Types of Golf Clubs: A Beginners Guide That Explains Each Club

Jeff Scott | Nov 9, 2024

Cameron Clark, York Daily Record

If the extent of your golfing experience comes from the various miniature golf courses you’ve played throughout the years, you’re likely only comfortable with a cheap putter in hand. When you hit the legitimate links, you’re going to have a lot of questions about what clubs are what and when they should be used. 

To help you out with the basics, we’ve broken down the most common clubs you’ll find in a typical golf bag. But whether you drive it down the middle of the fairway or slice it into oncoming traffic is still entirely on you. 

The Driver

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Each club in your bag has its reason for importance, but nothing sets the tone like the driver. The driver, also known as the 1-wood, is your heavy hitter. All club heads have a certain degree of loft that helps to determine how much elevation, and ultimately distance, is put on your shot. Typically, drivers fall somewhere between 8 and 13 degrees. 

Because of the club’s low loft, the driver is commonly used when teeing off on Par 4 or Par 5 holes. They provide the most distance of all the clubs in your golf bag and hopefully set you up for a successful second shot on the fairway. 

Woods

Don’t let the name fool you as clubs these days aren’t really manufactured with wood any longer. Technology has evolved, as has club design. These days your woods are comprised of titanium or carbon fiber to provide more durability, stability, and distance. 

Woods are designed to be longer in length and lighter in weight than most other options in your bag. As mentioned, your driver is technically classified as the 1-wood, but there are others in the wood family as well. The driver will typically get beginners somewhere near 200 yards off the tee with a solid shot. 

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The 3-wood and 5-wood are also very commonly selected as club options in golf bags. Both can be utilized in fairways to follow up driver shots when you’re playing a lengthier hole.

3-woods are designed with a loft range of 14 to 16 degrees. While your 5-woods feature lofts of 17 to 19 degrees. There are 4-wood options as well. Which, as you can probably surmise, exist between the 3 and 5-wood ranges. 

Irons

Once you’ve hit that sweet, sweet shot into the middle of the fairway, you’re probably going to want to switch to an iron for your approach to the green. Irons are shorter clubs with higher loft than woods. 

There are many more irons than woods so that golfers can dial in their projected distance. With a correctly chosen iron, these higher arching iron shots have a higher probability of landing near the pin without rolling off the green. However, with higher elevation comes more of a chance for wind or rain to affect your shot. 

Corey Perrine/Florida Times-Union / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Here’s a breakdown of the most common iron clubs, the loft they provide, and the distance that beginners can expect:

Club	Loft	Beginner Yardage
3-Iron	18 - 21 Degrees	135 Yards
4-Iron	20 - 24 Degrees	125 Yards
5-Iron	23 - 27 Degrees	120 Yards
6-Iron	26 - 31 Degrees	115 Yards
7-Iron	30 - 35 Degrees	105 Yards
8-Iron	35 - 39 Degrees	95 Yards
9-Iron	39 - 44 Degrees	80 Yards

"All club heads have a certain degree of loft that helps to determine how much elevation, and ultimately distance, is put on your shot."

Wedges

Your golf bag will almost certainly contain a few different wedge clubs as well. Wedges are really just a subset of irons. They have higher ranges of loft to offer shorter, more accurate shots. They’re also the clubs used to escape from sand bunkers and other hazards. 

Club	Loft	Beginner Yardage
Pitching Wedge	45 - 47 Degrees	70 Yards
Gap Wedge	50 - 52 Degrees	60 Yards
Sand Wedge	54 - 58 Degrees	55 Yards
Lob Wedge	58 - 64 Degrees	40 Yards

Rory McIlroy uses a wedge to approach the 18th green during the final round of the U.S. Open golf tournament. / Jim Dedmon-Imagn Images

Hybrids

There is another subset of clubs that are deemed “hybrids”. We won’t dive too deep into these, but they are more frequently found in club sets these days. They’re a hybrid of wood and iron clubs that were designed to replace lower numbered irons. These clubs offer distances similar to woods but with the feel of swinging an iron. 

Other than everything mentioned above, it’s really just your good ‘ole trusty putter that we haven’t touched on. But you’re already a mini-golf master, so there’s no need to delve into that. 

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