What if golf club is too long

The outcome is a tendency to push the club on more of an outside path in an attempt to get the club away from your body to create that sense of increased space. A club that fits you perfectly allows you to take the club back in a smooth, more natural line and to do so without you encountering any problems.

An outside-inside swing is one of the most common errors in the game leading to wayward shots. This is further exacerbated when you struggle to control a shot in the first place, so this type of swing will only make matters worse.

When a club is too long, there is a greater chance of you creating too much height on your shots, so you will also lose distance at the same time. Of course, a number of swing issues will also lead to too much height, and while it may not come across as the obvious cause, quickly measuring your clubs to see if you have something too long could help provide a quick solution.

One reason why the ball may gain too much height is due to that weight distribution. If your weight is on the back foot, you will tend to get under the ball more and this will result in too much height. This one may sound strange, but a club that is too long may also appear too heavy for you.

This happens due to the weight distribution and balance of the club. A club that feels too heavy becomes difficult to manage. It puts added pressure on your shots, and the outcome is often for you to lose some distance. Finally, if you notice your shots ping off the toe on a regular basis, then it may indicate the club is too long. This is due to you struggling to line up perfectly with the ball, and this issue is then enhanced by the difficulties with both stance and posture.

The wrong length of club makes it harder to get closer to the ball. Also, if we know the club is too long, we seek to compensate by physically standing back. Ultimately, this leads to us using the toe of the club leading to less control and power through the shot. As you can see, we have several signs to watch out for when it comes to clubs that are too long, but what about the opposite when they are too short? As with clubs that are too long, we have several signs that the clubs you are using end up too short.

So, how can you tell? Just like before, you need to measure them. Take that measurement of both the club as well as from your wrist height to the floor and see how they compare. When your club is too short, it pushes you away from the club or it feels too close to your body. Due to this, you tend to swing the club through more of an inside path.

The problem here is this inside swing leads to a whole host of issues with your shot. You tend to hook the ball while the chances of a mis-hit will also increase. An inexperienced golfer will have a greater chance of losing control of their shot and where the ball will head. Ultimately, the chances of your shot finding trouble, and missing the fairway completely, will increase.

The tendency is that your stance will lead to you being all hunched over. This problem is due to the shorter club leading to you effectively having to reach for the ball. Reaching for the ball puts you in an unnatural position, and it becomes impossible for that to then help your swing. This reaching will change your spine angle. This leads to issues with the rotation during your swing as well as it changing how your weight is ultimately distributed. Here, as you find yourself reaching for the ball, your weight moves to your toes.

This creates the feeling of falling over, or at least the potential for that, and this leads to tension in your swing. Both of these issues will lead to major problems with not only the swing, but also with the ball itself. I then hit some balls with the driver holding the club as usual, and I got the same clubhead speed I was getting with my 5 wood and with the drive when choking down.

The ONLY real difference I could see with the driver was that when I choked down to the bottom of the grip, I was hitting drive after drive down the center of the driving range, within a few FEET of my target. Launch angle looked about the same, so I have to assume my carry distance was pretty much the same, only closer to the intended target line.

Don, I think that was a great experiment, and agrees perfectly with the articles and the clubfitter, Tom Wishon, I referenced in my column. Most people do not lose clubhead speed with a shorter driver, but they make better contact and hit the ball straighter—in other words, they hit the ball more accurately AND farther with a shorter club.

Thanks for sharing your results! Hi John, I am brand new to golf. My father in law had given my wife and I his old set of clubs. When I choke up on the driver at the same position as I do on the irons it feels very akward when I swing. Is this something that I can work through or should I try to find a driver with a much shorter shaft? How can I know what length would be best for me? If you take a long club like that and swing it in a very vertical or upright plane, you will feel jammed and uncomfortable during the swing and experience a lot of mis-hits, including the slice.

How tall are you? If you decide to get fitted, just speak with the fitter first. If they try to talk you out of it, just tell them you will look elsewhere for your clubs. Could clubs this short be my problem. When I bend forward to address the ball I feel the clubs are way too long. The shorter clubs shafts made golf fun and I felt very competitive. Regards, Carter. Hi, Carter. Thanks for reading my article, and for the email you sent separate from this comment.

