By E. Michael Johnson

Over the last decade or so professional golf has become a power game with an equipment focus on balls that fly like flubber and drivers the size of saucepans. Less noticed, however, has been the role of the fairway wood. Quietly, the club has gone from one used to reach the green on par 5s to, in many instances, a second driver.

Photo: J.D. Cuban

There are few tournaments where that holds as true as at the Players, where many in the field hit driver only a handful of times. One of those players was eventual winner Tiger Woods, who hit the big stick sparingly and let his 3-wood and, at times, his 5-wood carry the load.

"I'm hitting 3-wood over 300 yards," said Woods. "This 5-wood I was hitting most of the week was going 280, and I was carrying it easily 260. Those are big numbers."

Ya think?

The bigger question, is how are these distances possible? The short answer: Driver technologies such as springy faces, higher moments of inertia (which produce better results on mis-hits) and longer shafts have trickled down to fairway woods, making them easier to gain distance with off the tee. Some outside-the-box thinking has helped too. Adams and TaylorMade have employed slots to boost ball speed, Nike's VRS_Covert fairway woods (used by Woods) have an open cavity on the sole and Callaway's X Hot 3Deep has (as the name implies) a noticeably deep face -- all with the thought of providing additional yards.

"It has been relatively easy to get to the USGA and R&A limit on springlike effect for many years," said Dr. Alan Hocknell, senior VP of R&D for Callaway. "It's taken a little longer to get there in fairway woods because you're working with a smaller size and, in most instances, stainless steel instead of titanium." That smaller head meant a reduced trampoline effect and stainless steel is not as durable as titanium, meaning it was more difficult to make the face thin without risking caving in.

A combination of improved manufacturing processes and more durable steels allowed designers to begin thinning the face (as well as other areas of the clubhead) and moving the center of gravity forward -- both favorable to increased distance. With that, interestingly, has come a shift toward higher lofts on the 3-wood within the PGA Tour ranks.

At the 2010 Players, slightly more than half of the 3-woods (52.4 percent)had less than 15 degrees loft, with 56 of the 145 players in the field (38.6 percent) using a 3-wood with 13.5 degrees of loft or less. Just three years later those numbers have shrunk to 47.6 and 22.8 percent, respectively. One of the reasons is that the more forward center of gravity combined with today's low-spinning golf balls make it more difficult to achieve the proper launch angle. Just as with a driver, a 3-wood off the tee requires a high launch with low spin to produce optimal results. The forward CG helped the low-spin part. More loft assisted the necessary high launch.

Such improvements in fairway woods have helped limit the use of drivers at TPC Sawgrass. The last 10 winners of the Players have combined to hit just 72 tee shots of 300 yards or more (an average of 7.2 per year). Over the last five years the winners have averaged just 6.6 such tee shots. But that doesn't mean there's a power outage off the tee.

"There's really no room to hit driver except for a few par 5s," said Woods. "I hit 5-wood off the tee [on No. 5] because I was afraid of hitting 3-wood up over the hill and through the rough and into the bunker. Even that 5-wood I think was 310."

For the record, ShotLink had it at 289 yards. But that doesn't diminish the fact players were getting more than enough off the tee with their fairway woods. "You've got to play the golf course for what it gives you," said Woods. "Certain years it's soft and it's wet, and I hit a lot of drivers. This is one of the weeks where I didn't."

As it turned out, he didn't need to.

TOUR STORIES

KEEGAN BRADLEY // A pair of 4s

Phil Mickelson has used two drivers, and there have been some instances of tour players heading into action with a pair of putters. At the Players, however, Keegan Bradley took on TPC Sawgrass with two 4-irons.

That's because one of the 4-irons actually behaves more like a 3-iron for the 2011 PGA champion. Bradley's iron set is Cleveland Golf's CG7 Tour model, a modest cavity-back favored by better players. The second 4-iron, however, is the company's 588 MT. Although the MT is a full iron set, many on Cleveland's PGA Tour staff have employed the beefy longer irons as hybrids or utility irons. At the Players, Bradley also worked with 2- and 3-iron 588 MTs with the possibility of adding one or both to his bag at Merion for the U.S. Open.

