Ever since Tiger Woods burst onto the golf scene like a superhero, golf has become the latest cool thing. Gone are the days when the football jock ruled the high school: make way for the golfer! OK, that may be a bit of an exaggeration. Still, there is no denying that Tiger (don't you love how we all call him by his first name?) has done a great deal for the image of golf; he's made it cool, fun and yes, sexy. Yet it is still the same sport it always was. It still involves balls, tees and funny spiked shoes, and it still requires a fairly extensive knowledge of the various golf clubs. Even Tiger uses all of these pieces of equipment. The fact is, if you want to be like Tiger, you still need to know your woods from your irons, your wedges from your putters.



A golf player is allowed to carry no more than 14 clubs in his bag during a game. The three major types of clubs are woods, irons, and putters. Woods are used for long shots from the tee, fairway or occasionally the rough. Irons are used for precision shots, which usually take place from the fairway or rough. And putters are used mostly on the green, although they can also be used from hazard bunkers (holes or depressions that have been filled with sand). Finally, wedges are a specific kind of iron usually used to approach the green from difficult ground, such as sand or rough. A golfer needs to know, first and foremost, what kind of club is required for a given situation. Recently, a new kind of wood club has been developed. It is known as a "hybrid," and it combines the precision abilities of an iron with the distance potential of a wood.

Woods fall into two classes, drivers and fairway woods. The former are longer, provide lower loft and are generally used for the first shot from the tee. The latter are used, as the name implies, from the fairway. They provide a higher loft, but because their shafts are shorter, the ball will not be driven as far. A set of woods will be numbered, the lowest number providing the longest drive with the lowest loft. Modern wood clubs have heads of hollow steel, titanium or composite materials. The shafts are graphite, which allows the club to be both lightweight and strong. Generally speaking, the longer the shaft of a wood, the further the player will be able to drive the ball. Shaft length for woods varies between 40 and 48 inches, with 45 inches being about average.

Irons have the widest range of applications on the golf course. Like woods, these clubs are numbered, the number one indicating the club with the longest shaft and lowest loft. Irons can be numbered all the way up to nine, but anything higher is considered a wedge. The shaft of an iron is generally made from steel, although some are made from graphite like woods.

Finally, putters are extremely specialized in design, since their purpose is much different from that of woods or irons. Most putters have very little loft capacity and shafts that are fairly short, about 34 inches. Both characteristics help the player to better control the trajectory of the ball.