I hope you are able to find some shorter clubs to match the ones you used and are able to regain some of the consistency you had before! Best wishes. I tried choking down yesterday, and the results were instant.

I went from hitting the ball the worst I ever had, to hitting them the best I ever had in 1 day. I was desperate and I read this article. Thanks for the info I feel more confident than ever in my golf game! Hopefully these results will stick around, or at the very least let you maintain some level of confidence and enjoyment. Best wishes, and thanks for reading and sharing your experience! I just saw a video by club-fitter Bronson Wright.

He studied a group of golfers comparing inch drivers to inch drivers. This agrees with other studies I have seen. And I still see a lot of cases where center contact with a shorter club hits it straighter AND longer! Golf-like what you say in your piece and it makes since to me. Hi, Jerry. I was really happy to see Bronson cover the issue of driver lengths. I really think a lot of people struggle unnecessarily because they play with clubs that are too long.

Thanks for checking out my site, and best wishes with your golf game! I will never fall for the trap in going for custom fitted again,anyone can do it themselves as it mainly goes on you feeling in control of the club at a certain length and not the club bullying you. Easy peasy! John, thanks for weighing in on this issue.

Two and a half inches seems like a crazy adjustment, but I am a firm believer in doing what it takes to play better golf. Hope you keep up the success! John, Thank you for the article and the discussion. I have a set of standard length Adams A7OS clubs that hook nearly everything I hit which I think now is due to their being too long.

My next step is to take an old set I have and cut them down an inch. Based on your article, I expect much better results. Thank you.

Tom Earls. Tom, thanks for reading the article and commenting. Just a handful of comments back you can see someone with an almost identical experience. Also, a handicapper will likely have quite a bit of room for improvement in the chipping and putting category. I did a test a few weeks ago. I took my I hit a dozen balls to get a good average over the 12 swings. I then choked down on the grip a full 2. I hit another dozen balls and got a second average. The club did FEEL a bit weird due to the swing weight being so much lower choking down that much.

Should make for a fun time trying out different weights in the head. Will be interesting to see if my center of face impact improves with the short club length, and to see if my BALL speed going up or down with the shorter club but I hope better center face contact. Don, as always, you are right on point. One strange thing to consider, and you probably know more about the individual clubs than I do, but it seems to me that some of the manufacturers have moved the sweet spots away from center because they made the clubs so long that people struggle to hit the center.

I have little doubt you will hit the center of the face more often with a shorter club, but the question is, will you hit the sweet spot more often?! That might depend on each individual driver. Thanks for weighing in again.

Good point John. Any ball hit from the center of the face to slightly above center with a modern driver is ideal.

Wonderful article John! The improvement on accuracy was amazing with zero loss on distance! Being a high handicapper this may be a real game changer. My only question is; should I now get my clubs re-shafted to the shorter length or can I get by with just choking up?

Mark, thanks for reading, and I hope you continue to see great success! You might want to read some of the comments above as they pertain to swing-weight, though—cutting off your clubs can affect the weighting and feel you get from them. Great article.

If I had a handicap, it would probably be about And guess what? With my old womens clubs, my best ever 7 iron at the range was about carry, off artificial grass.

To be fair, the extra soft shafts on my old clubs compared to uniflex on the new was probably giving me extra distance, but that much distance??!? Also, I suspect the manufacturers have been misleading us all for years about which shaft flex we should be using.

Machismo has taken over the marketing of golf equipment. You raise some very valid points. You and I are very similar in numbers—I am a bit taller and a few years older, but our swing speeds sound comparable, and I play with short, graphite-shafted clubs. I think a lot of guys want to be able to claim they play with extra stiff clubs because it will somehow testify to their strength and manliness. It is possible that as your swing develops and evolves, that your fitting will change drastically.

This article was SUCH a blessing to me. But, before doing so, today I did exactly as you suggested — stood closer to the ball, more spine bend, knees more flexed and ….

Everything you said — worked. I cannot thank you enough and truly believe this will help me get down from 12 to single figures almost immediately.

