Best Fairway Woods For High Handicappers: The 2021 Complete Review

Sleek Sole

The sole of the M4 is an unheralded but important aspect of it. It’s perfectly shaped to deliver a good strike to the ball, even in fairly tough lies. I found it dug through the rough well and gave long, high-flying shots.

The Speed Pocket built into the sole makes the face ultra-hot, giving both sweet-spot contacts and mis-hits remarkable distance.

Sound is feel

One of the most important aspects of the borderline-indefinable quality known as “feel” is the sound of the club. In the past, I’ve found TaylorMade woods to perform well but to have a thuddy, almost plastic sound. This is common to woods that use carbon fiber composite materials instead of being solid metal.

TaylorMade has paid a lot of attention to this aspect, and have really improved the sound. A well-struck ball leaps off the face with a satisfying crack, aided by the sonically tuned fluted hosel.

Low spin and high launch

The carbon-fiber material used in the crown allows TaylorMade to move the center of gravity low and forward, which provides the hitherto difficult-to-achieve combination of high launch and low spin. Low-spin clubs are usually hard for high-handicappers to get in the air, but the TaylorMade M4 launches nice and high. The lower spin reduces the severity of hooks and slices, resulting in more fairways and greens hit.

Tried and true

TaylorMade is always pushing the boundaries with technological advances and gimmicks that promise to hit the ball longer and straighter every year. But they made their name by making simple, well-designed clubs that flat-out perform. 

The RBZ Fairway Wood forgoes the fancy materials and adjustability of many modern fairway woods. Instead, it’s a classic, effective design that’ll suit any golfer.

Low profile

The RBZ Fairway is very vertically compact, and rests very low on the ground at address. This gives a great visual cue that you’ll be able to deliver the club to the bottom half of the ball and send it flying high in the air. 

High-handicappers often lack pre-swing confidence, so a club like the RBZ Fairway that settles nicely behind the ball is a good choice.

Speed Pocket

Like the M4 above but even more pronounced, the RBZ Fairway features TaylorMade’s legendary Speed Pocket, which results in great distance across the whole face. 

Heel and toe strikes still take advantage of the Speed Pocket and travel a good distance with surprisingly good roll-out.

The only drawback of the deep Speed Pocket is that it results in a high-pitched, tinny sound. It’s not as satisfying as I’d like on sweet-spot contact, but the shots aren’t affected. And that’s what it all comes down to.

Flash Face Technology

If you are looking for more distance from your fairway woods, then the Epic Flash line has you covered with their Flash Face technology. Callaway has redesigned the club face on their Epic Flash woods using artificial intelligence to make the impact zone of the club thinner and hotter for increased length on shots.

Another feature of the Flash Face that has golfers enjoying the Epic Flash is that the face has a larger sweet spot for better quality contact and more forgiveness on off-center strikes.

Face Cup Technology for Forgiveness

Accompanying the Flash Face feature is the Face Cup technology that assists with keeping your shots straight no matter where they find the club face. Forged with 455 Carpenter steel, the Face Cup helps deliver remarkably fast ball speed while preventing the golf ball from straying off your target line.

Put together, the Face Cup and Flash Face technology work in unison to promote maximum distance and accuracy, a great combination for low handicappers who want the best equipment in their bag in their pursuit of breaking par.

Optifit Hosel for Custom Control

The Epic Flash is fitted with a Optifit Hosel that allows golfers to customize their Epic Flash Fairway Wood to their liking. Whether you want to tailor your shot for a draw or fade or reduce or increase your launch angle, the Epic Flash has you covered with their easy-to-adjust loft sleeve.

The hosel on the Callaway club is lighter and faster for more distance, while helping the club stabilize at impact for less twisting and higher launch.

Adjustable Loft Sleeve & Weighting

The F9 Fairway has eight adjustable loft settings, giving golfers more control and options on the height of their shots. Regardless of the loft setting you choose, Cobra has included their Smart Pad Technology to help keep the face square at impact.

A rear tungsten weight anchors the back of the club and helps keep the center of gravity back to assist with higher launch off the face. Also, the weight is interchangeable if you want a heavier feel throughout the swing.

Three Different Options

The King F9 Fairway comes in three different options to customize your club set. There is a 3-4 wood, a 5-6 wood, and a 7-8 wood to choose from. Each club offers different features to help create the shot shape and height that you want from your fairway wood.

The popular 3-4 wood has shallower rails to create the sweeping motion that golfers want from their long fairway woods. The rails allow for a lower and more rounded swing arc to lift the golf ball from trouble areas like rough and hardpan surfaces.

The other options have higher lofts and moderate rails on the sole to accommodate a steeper swing for more compression and greater launch angle.

Aerodynamic Crown

The F9 Fairway also features an incredibly sleek aerodynamic crown for maximum club head speed. Lightweight and durable, the club head is another reason why the F9 Fairway is one of the best bargains for mid-handicappers looking to upgrade their secondary woods.

