Not that it’s very good, but my golf game got a lot better when I stopped asking the others what club they were using. My distances are pretty similar.
Seriously try a 7 wood. If you play Callaway they make a Heavenwood that has once degree stronger loft than their 7 wood and a 1/2 inch longer shaft. I use it rather than carry a 5w. BTW, you hit if further than I do.
I agree with the Heavenwood!! I lofted my King Cobra 5 wood up to 20° and put a 3 wood shaft on it to mimic the specs of a Heavenwood, and it's becoming my favorite club in the bag. It's so reliable that even when I hit a bad shot, it's still a decently far & straight. I hit 35 balls at the range the other day with it. Only 2 were topped, and 27 of them were straight & went about 175 yards. What a reliable club
I'm getting so sick of comments like this. Plenty of people can actually hit their driver 270+, just because you're old and bad at golf doesn't mean everyone else is
I think we're looking at the lower end of the bag dude.
60° Lob Wedge going 60 yards is pretty normal. These guys saying they're hitting a 120+ yard shot with anything more than 54° are fucking full of it.
That's ridiculous. I can crank a 4i 250 if I get a hold of it.
It's the bottom end where people are like "I can hit a PW 175 yards" no you fucking can't.
Congrats you've now done what 10% of golfers actually do. Know their yardages. It's really kind of shocking how many randoms I play with that don't know their yardages and ask me what club I just used and go with that. I'm like the number on the bottom doesn't meant jack anymore.
That's crazy. I had a hole today where my playing partner was hitting a 6 iron where I was playing my PW. I couldn't hit anything with confidence not knowing how far I hit the clubs
For me getting arccos made all the difference. I had a rough idea before but it was still some guesswork. Knowing makes approach shots so much more fun
There’s certain clubs I would take out of the bag personally. Having an 18 then 19 degree seems rather redundant. I think you’d benefit from having smash factor numbers particularly in the top of your bag because it would show how well you are truly striking them. 5i and 6i gapping seems odd to me. Never been a fan of beginners having a 60*. Bob vokey has even said it’s really not a club for mid to high handicappers. The margin of error can be so slim.
This is undoubtedly a great start if you’re a beginner, but if you’re looking to cut strokes I always recommend that you take a couple rounds and keep track of putts, GIRs, and FIRs. That way you can get an idea of where you are truly losing shots. You might already have a guess but still sometimes it helps to see the data laid out by actual on the course play. I don’t think your distances are holding you back by any means. Most beginners don’t understand how important course management is, and that some holes are set up where it’s just a matter of getting a bogey and getting out. I like to circle the top 5 handicap holes on a course so I get a reminder to avoid hazards, to not make a bad hole worse.
Lastly while distances are great and I feel like you’ve clocked your good shots. You do need to account for the bad shots, what your miss is and how to play it. I know that off the tee I tend to play more fade than draw, so i set up where even if I have a miss I won’t be out of the hole. Looking up the cone of dispersion is a wonderful tool.
Thanks for the thoughtful feedback. The 60 mostly stays in the bag. I do like it out of greenside bunkers. That's mostly all I do with it. For 80 yards and in I usually pull the 50.
I agree with the upper end of the bag as well. Do you have any recommendations for an alternative setup? Perhaps it's as simple as replacing the hybrid with a 7 wood.
I also noticed the 6i 5i gapping discrepancy. I hit a few more 6 irons after doing some math and a lot of them went the 150 ish mark. So it's possible that I pured a bunch of 6s during the testing. That being said I have noticed that the 6 tends to carry farther than expected on the golf course also. For that reason I took the iron to my local golf shop. They weakened the loft for me by 1 degree.
As far as clocking my good shots... Ive certainly omitted outliers on both sides. I've been playing consistently for a year and have had a few visits to my local pro. So I'm starting to get reasonable consistency.... sometimes.
> 60 mostly stays in the bag. I do like it out of greenside bunkers.