NEW STUFF

Nike VR_S
PRICE: $200 (Models: 3- and 5-wood, adjustable)

Tiger Woods used these fairway woods at the Players. A dual-axis hosel allows for independent loft (five to choose from) and face-angle adjustments.

nikegolf.com

BAG ROOM

Now healthy and saying, "I'm able to generate the speed like I used to, and I'm able to handle that shaft again," Tiger Woods changed driver shafts at the Players, returning to the Mitsubishi Diamana White Board he used for most of 2007 through 2009. ... Another player switching to a Mitsubishi shaft was Louis Oosthuizen, who after testing the 'ahina model in his Ping Anser driver said he felt he was gaining up to 10 yards. Oosthuizen then backed up his claim, leading the field in driving distance at 300.6 yards -- the only player to crack the 300-yard mark for the week. ... If it looked as though David Lingmerth was using a shorter-than-normal putter, it's because he was. Lingmerth's Ping i-Series Craz-E is just 33⿡ inches long. ... At the other end of the putter-length spectrum was Roberto Castro. The first-round leader put a new club in the bag at TPC Sawgrass -- a TaylorMade Daddy Long Legs putter. The counterbalanced mallet was 38 inches long with 3 degrees of loft. ... Jeff Maggert is known as one of the most particular players on tour when it comes to equipment. How precise is Maggert? He has the swingweight on his irons down to the decimal point. The swingweight on his Ping S56 irons are D2.2. ... Wilson was showing its prototype adjustable woods to players this week, and Padraig Harrington liked the hybrid enough to put the club (21 degrees of loft) in the bag. No word when (or if) the clubs will be brought to market.

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By Mike Stachura

It might be much ado about nothing, but a recent addition to the United States Golf Association's conforming driver list appears to be an all-black version of TaylorMade's flagship white R1 adjustable driver.

Related: Our picks for 2013's best drivers

What's shown is a left-handed model that seems to feature the R1's adjustable hosel and sole plate, with only a TaylorMade logo alignment mark on the crown instead of the angled stripes seen on the white version.

Company spokesman Dave Cordero called this club a prototype and said there are "no plans for this version to come to retail."

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By E. Michael Johnson

Draw it up: Tianlang Guan played two new fairway woods. Photo by David Cannon/Getty Images

You might think players would be reluctant to make equipment changes at the year's first major. But the challenges of Augusta National (the need for a right-to-left tee shot, firmer-than-normal turf, greens that are more receptive to higher shots) had several players making changes or tweaks.

Adam Scott had a new driver, changing from Titleist's 910D3 driver to the newer 913D3. Scott kept the same specs, including 9.5 degrees of loft and a Graphite Design Tour AD DI-8X shaft.

Lee Westwood recently tried a Ping Scottsdale TR Anser B putter, 38 inches long. For the Masters, Westwood was back with the TR Scottsdale Shea he'd been using, at a conventional 35 inches.

Tianlang Guan [above], 14, tested a Callaway X Hot 3-wood and 4-wood in Augusta before the tournament. The 3-wood was 43 inches with 14.1 degrees of loft. The 4-wood was 42 inches with 17.1 degrees of loft. Guan liked that he could draw the clubs, so he putt hem in his bag

Tiger Woods added a Nike VR_S Covert 3-wood, preferring the way he could turn the ball right to left with it.

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By E. Michael Johnson

Tee it up: The X Hot 3Deep clubface is 10-percent taller than the X Hot.

If 60 is the new 40, then 3-wood is the new driver. Or at least it's the second driver. That's one reason Callaway released the X Hot 3Deep fairway wood -- a supersize version of its X Hot line -- to its tour staff. The impetus was Callaway staff player Phil Mickelson's desire for a fairway wood that is long enough to use as a second driver but playable off the ground. The face on the X Hot 3Deep is 10-percent taller than the X Hot, so the center of gravity is slightly higher and more in line with the impact area on tee shots, leading to more ball speed. Look for Mickelson to have the club in his bag this week and at the Masters.

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By E. Michael Johnson

It happens virtually every week: Reports from PGA Tour reps, ads from manufacturers and tweets from golfers all offering claims that tour players are seeing significant distance gains. How is that possible, you ask, when drivers are either close to or at the legal limit for springlike effect?

One of the reasons is that despite the endless hours pros spend getting "dialed in" to their equipment, not all players have reached their maximum efficiency off the tee. One only needs to look at Tiger Woods as an example. Although much has been made of Woods' resurgence with the putter this year (and rightfully so), less well-known has been his improvement in "driving efficiency," a statistic that combines a player's carry efficiency (his carry distance divided by his clubhead speed) and total distance efficiency (total distance divided by clubhead speed).