The carbon fiber crown of the Cobra fairway wood moves more weight to the high side of the head to allow for a lower center of gravity that creates incredibly high launch after impact with reduced side spin for straighter and more accurate shots.

Lofts

With lofts starting at 21 degrees and going all the way up to 33 degrees, these fairway woods are designed as replacements for long and mid irons. Many high handicappers struggle with long irons, and even struggle to hit hybrids properly. If that’s you, you may find a lot to like here. The Moon Woods offer a good bit of forgiveness for off-center hits.

With the high lofts, you’re not going to get much distance out of these compared to a normal fairway wood setup of, say, a 3 and 5 wood. But if you can’t hit a 3-wood properly, that’s not really going to concern you! The 21-degree flies about as far as a well-struck 3-iron, with the added benefit of a bit of stopping power than most high-handicappers have a hard time generating.

Shallow

The Moon Woods have an extremely low profile. This makes them tough to hit if they’re teed up at all, so be sure you’re teeing them close to the ground if you decide to tee off with them. But it does help them cut through the rough and get under the ball on a tight fairway lie. Sometimes when it seemed like only a 9-iron or pitching wedge would be able to give the ball enough lift to escape heavy rough, the Moon Wood was up to the task.

I was also surprised to find them useful around the green. If you have trouble with chunking or thinning chips and wish you had a more reliable option, take the Moon Wood to a chipping green next time you’re practicing. You may be pleasantly surprised that the ball pops up into the air and rolls out nicely to the hole.

This is really only a good option if you have a lot of green to work with, but that’s often the toughest shot for a high handicapper to hit.

Value

At a price point similar to better-known companies, it’s tough to spring for a relatively unknown company. But if you miss the old Adams Tight Lies club or you’re new to the game and can’t hit fairway woods or hybrids, it’s worth your time to give these a shot.

Clubhead Speed

The Callaway Rogue fairway woods feature “Jailbreak Technology,” which is designed to maximize clubhead speed through their aerodynamic streamlining in collaboration with airplane manufacturer Boeing. 

This translates into a very fast fairway wood with a hot face that really gets the ball up in the air and flying.

High handicappers may find that the Rogue 3-wood is easier to hit and longer than their drivers, so you may wind up being like Henrik Stenson, hitting 3-wood off of most tees. 

The increased clubhead speed also helps generate more lift off the fairway and even from the rough.

Forgiveness

While Callaway has done everything it can to maximize distance, the forgiveness of the driver is a bit compromised. Heel and toe hits fly offline without much directional correction. 

The distance is still good, but it would be nice to see more perimeter weighting to help mis-hits curve back to the intended target.

Is the trade-off worth it?

High handicappers are always looking for more distance, so the Rogue is a good choice for shorter, straighter hitters who would benefit from longer shots. 

If you’re a high handicapper because you’re always in the woods trying to find the ball you hit 50 yards offline, you may want to look for a club that offers more directional correction.

Performance

The big selling point for the M5 and M6 woods is the Twist Face technology, which is a tweaked version of the classic “bulge and roll” technology. Instead of the standard bulge and roll, the Twist Face is tweaked to deliver more correction on high-toe and low-heel hits; those are the most common mis-hits for all golfers and, thus, need the most focus.

And the technology works. Whereas normally a high-toe hit would balloon off to the right, the Twist Face helps apply spin to keep the flight lower and curving back towards the original line of the shot. While it’s not going to guarantee good results, it certainly helps to minimize bad ones.

And the thinness of the face combined with the Speed Pocket behind it turns the M6 into a rocket. Many golfers may find they hit it nearly as far as their driver and may find themselves going the Henrik Stenson route of hitting mostly 3-wood off the tee.

While past TaylorMade woods have been a little too busy on the crown for my tastes, this is a simple combination of a silver front half and a carbon-fiber black back half, with a simple sweet-spot indicator that puts a great visual in your mind before you swing. It looks like it’ll send the ball into the stratosphere, and it does!

Value

The TaylorMade M6 has a price tag to match its performance level, however. At around $300/club, it’s up there with some drivers and entire iron sets. High handicappers may have a tough time justifying this expenditure, especially when they may get more benefit out of more lessons or playing time instead of new equipment.

While there are comparable clubs out there for a lower price, if you do want that extra last bit of yardage and forgiveness, it’s here for the taking. I can’t blame you if you opt for a nearly-as-good-but-1/3-the-cost option, however.

Ultralight design

The very light shaft and clubhead together help the high handicapper generate clubhead speed while encouraging a full release of the clubhead through the swing. 

While most fairway woods come with shafts around 85g, the Cobra F-Max Stiff shaft is only 65g, so you should notice an uptick in swing speed.

Offset hosel

A feature you find more often in putters and irons is an offset, designed to help get the clubface closed or squared at impact. 