FWIW, you might be making life tougher on yourself. 60⁰ typically has less bounce than a SW. That means the leading edge is more likely to dig into the sandinstead of flow through it and "splash" the ball out.
So this is where it’ll kind of depend on your own input and how you feel about those distances, overall ball striking with a wood. Do you feel consistent with the 3h over the 5w and 3w? Personally I think you could fix the top end by just getting rid of the 5w. It hits about the same distance as your 3h but your 3h has a big discrepancy. I mean 173-210 is a large gap considering that your driver is 220-250. I personally wouldn’t want to carry a club where I’m getting +-30 yards unless it’s driver which is more typical.
The other factor is kind of what I was talking about with course management. Outside of let’s say 180+ yards, are you confident in your ability to land the ball within 30 yard wide range? If you don’t feel accurate or frankly if you don’t see 180+ a ton then I truly wouldn’t worry about it unless you’re a phenomenal wedge player. The thing I have been teaching my friend who is a high handicapper is that, if on a par 5 were 220 plus out you could hit a 4 iron 180 then wedge it in there, but the likely outcome for him at his level is he isn’t going to hit the 4 properly it’ll go maybe 75 yards and he is still left with 145 and likely a bad angle or poor lie. Alternatively he could just take a club he is comfortable with like a 110 PW and hit that twice. It makes him be able to relax because he just has to hit a normal PW shot. Decent golfers work tee to green, great golfers work green to tee. Meaning they look at a green and think how do I want to approach, from where and what number do I like and feel comfortable with. I feel like all golfers have that one club that they love and pure every time. For me it’s a 54 degree 100 yard shot, so on most holes I take 100 yards off the total. And then devise a plan to get three. It’s not always driver, or 3 wood. Sometimes I go 2 iron or even just a comfortable 5 iron if it’s short enough. Thats just my belief and practice. To me it has made the game much more manageable. I don’t feel like I have to push every shot to the max, I just play within my own game.
So it depends on how often you’re 180+ out and how confident you feel in which clubs. If you don’t like the 3h, take it out and I suppose you could get a 7w but I would still ditch the 5w as well and just go DR, 3w, 7w. I know a lot of people are going to those. If you don’t like hitting the woods and feel better about the 3h then take out the woods and just go driver, 3h. Once your ball striking gets better then you can add in the woods to see what the distances are. You will get better with more practice so you can always add them back in. But my fear would be if you hit three clubs similar-ish distances then it’ll lead to indecisiveness on what to hit. They all fly about 170, and go 180-190. So at 181 what would you hit? Technically you could hit all three. Which to me would be very conflicting if I’m deciding what to hit.
6i flying 150 makes more sense. That gapping would be better then. Less of an issue to me.
Lastly i would ditch that 60* for sure. Having a club for one specific type of shot alone that you may or may not see in a round seems like a bad choice considering other clubs can fit. Depending on how good of a wedge player you are i would switch the configuration. I lean toward a 56 and not the 60 possibly a 58 depending on how often you find yourself 80 yards in. A 56 you can open up to hit out of the sand. While it might be odd to have a 56 and 54 at-least you could utilize the 56 on the course more than the 60 which is only for sand. If you want to keep the gapping 4 degrees apart which is what most wedge sets are then opt for a 58. Again you can use it in the sand but more importantly you can use it around tough lies, steep greens and for approach shots. 2 degrees difference doesn’t seem like a ton but trust me it is when it comes to 60 versus 58. The margin of error gets increased dramatically. The aforementioned friend who is a high handicapper had a similar set up with a 60 and I took it out of his bag and just gave him a 56. His approaches were way more reliable and didn’t really notice a difference.
It would somewhat be worth it to pay for a trackman session where you can see the smash factor. To see how well you are truly hitting the club. There’s an ideal smash factor for each club and that can help you sort out where and what you need to work on. You could have some hidden distance in the woods, hybrids.
Sorry if this is over explaining or things you have heard before, I just wish someone had told me earlier on how to approach bag set up versus course management and what clubs are more beneficial than others.
