Loft...

A curiosity question. If a 15degree 3wood can drive a ball just a far at times as a 9,10 degree driver,, why is it hard to put a 15deg driver in players bag? hmmmm...

My guess is that it would work fine for some people. I think some junior (and maybe ladies) sets have a driver in this loft range.

However, even at a moderate swing speed I have found some of the high lofted drivers (12*-13*) difficult to keep from going too high (and probably spinning too much). For example, on solid strikes I could hit a 13* 3-wood (Callaway 3 Deep) farther than a 12* driver (Titleist D2). The D2 was definitely straighter on average/overall, but I think the head designs/cg placement made the ball do different things despite a similar stamped loft.

The other thing is probably just practical - how many people will actually buy it?

EGO, still have a buddy who has to play a 9* stiff shaft and swings slower than me, tried to let him hit a driver at 11* and he keeps saying the balls too high, I still outdrive him by 30 on his best day.

> @Makidebinens said:

> A curiosity question. If a 15degree 3wood can drive a ball just a far at times as a 9,10 degree driver,, why is it hard to put a 15deg driver in players bag? hmmmm...

Because most players don't understand how swing weight works. I game a 13* and have a 16* for some courses. Nike did exactly what you suggest with their "Lucky 13" and "Lucky 16" clubs. The problem is that the three wood has a much heavier head. If you just duplicate the club (short shaft, high loft head) you need to add a TON of weight to make it feel the same. And I mean a ton. I have about 29 grams added to my driver head, and I did it using a kitchen scale. Most players won't do that, so if you sold them something like that, it would feel awful because its swing weighted at like C1. Remember we don't feel a club as heavy or light because its heavy or light. We are swinging something on a radium in a circle, which means we feel the difference between the shaft and head weight. A club designed to play at 44-45" must be way lighter out of the box.

And I'd argue if you added those two inches to the shaft to make the weight right, the player magically wouldn't be able to hit it anymore.

So could they make a three wood heavy head? Sure. But that would make it completely incompatible with the switching shafts / adapter model - you'd have to have short shafts just for that head. And on and on.

So there is merit to it (see my Sig, and I play that club in tournaments often) but it would be very hard to mass produce and fit a random golfer into because the head would be so much lighter (or so much heavier, and then it wouldn't work like other drivers where you can swap shafts in and out). Tough sell.

All that said, a Nike 13 or 16 can be had on ebay cheap and you can put a lot of weight on the head via rubber epoxied squares (you don't need tape since it isn't hit off the ground) and I'm a huge fan of that, so for the tinkerers on this board its a great idea. General public not so much.

> @pinestreetgolf said:

> The problem is that the three wood has a much heavier head. If you just duplicate the club (short shaft, high loft head) you need to add a TON of weight to make it feel the same.

Although I don't disagree with the general point - "Ton" is a bit of an exaggeration IMO. A 'standard' weight 3wd head is 210 gm. Only about 10 gm heavier than a 'standard' driver -and many modern drivers are coming out already heavier than that 'standard'. My Ping G driver started out a 208 gm as the stock weight and that was before cutting down. My SLDR was pretty heavy as well - very close to that 210 number. They may be coming back down closer to 'normal' with the composite heads - but can't say for sure - haven't measured all that many of the newest heads.

Now the trend toward "counterbalanced" shafts and lighter shafts certainly isn't helping things - that can make it seem like more head weight is needed when the problem really is the shaft weight and balance point.

Personally I think that it's more likely that the number of people that can NOT hit the current drivers (9-12*) farther than their 3wds is way too small to make any such offering profitable for the OEM's. That's of course assuming a reasonable fit is found for both the driver and fairway.

I have a PING G2 EZ driver. 15.5 degrees of loft, 400cc head, standard driver length. It is very straight, goes very high, and doesn't go very far. Shorter than a three wood, but very easy to hit well.

I only use a 3w from a tee on short par 4's or really tight fairways, but I've always found the head to be unforgiving, so.....I'm testing a TM R15 14* driver head lofted to 12*.......it's so good that it's in my bag for the foreseeable.

Head is 198g fitted to standard length and tipped TM 5w length Diamana R80x. Playing length is just shy of 43". I tested lead tape but it all fell off and for some reason I can strike it better with out the tape! It is accurate, high, long and straight.