How to Know Which Golf Club to Use

Standing over your ball, stuck between a 7-iron and an 8-iron, is one of golf's most common and frustrating dilemmas. Making the right choice feels great, but grabbing the wrong club turns an easy par into a struggle for bogey. This guide will give you a clear, repeatable process to take the guesswork out of club selection, helping you stand over every shot with confidence.

Understanding Your Tools: a Quick Club Refresher

Before we can choose the right club, we need a basic understanding of what each one is designed to do. Think of your golf bag as a toolbox, with each club serving a specific purpose. They generally fall into three families:

• Woods (and your Driver): These are your power tools. With their large heads and long shafts, they’re designed for distance. Your driver is the longest club, used exclusively off the tee to hit the ball as far as possible. Fairway woods (like a 3-wood or 5-wood) can be used off the tee or from the fairway for long-distance second shots.
• Irons: These are your precision and utility tools. Numbered from 3 or 4 all the way down to a 9-iron, these clubs are the workhorses of your set. They are designed for approach shots into the green from a huge variety of distances. The lower the number (e.g., 5-iron), the less loft it has, and the further it goes. The higher the number (e.g., 9-iron), the more loft it has, making the ball fly higher and land softer.
• Wedges: These are your scoring tools. This category includes your Pitching Wedge (PW), Gap Wedge (GW), Sand Wedge (SW), and Lob Wedge (LW). They have the most loft and are used for short shots into and around the green - chip shots, pitch shots, and bunker shots. They are built for control and accuracy over short distances.

Knowing this gives us a baseline, but the real art of club selection comes from knowing yourself and your environment.

The Foundation of Good Decisions: Chart Your Personal Distances

If you take only one thing away from this article, let it be this: you must know how far you hit each club. Not how far you think you hit them, or how far your buddy hits them, or how far a pro hits them. You need to know your personal yardages. Without this information, every other decision is just a wild guess.

Creating your own distance chart is the single most valuable 30 minutes you can spend on your game. Here’s a simple, step-by-step way to do it.

Step 1: Find the Right Location

The best place to do this is a driving range that uses ball-tracking technology like Toptracer or TrackMan. These systems will give you precise carry distances, which is the most important number. If you don't have access to that, a range with accurate yardage markers will work. Just be sure to find a clear area where you can see your balls land.

Step 2: Warm-Up, then Get to Work

Start with a few easy swings using a middle iron, like your 8-iron, just to get loose. Don't go right for the driver. Once you feel limber and are making consistent contact, you're ready to start building your chart.

Step 3: The Process - Work Through the Bag

Start with your highest-lofted wedge (your SW or LW) and work your way up through the irons. For each club:

• Hit a set of 5 to 10 shots.
• Make your normal, comfortable swing. This isn't about finding your absolute maximum distance, it's about finding your reliable, repeatable, on-course distance.
• Completely discard any terrible shots (e.g., a shank or a topped ball). These are outliers and will skew your data. You only want to measure reasonably well-struck shots.

Step 4: Focus on Carry Distance

Your main objective is to measure the carry distance - how far the ball flies in the air before it first hits the ground. This is the number you need for carrying bunkers, a pond, or landing on the green. The total distance (carry + roll) will change based on how firm or soft the ground is, but carry distance is a much more reliable number to base your decisions on.

Step 5: Record Your Numbers

After hitting your set of shots with one club, find the average carry distance. If you’re at a tech-enabled range, it will do this for you. If not, eyeball the average landing spot for your solid shots. Then, write it down. You can use a notes app on your phone, a small notebook you keep in your bag, or create a simple chart. It just needs to be accessible.

Your final chart might look something like this:


CLUB | CARRY DISTANCE
---------------------------
5-iron : 165 yards
6-iron : 155 yards
7-iron : 145 yards
8-iron : 135 yards
9-iron : 125 yards
PW : 110 yards
GW : 95 yards
SW : 80 yards


This chart is now your gospel. When you face a 145-yard shot, you won't have to guess. You'll know it's your 7-iron.

Reading the Situation: Factors Beyond Distance

Knowing your base yardages is half the battle. The other half is adjusting for the realities of the golf course. The number on the sprinkler head is just the starting point, a skilled golfer makes subtle adjustments based on the following variables.

The Lie of the Ball Changes Everything

How the ball is sitting will have a major impact on how it flies. You must assess your lie before pulling a club.