I am SO grateful. The ability to bend over, stand close to the ball, and steepen the shoulder turn if all this can be done without back issues tends to be very good for accuracy and ball-striking. I hope you are able to keep building on your success! John, what I read on your website was just what I was looking for and just a great read. It made me confident in my choice to get my irons cut down.

I am in love with the game of golf and have recently started to really pay attention to my swing and my mechanics so that i could be more consistent. My question for you is how long my irons should be for my height. Thanks, Sam. You can always take a half inch and still choke down a little as needed, or take a little more off later. Hello John. I am currently in the market for my first new set of clubs. I seem to get conflicting advice on choice of irons, and flexibility of shaft. Please advise.

Hi, Cindy, and welcome to the game! Also, as you are learning the game, your swing will change enough in the first few seasons that you might consider a more budget-conscious set now with the idea of getting another fitted set in a couple seasons. I think you might also benefit from graphite over steel, but the proof will be in the pudding—make sure you demo quite a few clubs to find out what feels good, and what helps you get the ball flight you like. I hope this helps a little, and best wishes for many years of enjoyable golf!

Not only a good read but extremely insightful. I have been wanting to cut down my irons for a long time but have time and time again been talked out of doing so. Every time I leave a bit confident in with the advice I had been given but that confidence soon fades with a couple weeks.

This frustrates me extremely because I am never truly confident at address about my club length. I feel in my mind it is the best thing for my game, when I choke down as much as that I feel most confident.

The real concern is I am a former college football player and at 26 years old I would consider my strength above average so the stiffness of shaft as well as weight of shaft poses a huge concern for me about doing this. Really looking for your help and insight here. Thanks and great job wih this article!!!! Hi, Joshua, and thanks for commenting on my article! But my clubs are one inch short and I use graphite shafts.

Not typical for sure. And I generally choke them down some more!! The bigger problem is weighting. Lie angle is also a concern—taking two inches off your clubs when they already have a flat lie will make them play very flat could make it hard to close the face at impact. Typically when I fit someone in a shorter set, they will get a degree or two upright angle to off-set the shorter shaft.

You might want to look into having yours bent upright, or just look into a new set. Hi John. I decided to try cutting my driver and 5 iron one inch first before doing the rest of the clubs. I decided to get the MP, hoping it would inspire me to strike the ball cleaner. Going to range tomorrow to test it out. But from taking practice swings in the back yard it seems to feel right.

Those charts tell me I should use std lengths. I disagree. Gordon, thanks for commenting. Also, you are doing well—you are not far from the average male score after just five years and having waited until age 62 to play. To all of you thinking about cutting down the length of your clubs, here is my advise. So try out his advise and see how it works for you. I average meters off the tee with my driver.

Irons are way more accurate and with them being shorter I feel each iron is more specific. I even let a fellow much taller than me try my driver and he was amazed with the distance over his driver that was half inch longer than standard. He actually hit his drive farther with mine than his. Carter, good to hear from you again.

Glad to know you are not only still swatting the ball, but doing so with more confidence. Congrats on your success, and keep up the good work! Greetings John, I am the new owner of a set of standard length irons and looking to add a set of hybrids.

I also wonder what the impact would be to my fiberglass shafted irons if I took them down an inch? Will the impact be dramatic if cut down an inch? I would appreciate any guidence… Regards, Dave. Dave, thanks very much for reading and commenting. It will take a little while, but one of the best things you can do is read back through all the comments that have been attached to this article.

It will help you understand the advantages and the potential downsides to shortening your clubs. I suggest reading the comments and making a few notes before you make a final decision about your clubs. Concerning the hybrids—feel free to order them short, but request that the manufacturer do what they can to keep the swing-weight up this is generally the biggest problem when shortening clubs, that the head-end becomes too light compared to the overall weight.

They might place weights down the shaft, or a few other tricks, to maintain a decent swing-weight. There are also some new ultra-light grips out there that can help the problem.

Concerning the irons—my clubs are graphite shafted and a full inch short. I love them. I have had to add lead tape to the cavity to get the swing-weight back up a little, but I am very comfortable with them. Thanks again, and best wishes! Hi Dave. I have a question for you.

