Exploring The Fairway Woods PGA Tour Pros Use (2024)

Choosing your fairway woods is an important task for any golfer and when it comes to thinking about which ones you should be adding to your bag it is always interesting to look at what fairway woods PGA Tour pros use.

So on this occasion, Golfing Focus decided to do just that to see which woods some of the world’s top players consider the best.

TaylorMade are the most used fairway woods by the top 100 PGA Tour pros making up 33% of the 167 woods played by this select group. PING’s G430 Max is however the most common individual model across the three, five, seven and 9-woods used by the top 100. A 3-wood and 5-wood is the most common wood set-up chosen by 33% of these pros.

That summary does not however tell the full story when it comes to the fairway woods being played on the PGA Tour.

Our in-depth analysis of the top PGA pros’ fairway wood choices also revealed insights into the number of times they altered the lofts of their woods, the shafts they favour and the preference of a minority of pros now to using a mini-driver in place of a traditional 3-wood.

And not only that we were also able to see whether the preferences of the equipment ‘free agents’ who are free to use whatever clubs they want differed from their sponsored colleagues!

the Most Used 3-Wood on The PGA Tour – Top 100 Player Breakdown

When it comes to the breakdown of the fairway woods used by the top pros on the PGA Tour it is clear that the 3-wood is the mainstay of the group.

However given master club makers often cite the 3-wood as the most difficult to fit a professional golfer for because of the variety of shots they want to be able to play with the one club we wanted to find out the preferences of the best Tour players.

97% of the top 100 PGA Tour pros carry a 3-wood and PING’s G430 Max is the most popular 3-wood used by 17% of this group, including Davis Thompson. Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy’s choice of 3-wood, TaylorMade’s Qi10, is the next most used with 12 players in total choosing it.

Titleist’s GT2 model is played by 6% of the top 100 while Callaway’s most popular model used by 5% is the Paradym Ai Smoke Triple Diamond.

Regarding overall numbers of 3-woods used across their full range of models TaylorMade and Titleist continue to dominate with 54% of the top 100 PGA Tour pros using one of these brands.

And this is not only consistent with what Golfing Focus found when we last did this analysis in 2021 and 2023 but is also reflected in the preferences of the non-sponsored players or equipment ‘free agents’ as they are also called.

These ‘free agents’ have the flexibility to play with any clubs they want. And of the 15 three woods we uncovered being used by these players – including Adam Scott and Justin Rose – TaylorMade and Titleist produce 60%.

Interestingly however there was more of a variety of models being chosen by these free agents with 12 out of the 15 being different. This compares to the 37 different models being played by the top 100 PGA Tour pros overall.

Despite TaylorMade’s and Titleist’s overall dominance though among the 3-wood preferences of both the sponsored and non-sponsored players PING’s G430 Max was again the most used individual model in both these groups.

A few things of note however should be born in mind in and amongst these data points:

1. A number of the top pros carry more than one 3-wood around with them
2. Others use much older models than the latest produced by the relevant manufacturer, while
3. A select few don’t use a 3-wood at all.

While Patrick Rodgers for example is currently opting for a Titleist TSR3 15º 3-wood he also carries a 13.5º version and a TaylorMade Stealth Plus model in his bag around with him on Tour.

Andrew Putnam meanwhile has clearly found a 3-wood he likes and is sticking to it no matter what new models are being produced. His Cleveland Launcher DST 3-wood first entered the golf market in 2010 so it seems that he has discovered something in it that he likes and is not for changing.

A small number of others then decide not to carry a 3-wood at all and these include Byeong Hun An.

He doesn’t use a 3-wood (or any fairway wood or hybrid at all for that matter) for the simple reason that he has always struggled to hit three woods off the tee and off the deck. As a result he prefers a Titleist U505 1-iron for those tee shots he wants to hit a little shorter and straighter than a driver.

Sahith Theegala by comparison chooses to bypass a 3-wood and opt for a 5-wood and 7-wood combination while Tommy Fleetwood, Harry Hall and occasionally Adam Scott have gone for the niche modern trend of swapping out their 3-wood for a mini-driver.

So while the 3-wood continues to take a dominant position in the bags of the vast majority of the best PGA Tour pros there are a small number who choose to dispense with it altogether.

