How Many Strokes Will You Save With Hybrid Golf Clubs?

Hybrid golf clubs are meant to replace long irons.

They’re easier to hit, and you can even use them out of tough lies. Do you think that if you replaced your long irons with hybrid clubs that you could hit accurately that you would save strokes? Maybe you even subconsciously play so that you won’t have to hit your long irons. Have you ever been in a position where you know your 3 iron is the right club for the shot, but you just had no confidence in it so you laid up with a 6 iron? Have you ever tried to hit a long iron out of longer grass—even from just off the fairway? Oftentimes it’s hopeless. The grass grabs the club head, and you end up hitting a hook or a really low shot that doesn’t go very far.

For most people, long irons can be hard to get in the air, and hit accurately.

Hybrid clubs are also known as utility clubs, and they look like a cross between fairway woods and long irons. For most golfers, they are much easier to hit than long irons—even from a tough lie. From certain lies, you may as well not even attempt to hit a long iron, but a hybrid club will work great. They slice through even deep grass, and get the ball in the air.

Hybrids are even useful for bump and run chips.

If you watch most pros chip, they get the ball running on the green as soon as possible, and use all the green they can. You’ll almost never see a PGA pro lob the ball when he has a lot of green to work with. Hybrid clubs are ideal for use around the green.

While hybrid clubs were originally designed for players with slower swing speeds, players on the PGA tour have found use for them.

Hybrids will cause the ball to fly with a higher trajectory, and land more softly than long irons, allowing them to be more aggressive in going for the pin. While the pros don’t have any problem hitting their long irons, hybrids are so versatile that even these guys find them useful enough to include in the valuable real estate of their golf bag. There are some weeks when the longest iron Phil Mickelson has carried is a 5 iron—all of the long irons are gone—replaced with hybrids.

Hybrids are generally numbered by their degree of loft.

With the table below, you can see how the degrees of loft in a hybrid equate with irons. Sometimes the hybrids are numbered to be equivalent to the iron numbers.

So there is no good reason to struggle with your long irons anymore. Players of all skill levels should replace whichever irons with which they struggle with hybrids.