When you choke down on your clubs, do they FEEL okay to you? Bottom line is that if you LIKE the way the clubs perform and feel when you choked down on the grips, you will LIKE them just as much after you cut the shafts down, So go for it. John, Great article! Dan, thanks for reading, and good luck with the experiment!

I look forward to hearing about your experience. Just read this great article. I usually play 1 inch longer but tried standard length and got great results. Many thanks and best wishes from Northern Ireland , Bill Stewart. Bill, good luck with the new clubs. Hope they serve you well, and thanks for checking in from Northern Ireland! Thanks for the great info. I am 6 ft and a 4 handicap. But, I can tell that my lie angle is a lot better. With standard length irons with standard lie angles, I noticed they were a little upright with me.

After hitting my new Nikes, I have noticed my lie angle is more even with the ground. No longer hitting pull hooks like i used to. I think being able to stand closer to the ball has fixed that. Chad, everything you said makes sense. Shortening the clubs effectively makes them play flatter, which could help with pull-hooks. And being closer actually can help that too, mainly through a change in balance or weight-movement during the swing.

Good luck with the blades, and thanks for reading! Will definitely get over it and try this next time I go to the range. Oh by the way I love Lakeview what great tracks that and Packsaddle. Lew, thanks for reading and commenting!

One thing you might experiment with since you are uncomfortable with choking down—try fatter grips. Part of your discomfort might be that the grip gets too narrow for you as you choke down. Glad you enjoy playing Lakeview. Hi John; Reading your posts on this site makes me wish I lived a lot closer to where you teach. My bet is that you give very helpful lessons that really work for your students.

Don, thanks very much. I enjoy the time I spend with my students, and do everything I can to help them enjoy the game more. Appreciate your kind words! The combo and length would bring it back to a red dot but add distance and allow me to dig more. The other said red dot, reg steel standard shaft.

Totally confused. Ken, I understand your frustration, and I wish I could clarify things for you. My advice is to make the final decision based on feel and ball-flight and cost if need be. Make sure you hit each option off of turf so that you get a realistic sense of the ball flight, and go for the one that gives you consistently the best control over direction and trajectory.

Good luck, and thanks for reading! Your analysis about the length of drivers makes sense to me. My colleagues have been puzzled as to why I hit longer with my 4 woods than my driver. I always felt that my swing was some how different for the driver as compared to other clubs.

I was thinking of shortening my driver but I will now try to chock down on it to see if it makes difference. I also wonder whether long drivers can create stress for your back, shoulders and wrists. Alan, I think you are right on track. A lot of golfers do very well with the length of a 4 or 5-wood, and the loft of about a 3-wood.

Modern drivers really do not relate to the rest of the set, and really require a completely different setup and swing. Best of luck, and thanks for reading! I have been struggling hitting irons below about a seven iron. I now choke down on all my shafts driver included. The result is that I am swinging better and making good contact with all my irons. I have in effect shortened the shafts.

The distance is excellent compared to previous sets ups. I am now able to put all the good stuff I have learnt into action most of the time. I am excited by the results of shortening the club. Maybe I should get the pro to take half an inch of all my clubs — putter included. Yes I go down the shaft on that one too. I am 5 foot 8 inches tall. By the way, my putter is probably about 32 inches. I am a one handed player right hand playing right handed. I place my hand on the grip in the same location as if I had both hands.

I had a fitting recently and he suggested shorter clubs and gripping them at or near the end of the grip to increase clubhead speed. He even mentioned possible trying womens length clubs. I know I grip my current set too tightly as my glove wears quickly. Thanks for reading, and best wishes! Went to a local club swap Saturday and picked up two clubs.

Picked up a TaylorMade R7 Quad I got both clubs because I want to do some testing of shorter than normal wood and the movable weight system of the TaylorMade clubs will allow me to adjust the weight of the head to compensate for cutting down the length of the shafts of both clubs.

This is a great way to figure out what length works best for each golfer as it allow for adjusting the swing weight as you cut down the shaft one step at a time until you find the BEST length for you or a customer. Will do some testing with the factory shafts but will install a good after market shaft before either club goes in my bag.