[Editor’s note – Do you use a 3-wood yourself or do you find it as hard a club to get fitted for as the top pros do? Or would you consider a mini-driver instead? Let us know in the comments at the end of this post!]

What About the Loft of A 3-Wood On the PGA Tour?

When it comes to analyzing the lofts of the 3-woods used by the top 100 players on the PGA Tour what is very noticeable is the variance in choices.

The ‘standard’ loft of a 3-wood is 15 degrees but only just over 50% stick with this standard.

11% opt for a strong 3-wood with a loft of between 13 and 13.5 degrees while 15% choose a much higher launch 3-wood version with a loft of 16.5 degrees.

With Bryson DeChambeau playing on the LIV Tour we didn’t find any outlier PGA Tour players carrying clubs like a 13º “5-wood” with 13º being the strongest lofted 3-wood choice we came across used by Andrew Putnam with his trusty Cleveland Launcher DST.

“I’ve worked with clubs for 25 years and can tell you [3-wood] is the hardest club to fit a tour player in. They want it to be low and long off the tee but high and long off the ground. They also want it to be able to execute a variety of different shots. It has to do it all.”

Tour senior club technician Brian Rhattigan

In 2024 our analysis also highlighted the best 100 pros on Tour use 13 different lofts of 3-wood varying from 13º up to 16.5º, with some even choosing lofts with a precision of up to 0.1 and 0.25 of a degree.

Valero Texas Open champion Akshay Bhatia for example has his Callaway Paradym Ai Smoke Max 3-wood bent from 15º to 13.9º while world no.1 Scottie Scheffler’s Qi10 3-wood plays at 14.25º.

And as we’ve already noted pros such as Patrick Rodgers carry different lofted 3-wood options around with them – 15º and 13.5º in Rodgers’ case – for use in different conditions.

Further, and again as we’ve touched on already, certain pros are turning to mini-drivers as an alternative to lower lofted ‘strong’ 3-woods.

Such attention to detail clearly shows how much time the pros spend choosing a 3-wood that is absolutely tailor-made to their requirements and why it is viewed by club specialists as the most difficult to fit for pro golfers.

As a result it is important to bear in mind that the 3-wood we see in the shops may be a fair distance from what the PGA Tour pro you are watching on TV may be playing with.

BRAND OF 3-WOOD	% OF TOP 100 PGA TOUR PLAYERS USING BRAND (Equipment free agents in italics)	MOST USED 3-WOOD MODEL
TaylorMade	30% (inc. Viktor Hovland, Wyndham Clark, Rory McIlroy, Scottie Scheffler, Colin Morikawa, Jason Day, Keegan Bradley, Justin Rose, Hideki Matsuyama, Ludvig Åberg, Shane Lowry, Ben Kohles, Denny McCarthy, Aaron Rai, Sepp Straka)	Qi10 View at PGA Superstore
Titleist	24% (inc. Max Homa, Patrick Cantlay, Russell Henley, Tom Kim, Adam Scott, Sungjae Im, Brian Harman, Patrick Rodgers, Jordan Speith, Cameron Young, Beau Hossler, Justin Thomas, Cam Davis, J.T.Poston)	GT2 Check eBay
PING	19% (inc. Corey Conners, Taylor Moore, Harris English, Brendon Todd, Mackenzie Hughes, Taylor Pendrith, Davis Thompson, Seamus Power, Mark Hubbard)	G430 Max Check eBay
Callaway	19% (inc. Xander Schauffele, Tony Finau, Sam Burns, Adam Schenk, Emiliano Grillo, Adam Svensson, Stephen Jaeger)	Paradym Triple Diamond View at PGA Superstore
Cobra	4% (inc. Rickie Fowler, Robert MacIntyre)	N/A
Srixon / Cleveland	2% (Andrew Putnam, Matthew NeSmith)	N/A
Unknown	1% (Matt Fitzpatrick)	Prototype

[Note – Just so you know, and we are upfront as an affiliate program participant, Golfing Focus, at no cost to you, earns from qualifying purchases made through links on this page.]

The Most Used 5-Wood and 7-Wood on the PGA Tour?

We have already seen that the 3-wood is a mainstay of the professional’s bag on the PGA Tour.

But do PGA players use a 5-wood or even a 7-wood in addition or preference?

