- 18/05/2025
When the driver is misbehaving, golfers often turn to the three wood in attempt to gain more control over accuracy and find more fairways. But does the data prove that this strategy is correct and does the trade off in distance make it worthwhile? That's what Dan Parker attempts to unpack in this video, with the help of shot data from real golfers provided by Arccos Golf.
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00:00Now for many golfers when the driver is misbehaving or you need to hit a tight fairway
00:04opting for the three wood seems like the most sensible option. A little bit more loft and that
00:09smaller head should give you more control to hit that fairway. That's the theory anyway but does
00:14it play out in reality? Well I've got the data that might prove it all wrong.
00:23So all of the data I'm going to be referencing in this video comes from Arcos Golf and their
00:28vast bank of real shots from real golfers on real golf courses. So far they've logged
00:33over 750 million shots so this is some really interesting data that we can dive into to look
00:40at whether that driver is more accurate or less accurate than the three wood. Now if you've been
00:46using Arcos Golf over the last couple of years then your driver shots and your three wood shots will be
00:50included in the data we're using today and if you want to use Arcos Golf for yourself I've put some
00:55handy links down in the description where you can find the best price in your location for a set of
01:00smart sensors. So let's start with the headline news in this data then and asking ourselves the question
01:06are you more likely to hit the fairway with a three wood than with a driver? Now in short the answer is
01:12yes but the results are nowhere near as resounding as you might think. So in fact from handicaps ranging
01:19from zero all the way up to 20 you are less than one percent more likely to hit the fairway with your
01:25three wood than with your driver. Less than one percent. Now I think that's quite shocking if I'd
01:29asked you that question before we had a look at this data I think you might have said something like
01:3315 20 25 percent I don't know but I think it'd be a lot more than one. Now when we're thinking about
01:39this as well so you're going to be one percent more accurate but according to the data your average
01:43loss of distance with three wood to driver is 12 yards. Now that doesn't really seem like a worthy
01:49trade-off to me so let's delve down a little bit deeper into this data and go handicap by handicap
01:54to see how they perform with driver and three wood.
02:01So let's start this deeper dive by looking at scratch golfers to five index handicappers. Now we're
02:06going to take a look at the percentage of fairways hit with each club with driver and three wood,
02:10how far each club averages for distance give us an idea of what that trade-off is,
02:15as well as looking at a really interesting stat that archives have given us looking at the percentage
02:19of shots that finish under 30 yards from the center of the fairway. So this is like you know not a
02:25fairway hit but we're less than 30 yards from the center so it might be first cut it might be rough
02:30depending on how wide the hole is but I think it's a really interesting stat to bear in mind a bit more
02:34nuance to it. So starting with a scratch golfer then they find the fairway just 2.4% more of the time
02:41with the three wood than they do with the driver and they average 15 yards less with the high lofted
02:47three wood as you might expect. There is quite a big percentage change with scratch golfers when we're
02:52looking at that category of less than 30 yards from the center of the fairway. Indeed scratch golfers are
02:57missing that so that 30 yard distance just less than four percent of the time with the three wood so
03:02there's a little bit of a gain there. Again it's only marginal at four percent and that 15 yards of
03:07distance you're giving up I don't think quite warrants it. It's an interesting thing to think
03:11anyway. If we look at a five handicapper that dispersion is even smaller. A five handicapper will
03:16hit the fairway 1.3% more of the time with their three wood and this rises to 3.3% of the time for
03:23those shots under 30 yards in the center of the fairway. So again really not a big difference here and
03:29much like that scratch golfer a five indexer is sacrificing 14 yards when hitting their three
03:34wood instead of their driver. So let's move on to 10 to 15 index handicap golfers now and while it
03:44might be expected that the performance and the percentage of fairways hit with three woods might
03:48go up a little bit with these higher index golfers the opposite is actually true. So if we look at a 10
03:53index golfer they are only 0.7% more likely to hit the fairway with their three wood which is you know
04:00that's barely anything. Even more amazingly I think here a 15 handicapper is more likely to miss the
04:07fairway with their three wood than with their driver. So we're now flipping it on its head entirely here.
04:13Now admittedly that's only by 0.3% so it's not a lot but it's still interesting to note I think that the
04:19the idea that the three wood is a safety club is not the case especially for 15 handicap golfers.
04:25Now as was the case with our scratch and five index handicapper we're losing a fair chunk of yardage
04:30as well. So for that 10 handicapper the loss of distance averages at 13 yards and for the 15
04:35handicapper we're losing 11 yards. So I'm going to stop with the 15 indexer there and just say
04:41to hit the fairway less often you're also sacrificing 11 yards. So that myth I guess we're proving now
04:47that the three wood is a safe club for 15 handicaps in particular definitely isn't true.
