Initially I was very dubious on the whole new revolution that is a hybrid club, despite friends telling me how good they are. Put simply a hybrid is a new type of club that is part-driver, part-iron and looks exactly like you'd imagine, the face is like an iron but the back of the club is a similar shape to a driver. I'd always thought of these clubs as a gimmicky-satellite tv shopping channel waste of money….. until I tried one.
I had decided to change my irons so took a trip down to a local golf shop/driving range to try out the Callaway X-20's. After I'd hit a few shots with a Callaway X-20 7-iron I went back and spoke to the club pro about the problem I was facing. The only reason I wanted to buy a new set of irons was because I couldn't use my 'skinny' 3-4 iron effectively enough, the clubs offered so little forgiveness for a slightly off-centre strike that you ended-up having to be as accurate as a professional to master them.
So the club pro suggested I forget the X-20's (which I didn't like anyway) and replaced my 3 and 4 irons with a hybrid. In the end I tried 3 different hybrid clubs, all of which are equivalent to a standard 4 iron, a Callaway steel shaft, a Cobra standard graphite shaft and the Ping G5 graphite shaft. All these clubs had a loft of 23/24 degrees.
I was instantly impressed as my first few shots with each club sailed well past the 185 yard mark with little effort, but whats important with this type of club is that you can hit them high enough to be able to get them to land on the green and stop quickly, not hit the green and bounce right off. I've found that I can hit the Ping 24 degree loft hybrid as high as a 7 iron. The reason I went for the Ping G5 24 degree hybrid was all down to how easy the club was to hit. I found the Callaway and Cobra hybrid to be slightly more unforgiving, some shots would fly very low and a short distance whereas the ping was easy to hit high in the air and accurately.
Since purchasing the Ping hybrid I've used it for 4 rounds and absolutely love it. Its effective off-the-tee and off-the-fairway, but most of all out of the rough, some say better than a standard 4 iron out of the rough. I've also found that its quite adaptable, you can use it to hit a low bump-and-run type shot from off the fairway to avoid hitting low tree branches, or a full-blooded 200 yard strike at a green.
In terms of cost, it isn't the cheapest club available, I paid £100 for mine after negotiating this down from £120. The other two clubs mentioned in this review were roughly the same price as each golf shop varies. One point to note is that the G5 range will be replaced by the G10 range very shortly (Sept '07), so anybody thinking of buying the G5 model should either wait or ask for a bigger discount. As for me I bought the Ping G5 purely because I knew it was the right club for me, and I'll be trying out a Ping hybrid 21 degree club soon to replace my old 3 iron.
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Very interesting - what options are there in stiffness of shaft? I have a very fast swing, and I have problems with a lot of clubs, especially graphite, getting the right material for the shaft. Adam
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