20% out of the top 100 PGA Tour pros use a 5-wood and that number rises to 37% when you include players who carry a 5-wood as part of a wider set of clubs for use when course conditions dictate.

BRAND OF 5-WOOD	NO. OF TOP 100 PGA TOUR PLAYERS USING BRAND (Equipment free agents in italics)	MOST USED 5-WOOD MODEL
TaylorMade	16 (inc. Rory McIlroy, Collin Morikawa, Ludvig Åberg, Aaron Rai, Tommy Fleetwood, Justin Rose, Adam Scott, Nick Taylor, Chris Kirk, Luke List)	Qi10 View at PGA Superstore
PING	9 (inc. Sahith Theegala, Matt Fitzpatrick, Corey Conners, Brendon Todd, Adam Schenk)	G430 Max Check eBay
Titleist	6 (inc. Max Homa, Brian Harman, Denny McCarthy, Justin Thomas, Billy Horshel)	TS2 Check eBay
Cobra	3 (inc. Hideki Matsuyama, Rickie Fowler)	N/A
Callaway	2 (Si Woo Kim, Harry Hall)	N/A
PXG	1 (Eric Cole)	0311 Gen5

Only 12% of this elite group always choose to use a 7-wood but 22% take a 7-wood around with them on Tour again as part of a larger set of clubs.

Tommy Fleetwood and Adam Scott meanwhile have also been seen carrying 24º TaylorMade Qi10 9-woods at certain tournaments.

Fleetwood chose to put one in the bag at the Players Championship on the especially firm playing Sawgrass while Scott opted to use his 9-wood at the BMW Championship at Castle Pines “to help soften the landing, and … cut through the dense Kentucky bluegrass rough.”

Both have since packed it back away however and in Fleetwood’s case, he has returned his standard 3-iron to fill the gap between his 4-iron and 5-wood distances.

“You get a lot of courses where there’s thick rough, firm greens and firm fairways and there’s always a balance between having something that you can drive down the fairway but also something that you can hit into greens or out of the rough. I went higher up in loft in woods to find something that could do that. I don’t like hitting hybrids and 7-wood numbers are too close to what my 5-wood produces so we found the 9-wood to fill that gap between my 5-wood at 250-yards and my 4-iron at 225-yards.

Tommy Fleetwood

And when it comes to the lofts of the higher numbered fairway woods used by the top PGA Tour pros it is often again worth paying attention to that number rather than the club number that stamped on the club.

What one player lists as a 7-wood may be closer to the loft of a 5-wood carried by another player. And that is because the pros frequently alter the lofts of higher-numbered fairway woods.

In 2023 British Open champion Brian Harman’s case for example the club number on his Titleist TS2 fairway wood does say 5 but he has had his club makers reduce the loft to 16.5º which is much stronger than a more ‘traditional’ 18º to 19º 5-wood.

The ‘traditional’ loft of a 7-wood is 21 degrees but over 40% of the twenty-five 7-woods used by the top 100 players on the PGA Tour are set up with less than that.

It is noticeable therefore how many of the top pros use fairway woods with lofts and numbers that don’t correspond to what we would expect based on ‘standard’ lofts.

So although many of the pros do indeed use fairway woods as high as a 7-wood it is always worth bearing in mind the lofts on these clubs may not match with what you may expect and can be quite far from the ‘off the shelf’ loft of a standard 5, 7 or 9-wood.

Looking then at the makes and models of the 5 and 7-woods used by the best PGA Tour pros TaylorMade and PING lead the way in both clubs.

Of the sixty-two 5-woods and 7-woods Golfing Focus found in the bags of this elite group of players 73% are made by one of those two manufacturers.

TaylorMade’s Qi10 is the most popular 5-wood among the top 100 PGA Tour players with 1 in 5 of those pros using that club type choosing it including Rory McIlroy.

PING’s G430 Max is by far the most popular 7-wood by comparison with almost 50% of 7-wood users in the top 100 opting for it.

But across all these different fairway woods, 21 different models produced by 6 different manufacturers, are being used showing no one model dominates entirely across all the pros.