04:55So finally then let's look at the 20 index golfer perhaps a more common index perhaps watching at
05:00home now you're a 20 indexer let's see how you're getting on with this three wood versus driver
05:04and again the differences are minuscule for a 20 index golfer they're going to hit the fairway 0.8%
05:11of the time more with that three wood so listen really not a lot interesting the the difference
05:17in distance is a little bit less so you're only sacrificing 10 yards as a 20 handicapper whereas
05:22we were at about 15 yards of the scratch golfer so you can see the difference in the quality of
05:26striking I guess there but again for 0.8% more fairways that sacrifice 10 yards I think especially
05:33a 20 handicapper is quite a lot. So what happens when we put all of this together then let's bring all the
05:38handicaps back together again and give ourselves an average of all golfers out there from this Arcos
05:43set of data well as you can see if we put everybody together you're more likely to hit the fairway with
05:48a three wood 0.9% of the time so less than 1% with your driver and that average distance drop off with
05:56all handicaps was around 12 or 13 yards now that is probably a different iron in the bag approach-wise
06:03isn't it a seven over an eight iron we should have more control over so we're thinking about is that
06:08distance trade-off worth it not a lot more accuracy if we contextualize this and say that there are 14
06:16chances per round to hit a fairway that's assuming that most golf courses have four par threes that
06:22equates to finding one extra fairway every eight rounds and that's that 12 yards you're giving up on
06:30every shot while we're here then let's take a look at my data for this because I've been using Arcos now
06:35for a couple of years I've got three and a half thousand shots logged on here now so I thought
06:40we'd be interested to compare my data with that of the the larger group that we're doing here and
06:44I fall very much into type about what we've been talking about here so with my driver I hit the
06:49fairway a whopping an eye-watering 40% of the time not great I know I work on it but I average 256 yards
06:56off the tee so there's my accuracy my distance now with my three wood I average 241 yards so there's
07:03that drop off of 15 yards we were seeing for some of the lower index golfers but only the fairway
07:0834% of the time so the the quote-unquote safer club when I want to try and find a fairway isn't
07:15my three wood because I'm not only I'm missing it more than my driver but I'm 15 yards worse off now
07:20it's really something interesting to think about here I was really interested to see mine
07:23versus the group data on here and it would actually make a lot more sense for me I was
07:28thinking about doing the safer option is to pull the hybrid out my bag now I average 212 yards with
07:34this club so it's obviously losing a lot but I hit the fairway 45% of the time still still not a lot
07:41really is that I need to work on my fairways and regulation but if I'm on a tee and I'm like Dan
07:46I need to hit a fairway here the three wood isn't the club as though I might have thought before
07:52it would be the hybrid or even a five iron if a fairway is that important the drop-off in distance
07:57is huge but that real safe club is much lower down the bag than the three wood so some final thoughts
08:04then on what I think has been a really interesting dive into this part of the bag and I think we can
08:08really walk away from this video with some interesting course management skills next time
08:13you're on the course now there's no denying that across the board the three wood technically is more
08:19accurate and you are going to find more fairways but the results are so marginal as we saw and if
08:24you're a 15 index golfer and me you're missing more often with your three with than the driver and
08:30you're sacrificing all that yardage now there's a few reasons why this might be the case you know
08:35there's a bit of a bias for getting fitted for your driver so maybe you feel more comfortable over
08:39it than your than your fairway would and that bigger head might inspire a bit more confidence but
08:43regardless of the reason as to why the driver isn't as wayward as the three as we thought
08:48i think it's worth just sitting back and thinking if i you know my fairway finder my safe club let's
08:54drop that a little bit further down the bag next time whether it's a five word seven word i'd move
08:59down to my four hybrid now that's the next thing i'm going to do when i'm when i need to find a fairway
09:03drop down to that four hybrid even a five iron a seven iron i don't care whatever you need to find the
09:07fairway i think we've busted the myth that three wood is safer than driver that's for sure um well
09:14i hope you've enjoyed this video in this deep dive into the specific part of the game as i said at the
09:18top we've got access to our cost is vast bank of data 750 million shots from real golfers on real golf
09:25courses so if there's anything you want to see me dive into like this for specific handicap indexes or
09:31for shots on specific parts of the golf course let me know down in the comments i'd love to hear from
09:36you and put a video together looking at that but for now thank you so much for joining me i'll see you
09:40next time
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