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 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% more of the time
02:41with the three wood than they do with the driver and they average 15 yards less with the high lofted
02:47three wood as you might expect. There is quite a big percentage change with scratch golfers when we're
02:52looking at that category of less than 30 yards from the center of the fairway. Indeed scratch golfers are
02:57missing that so that 30 yard distance just less than four percent of the time with the three wood so
03:02there's a little bit of a gain there. Again it's only marginal at four percent and that 15 yards of
03:07distance you're giving up I don't think quite warrants it. It's an interesting thing to think
03:11anyway. If we look at a five handicapper that dispersion is even smaller. A five handicapper will
03:16hit the fairway 1.3% more of the time with their three wood and this rises to 3.3% of the time for
03:23those shots under 30 yards in the center of the fairway. So again really not a big difference here and
03:29much like that scratch golfer a five indexer is sacrificing 14 yards when hitting their three
03:34wood instead of their driver. So let's move on to 10 to 15 index handicap golfers now and while it
03:44might be expected that the performance and the percentage of fairways hit with three woods might
03:48go up a little bit with these higher index golfers the opposite is actually true. So if we look at a 10
03:53index golfer they are only 0.7% more likely to hit the fairway with their three wood which is you know
04:00that's barely anything. Even more amazingly I think here a 15 handicapper is more likely to miss the
04:07fairway with their three wood than with their driver. So we're now flipping it on its head entirely here.
04:13Now admittedly that's only by 0.3% so it's not a lot but it's still interesting to note I think that the
04:19the idea that the three wood is a safety club is not the case especially for 15 handicap golfers.
04:25Now as was the case with our scratch and five index handicapper we're losing a fair chunk of yardage
04:30as well. So for that 10 handicapper the loss of distance averages at 13 yards and for the 15
04:35handicapper we're losing 11 yards. So I'm going to stop with the 15 indexer there and just say
04:41to hit the fairway less often you're also sacrificing 11 yards. So that myth I guess we're proving now
04:47that the three wood is a safe club for 15 handicaps in particular definitely isn't true.
04:55So 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%
05:11of the time more with that three wood so listen really not a lot interesting the the difference
05:17in distance 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% more fairways that sacrifice 10 yards I think especially
05:33a 20 handicapper is quite a lot. So what happens when we put all of this together then let's bring all the
05:38handicaps back together again and give ourselves an average of all golfers out there from this Arcos
05:43set of data well as you can see if we put everybody together you're more likely to hit the fairway with
05:48a three wood 0.9% of the time so less than 1% with your driver and that average distance drop off with
05:56all handicaps was around 12 or 13 yards now that is probably a different iron in the bag approach-wise
06:03isn't it a seven over an eight iron we should have more control over so we're thinking about is that
06:08distance trade-off worth it not a lot more accuracy if we contextualize this and say that there are 14
06:16chances per round to hit a fairway that's assuming that most golf courses have four par threes that
06:22equates to finding one extra fairway every eight rounds and that's that 12 yards you're giving up on
06:30every shot while we're here then let's take a look at my data for this because I've been using Arcos now
06:35for a couple of years I've got three and a half thousand shots logged on here now so I thought
06:40we'd be interested to compare my data with that of the the larger group that we're doing here and
06:44I fall very much into type about what we've been talking about here so with my driver I hit the
06:49fairway a whopping an eye-watering 40% of the time not great I know I work on it but I average 256 yards
06:56off the tee so there's my accuracy my distance now with my three wood I average 241 yards so there's
07:03that drop off of 15 yards we were seeing for some of the lower index golfers but only the fairway
07:0834% of the time so the the quote-unquote safer club when I want to try and find a fairway isn't
07:15my three wood because I'm not only I'm missing it more than my driver but I'm 15 yards worse off now
07:20it's really something interesting to think about here I was really interested to see mine
07:23versus the group data on here and it would actually make a lot more sense for me I was
07:28thinking about doing the safer option is to pull the hybrid out my bag now I average 212 yards with
07:34this club so it's obviously losing a lot but I hit the fairway 45% of the time still still not a lot
07:41really is that I need to work on my fairways and regulation but if I'm on a tee and I'm like Dan
07:46I need to hit a fairway here the three wood isn't the club as though I might have thought before
07:52it would be the hybrid or even a five iron if a fairway is that important the drop-off in distance
07:57is huge but that real safe club is much lower down the bag than the three wood so some final thoughts
08:04then on what I think has been a really interesting dive into this part of the bag and I think we can
08:08really walk away from this video with some interesting course management skills next time
08:13you're on the course now there's no denying that across the board the three wood technically is more
08:19accurate and you are going to find more fairways but the results are so marginal as we saw and if
08:24you're a 15 index golfer and me you're missing more often with your three with than the driver and
08:30you're sacrificing all that yardage now there's a few reasons why this might be the case you know
08:35there's a bit of a bias for getting fitted for your driver so maybe you feel more comfortable over
08:39it than your than your fairway would and that bigger head might inspire a bit more confidence but
08:43regardless of the reason as to why the driver isn't as wayward as the three as we thought
08:48i think it's worth just sitting back and thinking if i you know my fairway finder my safe club let's
08:54drop that a little bit further down the bag next time whether it's a five word seven word i'd move
08:59down to my four hybrid now that's the next thing i'm going to do when i'm when i need to find a fairway
09:03drop down to that four hybrid even a five iron a seven iron i don't care whatever you need to find the
09:07fairway i think we've busted the myth that three wood is safer than driver that's for sure um well
09:14i hope you've enjoyed this video in this deep dive into the specific part of the game as i said at the
09:18top we've got access to our cost is vast bank of data 750 million shots from real golfers on real golf
09:25courses so if there's anything you want to see me dive into like this for specific handicap indexes or
09:31for shots on specific parts of the golf course let me know down in the comments i'd love to hear from
09:36you and put a video together looking at that but for now thank you so much for joining me i'll see you
09:40next time
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