If you’re thinking about purchasing a new pair of clubs, then you should begin my doing your research. This article is for people new to the game or looking to get a bit more of an understanding about just what they’re buying. So let’s start with the basics: there are four major categories of clubs: woods, hybrids, irons, and putters. Wedges, which resemble irons with a more angled club head, may also be counted among these. A golfer is allowed to carry up to fourteen clubs during a round.
It is possible to play a range of different shots using only one club by modifying only the speed and direction of swing (which anyone who has ever seen the Adam Sandler movie Happy Gilmore knows), but this is not a particularly successful technique. It is much easier to keep the swing as constant as possible and achieve different lengths and characteristics of ball flight using a different club for each shot. To help golfers make the appropriate choice of a club for any particular situation, all irons (and many woods and wedges) come in sets of similar clubs graded by loft, shaft length and weight. Clubs are numbered for identification with the smallest numbers...