Driver vs. 3 wood off the tee

[cnosil 18,700]

Might have been another topic on this as it seems to come up in most course management discussion.

 

When looking at modern strokes gained and course management strategies we are advised to hit driver unless you really struggle with the driver or dropping back takes hazards out off play. Counter arguments are that people will give up distance to be in the fairway.

 

Saw this performance based test posted on twitter. Matt generally does a pretty thorough analysis of information so I think it is a good read

 

https://pluggedingolf.com/should-you-always-hit-driver-golf-myths-unplugged/

 

 

For the article it seems like the newer strategies are the way to go forward as backing off to 3wood gives up too much distance and people don’t hit the fairway more often as is often stated.

 

Granted there are times and situations not to hit driver but if

You can hit the driver you need to hit the driver.

[Shankster 26,855]

Is it better to be 75 yards in the junk or only 15?  

[jlukes 14,491]

Fairways hit is always something amateurs seem to have no idea what is good and what is bad. They have one round where they go 2 for 2 hitting fairways with their 3w and they hit their driver inconsistently for the day and all of a sudden they’re so much more accurate with their 3w

my brother in law struggles to break 100. Extremely inconsistent with most clubs in the bag.  Yet for some reason he almost never hits driver and hits his 2h off the tee.  Because it keeps him in play more.  I wish he used arccoss or shotscope so he could see what I see and that his assumption is way off base 

 

[RickyBobby_PR 6,477]

I used to play a 4w off the tee for a while to play to a number on shorter par 4s and played pretty well that way.

Ive gone back to driver unless there’s trouble like a penalty area where driver would run out to or possibly around my carry number.

 

[rbsiedsc 2,732]

Considering my last round i hit my 2H as far as my driver, I will take the 2H all day for now while working on my driver swing mechanics

[Lacassem 12,052]

Driver unless there is major trouble. Rough or fairway doesn’t matter to me. Tree line can be difficult here in the northeast but if I’m behind the trees with driver or 3w either way It’s a tough out.

[TBT 3,454]

I’ve been hitting 3W a lot lately to keep the ball in the fairway, but I’m hitting a strong 3W so I’m only giving up 10-15 yards


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[DaveP043 4,678]

8 minutes ago, TBT said:

I’ve been hitting 3W a lot lately to keep the ball in the fairway, but I’m hitting a strong 3W so I’m only giving up 10-15 yards


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How many more fairways are you hitting?  If its only one or two more, you're probably giving up strokes.

[B.Boston 12,131]

Generally I take Driver.  But there are a few considerations.  To start, I use a 5-wood so there is definitely a distance gap.  Arccos shows my driver as 261 and my 5-wood as 237, a 24 yard gap.  However the range is much greater as I can hit my driver further if I figure a few things out consistently.  Arccos has the top end range for my driver as 281 vs 253 for the 5 wood, a 28 yard gap,  That is the difference between a 8 iron or PW on an approach.  For me with those two clubs I hit the green 22% more of the the time with the PW.  That's a sort of shocking difference actually.  Note to self: Time to clean up the iron play.

Here is my off the tee performance for both:

First thing to note is that I have about half as many tee shots with the 5-wood, but still a good sample.  There are two things that stick out to me immediately:

• I do have tighter dispersion with the 5-wood being 6 yards tighter.

I'm not really sure in the long run this alone would lead to lower scores as we've already discussed the 24-28 yard distance gap I would be leaving myself on average.

• Dispersion pattern is more left with the 5-wood than driver

This is where I can and do use my patterns if I choose to not hit driver.  I've played a few holes where I run a higher risk of running out of room on the right or the hole is shaped/sloped in a way that a shot moving from left to right ends up in a significantly less favorable spot than 20-30 yards back in the fairway.  But they're aren't many.

I'm pretty sure that if it weren't for a lot of the challenges built into #CCC4 that it would even be close to a 2 to 1 ratio.  Now, If I'm leaving everything well right or not swinging the driver great... I have a ton of confidence in the 5-wood to be consistent.  If that happens I'll use it off the tee, because I know the distance gap between them isn't 24-28 yards if I'm not hitting driver well.  But unless there's an obvious reason not too like forced layups or severe left to right slopes and doglegs, the big stick is coming out of the bag most of the time.

 

 

[cnosil 18,700]

2 hours ago, Shankster said:

Is it better to be 75 yards in the junk or only 15?  

Not all junk is created equal so I'd take the 75 yards because you got 60 more yards of junk. 

