ and when I hit it well, it goes closer to 205-215. Are these carry numbers or total numbers? My personal numbers are total numbers. I don’t even try to hit a 3-wood, so can’t compare numbers there.

Based on the mph chart i swing at 120 mph based on 3 and 5 wood.

I’ve only hit my 3w off the deck so far and with 22 shots with it per arccos it has my range as 188-215. With ONE outlier I got ahold of and sent 245… go figure on that one. My 3h is 179-192. Im nothing special at this game either. ~17hcp

Great stuff ….. I’m doing pretty good compared to average as is the nature of averages ! 😂

Who cares how far you hit any club. I carried a 5 handicap on a 142 slope course for over 20 years and hit my 5 wood and 3 wood much shorter than this chart. It's not how, it's how many.

These distance numbers seem low. Most golfers I know, myself included, hit a 3 wood 215-240. I'm a 20 hcp

These yardages cant be right... How can someone hit a 5 wood the same as 7 iron? Makes no sense, I only started with woods few months ago and only completely bad shot goes that much but any decent connected shot will go 170+ yards easily. I mean the data could be right which means people are then misusing them. There is no way 0 handicapper hits 5 wood less than 200 yards.

3 wood is not worth having. I'd rather choke down on the driver or pull out my 7 wood.

This is good news for me. I hit my 3 wood farther than a 0 handicap. And I hit my Minnie driver even farther. 200 to 215 and I'm 71. The bad news is my driver only goes 230 to 250.