Tournament player setups vary from week to week, and no bag data picture tells the full story. What the data and trends tell us is that the traditional hybrid is no longer a staple on the PGA Tour. It has become a minority club and the list of players holding one is shorter than you might expect.
If you want to know what’s replacing it and what that could mean for your bag, here’s a look at what’s showing up on Tour right now.
Who’s still keeping a hybrid?
Some players are still committed to a traditional hybrid. This is not a complete list, but these are some of the biggest name players with one in the bag based on recent data.
- Cameron Young – GT1 title
- Davis Riley – TSR2 Title
- Aaron Rai – GT2 Title
- Russell Henley – Title TSi2
- Robert MacIntyre – TaylorMade Stealth 2 Rescue
- Joaquin Niemann – PING G430
What are players using instead?
When the hybrid comes out of the bag, what are these PGA Tour pros putting in its place? There are three different options: another fairway wood, a utility iron, or the Callaway Utility Wood.
7-wood and 9-wood
of high fairway wood it has become the most common replacement for the hybrid on Tour. The 7-wood in particular has made a strong comeback and the names that carry one are hard to ignore. Some actual examples:
- Ludvig Åberg — TaylorMade Stealth 2
- Patrick Cantlay – TS2 Title
- Max Homa — TaylorMade Qi10
- Tyrrell Hatton – PING G430 Max
- Cameron Smith – Title TS2
- Jason Day – TaylorMade Qi35
- Keegan Bradley — TaylorMade Qi35
- Phil Mickelson – PING G430 Max
The 9-wood is a smaller trend, but there are some guys with it in the bag. Tommy Fleetwood regularly carries a TaylorMade Qi10 9-wood. Adam Scott has one too. Sahith Theegala, whose bag is one of the most unconventional setups on Tour, has a PING G440 Max 9-wood.
The 9-wood offers more loft, higher launch, steeper descent angles and more stopping power on approach. For players who value accuracy over versatility from the rough, a fairway wood in this range makes sense.
useful forests
The Callaway Apex UW is in a category of its own. Callaway describes it as combining the distance and launch characteristics of a high pitch wood with the versatility of a hybrid. The head shape is more compact than a standard fairway wood and the shaft length falls between the two. Some current Tour players with an Apex UW in their bag include:
- Xander Schauffele
- Akshay Bhatia (prototype version)
- Emiliano Grillo
Utility irons
A smaller group has moved entirely in the other direction. The handy, compact, iron-like iron, built for a penetrating and controlled ball flight, is usually the least forgiving of these alternatives, but for the right player it offers the most accuracy. Current examples in the tournament:
- Gary Woodland – Wilson’s Staff Model Service
- Haotong Li – Titleist T350
- Min Woo Lee – Callaway X-Forged UT
Min Woo Lee is worth mentioning here. It carries both a Callaway Apex UW fairway and a Callaway X-Forged fairway iron.
What does this mean for your golf bag?
Before you pull your hybrid out of the bag based on what the Tour pros are doing, consider this. PGA Tour players are swinging their hybrids at around 102 mph. The average amateur is closer to 87 mph, a number that is much more in line with the LPGA Tour than the PGA Tour. And on the LPGA Tour, hybrids are everywhere.
This is important for two reasons.
First, the draw bias we see in most hybrids that plagues elite high-velocity ball hitters becomes much less of an issue as the swing speed drops. Second, the lower, back-weighted center of gravity that defines a hybrid’s design is what helps slower-speed players move the ball through the air more consistently with longer clubs.
The Tournament of Champions tells the same story. These players also rely heavily on hybrids now that their swing speeds have dropped.
The PGA Tour trend is real and worth understanding. But this applies to a very specific group of players who swing the club at speeds that most amateurs will never achieve. For most golfers, the hybrid cannot be removed yet.
Instead, experiment with hybrid and fairway woods to see which ones fill the gaps in your bag and yield the best results.
