For most weekend golfers, the driver is the most-used club off the tee by a wide margin. Boasting the largest profile and plenty of distance, it can be a total game-changer, provided you’re playing something that’s built to enhance your strengths and mitigate common misses.
But what happens when the driver misbehaves? As much as we’d all like to be able to work on those issues on the course, it pays to have a reliable secondary option off the tee. And possibly from the fairway.
This is where a consistent 3-wood can be a godsend.
For the latest round of robotic testing with Golf Laboratories’ swing robot, we put 2024 3-woods under a microscope to see how they performed at 95 mph. More specifically, how each performed on heel and toe misses. Let’s go to the numbers.
(How we calculate: Each 15-degree 3-wood is tested using a 3-point face mapping. We hit 6 balls out of the toe and heel and then compared the data to the geometric center.)
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TaylorMade Qi10 Max | 7.6 yards of distance dropoff between geometric center and the other mishit locations
Insights: Saw almost no distance loss on heel strikes at 0.8 yards. To put that number into perspective, almost every 3-wood tested had a carry distance loss delta between 10-15 yards on the same heel miss. Toe strikes lost 14.4 yards, which was closer to the mean. An excellent option if you live in the heel.
Cobra Darkspeed LS | 8.4 yards
Insights: A reverse of the Qi10 Max with a small carry loss delta of just 2.7 yards on toe strikes. Only one other fairway wood (Ping G430 LST) came within 3 yards of Cobra’s toe strike number. Lost 14 yards on heel strikes, placing it within the middle of the pack.
PXG 0311 Black Ops | 9.9 yards
PXG 0311 Black Ops Custom Fairway Wood
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Insights: One of the more consistent fairway woods to undergo testing. The carry loss delta between heel and toe was less than 2 yards, meaning you could miss it off the heel or toe and see similar distance numbers. Toe misses saw carry distance drop by 9 yards, while heel strikes recorded a respectable carry delta at 10.8 yards.
Cobra Darkspeed Max | 10 yards
Insights: While not as consistent as the PXG, Cobra’s Max model also saw tighter carry loss deltas across the heel and toe areas. Toe strikes drop distance by 7.7 yards — one of six fairway woods to record a single-digit number — compared to 12.7 yards on heel misses. Fairway wood lives up to the Max name.