Although hardly a measure of how good a driver of the ball a player is, driving efficiency does say whether you're getting the most out of your swing off the tee, something in past years Woods had not achieved. From 2007 (when the stat first became available) in years he has played enough to qualify for a ranking (2007, 2009, 2012), Woods' rank in driving efficiency was 166th, 159th, and 92nd. Entering the Arnold Palmer Invitational, Woods ranked 11th.

To max out distance, players need to get the best match with their driver, ball and launch conditions. The key to efficiency? Almost without exception it is a combination of high launch with low spin. The 21 players in the top 20 in total driving efficiency on the tour average 1.52 degrees more launch angle than the tour average (12.65 degrees compared to 11.13 degrees) and spin it 245 revolutions per minute less (2,376 to 2,621).

Woods' stats speak to the importance of the launch angle/spin connection. In 2007 Woods was the epitome of a player whose launch conditions off the tee were the worst of both worlds as he combined a low launch (8.45 degrees) with high spin (3,343 rpm). This year Woods has a more desirable 11.76 degrees launch angle and a spin rate of 2,672 rpm. This has allowed him to maintain his length (300.3-yard average, a drop of just two yards from 2007), despite a loss of 4.5 miles per hour club- head speed during that same period.

Just because a player is efficient off the tee, however, does not necessarily mean they are long. Jin Park, Darron Stiles and Lee Williams, for instance, all rank among the top 20 in efficiency but average less than 275 yards per drive. Each, however, swings less than 107 miles per hour (the tour average is slightly above 113 mph) so they are getting the most out of what they have to work with. To do that most spend a lot of time looking at numbers, in an effort to find the right loft and shaft to produce the best result. Such work helped a player such as Park, whose swing speed is 104.42 mph, second slowest on tour. He found that a launch angle near 14 degrees with about 2,250 rpm of spin got him as much as he could out of his swing.

Conversely, there are several good players who are inefficient off the tee. Sergio Garcia, for example, is ranked 182nd (out of 183 players) in driving efficiency, the victim of a high spin rate. Freddie Jacobson (ranked 163rd), on the other hand, needs to boost his launch angle. His 7.78 degrees of launch is the third lowest on the PGA Tour.

Related: How Tiger's swing has changed

The reason for these numbers is not ignorance on the players' part, but rather a tradeoff they feel benefits their respective games. Garcia prefers the spin because he likes to work the ball. Jacobson prefers a more piercing trajectory over a high, arcing bomb.

As with all equipment decisions, you need to find the right balance for your entire game, not just the tee ball. But if you don't think you're getting the yardage you should from your driver, perhaps it's time to take a look at your own distance efficiency. You may not get the significant increases the ads claim, but you're likely to pick up a few yards.

TOUR STORIES

JIM FURYK // Shopping for strokes

Orlando isn't exactly known for its great shopping, but that didn't prevent Jim Furyk from making a stop at the Edwin Watts Golf store on Turkey Lake Road (just a few miles from Bay Hill Club & Lodge) on Saturday of the Arnold Palmer Invitational to peruse the putter corral. After taking a look at several models, Furyk went to the checkout counter with an Odyssey Versa #1 Wide model.

The purchase smacked a little of deja vu for Furyk, who bought a used Yes! Sophia putter at Joe & Leigh's Discount Golf Pro Shop at Pine Oaks GC in South Easton, Mass., for $39 the week of the 2010 Deutsche Bank Championship. Furyk used that putter to win the Tour Championship as well as the FedEx Cup. Whether Furyk has similar success with this putter remains to be seen, but one thing is certain -- he did not get quite as good a deal on this flat stick. According to the store, Furyk paid "somewhere between wholesale and retail" for the club, but as part of an Odyssey promotion received a limited-edition Phil Mickelson putter cover with the purchase.

NEW STUFF

CALLAWAY HEX Chrome+
PRICE: $36/doz.

Designed to produce high ball speeds for mid to fast swing speeds, this four-piece ball has a fast inner core and dual-mantle layer to help minimize spin off the driver.

callawaygolf.com

BAG ROOM

Among the many players changing putters at the Arnold Palmer Invitational was Rickie Fowler, who benched his Scotty Cameron by Titleist GoLo for an Odyssey Versa #7 mallet. Fowler had a good week on the greens, ranking sixth in strokes gained/putting en route to a T-3 finish. ... Phil Mickelson had a little less luck with his switch to a specially made Odyssey Versa #9 model. The club featured a Metal-X insert (which was black instead of silver), black shaft, milled alignment line on the flange with no paintfill and significant offset. After missing the cut, however, Mickelson said he would return to his Odyssey Black Series putter for the Shell Houston Open. ... Why did Karrie Webb have half her clubs with green Iomic grips and half yellow at the Kia Classic? Turns out green and gold are the traditional team colors of almost every Australian national sporting team and Webb wanted to show a little national pride.