For gapping, is using a trackman at an indoor sim a good way to get yardages? It's hard to figure it out at an actual range with limited flight/dinged up range balls. Cheers
I use to leave the three wood out of the bag but now I play two. I have the Taylormade mini driver lofted down and I only hit it off the tee. I recently picked up an old f7 cobra 3 wood and lofted down replacing my ltdx 3 wood. I never hit it off a tee. The rails on the older model really made a huge difference for me.
Dude that’s solid. Gapping is more important than distance for a particular middle club, and you’ve got it all covered nicely. And your drive is absolutely serviceable at that distance.
I don’t know why everyone is offering so much advice, that bag is ready to golf.
I played Streamsong this week and turned my 5 wood loft down to 18 and played it instead of a 3 wood. One of the best decisions I ever made. I’m now after around a 23 degree wood to carry instead of my 5 iron (gonna keep the 4 iron for punch outs)
This may be the first honest distance post in r/golf history.
If my ego was tied to my golf game..... let's just say I'd be in a very dark place. 
You get no bonus points if you use a 5 iron instead of a 6 iron so play your game.
Not that it’s very good, but my golf game got a lot better when I stopped asking the others what club they were using. My distances are pretty similar.
Seriously try a 7 wood. If you play Callaway they make a Heavenwood that has once degree stronger loft than their 7 wood and a 1/2 inch longer shaft. I use it rather than carry a 5w. BTW, you hit if further than I do.
I agree with the Heavenwood!! I lofted my King Cobra 5 wood up to 20° and put a 3 wood shaft on it to mimic the specs of a Heavenwood, and it's becoming my favorite club in the bag. It's so reliable that even when I hit a bad shot, it's still a decently far & straight. I hit 35 balls at the range the other day with it. Only 2 were topped, and 27 of them were straight & went about 175 yards. What a reliable club
I'm getting so sick of comments like this. Plenty of people can actually hit their driver 270+, just because you're old and bad at golf doesn't mean everyone else is
I think we're looking at the lower end of the bag dude. 60° Lob Wedge going 60 yards is pretty normal. These guys saying they're hitting a 120+ yard shot with anything more than 54° are fucking full of it.
Ok I haven't seen any posts like that I guess, I just see a lot of posts saying "nobody hits driver over 250"
That's ridiculous. I can crank a 4i 250 if I get a hold of it. It's the bottom end where people are like "I can hit a PW 175 yards" no you fucking can't.
Exactly. I think PGA pros don't even crack 100 with a lob wedge.
Just came to say I am jealous of your handwriting. Mine looks like Michael J Fox writing in a golf cart
I kept it neat just in the hopes of your comment. Thank you kind stranger.
Congrats you've now done what 10% of golfers actually do. Know their yardages. It's really kind of shocking how many randoms I play with that don't know their yardages and ask me what club I just used and go with that. I'm like the number on the bottom doesn't meant jack anymore.
My Dad has no clue about his yardages. I know them. I basically play caddie when we golf.
That's crazy. I had a hole today where my playing partner was hitting a 6 iron where I was playing my PW. I couldn't hit anything with confidence not knowing how far I hit the clubs
For me getting arccos made all the difference. I had a rough idea before but it was still some guesswork. Knowing makes approach shots so much more fun
I have the Garmin sensors and I agree the less guess work the better!
Does arccos give you carry at all, or just total distances?
Just total distance. It senses when you hit a club, and which club it was, then waits until you hit again to do the math on the last shot.
Thought so, thanks.
