Which are our top 5 fairway woods for 2018?

What are the best fairway woods 2018? Are you looking for a new 3-wood to mix it up off the tee or to reach those par-5s in two?

I think a reliable 3-wood is a essential club for any golfer’s bag.

It can step in if the driver is misfiring or give you a little bit more accuracy to a tight fairway.

For me personally, I prefer to hit a 3-wood off the tee rather than the deck.

If I hit a decent drive and I’m faced with 220-230 yards to the pin it’s either a par-5 or a very tough par-4. And I’ll be getting a shot on the latter so there’s no need to be a hero.

I don’t expect to be that accurate from 230 yards out as a mid-handicapper. Don’t get me wrong, if it’s sitting up perfectly (preferably in the first cut of rough) I’ll give it a go.

But I’m looking more at performance off the tee here and if it feels me with the confidence to hit it off the deck as well then that’s a bonus.

Oh, and I’ve only picked out a top five which was very difficult.

Those which very narrowly missed out on the top five were the Cobra F8, Srixon Z F65 and Mizuno ST180.

5. Best fairway woods 2018: Vertical Groove Golf

We’ve been very impressed with both the Vertical Groove driver and 3-wood this year.

It’s no surprise to see them having huge success on the PGA Champions Tour being use by the likes of John Daly Rocco Mediate and Mark Calcavecchia.

There are two versions available a 14˚ Tour and a regular 15˚ model. We tested out the former and we able to get some great numbers.

For me personally, I like to see a flat flight with a 3-wood that doesn’t spin too much and runs out a lot.

And that’s exactly what I found with the VGG 3-wood. It frames the ball really nicely and had quite a deep face to make it ideal for use off a tee.

It seems to me like the vertical groove technology does work as I wasn’t getting any unwanted left to right spin which can balloon the ball up and costing me distance and accuracy.

I actually got fitted for this driver over the phone which was not the most ideal scenario but it certainly helped and was much more worthwhile than just being sent a random stock sample.

I was able to send over some Trackman screenshots, talk about my current 3-wood, what I wanted to see and what I didn’t.

As I say, not the most ideal fitting but it was definitely worthwhile.

SRP: £229

More information can be found on the Vertical Groove Golf website.

See where the VGG driver fared in our 2018 driver test.