Ladies Fairway Woods

The fairway wood really is a useful tool to have in your bag. Designed primarily to be hit from the turf of the fairway, the fairway wood allows you to reach the intermediate distances, perhaps as the second shot on a par 5 or a long par 4. It's also pretty common to hit a short tee shot and then a long second shot with the fairway wood if there's a dog-leg near the start of the hole (this is often referred to as a 'lay-up').

Club Combination Equals Distance & Accuracy

While the newfangled hybrid club might be beginning to compete seriously with the fairway wood on holes where accuracy is more important than distance, it still falls short of the fairway wood's power. The 3-wood is often used by amateurs and pros alike as a driver in its own right on tighter courses, so you might like to consider a hybrid-fairway wood combination.

Women's fairway woods will, depending on the manufacturer, have a lighter and more flexible shaft, and a thinner grip in comparison with men's fairway woods. The heads are smaller too, and less rounded than the higher numbered driving woods.

Nevada Bob's suggests that you start your fairway wood collection with a 3 and a 5. These clubs tend to find the best compromise between height, distance and accuracy, and are still pretty easy to hit.

Flexibility in Women's Golf

Women's fairway woods are generally a little more flexible in the shaft than men's fairway woods. This is necessary since most female golfers have a slightly slower swing; the shaft's flexibility adds a little speed to the head of the golf club and then whips it through the golf ball, a technique that's designed to boost the height and distance of your stroke. You tend to lose a little bit of 'feel' when the club head strikes the golf ball, and you sacrifice a little accuracy in favour of distance, but those factors are to be expected with distance clubs like fairway woods. And besides, your shot will probably be more accurate than the same shot played with a long iron anyway, since long irons are so hard to hit.

The shafts of ladies fairway woods are lighter too, to add a few more miles per hour to the club head. Their lightness is key, it makes handling the club much simpler, which in turn makes your swing much simpler and more controllable. The thinner grips at the top of the shaft allow for a tighter, more secure grip without over-stretching your fingers.

The clubface on a fairway wood is specifically designed to provide the loft and distance directly from the turf. With its low centre of gravity and low profile head, it sits solidly behind the ball and looks like it can be struck easily. It can.

Ladies' Fairway Wood Styling

Although the styling doesn't generally differ between the male and female styles of fairway wood, there are a few exceptions. Callaway's 'Big Bertha', for example, is designed and constructed in subtle, feminine colours, as is Benross' V5 fairway wood. Mizuno's Tava is simply beautiful, as golf clubs go, as is the Lynx Tigress. Nike's oddly named 'Sasquatch', however, is an ugly lump, but you can be certain that it performs on the course. Prestige offers a high-tech female fairway wood, with the trapezoidal head of its (a bit blandly named) XDC 2911.

Before we wrap up the women's fairway wood guide, a quick word about replacing irons. Fairway woods are ideal alternatives to long irons. As the inimitable Lee Trevino once put it: "If you're caught on a golf course during a storm and are afraid of lightning, hold up a 1-iron. Not even God can hit a 1-iron." Fairway woods and hybrids have now just about retired the 1-iron, with none of the major manufacturers producing one, and the 2-iron is the reserve of the golfer with a professional swing. In fact, most professionals don't even hold 2-irons in their bags, opting for the hybrid and the fairway wood in the long iron's stead.

So, Nevada Bob's suggests the following information might be useful if you're struggling with a difficult iron and want to try a fairway wood. The clubs roughly correspond to each other like this:

• 5-wood = 2-iron
• 7-wood = 3 or 4-iron
• 9-wood = 5-iron

We hope you found the information in this guide useful. If you have any further questions that are not covered here or in any other section of our buyer's guides, please don't hesitate to get in touch via our Contact Us page!