What Makes a Golf Club a Hybrid Club?

A hybrid golf club is part iron and part fairway wood, combining design elements from both that deliver the best each club has to offer. The loft is more like an iron, while the club has the weight typically found in a wood. In addition, the club’s shaft will be shorter than you find in most fairway woods, offering easier swing and better control.

The result is a club that the beginning to intermediate golfer can hit as effectively as a middle iron while getting the distance you’d expect from a 3-wood. These combination clubs are usually used in place of the 3-wood and 2, 3, or 4-irons.

Hybrid clubs sport a very low center of gravity, too, which mean that they put more weight into the lower half of the ball on contact, when properly struck, which launches the ball more quickly, with a higher trajectory and more back spin. Since many golfers struggle to get the ball up in the air using fairway woods, especially from the rough, this is seen as a primary benefit to using a hybrid golf club. Just five years ago less than 10% of golfers carried a hybrid in their bag.

Today, more than 35% carry one, and they have started showing up in the bags of touring professionals. The innovative design makes for better, more enjoyable golf for all who use them.