Why You Need This: In this video, "Fairway Wood, Hybrid, and Long Iron | What is the Difference?"...

You'll finally find out how far each club hits...

What makes these clubs different...

And which one you should carry in your bag.

Long Iron

This is better suited for players with higher club head speeds...

So if you're getting around 120 mph club head speed with your driver...

...then that's plenty for hitting long irons.

Also, long irons are better for you if you want more control over the shot shape.

If you're closer to being an average golfer (~90% of all golfers)...

...I recommend stopping your irons around a 6 iron.

Anything higher than a 5 iron, you'd most likely be better off with woods or hybrids.

Hybrids

Hybrids play a little longer...

So if you're looking to replace a 4 iron, you'd want to use a 5 hybrid.

Also, hybrids are more rounded on the bottom.

This will help you if your lie isn't great; you'll still be able to get a decent shot.

Note that long irons can be really difficult from a bad lie.

Fairway Woods

Woods will typically launch the lowest and will give you more distance.

This may be great for tee shots but the sole is so wide that it may be difficult to get out of normal to bad lies.

What club is best for you?

Overall, if you don't have crazy swing speed and you're looking to make life a bit easier, then make sure you test some hybrids.

All that really matters is that you test out a bunch of different clubs...

And see what feels best for you.

Watch this video now to learn about the different club types...

...then test the clubs to see what's best for you!

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 8:07

Video Transcription:

All right guys, the long iron, the hybrid, or the fairway wood? How do we know which one to use? How far do they go? What’s the difference in these clubs? And which one should we carry in our bag?

I’m going to go over the entire thing for you, so you’ll know which ones are good for your game, and what to try out, what type of situation to hit these in.

Let’s start out with a long iron. Typically professionals you’ll see carrying a 3 iron, sometimes a 2 iron or a 1 iron, driving iron, something like that. As the clubs get longer and longer, our launch is going to be lower and we’re going to get some pretty good spin on these longer irons.

Maybe if we wanted to play a shot shape, let’s say that we had to bend one. If you’re watching the PGA Tour, and you see a player set up there and he wants to hit a little fade, or a draw, or control the height, you can do that pretty easily with a long iron.

These are good for players with high club head speed. If you’re swinging 120 miles an hour with the driver, you’ve got enough club head speed to really hit that 3 iron, even a 2 iron pretty well. You’re probably going to like that driving iron to lay up on the par 4s and things like that.

So longer irons, driving irons, stuff like that, those are going to be pretty good for players that have real high club head speed.

For the average golfer out there, 90 percent of the golfers out there, I would say stop the clubs with probably a 6 iron, and then anything 5 iron or lower, go ahead and get rid of those and we’re going to replace those with hybrids or woods.

For players that typically hit the hybrids better, you can use them for any clubs, there’s entire sets that are made out of hybrids.

The only disadvantage is we’re going to be able to get a little bit more spin on those shots, and we’re going to be able to control the spin a little bit more if you have a little bit higher club head speed.

Let me go ahead and hit a shot here with my 4 iron, and we’ll take a look at how high this ball launches, the maximum height, and the overall carry distance just to get a frame of reference for about what a 4 iron would do. Let me go ahead and try one out, hopefully I hit a nice solid one.

There we go, a little off the toe, pretty straight, though. Let’s pick up my FlightScope and we’ll see what the numbers are there.

All right, so that one was 96.6 club head speed, didn’t quite catch that one as good as I wanted to. Total distance was 211, carry distance was right about 200, 198 was the carry distance.

Now let’s look at my launch angle. So this is the angle that my club, or my ball launched off the ground. So if it’s a low launch, that’s going to be a very low penetrating shot. A higher launch is going to get up in the air a little bit quicker.

So the maximum height – I’ll go ahead and double click that – 92.5 on the maximum height. Let me find my launch angle here real quick. 5,500 spin, so pretty high spin on that shot. Even though I hit it off the toe, that took some spin off of it. My launch angle was 11.3.

So again, a little bit of a toe shot, not my best swing, but maximum height of 92 feet, 5,500 RPMs of spin, pretty good amount of spin, and vertical launch of 11. So pretty low launch, if I was trying to work the ball, that would probably be a pretty good club to do it with.

Let me change over to a hybrid here. Let’s go to my 3 hybrid. Unfortunately, I don’t carry a lot of hybrids or fairway woods, so it’s not going to be a direct comparison.

