Is it better to have more options at the long or short end of your bag?

Says

The very best ball-strikers can gain advantage by having options at the top end of the bag. If a player hits the ball toweringly long and straight repeatedly and can find greens from 200 plus yards out, correct high-end gapping will make a difference for them in terms of scoring.

Most amateur golfers do not hit the ball like that. For the average player, the aim is to generate reasonable distance to propel the ball with a degree of consistency towards the vicinity of the putting surface. Whether this is done with a 4-wood or a 4-iron is pretty much irrelevant when it comes to scoring.

The average player should find a couple of go-to long clubs they can trust to generate reliable distance for making steady progress around the course. For most handicap golfers, it makes sense to pack the lower, scoring end of the bag to give the maximum number of options for saving strokes.

Within 100 yards of the green, small variations can make a big difference. Most amateurs can strike a wedge with reasonable consistency, but getting the yardage wrong from close range can mean falling short of, or flying over, a green. The ideal is to make a full and confident swing to find the correct yardage. Only a selection of lofts will allow this to be achieved consistently from close in.

A selection of wedges will also deliver options when trying to get up and down, or even get down in three, from difficult positions around the putting surface. This is where shots will be saved and scores improved.

For the typical amateur, packing the long end of the bag just provides more clubs to be inconsistent with. More sticks at the short end offers a realistic chance to shoot lower.

Tour trends may be for four wedges, but is that necessarily right for you? I feel that a lot of club golfers would be better served by a wider range of options at the longer end of the bag than an excessive ratio of clubs that don’t hit it much more than 100 yards.

Over the years, I’ve certainly played with more golfers whose line-ups have created unmanageable gaps at the long end than those caught out at the short end. One of the most extreme cases was a reasonable handicapper who had nothing in his bag between his 4-iron and driver, and therefore no options from around 185 to 235 yards. This must have been costing him more shots than having only two or three wedges rather than four.

This extreme example aside, it’s also about having clubs at the long end of your bag that you can perhaps move different ways or use from different lies. That might mean having at least one club you are confident you can move the opposite way to your normal shape, or a lofted hybrid that can tackle lies where a long-iron or 3-wood would fear to tread.

Tour pros hit it so far that they have more scope to load up at the short end, where they know it is the precision of their scoring clubs that will have a major bearing on their score.

Of course, with a 14-club limit we can’t have it both ways, and yes, you do need to have options at the short end. But if you have gaps that are too wide at the long end, you’ll simply have no shot sometimes, whereas you can still tackle 100-yard shots if your gap wedge goes 90 yards and your pitching wedge goes 110 yards.