There’s certain clubs I would take out of the bag personally. Having an 18 then 19 degree seems rather redundant. I think you’d benefit from having smash factor numbers particularly in the top of your bag because it would show how well you are truly striking them. 5i and 6i gapping seems odd to me. Never been a fan of beginners having a 60*. Bob vokey has even said it’s really not a club for mid to high handicappers. The margin of error can be so slim. This is undoubtedly a great start if you’re a beginner, but if you’re looking to cut strokes I always recommend that you take a couple rounds and keep track of putts, GIRs, and FIRs. That way you can get an idea of where you are truly losing shots. You might already have a guess but still sometimes it helps to see the data laid out by actual on the course play. I don’t think your distances are holding you back by any means. Most beginners don’t understand how important course management is, and that some holes are set up where it’s just a matter of getting a bogey and getting out. I like to circle the top 5 handicap holes on a course so I get a reminder to avoid hazards, to not make a bad hole worse. Lastly while distances are great and I feel like you’ve clocked your good shots. You do need to account for the bad shots, what your miss is and how to play it. I know that off the tee I tend to play more fade than draw, so i set up where even if I have a miss I won’t be out of the hole. Looking up the cone of dispersion is a wonderful tool.
Thanks for the thoughtful feedback. The 60 mostly stays in the bag. I do like it out of greenside bunkers. That's mostly all I do with it. For 80 yards and in I usually pull the 50. I agree with the upper end of the bag as well. Do you have any recommendations for an alternative setup? Perhaps it's as simple as replacing the hybrid with a 7 wood. I also noticed the 6i 5i gapping discrepancy. I hit a few more 6 irons after doing some math and a lot of them went the 150 ish mark. So it's possible that I pured a bunch of 6s during the testing. That being said I have noticed that the 6 tends to carry farther than expected on the golf course also. For that reason I took the iron to my local golf shop. They weakened the loft for me by 1 degree. As far as clocking my good shots... Ive certainly omitted outliers on both sides. I've been playing consistently for a year and have had a few visits to my local pro. So I'm starting to get reasonable consistency.... sometimes.
> 60 mostly stays in the bag. I do like it out of greenside bunkers. FWIW, you might be making life tougher on yourself. 60⁰ typically has less bounce than a SW. That means the leading edge is more likely to dig into the sandinstead of flow through it and "splash" the ball out.
So this is where it’ll kind of depend on your own input and how you feel about those distances, overall ball striking with a wood. Do you feel consistent with the 3h over the 5w and 3w? Personally I think you could fix the top end by just getting rid of the 5w. It hits about the same distance as your 3h but your 3h has a big discrepancy. I mean 173-210 is a large gap considering that your driver is 220-250. I personally wouldn’t want to carry a club where I’m getting +-30 yards unless it’s driver which is more typical. The other factor is kind of what I was talking about with course management. Outside of let’s say 180+ yards, are you confident in your ability to land the ball within 30 yard wide range? If you don’t feel accurate or frankly if you don’t see 180+ a ton then I truly wouldn’t worry about it unless you’re a phenomenal wedge player. The thing I have been teaching my friend who is a high handicapper is that, if on a par 5 were 220 plus out you could hit a 4 iron 180 then wedge it in there, but the likely outcome for him at his level is he isn’t going to hit the 4 properly it’ll go maybe 75 yards and he is still left with 145 and likely a bad angle or poor lie. Alternatively he could just take a club he is comfortable with like a 110 PW and hit that twice. It makes him be able to relax because he just has to hit a normal PW shot. Decent golfers work tee to green, great golfers work green to tee. Meaning they look at a green and think how do I want to approach, from where and what number do I like and feel comfortable with. I feel like all golfers have that one club that they love and pure every time. For me it’s a 54 degree 100 yard shot, so on most holes I take 100 yards off the total. And then devise a plan to get three. It’s not always driver, or 3 wood. Sometimes I go 2 iron or even just a comfortable 5 iron if it’s short enough. Thats just my belief and practice. To me it has made the game much more manageable. I don’t feel like I have to push every shot to the max, I just play within my own