The absolute essential equipment of any golf game is a golf club so the more we understand it, the better equipped we will be to handle it successfully. A golf club has three parts to it – the Head, the Shaft and the Grip. A golf club has to stick to certain specifications but within those specifications a club maker tries to create golf clubs that can help a golfer improve his game by reducing swing error and allow for accurate shots.
If you look at the standard set of golf clubs, you will notice that it contains three woods (the 1-driver, 3 and 5) plus eight irons (3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and a PW). You will also have a putter, which brings it to a total of twelve. Now, the rules of golf state that you can carry a maximum of fourteen clubs in your bag, which then permits you two more clubs in addition to the above. Depending on your skill levels and comfort levels, you could add another specialty wood or an iron to help you out.
Woods
The golf clubs known as woods are usually used to hit long shots. The club is a hollow wood that has a large head. Suppose the golf hole is about 400 yards or so from the tee to the green, then you would be using the woods to start off.
• Of all the woods, the driver or the number 1 wood has the lowest loft. Loft is defined as the angle of the clubface. The loft of the club decides the trajectory and thereby the distance the ball can be hit to. Usually a driver has a loft anywhere between seven and twelve. It is usually a lot harder to hit with drivers of low loft than higher lofted ones and hence you will find only fairly experienced professionals going in for drivers with lower loft. Recently though, the newer golf balls provide a lot of low spin forcing even pros to take to slightly higher loft drivers so as to get a higher launch angle. Most of them now use drivers that have lofts of 8.5 to 10 degrees though non-professionals are advised to use something which has a loft of 10 or more
• You may also want to carry the number 3 wood as well as the number 4 wood in your bag. The number 3 club has a loft between fifteen to eighteen degrees while the number 5 club has a loft between twenty and twenty-two degrees. As most golfers also carry 3 and 5 woods in their bag. A 3 wood has a loft between 15 and 18 degrees, and a 5 wood has a loft between 20 and 22 degrees. As you would have realized by now, the higher the number of the golf club, the higher the loft and the higher the loft, the shorter the club. Shorter clubs essentially mean the ball will be hit for a shorter distance. Rarely do people go for the number 7 or 9 clubs.
• You may be under the belief that since these particular golf clubs are called woods, they would be made of wood. In fact, that was the case till late 1980s. Then they realized that metal has many distinct advantages. The most important advantage that it has is its ability to precisely mold golf clubs into one, having a low center of gravity and two, having perimeter weighting. Both of these allow the golfer to hit longer distances with greater precision.
• So far we have been talking about the 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9 woods. You may wonder what about those in between like 2 and 4 wood? There are woods with numbers 2 and 4 but their usage has gradually decreased. Today, most of the players prefer to take the 7 and 9 woods with them rather than 2 and 4. So much so that many actually prefer to take the higher numbered woods to lower numbered irons as improved technology has meant there is far greater precision even with woods even for smaller distances.
Irons
• The best time to use irons is when you are much closer to the green, say, at a distance of about 200 yards or less. Also remember that the closer you are to the green, the higher numbered iron you will use. Again, similar to the woods, you can find the standard set of irons being 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 irons and of course the Pitching Wedge, fondly called as PW.
• As we had mentioned earlier, there are many golfers who prefer to play with higher numbered woods like the 7 and 9 and skip the lower numbered irons. Especially for ladies and senior citizens, even for beginners, higher numbered woods offers far greater driving ease at shorter distances than the lower numbered irons do and provide almost the same degree of accuracy.
Wedges
• We have already spoken about the pitching wedge. In reality, wedges are just more specialty irons. The lowest number specialty iron is the pitching wedge that has a loft of forty-eight degrees. Obviously higher numbered irons are going to have higher lofts like fifty-two, sixty and sixty-four degrees.
• These particular golf clubs can be very helpful at certain times in your game and every player tend to keep a few of them. Their design feature is more in terms of a blade club because being close to the greens, what you now need are clubs that will help you control your shots and shape your shots better rather than just aiming for distance.
Putters
• The final but fairly important golf club is the putter. The usual course of a golf game is as follows. You tee off with a driver for a distance of about 250 yards, hit another shot for 175 yards right into the sand trap, use the wedges to get it out onto the green and then finally use the putter to gently tap the ball into the hole.
• The putter is of course used only on the green but you may be surprised at the variety of putters that are available – you can get short, long heel-toe, mallet and so on.