Golf Equipment -
Woods
The woods in a typical
golfer's bag will include a driver and one or two fairway woods, most
commonly a 3-wood and/or 5-wood. Women and seniors might benefit from
adding a 7-wood or 9-wood. The 4-wood is another common wood, and some
golfers even carry an 11-wood.
Woods feature deep (from front to back) clubheads that are made of
metal, usually steel or a titanium alloy. They are called "woods"
because the clubheads used to be made of wood. Metals came into broad
use in the 1980s, and "fairway woods" are now sometimes called "fairway
metals."
For beginners, the driver (also called a 1-wood) will be one of the
toughest clubs to master. It is the longest club in the bag - a typical
length these days is 45 inches - which makes it the toughest to control
in the swing.
Driver clubheads are usually made of titanium alloys or steel.
Steel costs less, but titanium adds some "oomph" because it is a lighter
material.
The same materials are used in the clubheads of fairway woods. Fairway
woods, like irons, are progressive in nature; that is, a 3-wood has less
loft than a 4-wood, which has less loft than a 5-wood, and so on.
Because of that, a 3-wood will go farther than a 4-wood, which will go
farther than a 5-wood, and so on.
A 3-wood is usually the second-longest club in a golfer's bag (there are
2-woods available, but they aren't very common). Fairway woods have
smaller heads than drivers and get progressively shorter than drivers.
That makes them easier to control in the swing than a driver, and for
that reason beginners are often encouraged to use a fairway wood off the
tee rather than trying to whack a driver right out of the gate.
Drivers can be hit from the fairway, but that's a shot most amateurs -
much less beginners - will never pull off successfully. Fairway woods
are good clubs off the tee or from the fairway; their smaller heads and
greater lofts help get the ball up into the air.
Beginners might want to consider carrying some extra fairway woods
(5-wood, 7-wood and 9-wood, for example) in place of the long irons (2-,
3-, 4- and even 5-irons). As a general rule, fairway woods are easier to
hit than long irons for most beginners and recreational golfers.
Drivers and fairway woods are intended to strike the ball either on the
upswing (in the case of the driver) or at the bottom of the swing (in
the case of fairway woods). For that reason, the ball is placed forward
in the stance when using a wood (see "Setup for Success" for photos
demonstrating the proper ball position).
Distances with each club will vary from player to player; there is no
"right" distance, there is only your distance, and you'll learn those
distances as you start playing. Typically, a driver will go 20 yards or
so farther than a 3-wood, which will go about 20 yards farther than a
5-wood. A 5-wood is roughly equivalent to a 2-iron in distance; a 7-wood
to a 4-iron.
Beginners often overestimate how far they are "supposed" to hit each
club because they watch the professionals blasting 300-yard drives. No
matter what the commercial says, you are not Tiger Woods! Pro players
are in a different universe; do not compare yourself to them. A "Golf
Digest" study found that the average driver distance for recreational
male golfers is "only" 195-200 yards.
From:
http://golf.about.com/cs/beginnersguide/a/woodsbeginners.htm
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