There may be no better way to immediately lower your golf scores than to customize your set make-up. For a very long time the typical set of golf clubs has been what is known as an 8-3-1 set. This means there are 3 woods; driver, 3-wood, and 5-wood. The eight irons in this configuration are typically the 3-iron through pitching wedge, and the last club being the putter. This leaves room for two additional clubs, usually the sand wedge and one other club of the players choice.

The golf club set is designed to enable the golfer to reach the greens in regulation, (one shot on the par 3s, 2 on the 4s, and 3 on the 5s), with no gaps in distance. If there are distance gaps that dont allow the player to reach in regulation, scores go up. Yardage gaps are very common in players with slow swing speeds, especially seniors and women.

There have been many technological advances in recent years that should lead to overall handicaps going down. Some golfing purists worry that these technological advances are, or will hurt the game. But these people have not addressed the fact that the technical advances have not lowered the average handicap in over 30 years. The advances have been mostly in the area of distance. Everyone wants more distance. I have never had a customer tell me I want less distance so I can hit more greens. Club and shaft designers realize this and concentrate research on distance gains. But the question remains with all these technological advances why arent the overall scores going down? Lets look at a couple of reasons.

As stated earlier the current iron set configuration is eight irons, 3-iron pitching wedge. The golfing public wants clubs that will hit the ball farther. In order to accommodate this demand, the club manufacturers have used two strategies. Producing clubs that have stronger lofts and they are longer. Lengths of clubs have increased over time. Comparing the lengths of clubs from the 60s and 70s with current lengths, you see that the lengths are 1 inch longer now. The lofts have also gotten stronger. Both these facts make the long irons harder to hit. The following chart illustrates this.

Era              1960s1980scurrent Club          Loft  LengthLoft  LengthLoft  Length 1-iron         17*   39/"16*   39.5/"15*   40/" 2-iron         20    38.519    3917    39.5 3-iron         24    3822    38.520    39     4-iron         28    37.525    3823    38.5 5-iron         32    3728    37.526    38 6-iron         36    36.532    3730    37.5 7-iron         40    3636    36.534    37 8-iron         44    35.540    3638    36.5 9-iron         48    3544    35.542    36 Pw             52    3548    3546    35.5 Sw             56    3555    3554    35.5

As you can see, the 3 iron of today is the same loft as the 2 iron of the 60s only half an inch longer. Clubs of today have the equivalent loft and are about .5 longer than clubs of the 60s. The quest for distance has created yardage gaps in most players sets. The stronger, longer clubs have created gaps with the shorter scoring clubs, and made it very difficult to hit the long irons consistently. Additionally, studies show that the average golfer cant hit an iron with a loft lower than 24 degrees with any consistency.

The gaps created by stronger and longer clubs, and the difficulty in hitting the long irons makes the traditional set make-up of 3 pw less effective. It also has the golfer paying for clubs that wont be used.

I dont recommend any average player carry an iron longer than the 4 iron. Also, the average player should be carrying at least one additional wedge. Hybrids and/or additional fairway woods should fill out the set. Putters that are properly fit and balanced should be considered because most strokes, (almost half), are taken with the putter.

Knowing the distances you hit each of your clubs, determining where you have gaps, and then filling those gaps with clubs you can hit consistently will save you strokes.