Other Uses For Your Hybrid Golf Club (Video) - by Pete Styles
Other Uses For Your Hybrid Golf Club (Video) - by Pete Styles

So, we now know how versatile these hybrid clubs can be. We can use them off the T on par threes, shortish par fours, we can reach par fives in two using them; there’s also a couple of other quirky uses. What are the main uses of hybrid clubs; I see a lot of golfers using is to actually get themselves out of fairway bunkers. If you play a golf course, that has a lot of fairway bunkers, but the fairway bunkers relatively flat and smooth and doesn’t have a big curved lip on the front of it. Maybe the hybrid club could be the nice club; for you get out.

It should have enough loft to get over any lip that you have. It should also have the sole plate that’s designed to not really dig into the sand too much. It’s not like sand which is going to cut down into the sand it’s going to bounce over the surface a little bit more if you hit the ball slightly heavy, so when you’re trying these fairway bunkers make sure you’ve got enough loft to clear whatever lip you’ve got; position your feet nice and stably on the surface and then go ahead and try and play the ball off the surface of the sand fairly cleanly. You’re not playing a fairway bunker with a hybrid club in the same way you would play a normal bunk shot. We’re not trying to hit down and take the sand before the ball. We’re trying to play the ball out relatively cleanly, so you can use a fairway wood, sorry, you can use a hybrid club from a fairway bunker, take a little bit of time to practice, but that can be quite a useful shot. We can also use hybrid clubs to get ourselves out of the trees. If you’ve ever driven a ball in the trees, you’ll appreciate that quite often, the low shot out is actually going to be more beneficial than trying to go high, branches are all up in the air, but actually down below head level, you might be able to shoot the ball out a bit lower, so a hybrid club played towards the back of the stance with the hands quite a long way ahead and banged downwards, might be quite a useful shot to hit the ball out and get it running quite a long way, the benefits of this club for this particular shot is that the hybrid club has quite a bit sweet spot. There’s a nice low forgiveness on the face, so if I can have the ball at the back of my stance and be able to punch it forwards, I can get that ball coming out super low, lands over a hundred yards away and then scampers on, but it never really got above head level, it just came out, under the branches and shot off. One last shot is similar to that, but a much, much shorter version is going to be the little bump and run around the side of the green. We can hear a little chip and run here, so we get nice and close to the ball down on the grip, little back and through, just pitch it over the stones, land it on the edge of the fairway and just trickle it up to the edge of the green like that, so a bump and run shot with a hybrid club might be replacing the seven or six sign that you’ve normally been bumping and running and hopefully those three extra uses is a real good reason to have these versatile hybrid clubs in your bag. 2016-05-09

So, we now know how versatile these hybrid clubs can be. We can use them off the T on par threes, shortish par fours, we can reach par fives in two using them; there’s also a couple of other quirky uses. What are the main uses of hybrid clubs; I see a lot of golfers using is to actually get themselves out of fairway bunkers. If you play a golf course, that has a lot of fairway bunkers, but the fairway bunkers relatively flat and smooth and doesn’t have a big curved lip on the front of it. Maybe the hybrid club could be the nice club; for you get out.

It should have enough loft to get over any lip that you have. It should also have the sole plate that’s designed to not really dig into the sand too much. It’s not like sand which is going to cut down into the sand it’s going to bounce over the surface a little bit more if you hit the ball slightly heavy, so when you’re trying these fairway bunkers make sure you’ve got enough loft to clear whatever lip you’ve got; position your feet nice and stably on the surface and then go ahead and try and play the ball off the surface of the sand fairly cleanly.

You’re not playing a fairway bunker with a hybrid club in the same way you would play a normal bunk shot. We’re not trying to hit down and take the sand before the ball. We’re trying to play the ball out relatively cleanly, so you can use a fairway wood, sorry, you can use a hybrid club from a fairway bunker, take a little bit of time to practice, but that can be quite a useful shot. We can also use hybrid clubs to get ourselves out of the trees.

If you’ve ever driven a ball in the trees, you’ll appreciate that quite often, the low shot out is actually going to be more beneficial than trying to go high, branches are all up in the air, but actually down below head level, you might be able to shoot the ball out a bit lower, so a hybrid club played towards the back of the stance with the hands quite a long way ahead and banged downwards, might be quite a useful shot to hit the ball out and get it running quite a long way, the benefits of this club for this particular shot is that the hybrid club has quite a bit sweet spot.

There’s a nice low forgiveness on the face, so if I can have the ball at the back of my stance and be able to punch it forwards, I can get that ball coming out super low, lands over a hundred yards away and then scampers on, but it never really got above head level, it just came out, under the branches and shot off. One last shot is similar to that, but a much, much shorter version is going to be the little bump and run around the side of the green.

We can hear a little chip and run here, so we get nice and close to the ball down on the grip, little back and through, just pitch it over the stones, land it on the edge of the fairway and just trickle it up to the edge of the green like that, so a bump and run shot with a hybrid club might be replacing the seven or six sign that you’ve normally been bumping and running and hopefully those three extra uses is a real good reason to have these versatile hybrid clubs in your bag.