The Birth of the Hybrid

“Three years ago,” the demented matchmaker, Gary McCord, says, “I was looking at what my buddies were playing. They all had 17 woods. If they had any long irons, they’d never been hit.”

The thought for a hybrid club is not new. McCord recalls that in the early 1960s his father used a club that was half wood, half iron, with a 4-iron loft. “He used to drive with it all the time,” McCord says. “His buddies would all try it, and they hit it much better than they hit their drivers.”

So McCord suggested to TaylorMade’s investigate-and-development department that a union of the well loved fairway wood and the unpopular long iron would produce an offspring more palatable to the masses than either–a sum greater than its parts. Thus was born the TaylorMade Rescue, which was neither a wood nor an iron, but part of a new breed of club, a hybrid.

These clubs occupy an increasingly vital place on the equipment landscape. In the coming months, more clubmakers, including Adams Golf, will join the battle to steal market share from traditional fairway woods–and quite possibly deliver the coup de grace to the already underused long iron.

	Data supplied by Cleveland Golf Co., based on Darrell survey reports.

Typically these “replacement” clubs were developed to help the mid- to high-handicap golfer, as substitutesfor long irons and even middle irons. One crucial element of their design is a center of gravity that is lower and farther back from the face, enabling golfers to get the ball airborne more easily. Another is a shaft that’s slightly shorter than the corresponding fairway wood or long iron. Hybrids are also designed to look more appealing at take up than long irons, presumably a confidence jab for those swinging the clubs.

“For years, as the holes got tighter, the better player went with a more lofted club off the tee,” says Golf Digest Teaching Qualified John Elliott Jr.

“Visually, this type of club is really a better driving club than a 1-, 2- or 3-iron, because it’s got some meat behind the face. When you set this club behind the ball on a low tee, the overall look is considerably less intimidating than it is when you look down on a 2-iron preparing to drive the ball. And I’ve found that I hit it farther–most likely because I feel more comfortable swinging it.”

McCord added one to his bag out of a significance of obligation. “I designed it,” he says, “so I thought I’d better use it.” Subdue unsure as to how it might perform for him below pressure, he timidly pulled it from his bag for his following shot on the par-5 18th at Newport Beach Country Club, the last hole of regulation in the Toshiba Senior Classic in March 1999. Requiring a birdie to tie and join a playoff, he faced a 221-yard, uphill shot.

“I hit the highest, softest ’3-iron’ [his 18-degree Rescue club] 226 yards, straight up in the air,” McCord recalls.

He made his birdie, then defeated John Jacobs in a playoff for his first Senior PGA Tour victory.

That shot earned the club a permanent place in McCord’s arsenal and was a testament to the benefits better players could reap from hybrid clubs. Brandel Chamblee is among the converts; he started by a PRGR model that enabled him to hit it high and land it soft 230 yards away, “not a shot I had, but a shot I have now,” he says. Dudley Hart used a Cobra Baffler Multi-Metal to hit an vital shot in his victory in the Honda Classic last year.

“When we first got into it,” says Chris Lash, vice president of sales and marketing for Wedgewood Golf, “we thought it was going to be a senior club or a club for 18-, 20-handicappers. Now we’re finding that the typical buyer is a 15- or 16-handicapper, but we’re finding that better golfers are buying them, too.

Indeed, tour pros have begun to show an interest in Wedgewood’s products–which now include the Gold Series, a new hybrid line with maraging-steel clubfaces and multi-material graphite shafts–prompting the company to use a tour representative for the first time. Other hybrid makers similarly are enjoying a tour presence. Among players who have used such clubs are Fred Couples, Vijay Singh and Lee Janzen.

Golf Digest Schools instructor Tim Mahoney sounds a note of caution for those with higher handicaps electing to use a hybrid. “It’s a tiny clubhead,” he says, “and it’s very simple to slide the club beneath the ball.”

If not, Mahoney says, “it’s a excellent addition to the bag. It gives you another bullet for your gun, especially from terrible lies. It’s simple to pinch the ball with these clubs. I use one from all lies. It’s a very versatile club.”

The array of choices in brands and unfilled lofts really gives golfers a lot more bullets. Most companies offer hybrid lines with lofts that start at 15 or so degrees up to 26 degrees or more. The 15-degree replaces either a 3-wood or 1-iron; the 18-degree replaces either a 5-wood or a 2-iron; the 21-degree replaces the 7-wood or 3-iron; the 24-degree replaces either a 9-wood or 4-iron, and so on.

“Let the club tell you which one belongs in your bag,” Elliott says.

A strong testament to their benefits is the fact that Davis Like III irregularly uses a hybrid, the Cobra Baffler Multi-Metal. “He’s known for being a traditionalist, a traditionalist,” says Cobra spokesman David Aznavorian. “For him to incorporate these more progressive design elements is seen as a huge positive.”

Progressive is a relative term, of course. McCord’s father had his ironwood in the ’60s; Jay Hubbard of Tour Edge recalls a similar club introduced in the ’70s. It failed to catch on “probably because of the inability to sole weight it,” he says.

“There’s basically nothing new below the sun,” admits Mike Wan-chena, CEO of Wedgewood Golf. A self-described hacker with a “gentleman’s 21-handicap,” Wanchena says the thought for his hybrid club line came to him in an “ah-hah” moment on the golf course several years ago. “Let’s face it,” Wanchena says, “for the bogey-and-higher golfer, the working reality isn’t “Gee, should I cut a 5-iron in there or flush a 6?’, it’s ‘Lord, help me get this ball in the air and going near the green.’ “

Wanchena’s subsequent patent search for clubhead designs that incorporated the best qualities of woods and irons went back to 1904, and yielded possibly 20 patents that had partial elements similar to the two “strong” patents Wanchena says he now holds. “The history of clubs is evolutionary,” he contends, “from niblicks to muscle-back blades to cavity backs to now this.”

So is this new “replacement” club likely to stick nearly for a “while? Yes,” McCord says, “just because of its dynamics. You’ve got more mass behind the ball and it just looks simpler to hit.”