Cutting 3 Wood

A bit of background, I currently have a RBZ stage 2 3HL (17°) and a Burner Superfast 7 Wood (21°) in my bag. The 7 wood is my crutch club, I can hit it relatively straight 190-200 most of the time. The 3 wood is... not a crutch to the point where I've basically stopped hitting it.

I'm thinking of cutting the 3 wood down by an inch to match the 7 wood length, has anyone tried this before and what should I watch out for in terms of swing weight/lie? I'll note that I don't have a lot of experience with this sort of thing and obviously the clubs have different swing weight to begin with, but I'm not particularly attached to the 3 wood and don't have much to lose here.

Thanks!

Simple test is try choking down an inch first.

Question is how often are you faced with a 3-wood type yardage, in your case greater than 200 yards? If you’re hitting 3W as your approach shot on par 4’s, you’d be better off moving up a tee box. I get that some par 3’s are over 200 even from the middle tees, but that’s the exception rather than the rule. On par 5’s, usually laying up to a wedge & trying to 1-putt birdie or 2-putt par is safer than putting double bogey into play.

That being said, I’m sure there’s a 3-wood out there you can hit with some greater confidence, or just play it further back in your stance. Once I learned to hit down on it more than sweeping/picking it, my 3-wood ball striking has gotten better.

That's a good way to look at it, I think my question was based on the fact that I wanted to mess around with a club that I'm not really using. Most of the times I hit the 3 wood are on a par 5 second shot just to get a few extra yards. As you mention, hitting to a wedge and laying up has been better hence using the 7 wood more often. Interesting you mention hitting down on the ball though, I swing quite shallow so maybe (probably) that has more to do with it.

Shortening the club by an inch will change its swingweight by about six points (D5 to C9, for example) - which is a lot. You'll probably need to add lead tape or some other weight to the head to make it playable. If not, you'll likely be no better off than where you are today.

1 inch, is 6 SW points, so add 12g to the head.

Or you can play around with a ultra light grip, the 25g ones.

A regular grip is around 50g, 25g grip will give you an extra 5 swing weight points, your decision to add 2g to the head or not to bring it up back to the original SW.

I personally play with a shorter 3 wood. I custom ordered it 1 inch shorter from Cobra. They found a heavier head, added the heavier weight. Comes out to standard D0/D1 with a regular grip.

There are a lot of reasons the club could be causing you trouble with the 3HL (really a 4wd). Playing length is important but just cutting it down to the same length as the 7 wd is not going to be enough. Playing length, shaft weight and head weight all have to work together. The good news is that it's really not that hard to figure what the problem might be. Just get some lead tape, go to the range and follow Howard's DIY fitting tutorial. It was written for drivers but it's just as effective for fairways.That's not the right approach in this case.

1) With no evidence that the original swing weight value is any good to begin with, it's pointless trying to replicate it for a different length.

2) Even it was, trying maintain the same swing weight value after such a big length change will not necessarily reproduce the same heft feel.

3) forget anything you may have learned about using grip weight or butt weight to manipulate swing weight. All it is is a very common misuse of the swing weight scale. The swing weight scale and general swing weight concept was never designed or intended to help manage grip weight changes. So how the swing weight scale readings change with grip weight changes is not even close to an accurate representation of how the feel might change.

Stuart have already said the most, but please forget you ever heard that 1 SWP = 2 grams, thats only right if the clubs is 38 3/4" long, so when we talk drivers and woods, we are down at 1.6 to 1.75 grams pr SWP and into wedges we are at 2.3 or higher, so please forget that silly rule of thimb, its useless in the real world.

Use this chart for dry fit to get closer, but NEVER shoot for a SW value unless that comes from a club with that specs we try to duplicate and ALL the other specs is the same, the SW scale CANT BE USED to "reset" resistance or feel of head weight when we change something, IT CANT , and it was never the intention with that tool either.

Do NOT misuse that chart to "reset SW" its not for that purpose and WANT feel as you think it does.

The SW scale is meant to be used like this.

Take "what ever club", with the grip of choice, the shaft you want, to the play length you want and add the actual head. Now try off that club. If feel of head weight is too low, add head weight until its right for you. Now you can put that club on the SW scale and measure its value, and you can use that value for a set of irons when you are using the same components for the other clubs. That will give you a set with progressive higher resistance as clubs goes longer. (resistance want be the same for all clubs, even with the same SW value)

So, we can NOT build a club starting with the SW scale and think "D3" is the right value, the instrument CANT help us with that,(yes we can find D3, but D3 is NOT what you think it is) so its only meant to be used to duplicate specs from one iron THAT WORKS to another, but first AFTER we have tuned up that club so it works like we want it to, if not you are fooling both yourself and the SW scale.

When we modify a club, no matter club, we have to go back to start, and tune up that club without even thinking of, or looking at values at all. When done we can use the SW scale for repair reference, but again, IT CANT help us to reset the feel it had as "D3" before we cut it shorter, thats IMPOSSIBLE with that instrument, because now we have both a different play length, Total weight, and grams pr inch club length, so the instrument "goes blind", it cant "see" what we have done, or "understand" what we try to do, the operator has to understand that, or he will fail, even if he use my chart above here, its just as useless as the SW scale is when the target is to "reset" the feel we had.

The chart is ONLY useful when we build a SET of club, and has the correct target value, its useless in every other case.

That's some very good information, looks like I should put the hacksaw away for now and get to reading...