- today
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
01:30asked 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 to 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
02:40percent more of the time with the three wood than they do with the driver and they average 15 yards
02:45less with the high lofted three wood as you might expect. There is quite a big percentage change with
02:51scratch golfers when we're looking at that category of less than 30 yards from the center of the fairway.
02:56Indeed scratch golfers are missing that so that 30 yard distance just less than four percent of the
03:01time with the three wood so there's a little bit of a gain there again it's only marginal at four percent
03:06and that 15 yards of distance you're giving up I don't think quite warrants it. It's an interesting
03:10thing to think anyway. If we look at a five handicapper that dispersion is even smaller. A five
03:16handicap will hit the fairway 1.3 percent more of the time with their three wood and this rises to 3.3
03:23percent of the time for those shots under 30 yards in the center of the fairway. So again really not a
03:27big difference here and much like that scratch golfer a five indexer is sacrificing 14 yards when hitting
03:34their three wood instead of their driver. So let's move on to 10 to 15 index handicap golfers now and
03:43while it might be expected that the performance and the percentage of fairways hit with three woods
03:48might go up a little bit with these higher index golfers the opposite is actually true. So if we look
03:53at a 10 index golfer they are only 0.7 percent more likely to hit the fairway with their three wood
03:59which is you know that's barely anything. Even more amazingly I think here a 15 handicapper
04:06is more likely to miss the fairway with their three wood than with their driver. So we're now
04:11flipping it on its head entirely here. Now admittedly that's only by 0.3 percent so it's not a lot
04:17but it's still interesting to note I think that the the idea that the three wood is a safety club
04:23is not the case especially for 15 handicap golfers. Now as was the case with our scratch and five index
04:28handicapper we're losing a fair chunk of yardage as well so for that 10 handicapper the loss of
04:32distance averages at 13 yards and for the 15 handicapper we're losing 11 yards. So I'm going
04:37to stop with the 15 indexer there and just say to hit the fairway less often you're also sacrificing
04:4411 yards. So that myth that myth I guess we're proving now that the three wood is a safe club
04:48for 15 handicaps in particular definitely isn't true.
04:51So 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 percent
05:11of the time more with that three wood so listen really not a lot. Interesting the the difference in
05:18distance 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 percent more fairways that sacrifice 10 yards I think
05:32especially a 20 handicapper is quite a lot. So what happens when we put all of this together then
05:37let's bring all the handicaps back together again and give ourselves an average of all golfers out there
05:42from this Arcos set of data. Well as you can see if we put everybody together you're more
05:47like to hit the fairway with a three wood 0.9 percent of the time so less than one percent with your
05:54driver and that average distance drop off with all handicaps was around 12 or 13 yards now that is
06:00probably a different iron in the bag approach wise isn't it a seven over an eight iron which we'll have
06:05more control over so we're thinking about is that distance trade-off worth it not a lot more accuracy
06:13if we contextualize this and say that there are 14 chances per round to hit a fairway that's assuming
06:19that most golf courses have four par threes that equates to finding one extra fairway every eight
06:26rounds and that's that 12 yards you're giving up on every shot. While we're here then let's take a look
06:33at my data for this because I've been using Arcos now for a couple of years I've got three and a half
06:38thousand shots logged on here now so I thought we'd be interested to compare my data with that of the
06:42the larger group that we're doing here and I fall very much into type about what we've been talking
06:47about here so with my drive I hit the fairway a whopping an eye-watering 40 percent of the time
06:52not great I know I'll work on it but I averaged 256 yards off the tee so there's my accuracy my distance
06:59now with my three wood I averaged 241 yards so there's that drop off of 15 yards we were seeing
07:05for some of the lower index golfers but only the fairway 34 percent of the time so the the quote
07:10unquote safer club when I want to try and find a fairway isn't my three wood because I'm not only
07:16I'm missing it more than my driver but I'm 15 yards worse off now it's really something interesting to
07:21think about here I was really interested to see mine versus the group data on here and it would
07:26actually make a lot more sense for me I was thinking about doing the safer option is to pull the
07:31hybrid out my bag now I average 212 yards with this club so it's obviously losing a lot but I hit
07:37the fairway 45 percent of the time still still not a lot really is that I need to work on my fairways
07:43and regulation but if I'm on a tee and I'm like Dan I need to hit a fairway here the three wood isn't
07:50the club as though I might have thought before it would be the hybrid or even a five iron if a fairway is
07:55that important the drop-off in distance is huge but that real safe club is much lower down the bag
08:01than the three wood so some final thoughts then on what I think has been a really interesting dive
08:06into this part of the bag and I think we can really walk away from this video with some
08:11interesting course management skills next time you're on the course now there's no denying that
08:15across the board the three wood technically is more accurate and you are going to find more fairways
08:21but the results are so marginal as we saw and if you're a 15 index golfer and me you're missing more
08:28often with your three with than the driver and you're sacrificing all that yardage now there's a few
08:33reasons why this might be the case you know there's a bit of a bias for getting fitted for your driver
08:37so maybe you feel more comfortable over it than your than your fairway would and that bigger head might
08:42inspire a bit more confidence but regardless of the reason as to why the driver isn't as wayward as the
08:47three wood as we thought I think it's worth just sitting back and thinking if I you know my fairway
08:52finder my safe club let's drop that a little bit further down the bag next time whether it's a five
08:57wood seven wood I'd move down to my four hybrid now that's the next thing I'm going to do when I'm
09:02ready to find a fairway drop down to that four hybrid even a five iron a seven iron I don't care
09:06whatever you need to find the fairway I think we've busted the myth that three wood is safer than driver
09:12that's for sure well I hope you've enjoyed this video in this deep dive into the specific
09:17part of the game as I said at the top we've got access to our cost is vast bank of data 750 million
09:23shots from real golfers on real golf courses so if there's anything you want to see me dive into like
09:28this for specific handicap indexes or for shots on specific parts of the golf course let me know down
09:34in the comments I'd love to hear from you and put a video together looking at that but for now thank
09:39you so much for joining me I'll see you next time
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