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By Mike Stachura

You can watch a pro golf tournament on television multiple times a day every weekend of the year, but only once a year will you see an hour of network golf coverage devoted to the stuff that really matters to average golfers: the hottest gear in the game. That hour comes this Sunday when Golf Digest and NBC Sports combine for the fifth annual edition of the Golf Digest Equipment Insider, a tour through the game's latest technologies in clubs, balls and fashion.

Related: Check out Golf Digest's 2013 Hot List

The show will be hosted by Golf Channel's "Morning Drive" co-stars Holly Sonders and Gary Williams, and will feature insight from Golf Digest Senior Editor for Equipment Mike Stachura; Golf World Senior Editor E. Michael Johnson and Golf Digest Fashion Director Marty "Mr. Style" Hackel.

The Golf Digest Equipment Insider will feature segments on every equipment category in the bag from drivers to putters, as well as a special segment on club-fitting and a closer look at the problem of counterfeit clubs. Throughout the show the leading experts in equipment technology at all of golf's top manufacturers will offer their perspective of how modern innovation is making the possibility for improvement not only commonplace for the top players in the world, but for average golfers, too.

The show will air at 1:00 p.m. ET, prior to Golf Central Pre-Game and the final round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational. Here's a sneak peek.

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By E. Michael Johnson

Crushing it: Former world long-drive champion Jamie Sadlowski. Photo: Andrew Schlotterlein

Callaway recently added 10 heavy hitters to its long-drive team, including Jamie Sadlowski, a two-time RE/MAX World Long Drive champion. Sadlowski, who's expected to use a 6.5-degree Callaway X Hot driver, clinched his first world title as a 20-year-old in 2008 with a drive of 418 yards in the final. His teammates include former world champs Carl Wolter and Mike Dobbyn. Callaway also signed on as the exclusive club sponsor of the RE/MAX World Long Drive Championship and Long Drivers of America.

"Since we think our drivers are the longest out there, this was a natural partnership," says Harry Arnett, senior vice president of marketing. Qualifying for the world championship is from March through August.

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By E. Michael Johnson

Flying high: Fowler added a full degree of loft to his driver. Photo by: Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images

Adjustable drivers aren't just for correcting swing flaws. The WGC-Accenture Match Play was a reminder that they might help you take advantage of high altitudes.

At Dove Mountain, 2,600 feet above sea level, several players added loft for extra distance. Rory McIlroy upped the loft on his Nike VR_S Covert Tour driver to 10.5 degrees. Rickie Fowler went from 7.5 degrees to 8.5 degrees on his Cobra AMP Cell Pro, and Lee Westwood went up half a degree on his Ping G25.

Yet the benefit might not be as great as players believe. Those who get the most distance are golfers with high swing speeds and spin rates from 2,200 to 2,400 revolutions per minute, says Brad Schweigert, Ping's director of engineering. Even that comes with a caveat: On mis-hits where spin is reduced, distance can be lost. At higher elevations, shots with spin rates of less than 2,000 rpm have difficulty staying in the air.

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By Mike Stachura.

Brandt Snedeker has been doing a lot right lately. Here are three things average golfers can learn from the game's hottest player:

Snedeker style: He's not looking for "the usual." Photo by: Justin Stephens

1. His Odyssey White Hot XG Rossie putter is 34 inches, an inch shorter than standard. Don't assume standard is right for you. "If the putter is too long, your posture will be too tall, your elbows will be jammed into your body, the toe of the putter will be off the ground and your eyes will be too far from the ball," says Todd Sones, one of Golf Digest's 50 Best Teachers and founder of Coutour Golf.

2. Snedeker's 2010 TaylorMade Burner SuperFast driver, at 45 inches, is an inch shorter than a lot of drivers on the market and an inch shorter than the SuperFast sold at retail. A shorter driver can make it easier for average golfers to strike the ball in the center of the face. And more center hits means more distance, says Steve Ball of Ball Golf Center in Oklahoma City, one of America's 100 Best Clubfitters.

3. You don't have to wear a ball cap when playing golf. Snedeker's customary visor "is cool, and that What, me worry? haircut fits nicely under that headwear," says Marty Hackel, Golf Digest's Mr. Style.

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