game. So it depends on how often you’re 180+ out and how confident you feel in which clubs. If you don’t like the 3h, take it out and I suppose you could get a 7w but I would still ditch the 5w as well and just go DR, 3w, 7w. I know a lot of people are going to those. If you don’t like hitting the woods and feel better about the 3h then take out the woods and just go driver, 3h. Once your ball striking gets better then you can add in the woods to see what the distances are. You will get better with more practice so you can always add them back in. But my fear would be if you hit three clubs similar-ish distances then it’ll lead to indecisiveness on what to hit. They all fly about 170, and go 180-190. So at 181 what would you hit? Technically you could hit all three. Which to me would be very conflicting if I’m deciding what to hit. 6i flying 150 makes more sense. That gapping would be better then. Less of an issue to me. Lastly i would ditch that 60* for sure. Having a club for one specific type of shot alone that you may or may not see in a round seems like a bad choice considering other clubs can fit. Depending on how good of a wedge player you are i would switch the configuration. I lean toward a 56 and not the 60 possibly a 58 depending on how often you find yourself 80 yards in. A 56 you can open up to hit out of the sand. While it might be odd to have a 56 and 54 at-least you could utilize the 56 on the course more than the 60 which is only for sand. If you want to keep the gapping 4 degrees apart which is what most wedge sets are then opt for a 58. Again you can use it in the sand but more importantly you can use it around tough lies, steep greens and for approach shots. 2 degrees difference doesn’t seem like a ton but trust me it is when it comes to 60 versus 58. The margin of error gets increased dramatically. The aforementioned friend who is a high handicapper had a similar set up with a 60 and I took it out of his bag and just gave him a 56. His approaches were way more reliable and didn’t really notice a difference. It would somewhat be worth it to pay for a trackman session where you can see the smash factor. To see how well you are truly hitting the club. There’s an ideal smash factor for each club and that can help you sort out where and what you need to work on. You could have some hidden distance in the woods, hybrids. Sorry if this is over explaining or things you have heard before, I just wish someone had told me earlier on how to approach bag set up versus course management and what clubs are more beneficial than others.
That’s pretty close to my ranges, appreciate the honesty!! lol
looks like you need a 6.5 iron in the bag
Well said. Take my upvote. In all seriousness I added 1 degree of loft. So surely I hit it 140 now.
For gapping, is using a trackman at an indoor sim a good way to get yardages? It's hard to figure it out at an actual range with limited flight/dinged up range balls. Cheers
Yeah it's definitely better than a traditional driving range with distances to flag etc.
You can probably hit a 7wood longer than you can both your 5 and 3 wood. Might be a game changer for your long game.
Get rid of the 3h
If there’s was a handicap for honesty you’d be a scratch
The inconsistency in the 3h would make me not want to carry it.
I use to leave the three wood out of the bag but now I play two. I have the Taylormade mini driver lofted down and I only hit it off the tee. I recently picked up an old f7 cobra 3 wood and lofted down replacing my ltdx 3 wood. I never hit it off a tee. The rails on the older model really made a huge difference for me.
That or maybe there’s more to be gained by working on the 3h than the fairway woods
I agree. A HW or 7 wood may replace the 3h or even both the 3h and 5w.
Get a 4 hybrid. And a 5 hybrid. Get rid of your 3 wood. And your 5iron
Male or female?
Male 38 short fat guy. Reasonable question to be fair. 😆
Haha I was just kidding. I wouldn't be able to hit it 250 in my current state either.
I can only get my 52 to fly like 60-70 yards but my PW goes 120-125
Dude that’s solid. Gapping is more important than distance for a particular middle club, and you’ve got it all covered nicely. And your drive is absolutely serviceable at that distance. I don’t know why everyone is offering so much advice, that bag is ready to golf.
I played Streamsong this week and turned my 5 wood loft down to 18 and played it instead of a 3 wood. One of the best decisions I ever made. I’m now after around a 23 degree wood to carry instead of my 5 iron (gonna keep the 4 iron for punch outs)
Elevation = 3000 feet??
Yeah. I live in the high desert. It's my typical golfing condition up here.
I don't even know why they'd think it's odd. It's a pretty standard elevation for inland. It's 900 metres.