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By independent reviewer Martin Hopley

With the ball spinning less and fairway faces getting faster you have seen many tour professionals start to carry a 5-wood as well of, or instead of, a 3-wood. Many amateur golfers may not have the clubhead speed to get a 15° club to carry far enough, so is the 5-wood for you?

I went to a fairway wood custom fitting at SGGT to see if a 5-wood was a going to be a better alternative for my slightly erratic 3-wood and the results were not what I was expecting.

Under the watchful eye of fitter James, we first got some numbers from my TaylorMade Stealth 15° 3-wood. As it had been on the course, the accuracy was not really there. The Stealth is a very good club, but the deeper face on it suits a more attacking motion at impact than my driver style sweeping swing.

James explained that the shallower face gets the point of impact closer to the middle of the face and the Callaway Paradym AI Smoke fairway offers this and the with Fujikura Vista Pro 65g shaft was the best fit. Immediately there was a marked improvement in consistency and accuracy as the strikes were closer to the centre of the face.

As well as an extra 5mph ball speed, it flew higher and the spin was more consistent with a 40% improvement. I liked the Vista Pro shaft as it was very easy to hit and we also toyed around with heavier versions which had a more stable tip, but the feel was not there for me so went back to the 65g version.

Then we tested whether more loft would make a difference by firstly using a 5-wood. As well as more loft it also has a shorter shaft that does reduce the club head speed. Whilst the higher launch with low spin could generate more distance for some, for me in this case it did not with around 10 yards less distance.

The steeper landing angle of the 5-wood trajectory could be useful for approaching greens and this is why a lot of tour players re using them. However, I need a fairway finder off the tee and an easy to hit wood for long second shots. Therefore the lower flight and greater total distance of a 3-wood is a better fit for my bag. Knowing the role you want a club to play is crucial and SGGT fitters will help you define what you need and build that into your set make-up.

We then tried putting a 3 wood shaft in a 5-wood head so see if that would improve things. 5-wood heads are heavier than 3-woods, so James switched the grips and put a butt weight into counterbalance the club. It makes the club heavier overall, but the swing weight stays the same. This did not improve the results for me, but it was great to use the custom grip fitting to test out different grips and weights in the fitting bay.

As another option we increased the loft on the 3-wood by 2 degrees using the adjustable hosel with a lower spinning head such as the Triple Diamond version of the Callaway AI Smoke fairway, but again the results were mixed.

The best club therefore for me in this test is the standard Callaway AI Smoke 3-wood. The fact that SGGT has the full range of different heads from every brand is key to getting the right type of fairway.

The style of head rather than the loft or shaft that was the key factor in improving distance, accuracy and consistency for my longest fairway wood. Therefore if you are looking for optimum performance from your longest fairway, head along for a custom fitting at SGGT.

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