Narrow body hybrids are targeted at better players with typically faster club head speeds and are set up with a more neutral bias to make it less likely the ball will go left. The reduced spin the narrow heads produce also allows better golfers to hit the ball lower which can be very helpful in windy conditions. Their design is also more closely matched to standard irons and as a result they are less forgiving than their wide body counterparts.
The wide body versions are by comparison better suited to golfers with slow to medium club head speeds. Designed based on the same principles as more lofted fairway woods the wider club head launches the ball higher and makes it spin more to help maximise carry distance.
Often combined with lighter graphite shafts wide body hybrids are a good choice for a lot of recreational golfers who are looking for the easiest and longest option available. One thing to look out for however when it comes to the wide body versions is that they are typically biased towards producing a draw. So considering your general standard of play and what type of trajectory you are ideally looking for is another key point when making your final decision.
Golf is very much a confidence game and players can often find confidence simply by the way one club looks compared to another. Whether a hybrid gives you more confidence when compared to a comparable iron or fairway wood is therefore a crucial component of any decision and one you should not ignore. Just because the stats on the launch monitor say one thing does not automatically mean you are going to step up to that next shot and look down on your new hybrid with confidence. If you only play a few times a year it would be difficult to justify spending a lot of money on replacing a lot of your irons all at once if you think hybrids are the way forward.
Also if you do want to spend some money on overhauling your bag with some new hybrids just absolutely make sure you remember to bear point 1 above in mind about lofts and distances. The last thing you want to do is to spend good money on a great hybrid which makes more than 1 other club in your bag redundant because they all go the same distance!
Whatever your standard of golf however we hope you are convinced by now that you should have at least one or two hybrid irons if not more in your golf bag. The ideal thing to help you make your decision is of course to get to a pro or custom fitting centre, get on a launch monitor, find out what your club head speed is and go from there. Hit at least 10 balls with each club and note the accuracy, distance and ball strike quality on every shot. You may end up deciding your irons still work better for you but if the hybrids give you better results there are options for every iron in your bag right up to your wedges.
Graeme Hay is the owner of GolfingFocus. Graeme started playing golf when he was only 4 years old and has loved the game ever since. A single figure golfer all of his adult life he lives in London and still enjoys playing whenever he can with friends and family.
Since hybrid golf clubs burst onto the scene they have proved to be a saviour for all standards of amateur golfer as they helped to solve the age-old difficulty we all have of hitting long irons Talking to the local pro he talked me through the options and then started talking about hybrid Skip to content Golf hybrids have been one of the great success stories of golf club designers over the last number of years. Which is all true but not particularly helpful.
Hybrids are more forgiving than long irons The bigger head on a hybrid allows much more permeter weighting which then means a lower centre of gravity further back from the clubface than a standard iron. Hybrids allow all golfers to hit the ball higher With their low lofts it makes sense that a lot of golfers find it difficult to generate height with long irons. Again the design of the hybrid helps here.
Hybrids perform better for golfers with lower club head speeds The poorer the golfer the lower the club head speed in general. Hybrids mean hitting more greens from longer distances With the added height and spin that hybrids offer to more standards of golfer a softer landing angle is also produced which stops the ball running too much when it lands on the green. As a result you have more accuracy and therefore more greens hit with hybrids than long irons. And this increased accuracy is backed up the stats.
Hybrids are much more versatile Because of its design features hybrids are much more versatile from difficult lies than long irons. The only real question is how many hybrids you should have.
Look at Clubhead Speed and Distance to Begin the Hybrid Experiments Before the explosion of golf technology in the last years putting a set of clubs together for golfers was a pretty straightforward task. And one of these key decisions is of course now how many hybrids should I have in my bag? And stronger lofts and longer clubs mean one thing for the average player.
You may need to hit a stinger off the tee that flies low, or a high cut around a tree from the fairway — these types of shots are generally more attainable with woods than with hybrids and fly farther to boot. There are two categories of hybrids nowadays: wood-like hybrids and iron-like hybrids often called utility irons , each designed to complement or serve as replacements to their namesakes.
No matter what combination of woods or hybrids you settle on, you want to avoid owning two different clubs that yield similar results. Ask yourself and be honest — is there a huge difference in how far your 3-wood flies when compared to your hybrid? Or maybe you carry two hybrids — if so, are your ball flights and distances discernible?
I did a little test of my own set and unwittingly, I had a pair of hybrids that although were different lofts and models, produced shots that were pretty similar to one another. This led to me ditching both and choosing a new one with a lower loft and another to replace my 3-iron to mind the huge gap I had between my irons and hybrids. Want to overhaul your own bag for ? Visit the expert fitters at our sister company, True Spec Golf.
For more on the latest gear news and information, make sure to check out our recent Fully Equipped podcast in the Spotify link below. Fairway Woods. That group actually saw a decrease with both clubs, including an 8-yard decline in distance with the 4-iron.
On approach shots, most brackets are appreciably longer with 4-hybrids. The handicap bracket was almost 5 yards longer! The lone holdout?
Four handicap brackets hit the fairway at about the same rate with both clubs. The outlier was the handicaps, who hit the fairway Approach shots are a different story. The data favours the 4-hybrid in every handicap bracket. One interesting note that shows the ever-widening gap between PGA Tour pros and single-digits. The average handicap has a GIR percentage of Every handicap bracket saw a lower score when using the 4-hybrid off the tee compared to the 4-iron.
The handicap bracket saw the biggest margin with a 4. That may not sound like much, but those margins add up over the course of a round. As you go from the best players to the worst players, the gaps widen. Previous post Next post. Back to Arccos Golf Blog.
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