Hello, Britt,
It seems more companies are adding a single length iron to their models. Frankly, I see too many downsides to it to go with it. Among those are 1) the woods aren’t included, and how could they be? (37.5″ driver?) 2) wedges are too long. If you grip down on them, you’re back to a lie angle issue.
However, there are lots of golfers who can hit their 5 wood but not their 3 or 1, or who can hit their 5 hybrid, but not their 3 hybrid, or their 6 iron, but not their 3 or 4.
Could the single length concept be adjusted to design a set of single length woods, say 43″, single length hybrids, say 41″, and single length long irons for 3-6, say 38″ and single length short irons and wedges, say, 36″? Is there any feasibility or benefit to this? (I hope this question isn’t wasting your time!) Thanks, Michael
By the way, I’m totally happy with the traditional way of designing club lengths.
Bue1945, thanks for sharing. Interesting to go 1/4 instead of 1/2 between. I imagine that you started with the length of your 3 iron and worked down 1/4 inch per club so your short irons wouldn’t be too short. Might be a good alternative for those who need longer wedges.
Of course the key purpose of single length is to have one swing plane and one swing. Since it’s never applied throughout the set (as I implied in my original post), my thought was to consider a way that would partially apply the one plane/one swing idea from Driver to Lob wedge by small groupings of clubs and club lengths that would be more acceptable. (For example, I sure don’t want a 37.5″ 3 iron, nor a 37.5″ pitching wedge, much less a lob wedge that long! And remember, gripping down on a club is the same as building it shorter as far as the lie angle and swingweight are concerned.) I might experiment with 1,3,5 woods at 43″ length, 3,4,5 hybrids (and HDI’s) at 41″, (3),4,5,6 irons at 39″, 7,8,9 irons at 37″, PW,GW,SW,LW at 35″ or something similar. (For golfers having difficulty hitting driver, I’d make it 12 degrees or eliminate it in favor of a deep faced 3 wood.)
Anyway, an interesting topic these days. However, very few top players use single length irons – only DeChambeau to my knowledge, so we’ve a long way to go till we see many others going that way, if ever.
Michael, Thanks for your interesting reply. Actually, in adapting my irons, I wanted to keep the club lengths as close to the length of my 7 iron (my favorite iron) as possible. So, I built the 7 iron to my usual length (+1 inch, due to my height), then made the 6 iron 1/4 inch longer, the 8 iron 1/4 inch shorter, and so on. Since my longest iron is the 6 iron these days (age 71 and losing clubhead speed), there now only 1 inch difference between my 6 iron and my wedge, which works perfectly for me. I agree with your thoughts about hybrids and fairway woods, and am thinking of building my 5, 7, and 9 woods only 1/4 inch apart and my two hybrids (24* and 28*) 1/4 inch difference as well….
Michael, I fooled around with single length early on (before component companies came out with SL sets of heads), and I discarded it. However, what I have settled on is reducing the difference in length between irons in the set. My iron set now
has a 1/4 inch progression between clubs. I do this mainly because I am a tall golfer (6’6″), and had always had problems with the shorter clubs in the set (8,9,pw) being too short. With my new configuration, I find it much easier to play all the irons in the set. With the Ke4’s you can adjust the swingweights to match, so the longer lengths don’t affect swingweight adversely. Hope
this helps…..