• Perfect Fairway Lie: This is your baseline. The ball is sitting up nicely, and you can expect a normal ball flight. Your chart distances are most accurate from here.
• Thick Rough: Expect less distance and less spin. The grass grabs the clubhead as it comes through, slowing it down and getting between the club face and the ball. A general rule of thumb is to take at least one extra club (e.g., a 6-iron for a 150-yard shot instead of a 7-iron). You should also anticipate the ball to roll out more upon landing because it won't have as much backspin.
• Hardpan / Bare Lie: These are high-stress lies. There’s no cushion of grass beneath the ball, so crisp contact is a must. Many golfers choose to "club up" (take a 6-iron instead of a 7-iron) and make a smoother, three-quarter swing to prioritize solid contact over power.
• Ball Above Your Feet: When the ball is higher than your feet, it promotes a swing path that naturally causes the ball to draw or hook to the left (for a right-handed golfer). You should aim slightly to the right of your target to compensate.
• Ball Below Your Feet: The opposite is true here. When the ball is lower than your feet, it encourages a swing that makes the ball fade or slice to the right. To compensate, aim a bit left of your target.

Adjusting for the Elements

You’re not playing in a vacuum. Wind and elevation can dramatically change how far the ball travels, and you need to account for them.

Wind: The Invisible Hazard

• Into the Wind (Headwind): This is the most common adjustment. A headwind will reduce your distance, sometimes significantly. A good starting point is to add one club for every 10 mph of headwind. A one-club wind (10 mph) means your 150-yard 7-iron now becomes a 6-iron. A two-club wind (20 mph) means it's a 5-iron.
• Wind at Your Back (Tailwind): A tailwind will help your ball travel further. You can generally take one less club for a steady tailwind. Your 150-yard 7-iron becomes an 8-iron.
• Crosswind: A crosswind will push your ball sideways. The adjustment here is more about your aim than your club. If the wind is blowing from left to right, you need to aim to the left of your target and let the wind drift it back.

Elevation: Uphill and Downhill

• Uphill Shots: An uphill shot will play longer than the actual yardage because the ball is flying into the slope. As a simple rule, add 1 yard for every 1 foot of elevation change. So a 150-yard shot that is 10 feet uphill will play like a 160-yard shot. Time to club up.
• Downhill Shots: Conversely, a downhill shot will play shorter than the yardage. A 150-yard shot that is 10 feet downhill will play more like a 140-yard shot. Time to club down.

Strategic Thinking: Pin Position and Target Selection

Finally, the best players don't always aim at the flag. They aim for the smartest target.

• Middle of the Green is Your Friend: A pin tucked right behind a bunker is often called a "sucker pin." The smarter play is to ignore the flag and take the club that gets you to the center of the green. This gives you the largest margin for error and almost always leads to a lower score than trying a hero shot.
• Front vs. Back Pin: If the pin is tucked in the front of the green, you need a club that will fly to the front edge and stop quickly - your higher-lofted clubs excel at this. If the pin is in the back, you might take a slightly shorter club and plan for the ball to land and roll towards the hole.

Your On-Course Process: A 4-Step Checklist

So how do you put this all together when you’re standing in the fairway? Turn it into a simple, repeatable mental checklist.

1. Get Your Number: Use a rangefinder or GPS to get the exact yardage to the pin.
2. Find Your Base Club: Look at your distance chart and see which club corresponds to that yardage. This is your starting point.
3. Make Your Adjustments: Go through the a mental scan. How is the lie? What's the wind doing? Is the shot uphill or downhill? Go up or down one or two clubs based on these factors.
4. Pick Your Target & Commit: Based on the pin position and the risk, pick your final target - which might be the flag or might be the fat part of the green. Once you've made your decision, trust it. Commit to the shot and make a confident swing.

Final Thoughts

Choosing the right golf club is a skill that blends objective data with on-the-spot adjustments. The process starts with the foundational work of mapping your personal distances, then layers in the feel and experience of assessing the lie, wind, and course conditions to make a smart, committed decision.

While this process becomes more natural with practice, sometimes you need an expert opinion right there on the course. We designed Caddie AI to be that on-demand golf brain, taking the uncertainty out of these critical decisions. When you're stuck between clubs or facing a bizarre lie in the trees, you can get a simple recommendation or even analyze a photo of your situation to find the smartest play. It’s like having a tour-level caddie in your pocket, ready to give you the confidence you need to commit to every swing.