What's with all the golf clubs?

The Game Room
1

I don’t golf. Unless you count mini-golf (and the last time I did that was 10+ years ago).

Standard practice for golfers, AIUI, involves carrying an entire bag full of clubs along with them as they play the course - or having someone else carry them for you, someone who also recommends the use of specific clubs for specific situations.

So what are all those clubs? I gather there are “woods” and “irons,” and I guess putters too. When would you use a wood or an iron? What’s with the different numbers on each of these? Are there other clubs that I didn’t list there?

2

The different clubs are so you can take a similar (full) swing and the ball goes a different distance. A driver. or 1 wood, has a face at around 10 degrees and the longest shaft, making it the club that will hit a ball furthest. The clubs get progressively shorter and more angled as the numbers get higher, usually 1,3,4 woods, and 4-9 irons plus a wedge or two.

In general woods are used for the really long shots, and irons are used for shorter shots. Shorter being relative, a short golf shot is 110 yards, where that would be a home run in many baseball parks. I hit my wedge 110 with a full swing. Anything shorter than that is partial swings or choke up on the club.

Of course that is all dependent on hitting the ball properly.

3

Paintcharge’s summary is a good summary. I would add that different irons, due to their different face angles, hit the ball higher in the air. A decent golfer can probably use at least six different irons to hit a 60 yard shot. If he wants to hit the ball low and run it to the green, he uses perhaps a 7 or 8 iron. If he needs to hit it over a sand trap and have it stop very abruptly, he’ll hit a lofted wedge.

Golfers playing in tournaments are allowed by rules to carry up to 14 clubs, no more. And, believe it or not, it would be easy for a good golfer to want to use more than 14 clubs.

4

Good golfers can really take advantage of the right club. Not being a good golfer I only used a 1 wood, 9 iron, and a putter. If you can’t hit the ball straight the right distance really doesn’t matter that much.

Who invented golf? Satan

5

And since nobody else has mentioned it, a putter won’t lift the ball off the ground at all. It’s what you use when you’re already on the green, and trying to roll the ball into the hole. In miniature golf, the entire course is nothing but green, so you use nothing but a putter (hence the other name for miniature golf, “putt-putt”).

6

You know why it was named golf?

All the other four-letter words were taken.

Not being a good golfer, I use a badminton racquet and a cast iron grill.

7

Not exactly what you were asking but in the early days of golf there was an invention that allowed you to put different golf heads on the same shaft. This would have required only one club shaft and a number of different club heads. The invention was banned(supposedly at the behest of manufacturers). I tried to find a link for you but couldn’t.

8

It’s been re-invented.

Looks like a rather nifty setup.

9

And Alan Shepard’s golf club consisted of a six-iron head that attached to the end of a long handle intended for a sample-collection tool.

10

By “early days of golf” I don’t think you really mean the “early days of golf”. After all, the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews was established in 1754, and the course at which it is located has been played since the 14th Century. I don’t think they were using that invention then. :wink:

11

It could be worse. You could be trying to remember the difference between your mashie, your niblick, and your mashie niblick.

http://www.golftoday.co.uk/golf_a_z/articles/old_golf_club_names.html

12

I’m not sure anyone has offered a super complete answer, to let me expand on Paintcharge’s summary.

There are three primary types of clubs:

Woods
Irons
Putter

Woods are used for hitting the ball a very long way. A wood is distinguished from an iron by having a longer shaft, as well as the characteristically oversized striking head, both of which add to the distance the ball will be struck. The “number” of the wood describes the angle the face of the club is set at; the lower the number, the lower the launch angle of the ball, and the further it will go. (Despite the name, they aren’t made with wood anymore.) The very lowest angle wood is the 1-wood or more commonly called the “Driver” and has a club facing of 9 to 13 degrees; this is the club you use when you want to hit the ball as far as you can. A 2-wood has a slightly higher angle, a 3-wood slightly higher, and so on. If you buy a proper set of golf clubs you will usually have a driver (marked “1”) and a 3-wood and a 5-wood.

Irons are used for other types of shots that are not putts. They have shorter shafts than woods, and the characteristic metal, angled clubhead. As with woods, an iron’s number is proportional to its angle. A 3-iron is angled at 21-24 degrees, a 9-iron at about 45-48 degrees. A club angled even slightly more than a 9-iron is called a “pitching wedge” but you could call it a 10-iron because that’s basically what it is. Irons with even more extreme angles can be purchased and are usually used for very short shots or for shooting a ball out of sand (the “Sand wedge”) or some other unpleasant place. If you buy a proper set of clubs you will usually be equipped with irons numbered 3 through 9. 1 and 2 irons are for sale but usually not in a set, and an amateur doesn’t really need them; a wedge is a useful buy, though. Some sets come with a pitching wedge.

The purpose of different angles, as others have pointed out, is that it allows the golfer to take a full and proper swing while directing the ball a different distance. It is much easier for me to take a proper swing with a 9-iron to strike the ball 130 yards than it is for me to use a 3-iron and try to hit it with about 70% of my usual force.