BRAND OF 7-WOOD	NO. OF TOP 100 PGA TOUR PLAYERS USING BRAND (Equipment free agents in italics)	MOST USED 7-WOOD MODEL
PING	14 (inc. Sahith Theegala, Stephan Jaeger, Mackenzie Hughes, Mark Hubbard, Taylor Pendrith, Viktor Hovland, Davis Thompson)	G430 Max Check eBay
TaylorMade	5 (inc. Sepp Straka, Jason Day, Tom Hoge, Kurt Kitayama)	Qi10 View at PGA Superstore
Titleist	3 (inc. Patrick Cantlay, Keith Mitchell, CT Pan)	TS2 Check eBay
Callaway	1	Paradym Ai Smoke Triple Diamond

But What About Mini-Drivers? Do Any PGA Tour Pros Use One?

Different golfers obviously have different preferences when it comes to fairway woods.

And when we look in detail at the woods used by the top 100 players on the PGA Tour the unique requirements of individual players are again in evidence.

And although the choice of a 3-wood is predominant amongst almost all of them a select few PGA pros are using a ‘mini-driver’ in its place.

In brief, a mini-driver is a category of wood that sits between a standard full-size river and a traditional 3-wood.

They are designed to be used mostly for tee shots as their larger head sizes (300-340cc in volume) add height but reduce spin compared to less forgiving 3-woods (165-188cc) making them both easier to hit and typically longer and straighter off the tee

6-time major champion Phil Mickelson pioneered the usage of the mini-driver, or ‘2-wood’ as he calls it, all the way back in 2013 to help him win the British Open and in recent times more pros have been spotted testing and using one.

In the build-up to the Players Championship this year Cameron Young tried out a Titleist TSR 2-wood prototype club as he searched for an alternative tee club that delivered a certain ball speed and yardage gap from his main driver.

On the PGA Tour today Tommy Fleetwood, Harry Hall and Garrick Higgo are now also among the Tour players using a mini driver while well-known golf club tinkerer Adam Scott has also been spotted carrying a TaylorMade BRNR mini driver on Tour.

This TaylorMade model is also the choice of Fleetwood and Higgo – Hall chooses the Callaway Paradym Ai Smoke Ti 340 Mini – and at lofts of between 11.5 to 13.5º the mini driver clubs these players are using have only slightly less and often the same loft as the strong lofted 3-woods preferred by a few of their colleagues including Rickie Fowler and Brian Harman.

Players changing the loft of their mini drivers and fairway woods to a specific number is a common thing and something to be paid attention to.

So too is the frequency with which the pros will use a different combination of mini drivers, fairway woods, hybrids and driving irons depending on the set-up of the course they are playing that week.

And you can see what Golfing Focus’ similarly detailed look at the hybrids and driving irons the PGA Tour pros use here.

Although they do not change the make-up of the longest clubs in their bag all the time the pros will frequently carry a bag of fifteen to nineteen clubs on Tour and swap out their fairway woods for other clubs as and when the course set up warrants it.

Whether mini-drivers start to challenge the long-term dominance of 3-woods in the bags of the top pros on the PGA Tour beyond a select few players however remains to be seen.

Before you go …

It is always interesting to know what fairway woods the best PGA Tour pros are playing. But what fairway woods do the top senior players use by comparison?

Check out our comparative detailed study of the fairway woods Champions Tour pros choose.

The Go-To Fairway Woods Of Senior Tour Champions

Or if you want to know how far on average the pros hit their 3-woods, 5-woods and 7-woods and how that compares to the other club types many of them pick as an alternative read our next article here.

How Far Do Pro Golfers Hit Each Club?

Other great articles related to this topic:

• Gear Up: Uncovering The Most Used Clubs On The PGA Tour
• Driving For Dough! The Most Played Drivers On The PGA Tour
• Hybrid Power: The Most Used Hybrids On The PGA Tour
• Do Pros Carry a Driving Iron?
• A Deep Dive Into the Most Used Irons on the PGA Tour
• Wedge Wizardry: The Most Used Wedges on the PGA Tour
• What Putters Do Most PGA Players Use To Master the Greens
• Spotlight On The Most Popular Shaft On the PGA Tour
• Getting a Grip On the Most Popular Grips on the PGA Tour
• On The Ball: The Most Used Ball on the PGA Tour
• Do Pros Use Regular or Stiff Shafts?
• Do Pros Use Graphite or Steel Shafts?
• In The Bag: Unpacking The Clubs Champions Tour Players Use
• The Complete Guide To The Most Popular Clubs On LPGA Tour