Over the last few years, perhaps no gear trend on Tour has been as hot as the usage of high-lofted fairway woods.
Pros have used 5-woods for years, but now the 7-wood has become a viable option for high-speed players and even 9-woods have their fair share of users on the PGA Tour and around the world.
In the recreational game, that’s left a lot of players asking if they too should take up the trend on the PGA Tour and trade their hybrids for high-lofted fairway woods.
On this week’s episode of GOLF’s Fully Equipped, co-hosts Johnny Wunder and Jake Morrow discussed the actual use cases for high-lofted fairway woods.
Wunder began by explaining he just played a round of golf with a player who just put Ping G440 Max 7- and 9-woods in the bag for the first time.
Morrow, who has been a skeptic of high-lofted fairway woods, explained that this player, who Wunder said was on the higher end of the speed spectrum, was probably a great example of a good use case.
“Not knowing any other numbers, like it just sounds like he found something that got the ball up much more easily,” Morrow said. “So it gave him an option in his hands that was easier to execute shots with just because of the comfort that he now feels with that club because he knows that no matter what happens, the ball is going to go up in the air.”
Morrow explained that he is typically a fan of hybrids and he builds them so they go left and fly up in the air. But often, those two objectives can be counterproductive.
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That’s when he started realizing the benefits of a club like the new Callaway Mini Spinner, which has a CG that’s flipped compared to a traditional fairway wood. The CG is higher to produce a lower launch but more spin.
Unlike traditional high-lofted fairway woods, Morrow isn’t seeing a ball that goes straight up and straight down while getting eaten alive by the wind.
For this player Wunder played with, he was not a high-ball hitter, so getting the extra launch and ball speed from the 7-wood and the 9-wood was a huge help for him.
“You’re getting ball speed,” Wunder said. “And I guess the arching or the umbrella statement is, for me, for what it’s worth, I would encourage, I think they need to be, they need to kind of be in every conversation at the top of an iron set or the top of a bag and pretty much everybody. Cause I think everybody needs to see if it works.”
For more from Wunder and Morrow, listen to the full episode of GOLF’s Fully Equipped here, or watch it below.
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