Players who tend to slice the ball do so because the clubface is open to the swing path when it hits the ball. 

An offset club sets the clubface back from the hosel ever so slightly, giving the golfer that extra split-second of time to rotate their hands and release the clubhead through the ball.

This can help promote a draw, or at the very least less of a slice. You don’t usually see lower handicap golfers using much offset since they’ll want to work the ball both ways. 

But if you always fight a slice, the Cobra F-Max design can help straighten you out. You may even manage to hit a draw every once in a while!

Back/heel weight

The other factor that will help fix a slice is the addition of back/heel weighting. This moves the center of gravity closer to the heel of the club and imparts draw spin on the ball no matter where on the face you make contact. 

This will help correct a slice, but if you already hook the ball it will accentuate that.

Ultralight shaft

The 60-gram graphite shaft is as light as you’ll find in any fairway wood.

Quite frankly, it’s too light for most golfers, but slow-swinging seniors and high handicappers will find a lot to like here.

The light, flexible shaft allows for greater clubhead speed, which helps get the ball up in the air.

Extra loft

The 3-wood comes with 16 degrees of loft, which is what you might find in 5-woods from other manufacturers.

Orlimar also offers, 5-, 7-, 9-, 11-, 13- and 15-woods in lofts all the way up to 38 degrees. That’s an 8-iron in most sets!

So if you have a slower swing or have trouble getting irons up into the air, the Orlimar Escape woods should be on your short list.

Shallow face

Orlimar’s Escape features a shallow face and a unique design that gets under the ball and sends it flying high in the air.

This makes it very easy to hit, but means you won’t get a ton of distance and not much in the way of roll.

If you’re using the Orlimar woods as iron replacements, this is a good thing! But if you’d like a more traditional 3-wood that’ll give you 15-20 yards of roll after it lands, this isn’t for you.

Slight draw bias

Though the TaylorMade AeroBurner fairway wood doesn’t have an offset like the Founders Club or Cobra woods reviewed above, it still seemed to offer a draw bias.

This could be due to the weighting or the hosel-style, but either way it’ll help you correct a slice.

For many golfers, hitting a baby draw with fairway woods is the holy grail, as it’s generally the longest shot you can hit due to good roll-out. The TaylorMade AeroBurner is built for hitting high baby draws.

Alignment lines

The alignment aids on the TaylorMade AeroBurner are the best among fairway woods tested. In addition to the “AeroBurner” logo that’s situated perfectly above the sweet spot, there’s a channel cut into the crown of the club that flanks the sweet spot and really helps focus your eye.

High handicappers will appreciate this alignment help as simply lining up with a proper setup and alignment is frustratingly difficult to pull off. If you’re using the Aeroburner from the tee, I’d suggest using your ball’s alignment aid to point in the direction you want the ball to start.

Then line it up with the AeroBurner and let your feet and body follow those lines. You may feel like you’re aimed way right or way left of the target, but trust it.

Eventually, with enough practice, you’ll start to aim all of your clubs better. I find at the beginning of every season I tend to aim farther right than intended. It takes a few sessions before I start aiming properly, and clubs with good alignment aids help.

White clubhead

For a long time, all of TaylorMade’s woods were available only in an all-white design. It’s a clever marketing move, as it was easy to see everyone on TV using a white clubhead. 

But I’ve found many golfers aren’t a big fan of it. And the fairway woods tend to get dirty easily, especially if you’re hitting from the rough a lot. It takes a bit of getting used to, but if the results are satisfying, I’m guessing you’ll adjust without too much trouble.

Less forgiving

The AeroBurner fairway wood has a nice, large sweet spot, which is great. But most high handicappers will still miss this large sweet spot fairly often, and off-center contacts aren’t as rewarding with the AeroBurner as with the higher-rated clubs. If you’re looking more for distance and a high ball flight than forgiveness, the AeroBurner is a good value.

Setting up

The PGX fairway woods have a set of small arrows for an alignment aid, and I wish it was just a dot instead. When setting up, the offset makes it look like the arrows are pointed way left of the target. 

This can cause aiming issues, especially for people with a bad slice who are used to aiming way left to begin with. The arrows may cause subconscious overcorrection, which is the last thing a slicer wants.

Ball flight

The PGX is focused on keeping the ball left, and it does a pretty good job of that. But overall distance and forgiveness are somewhat lacking. It just doesn’t have the lively face or high-tech design advantages of most of the other woods reviewed here. Ball flights are high but a bit short. 

However, most importantly, they tend to draw or hook. So the one trick they attempt, they pull off.

The bottom line

The PGX is an inexpensive club geared at the recreational golfer who just wants to stop violently slicing the ball. It won’t win any beauty contests (in fact, it gets scratched up pretty easily even if you’re diligent about keeping its headcover on), but at a price point around $50 and lofts available up to a 15-wood, it might be a lifesaver to the right high-handicapper.