1 hour ago, rbsiedsc said:

Considering my last round i hit my 2H as far as my driver, I will take the 2H all day for now while working on my driver swing mechanics

That is a different issue; If you don't hit the driver well you need to work on mechanics and hitting the driver well.   For those that hit the driver reasonably well and the hole sets up to hit the driver there is no reason not to hit the driver as there really isn't an advantage to backing off to the next club.  

[revkev 23,519]

Matt was a MGS regular when I first started. I have great respect for him.

This has become the prevailing wisdom and I’m almost always going driver unless it’s too tight an area that I’m driving.

There is this one short par 4 at my club where I should hit driver - no hazards, wide open in front of the green. But every time I hit driver I duck hook the thing into someone’s yard. So I will add bad juju to the list of reasons to back off.

So on that one it’s duck hooked 5 wood, GW - something about the way that tee is oriented that it produces lots of hooks


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[BMart519 818]

35 minutes ago, B.Boston said:

Here is my off the tee performance for both:

First thing to note is that I have about half as many tee shots with the 5-wood, but still a good sample.  There are two things that stick out to me immediately:

• I do have tighter dispersion with the 5-wood being 6 yards tighter.

 

You have to watch out for conclusions from horizontal spread. I've reviewed shots and "yards from center" does not always detect the center of fairway. It also doesn't allow you to factor in if you were aiming away from trouble for a shot 30 yards right of center just barely in the rough which is a lot better if there is sand or water left.

Instead of 13 vs 19 yards of dispersion, I would look at total spread and pick a number of poor shots to eliminate. If you remove 1 widest miss from the charts above, you have a dispersion of 60 yards with your 5W and 100+ yards with your driver (rounding to nearest 10 yards). These numbers are about 15 and 40-50 yards wider than ideal for that distance based on what Scott Fawcett talks about in DECADE for dispersion patterns. Getting 10% more distance with a 60% bigger dispersion spread is likely costing you strokes unless the courses you play are wide open with minimal hazards and trees. 

It would be easy for 10 balls on the right side of the driver graph to be lost, go OB, or require punch outs unless you strictly aim up the left side of fairway and even into the rough. You need this info the figure out strokes gained (or lost). But all of this data is influenced by the factor in BOLD above. 

25 yards less off the tee is 0.2-0.3 strokes lost per drive. 1 tee ball OB is 2 strokes lost, so roughly 7-10 shots with driver vs 5w. In Shot Scope, there are scoring breakdowns by tee club and my 2H (220-250 club) vs driver (250-270) were basically equal. I did learn that my driving iron "safety club" was my worst performing tee club, even worse than clubbing wayyyy down to 6 iron. The takeaway is you and me both need to get better at driver, but in the meantime you can't blindly follow the gospel of pull driver when there is no hazard/OB. 

Scott Fawcett will occasionally throw out the disclaimer that if you're awful with driver and good with the next club down, the driver strategy may not apply but then always follows it up with "that means you need to work on driver". I've taken the driver advice to heart and look to hit it where possible because you will always hit more greens with your wedges than an 8 iron no matter your level of iron play. 

As you mentioned, having the awareness to drop back from driver on a day you are not hitting it well is important. Especially on holes with OB/penalty areas as the dispersion increases risk. It is impossible to quantify the effect that confidence will have on the outcome if you feel shaky with driver in the hand. 

[ZenGolfer 834]

I tried this for a couple months last year and found that Im better with driver because the head is bigger and because I dont hit a 3-wood much straighter than I do my driver.

I found that it put more pressure on me to hit my 3-wood perfectly because if I mishit it, I could forget about par on that hole.  My driver, on the other hand, I can mishit it a little bit and still get good enough distance that even if I miss the fairway, I would advance the ball far enough that I can at least hit a recovery shot and have a chance at par.

That and the huge head of a modern driver instills you with so much confidence, that theres really no reason not to hit it.  I really kicked myself last year when I went to Arcadia Bluffs over the 4th of July and didnt pack my driver because I was kind of nervous and not hitting my 3-wood well shattered what little confidence I had.

[B.Boston 12,131]

1 hour ago, BMart519 said:

You have to watch out for conclusions from horizontal spread. I've reviewed shots and "yards from center" does not always detect the center of fairway. It also doesn't allow you to factor in if you were aiming away from trouble for a shot 30 yards right of center just barely in the rough which is a lot better if there is sand or water left.

