Hybrids

The newest club category, which features a shape right out of Old Tom Morris’s bag.

TRENDS: HYBRIDS GO FROM FAD TO MUST-HAVE

When Todd Hamilton won the 2004 Open at Royal Troon, only 35 players in the field carried a wood-like hybrid. Good thing for Hamilton he was one of them: He used Sonartec’s MD Transition to hit tee shots and approaches and to get up and down 13 of the 14 times he chipped with it.

The R&A even looked into whether the club conformed to the Rules of Golf. It did. And for the companies that sold hybrids, the exposure put them in overdrive. Players using hybrids at the Open rose each year after Hamilton’s win until this year. The high of 89 in 2009 was a 154.3 per cent increase from 2004.

Hybrid sales have followed a similar path. In 2004, hybrids accounted for 15 per cent of all wood sales. Today they represent a third (not including ones sold as part of an iron set).

“There’s no question hybrids offer more options for players to hit shots,” says Tim Reed at Adams. “Whether it’s an iron replacement, playing a chip like a putt or punching out from the trees, it’s a must-have club.”

TESTED: HYBRIDS VS FAIRWAY WOODS

What to carry between your driver and your longest iron is the toughest part of the bag to figure out. For example, does a hybrid of a particular loft play differently than a fairway wood of that same loft?

To investigate, we had a golfer with a fast swing speed (100mph) and one with a slow swing (85 mph) hit 10 shots each with a 19° hybrid and a 19° 5-wood. The slow swinger averaged 13.6 yards more carry with the fairway wood.

The fast swinger averaged only 2.2 more yards. We expected more distance with the wood because the shaft was 1.5 inches longer, but what caused the discrepancy in results for the two golfers?

“For faster swingers, the excessive spin from a fairway wood’s deeper centre of gravity can hurt distance,” says Nate Radcliffe, of Cleveland Golf. But for slower swingers, more spin can help the ball stay in the air longer.

Slower swingers benefit from the higher ball flight they get from more shallow-faced fairway woods,” Radcliffe says. But the distance a fast swinger gets might not be worth a trade-off in control of the shorter-shaft hybrid.