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In the sport of golf, a wood is a class of golf club designed for long-distance shots. Originally "woods" had a wooden clubhead, hence the name.

Woods generally fall into two classes, drivers and fairway woods. The longest and lowest-loft wood, the 1 wood, is the driver . It has the longest range of any club in a golfer's bag, and with its large head and deep face is designed to hit off the tee for the first shot of long-yardage holes. The driver can also be hit from the turf, although modern deep-faced drivers require a high level of skill and a certain amount of luck regarding the "lie" of the ball to execute such a shot correctly. Some 2-woods also have a similar deep-face oversized design, used for tee shots requiring less distance than the player's average drive. Such 2-woods are also called drivers (sometimes called the "Mini Driver" to differentiate it from the 1-wood, often taken as a joking reference to Minnie Driver), but this variation is rare, as is the 2-wood itself. An older term for the 2-wood is a brassie.¹

Higher-number woods are generally known as fairway woods and, as their name suggests, are designed for shots from off the turf of the fairway that still require long distance, such as the second shot of a par-5 or a long par-4 hole. They have two important features: a higher loft to lift the ball out of the turf and over low obstacles like hills, and a shallower face height which allows a player to hit a ball from the ground using the exact center of the club, providing greater distance for such shots. These two design features enable players to hit fairway woods off the ground with ease. Fairway woods are also useful off the tee depending on the hole; a player may for instance wish to play their tee shot short (known as "laying up") due to a dogleg or a hazard in range of their driver, and will opt instead for their 3-wood.

The most common set of clubs has three woods: a driver, 3 and 5 wood. However, there are many variations depending on the player and the course, and fairway woods of any number from 2 to 9 are produced and preferred by various players. The 7-wood in particular is common for tight lies, hilly or hazardous courses, and among ladies and seniors.

Design

The head of a wood is roughly spherical in shape with a slightly bulging clubface and a flattened sole that slides over the ground without digging in during the swing. Traditional "wood" clubheads were made of wood; beech wood or ash prior to the twentieth century, and later persimmon or maple. Modern club heads are usually hollow steel, titanium or composite materials, and are sometimes called "metalwoods" or more recently "fairway metals". The first metalwoods appeared in the late 1970s but did not begin to gain wide acceptance over traditional woods until the early 1990s, when more forgiving "oversized" heads were introduced. Now, not only has the size changed but there is also more of redesign in the "shape" of the clubhead. The newer Cleveland and Callaway drivers are well examples of this.

The typical loft for woods ranges from 7.5 to 31 degrees. Driver lofts generally center around 10 degrees, while the average 3-wood has a 14-15 degree loft and the average 5-wood has an 18-19 degree loft. Higher lofts than that overlap with irons, but many players prefer high-number woods to low-number irons wherever they can be used as, with the same loft, the fairway wood's launch angle is higher and the distance is greater. The loft of any given club number varies between manufacturers and classifications; higher-lofted drivers (as high as 13 degrees) as well as higher-number fairway woods are often preferred by ladies and senior players, as they get the ball up in the air more easily at lower clubhead speeds.

The shaft length in woods varies from about 40-48 inches (100-115 cm), with the current standard length for the driver being 45 inches, formerly 43.5 inches. Some players prefer shorter driver shafts (43.5"-44.5") because they are easier to use, though the shorter shaft slightly reduces distance. Graphite shafts are usually preferred for woods due to their light weight, which enables users to generate higher clubhead speeds and thus greater distance. The maximum legal length of a shaft by USGA and R&A rules is 48 inches, although some woods have been made with shaft lengths of up to 50 inches. These woods are mainly used in long drive contests.

Construction

Shaft

The shaft is the true engine of the modern wood. Widely overlooked, the proper shaft increases distance and accuracy, while a poor shaft can lead to inconsistent shots, slices, and reduced distance.