Furthermore, the higher the angle, the less the ball will roll when it strikes the ground, obviously. As you get closer to the target, you are less interested in distance and more interesting in placing the ball on target. If you are very far from the hole, further than you can hit a ball, all you want is to shoot the ball as far as you can without veering off the fairway, so you hit it with your driver and hope it rolls a long way if it lands in the fairway. But if you are just 60 yards away, what you’d like to do, ideally, is drop the ball near the hole with very little roll; to that end, a very high angle of flight is ideal, since it minimizes roll. How a golf ball bounces and rolls after landing is a bit more random than how it flies, so it’s best avoided if you’re looking to be accurate.

As Paintcharge points out, “short distance” in golf is a really long way. The meek little 9-iron can easily hit a ball over 100 yards. My 70-year-old mother can use her driver to hit a ball close to 200 yards, which is further than any major league baseball player will hit a baseball this year. Golf balls are designed to really fly a long way, so the necessity of increasing the angle of the clubhead so you aren’t continually blasting the ball over the green onto the other side is rather central to the design of the equipment. There’s no rule saying you don’t play a whole round of golf just with your driver, but making short shots would be maddeningly frustrating.

Of course, the ability to select the angle of shot can sometimes serve other useful purposes. If for example you are at a distance that would usually call for the 9-iron, but it is obvious that striking the ball at that angle will cause it to hit a tree, perhaps in that case you do want to use a lower iron but try to hit it a bit more softly, thus avoiding the tree. Or you may be in a situation where a water hazard looms ominously between you and a distant hole; shooting with a long range club might present more of a danger that the ball might unexpectedly roll into the water, but shooting with a higher iron will cause it to safely come to rest in front of the water where you can take a second shot to get over it.

The putter, as has been pointed out, is meant to simply roll the ball on the green, and has a perfectly flat angle.

There are other types of clubs, too, called “hybrids,” that sort of blur the line between woods and irons.

13

And it’s still illegal, under Rule 4-2(a) of the USGA Rules of Golf:

“During a stipulated round, the playing characteristics of a club must not be purposely changed by adjustment or by any other means.”

If you could change the angle of a club, you would have more room for other clubs and still be with the 14-club limit.

14

Excellent and detailed description, RickJay. But I noticed one mistake. Putters are not flat or perpendicular. The do have loft. Most putters have 3 to 4 degrees of loft. Some putter makers are experimenting with significantly more and less loft. Noted finesse player and equipment tinkerer Phil Mickelson has experimented with putters that have as much as 7 degrees of loft.

But otherwise, good job.

15

Mr Burns: “Use an open faced club, the sand wedge!”
Homer Simpson: “Mmmmmmm open faced club sandwich …”

16

I don’t play and never have, but I’ve always wondered. Rather than say hit a 6 iron, why not swing a 1 iron less hard? If the idea of the different clubs is they hit the ball a different distance, why not simply adjust how hard you hit the ball?

17

Because it’s harder to adjust how hard you hit!

18

My father (an excellent golfer) frequently carries only two clubs with him when he’s out doing a practice nine. The two clubs vary from time to time, but last time out I noted it was a 4 iron and a wedge.

19

As glee pointed out, it’s tough to get partial swings right.

Note that there are times when you have to use a partial swing. Say, when you’re only 100 yards from the green (a full pitching wedge for this geezer), but you’re behind a tree and only a seven iron or longer is going to keep the ball under the lowest branch.

Having said that, many golfers pave a standard partial swing with a pretty good idea how far the ball will go with various clubs. For me, it’s a vertical-to-vertical gentle half-swing (SW: 50 yards, PW: 60 yards, etc.).

20

It’s been said several times before you asked, but again; it is much, much easier to simply pick up a different club and take exactly the same swing you always do than use the same club and deliberately strike the ball in a manner you are not used to. You can take exactly the same swing you’ve practiced thousands of times and the ball will go the correct distance.

The other problem you have is that, again, unless there is an obstruction in your way, is it ALWAYS to the golfer’s advantage to have the ball land at the steepst angle possible for the distance needed. For me a six-iron shot is about a 160, 170 yard target. The ball will leave my club at about a 35-degree angle and land at an even greater angle, probably 45-55 degrees, which minimizes how much it rolls and means I have a better chance of keeping the ball where I want it to be.

If I use a 2-iron (1-irons are almost never even made anymore) I am risking the possibility that I will not hit the ball with the correct force; if I hit it just a bit too hard, it’ll fly over the green, and if I hit it too softly I will unnecessarily fall short of a green I should have easily reached. Even if I strike the ball with the right force, the ball will only leave my club at about a 20-degree angle. When it lands it will skip and roll a long way, much more than with a 6-iron. Skipping and rolling is very unpredictable. The air is pleasantly consistent; the ground has bumps, rises and valley and stuff. If my shot hits a slight rise in the fairway it might pop into the air and come short. The slightest irregularity in the ground could cause it to skip happily away from the green and into a nasty sand trap. I don’t want to ball skipping and rolling if I can possibly avoid it.