Now if I’m hitting a 4 iron, the correct hybrid to replace that would be a 5 hybrid. As you go from an iron to a hybrid, hybrids go a little bit longer, so we’re going to go a club down.

This is here is a 3 hybrid which would replace a 2 iron. So that should go quite a bit longer, and let’s see what the launch angle and spin does.

Now these are great, because the sole on these is nice and curved, so if you’re on a bad lie, let’s say that your ball is sitting down in a little bit of a hole, you should be able to still get this out of there pretty nicely with the hybrid. 3 irons, longer irons, those are a little bit tougher when you get in bad lies.

I’d only recommend those for high swing speed players. If you go to a wood, a fairway wood let’s say 5 wood, 3 wood, that kind of thing, the sole is so thick on these, so wide from front to back, it’s really tough to get down and pick those out of a bad lie.

So these are fantastic if you don’t have the best lie, these are the easiest to hit, in my opinion. They’re also shorter in length than your woods, look how much shorter that is than my 3 wood. That’s going to make it easier to maintain and swing, and get a consistent strike on it.

They go a little farther than irons, so that’s good. Again, like I said, I’d recommend from a 6 iron, that’s going t be your last iron, and then instead of having a 5 iron, you would have let’s say a 6 hybrid, that’s going to replace that.

Let’s g ahead and take a look, compare this to our vertical launch, our total distance, and our spin as we’re trying out this club.

There we go. Fairly straight, again, hit it a little toe-y, not too bad, just barely off the toe. Let’s see what my total distance was.

FlightScope will pick that up, so my club head speed was a little bit higher, obviously, because this is a longer club, going to have a little bit higher club head speed, but not all that much longer, just about an inch, inch and a half, something like that.

My club head speed was 104. Carry distance was 223, if that rolled out it would have gone 240. My launch angle was 12.6, so my launch angle was higher than with my 4 iron.

My spin rate, let’s see what my spin was, 4,459, so exactly like I said. This is going to launch higher, but it’s going to keep the spin off of it, so it’s going to kind of penetrate through the wind a little bit.

When it launches higher and penetrates through the wind, you’re going to get more carry distance with that.

Then finally, let’s do the max height, 110. I went from 92 to 110, this one launched higher, went higher up in the air, and had less spin to literally let it penetrate through the wind and get a little bit more distance.

If I was trying to shape a ball, if I’m an advanced player, I’m a pro player, and I’m trying to hit a fade, or a draw, or use different heights, it may be a little bit tougher with this hybrid. For most players out there, I think this is going to be a much better choice for you.

Now with the fairway wood, I use a low-lofted fairway wood. I really only use this for tee balls on a par 4. Every once in a while if I get a par 5 I might get that. But this is going to launch the lowest, it’s going to be the hottest, go the farthest, but we’re really going to take a lot of spin off of this, especially with this 13°.

Let me grab another ball, I’ll make a swing with this and we’ll compare the three.

All right, so now we’ve got the 3 wood. As I mentioned the sole of the 3 wood is really wide, so it’s going to be a little more difficult to hit it out of bad lies. If you’re sitting down, bare lie, in a hole, something like that, it’s just a little tougher to get it up and out of the hole and up into the air.

I have a 13° 3 wood here, it’s not going to be a very good comparison because this is going to go so much longer than the iron and the hybrid. I wish I had like a 7 wood or something like that, might relate a little bit better.

This is typically going to go a little farther and have a little bit less spin, and as I mentioned, this is a 13°, so it should go pretty far and really a great driving wood.

There we go, again, didn’t catch that perfect, but nice and straight. Let’s see what the numbers end up with there on FlightScope.

Obviously a longer club, so compared to my 4 iron, much longer shaft, that’s going to get me a lot more club head speed. I think the 4 iron was around 92 miles an hour, this is 112 miles an hour. Carry distance of 249, so basically 250 carry distance.

The max height on this one, because it had a lot lower loft, because it was a fairway wood, only got to 84. So more penetrating type trajectory.

Again, that’s the 13°, so it’s just going to go pretty low. Launch was only 8°, that’s why I like to hit it off the tee, it’s a nice low-launch club. A good one for those tight par 4s, and the spin was only 3,600.

So again, hit that one just a little tiny bit ff the toe, which kept the spin down. But that’s the difference in these three clubs. You’ve got to find which ones are best for you, those are my general recommendations, but it all comes down to trying out a lot of different clubs.

Go to your local shop and try out 10 or 15 different types of clubs. Figure out which one you like the best, and you’ll get the best set for your game.