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Hybrid golf clubs were originally developed to allow players to use a golf club that has the advantages of both a wood and an iron. Playing with a fairway means you are using a larger headed club that makes it easier to achieve a great connection with the golf ball when compared to the smaller head of an iron. Playing with your irons is easier, however, as they are shorter in length than fairway woods are.

Hybrids were developed to provide the best of both worlds. They have the head size of a wood, but the shaft length of an iron and originally they were developed to replace the most difficult clubs to play with in a club golfers bag. The clubs that the average golfer struggled to play well with were their long irons - their 3 iron and also their 4 iron.

These longer irons were difficult for club golfers to consistently strike well because they had the smaller head of an iron but a longer shaft in order to generate distance with the shot. The longer the shaft is in a golf club, the further away from you the club head is and because of this, the club head becomes more difficult to control. Added to this issue is the smaller club head. The smaller the club head is, the smaller the sweet spot becomes. The sweet spot on the club face is a small area in the centre of the face that creates maximum length and accuracy to your golf shots.

Playing a great shot with a long shafted club, that has a small head and small sweet spot, makes consistently achieving a connection between the sweet spot and the golf ball very difficult. The majority of club golfers really struggle with being able to achieve this consistently and they mis-hit long iron shots more than they hit them well, making the long irons redundant and useless to a lot of golfers. There is no point in attempting to play a shot that you know you will mis-hit when you are out on the golf course, so club golfers tended to not bother trying with their long irons.

Hybrid golf clubs were developed to replace these longer irons with a much easier solution. Hybrids brought the best of both worlds into a golf club. They have the larger club head of a wood and the shorter shaft of an iron. Playing a club that has a larger head and therefore larger sweet spot, but that isnt so far away from you as you swing it around your body so is easier to control, means that players are able to connect the sweet spot of the club face with the golf ball much more often. The larger club head also means that the centre of gravity is further back in the head and this makes it much easier to get the ball airborne. Added to this, the larger hybrid club head also has a wider sole so it glides over the turf rather than cuts into it as the head of an iron would do if it struck the ground before the golf ball.

It is therefore much easier to play hybrids but still retain the length required for the longer shot, so club golfers replaced their longer clubs with hybrids. Initially, they replaced their 3 iron, but due to the results they also replaced their 4 irons as well.

If you struggle to play any of your irons well, you can get hybrids to replace them and you can get full sets of clubs nowadays that are made up of hybrids.

The majority of golfers nowadays carry several hybrids to replace the long irons that they struggle to hit well and consistently. Even todays leading Tour Professionals carry one or two hybrids in their bag because there is no point in making the game more difficult than it needs to be.

The majority of golfers have at least one hybrid in their golf bag, if not two or even three. Hybrids have made hitting longer golf shots well much easier to achieve and much more often and as a product of this, golfers are able to take fewer shots to complete the holes that require that longer second or third shot into the green.

Sand irons and more lofted golf clubs are the shortest length clubs in your golf bag. The shorter length results in it being easier to control the club head as you swing and therefore achieve a great strike. With these clubs, you are not playing for distance on the shot, but height, distance control and accuracy. You do not need to replace your lofted clubs with hybrids.