This is a great article, and based on my experience I have been playing since I was a kid and grew up taking lessons and honing my swing fundamentals , I want to believe you. Last week, I got my first custom set of irons at Golfsmith. Last weekend, I played my first round with the clubs with mixed results. At address, they look and feel fantastic. However, I had a few swings where, although the ball seemed to fly higher and pretty consistently straight, the distance was a good 5 to 10 yards shorter than how long I used to hit the same irons Note: my old set was standard length.

That said, when hit purely, the contact felt better than ever, my accuracy was excellent, and I rarely had serious mis-hits. Should I be worried that I should have gone with standard length? Is it normal to see the results that I saw?

Could this be an effect of me just having to get used to a slightly shorter club than the ones I have hit over the past 20 years playing? I feel like consistency with my new clubs will come with time, and keeping in mind your pointers of posture and approach above would help as well…. Hi, Chase. Great comments and questions. Here are some things to consider, and some possible explanations for the results you saw:. Playing with one set for 20 years will make your swing evolve to fit those specs, which is why I asked if you have a somewhat flat swing.

If you play with the new clubs for several years, your swing will likely evolve to fit them too. The point of my article was that most people can create more distance by focusing on other factors before adding length to the club. Best wishes, and thanks for reading! I have a son who just turned I bought him a set of rental return Nike VRs from our golf course as a reward for not playing tackle football afraid of head injuries like many others unfortunately as he really enjoyed playing.

Anyway, the clubs are probably 5 to 6 inches too long, the driver probably even more based on your points in your column. He hits them Ok, but struggles to get the ball flight that he had when he was playing his junior clubs. He feels embarrassed going back to junior clubs because all of his friends have adults clubs they are too big for some of his friends as well so these kids must want to grow up too fast these days!

PS Yes, he chokes down on all of them, but the shaft almost pokes him when he swings, ugh! Thanks for any help you can give, take care! Brian, thanks for reading and responding to my article. She was phenomenal, and she had this amazing swing based around the angles created by choking down on her junior clubs. Eventually her dad decided he did not like her choking down and she was removed from my junior programs. She went on to play college golf and is a respectable player to this day, but her scores were never better than when she was 13 years old.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if she had been allowed to stay on the path she had started down. One of my methods is to try to create angles and planes for juniors that will not change when they are adults. As they get taller, the clubs get longer, but the angles are consistent. Juniors playing with long clubs tend to learn swing planes that are not entirely effective, and tend to be less effective when they are taller and stronger.

My suggestion is this—at the very least, cut an inch or a little more off those clubs. You might consider having a club-fitter help you add some weight to the head to keep the swing-weight decent. And even then, have your son honestly evaluate which set he hits better. Perhaps a third set a short, light-weight adult set? My old shafts definitely had more flex and were lighter. The salesperson at Golfsmith recommended I go with a stiffer flex, which I think is resulting a a more consistently straight ball flight.

No, they are fairly similar. No, I think my swing is probably more vertical on average. And while it sounds like you needed a stiffer shaft, you also could lose a few mph in the swing if the new shaft is heavier. I also find it unlikely that a half-inch of length translates into a one-club change in distance. Hope you get adjusted to the new sticks, and either get your yardage back, or at least hit them accurate enough that less distance is worth it!

Chase; I would have to think that the main reason you are hitting your new irons shorter and higher is due to the loft of the new clubs being higher.

I have a set of SnakeEyes C irons, and compared to most of todays current irons, the loft of all of the clubs is Higher with the SnakeEyes set.

A good 15 to 20 Yards shorter, all due to the higher loft on my older irons. I also was hitting the ball 5 degrees Lower with the newer Burner irons. Again due to the lower loft. My money is betting on you not seeing much if any difference in distance do this test.

After a 10 year lull while my weekends were locked by Little League and such, I have started golf again. I leave my Driver out of bag because it always slices. Striking the 3 wood better now, heavy slice is gone. I am thinking this explains my ability to hit a 2 iron with better accuracy. Except that two iron is a graphite shaft, while the rest are steel. So now, it is time to buy a modern set of clubs. And I am concerned with loft and shaft.