Instead of 13 vs 19 yards of dispersion, I would look at total spread and pick a number of poor shots to eliminate. If you remove 1 widest miss from the charts above, you have a dispersion of 60 yards with your 5W and 100+ yards with your driver (rounding to nearest 10 yards). These numbers are about 15 and 40-50 yards wider than ideal for that distance based on what Scott Fawcett talks about in DECADE for dispersion patterns. Getting 10% more distance with a 60% bigger dispersion spread is likely costing you strokes unless the courses you play are wide open with minimal hazards and trees. 

It would be easy for 10 balls on the right side of the driver graph to be lost, go OB, or require punch outs unless you strictly aim up the left side of fairway and even into the rough. You need this info the figure out strokes gained (or lost). But all of this data is influenced by the factor in BOLD above. 

25 yards less off the tee is 0.2-0.3 strokes lost per drive. 1 tee ball OB is 2 strokes lost, so roughly 7-10 shots with driver vs 5w. In Shot Scope, there are scoring breakdowns by tee club and my 2H (220-250 club) vs driver (250-270) were basically equal. I did learn that my driving iron "safety club" was my worst performing tee club, even worse than clubbing wayyyy down to 6 iron. The takeaway is you and me both need to get better at driver, but in the meantime you can't blindly follow the gospel of pull driver when there is no hazard/OB. 

Scott Fawcett will occasionally throw out the disclaimer that if you're awful with driver and good with the next club down, the driver strategy may not apply but then always follows it up with "that means you need to work on driver". I've taken the driver advice to heart and look to hit it where possible because you will always hit more greens with your wedges than an 8 iron no matter your level of iron play. 

As you mentioned, having the awareness to drop back from driver on a day you are not hitting it well is important. Especially on holes with OB/penalty areas as the dispersion increases risk. It is impossible to quantify the effect that confidence will have on the outcome if you feel shaky with driver in the hand. 

Good and interesting feedback, thanks. 
 

I can say with 110% certainty the far left ball on the driver was a dead pull, and ricocheted off a tree and went clear into the middle of the next fairway over.

So that’s an outlier for sure. 
 

Also agree that the centerline isn’t great either. One course in Maine I play has a fairway that never really ends. (The two green balls well right of center).

driver i typically aim to play up the left side and cut back to the center. With the 5 wood I actually feel comfortable working a draw or fade in. 
 

ill have to check out the DECADE stuff. Also put me in the “driver swing needs work” camp! Haha

[CarlH 6,003]

Off the deck in the fairway, I stripe my 3 wood.  But, if I tee it up on the tee box for a safer shot than my driver, I invariably slice it, duck hook it, top it, or otherwise screw it up.   

[dlow206 7,762]

I hit my driver on all par 4s and par 5s, at least at my home course. Any non-iron club off the tee for me is unreliable. Likeliness of topping a fairway wood or hybrid off the tee is very high. And I am not going to hit a 5 iron of the tee on a par 4 or par 5. 

[goaliedad30 86]

I've concluded that I'm better off hitting driver whenever I can. There are only a few situations where I drop back to something else (3w, etc)

• Serious penalty or deep bunker trouble pinches the fairway at driver range, and I can't carry it
• The ball absolutely has to go right to left (we have a couple of R>L doglegs that driver goes through the fairway if it doesn't move R>L)
• Driver would carry me onto nasty downhill/sidehill lies. Our 1st and 10th holes are both seriously downhill. Driver doesn't get to the flat bottom, but it goes past the shorter flat area that's around 150 yard from the green. The slopes are severe enough (and have potentially long rough as well) that I truly am better hitting 8i from 155 and flat than PW from the lies you can draw.

[revkev 23,519]

Once again seeing how much different we all are. I like the hit the longest one you are comfortable with and if it’s not driver work on it strategy for sure.


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[Micah T 1,105]

2 reasons I won’t hit driver: hole won’t hold a right miss, or a sharp dogleg left that can’t be cut.

There was a point in my game where the driver was costing me 6 strokes a round due to OB and hazards(16 handicap) and not hitting it drastically reduced my handicap. But short of not being able to keep it on the planet( I used to swing the driver as hard as I could, and it was not a forgiving driver) not hitting driver is just giving up 2-3 shots a round.


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[cnosil 18,700]

2 reasons I won’t hit driver: hole won’t hold a right miss, or a sharp dogleg left that can’t be cut.

Those are perfectly valid reasons. No one is saying always hit the driver. The point is that dropping back a club doesn’t guarantee better results.