You’ve been using irons your whole golfing life. Now the new craze has everyone around you using hybrid golf clubs. You find yourself wondering if you should jump on the bandwagon or just wait and let the new fad fade away. Well, you will have a long wait if you choose to wait out the hybrid golf club craze. These clubs are here to stay, so you might as well get on board with the idea and in the process be pleasantly surprised by your lower golf scores.

Let’s take a look at why the introduction of hybrid golf clubs has lowered the handicaps of many of those who have made the switch from long irons.

When comparing the two type of clubs the first thing you will notice is the huge difference in head shape. An iron has a blade shape, but a hybrid club almost has the look of a fairway wood. The head is much wider than an iron, and it has more overall mass and a much lower center of gravity while still having loft like an iron. The difference in head shape cannot be overstated. If you are in the rough, the hybrid head will power through the grass, while the blade head of a long iron is easily turned and decelerated by the grass. The result is you can hit much cleaner, straighter shots out of the rough with the hybrid.

There are times with your You have, say, 190 yards to the hole and you decide that it is a perfect distance four your 4 iron. Great lie, perfect distance, poor swing. The result of that could be the ball rolling 30 yards down the fairway while you clean the big chunk of turf off your clubhead from hitting the ball fat. If you had put that same swing on the ball using your hybrid, you still would not have been on the green, but you would likely be way down the fairway and chipping to the hole rather than hitting a longer iron. Same swing, two different results. On the other hand, maybe you are at the same yardage and choose the same 4 iron and rather than hit it fat you hit it thin. Now you either sliced it or hooked it and depending on the course, you could be in big trouble. If you had chosen a hybrid and hit it thin, you once again would not have reached the green, but the ball probably would have gone straight and once again, you would just be chipping into the green. These are very real and accurate scenarios to consider when comparing long irons and hybrid golf clubs.

Average golfers lose a lot of shots around the green, and there are simple things you can do to cut those wasted strokes way down. We have all had a nice little chip to the hole, and find ourselves either sculling it over the green into sand or water, or digging the blade into the turf and chili dipping it 5 feet, only to have to chip again. Consider using a hybrid for your chips. The reasons are the same as those explaining why to use a hybrid out of the rough or fairway. The head of the hybrid makes it very hard to dig the clubhead into the ground, and the loft on the club face makes hitting the ball thin less likely to send it screaming over the green.

Hopefully you can now see the reasons so many golfers have pulled the long irons out of their bags and are using hybrid golf clubs instead. Give them a try and you will probably see this is not a fad, but rather that hybrids are here to stay.