At age 55 and 5. Thanks for reading, Greg, and welcome back to golf! I Wish that more clubs came with Weight Ports or weight screws that could be used to Increase the weight of the head. They would sure come in handy for building a set of clubs with shorter shafts to get the swing weight back to normal. I really hate the look of lead tape on a clubhead. However, one thing that I noticed right away was that I felt pretty comfortable hitting wedges, 9 iron and 8 iron, and generally hit them as well — and as long — as my friends who are much better players.

I understood that swing flaws come out more as you move toward the driver, but it was more than that. My swing with the shorter clubs felt comfortable, like my shoulders just rotating around my spine, while the longer clubs just felt out of control. I wished that I could have the same type of swing for my driver and long hybrids as my higher clubs, but the shaft tended to put me in an more upright position, so I figured that that was the position that I was supposed to have.

Then, a few weeks back, a friend was watching a PGA event. As you mentioned, it looked like he was playing with kid clubs. He was bent over more that I was with a 9 iron. But I noticed how it allowed him to use his shoulders to turn his arms and hands. I was blown away. I watched him hit a driver. Same thing. Much more spine tilt. I noticed something else. His hands gripped the club just a bit above his knees with his driver.

My hands are around my pockets, maybe my crotch, a good foot higher! That was amazing to me. I noticed that most pros grip is around mid-thigh, again, much lower that where I setup.

They push you toward a much more upright address position, particularly the driver and other woods. Also, from a mental perspective, two inches of club sticking out kind of messes with my concentration, but I can get used to it. Anyway, I guess that this is a long-winded way to say thanks for the article. Bit far to drive for a lesson. I think you are spot-on with the things you saw in Keegan Bradley.

Consider going through a fitting for new, shorter clubs, or consider cutting your clubs down a little read the earlier comments to get a lot of good info about club adjustments.

And if you ever go into the Blue Ridge Grill, say hi to the bartender, Mark, who is one of my best buddies. Funny you should mention the bar. I did play down there once. Probably scored around — a generous — though I did birdie a hold and hit some pars, which shows what the other holes were like. My friends mentioned the Blue Ridge Grill, saying that it was a great place to grab a drink. By the way, I went to the range yesterday to test choking down.

It definitely made me feel more comfortable. It might help. Excellent article… after a 30 year break from golf I started playing last August. Taylormade R11 TP All of these changes, including shoes, for less than a new driver — golf is just plain fun now. I actually wear a cadet-medium glove but play with jumbo lamkin grips. They fill the hand while the hand is in a relaxed position—not to mention that some of us choke down to get the right length on the clubs, and the oversized grips keep the handle from getting too narrow as the hands go down the shaft.

And I absolutely agree about the shoes adding stability to the swing. Great stuff! Thanks John for posting the article, I feel more comfortable on cutting my driver down to size now, I found at 3.

John, time will tell about the performance of the shaft, but I can tell you that most people do better with a driver that is close to 5-wood length, which is pretty close to where you have ended up. I was told that I needed these and I never really questioned it. Last night, I went to golf store and got on fitting machine for new clubs.

To my astonishment, I hit the standard length 6-iron close to 10 yards farther than the longer clubs, even when I felt like I was hitting the longer clubs flush. The swing speed and ballhead speed were correspondingly greater with the standard length. But in my case, it created a slower clubhead speed. What is the explanation for this?

Be sure to include graphite and metal shaft clubs. Graphite clubs will be a bit longer for the same weight club because graphite is a lighter material. Practice swinging with the clubs. If the store has a golf simulator, that will work, otherwise visit a driving range.

It is important to hit balls with the club before you buy one to get a feel for how the different lengths affect your shot. The longer the club the more power you can hit with, but it will also be harder to control. Always give up distance for accuracy when choosing the club. Using the measurement you got in step 2 of the driver process, select 2 or 3 different iron types to swing.

When deciding which irons to select, use the middle irons 5, 6, 7 as a guide. Those irons should be the closest to your ideal club length. As with drivers, shaft length will determine how much control you have over your shot but you do not want to be hunched over or out of good hitting position.