The oldest shafts for all golf clubs were made of hickory wood. The shaft was whippy and light, but inconsistent in flex from club to club and quite fragile. Beginning in the 1920s, steel shafts started making an appearance, though the USGA and R&A did not allow their use in sanctioned tournaments until 1929. These shafts traded the lightness and flex of the wood shaft for vastly increased durability and consistency, and were the only type of shaft in general use on any club until the early 1990's. The modern "graphite" shaft (technically a carbon-fiber composite material) currently in use today is the best of both worlds; it is lighter and more flexible than either steel or hickory, while having similar durability as steel, at the cost of slightly reduced shot consistency due to increased torque (though this has vastly improved on recent generations of shafts). Graphite shafts gained widespread popularity in the mid-1990's; although the carbon-fiber composite technology had been available since the early 1970s, it was very expensive to produce and nearly impossible to mass-market. Advances in producing, forming and curing composite materials have made carbon fiber much cheaper, and now virtually all new woods, regardless of price point, have graphite shafts.

Shaft flex has a very pronounced effect on the power and accuracy of a driver. The flex of a shaft allows it to store energy from a player's downswing, and release it as the head makes contact for increased club speed at impact. This "whip" action imparts greater impulse on the ball for maximum distance, which is essential to a good wood shot. This requires a fine balance; a shaft that is too stiff cannot be flexed by the golfer during their downswing, which reduces club speed at impact. A shaft that is too flexible will retain some of its stored flex at contact, wasting energy and changing the angle between club face and ball at impact, causing inconsistent shots. The strength of a golfer's swing, and therefore the required flex for maximum impact speed, changes over time and can be different from day to day, complicating this equation; the best answer is a shaft that is the best fit for the player's average swing power, or else a shaft that matches the player's maximum club speed, so the player retains accuracy on his/her most powerful shots.

Shaft torque is also a concern. Flex and torque are generally related; the more a club can flex, the more it can also twist around its axis (though this is not always the case). A shaft that can torque easily is less forgiving of off-center shots as it will allow the head to twist, causing pulls and pushes. Low-torque shafts resist twisting for more forgiving behavior, but tend to be stiffer and require more power for proper distance. The latest generation of driver shafts combine a flexible shaft with a stiff tip, giving the golfer the required flex to "whip" into the ball while reducing clubhead twisting.

Hosel

Traditional woods had a very thick hosel, often wrapped with thin cord, which provided a very secure join between shaft and head at the cost of a higher center of gravity. Modern metalwoods have largely done away with the hosel altogether, instead anchoring the shaft within the clubhead. This allows as much mass as possible to be contained in the clubhead, lowering the center of gravity.

Head

Older woods had largely wooden heads, except for occasionally a metal sole and/or a metal or plastic faceplate. These wooden headed clubs were dense and heavy, and were generally much smaller than today's clubheads. Their smaller surface area also made consistent contact more difficult, as the sweet spot of these clubs was considerably smaller than today's models.

Gary Adams, founder of TaylorMade Golf, is considered the grandfather of the modern metal wood. Adams began to market his club in the late 1970s, but it was nearly a decade until metal woods became more popular with most golfers. Many PGA Tour players still used persimmon woods into the 1990s with Justin Leonard being the last major championship winner to switch from wood to metal. Callaway Golf is also largely responsible for the current design of metal woods; the original Big Bertha driver introduced players to the "oversize" driver with a larger and deeper clubhead (at the time it was 190cc in volume), giving maximum club face and a deeper center of gravity. Callaway Golf continued to expand the size of the clubhead to increase these effects, resulting in the Bigger Bertha, the Great Big Bertha, and others in the line. The current incarnation of the Big Bertha driver is 460cc.

Today, many metal wood clubheads (and most driver clubheads) are constructed out of titanium. Titanium has a higher strength to weight ratio than steel and has better corrosion resistance, so it is an ideal metal for golf club construction. Manufacturers can also make clubheads with greater volume, which increases the hitting area, and thinner faces, which reduces the weight. As a result of the rapidly-increasing size of driver heads in the late 1990s, the USGA curbed the volumetric growth of drivers by instituting a size rule which states that no clubhead can measure greater than 460 cubic centimeters, though larger clubheads exist for long-drive contests and informal games.

References

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