Which clubs earn their spot

First, so you know where I stand: I work in golf retail. Nothing here is a link, and nothing here is a pitch.

A 15 handicap hits his 7 iron within 5 yards of his own number 14% of the time (Shot Scope data via MyGolfSpy, 2026). A scratch golfer, 18.5%. So the 10 yard gaps you have been told to chase are smaller than your normal miss. Nobody hits their number. The question is not whether your gaps are 10 yards. It is whether one of them is 30.

The One Gap

Close the one big gap in your bag. Ignore the small ones.

Most bags have two problems, and neither is a 10 yard gap. The first is a hole. A game improvement pitching wedge is now 41 to 43 degrees (Golf Digest Hot List, 2026). A sand wedge is 54 to 56. That is a 14 degree jump where the sets of the 1990s had 8. The wedge makers' own rule is 4 to 6 degrees between wedges, and that is their rule, they sell wedges, but a 14 degree jump is two or three steps with nothing in it.

The second problem is two clubs that do the same job. A 25 handicap's 4 iron, 5 iron and 6 iron carry 151, 143 and 137 yards on a solid strike (Shot Scope data via MyGolfSpy, 2025). Three clubs. Fourteen yards. A 15 handicap's 5 iron and 6 iron are 7 yards apart.

So the job this week is not to tune your gaps. It is to find the one hole and the one duplicate.

Two cards

The Club Tally is 14 rows. One mark every time you pull a club, kept up for 3 rounds. After 3 rounds, the row with no marks is the club not earning its spot. The two rows with the same marks and the same yardage are the duplicate.

The Carry Card is your carry number for each club, written down in order. The biggest step between two neighbours is The One Gap. In winter, the numbers come from an hour in a simulator bay. In season, they come from your logged rounds. They never come from a store's launch monitor, because a store's monitor is there to sell you something, and that is true of mine too.

Take a club out first

The lesson leads with taking a club out, not buying one. The club with no marks comes out. The spot can stay empty. Fourteen is a limit, not a target.

At the top of the bag, the data leans one way. Golfers from scratch to a 25 handicap are more likely to hit the green with a hybrid than with the equivalent iron (Arccos, 2024). And when Arccos compared a 7 wood with a 3 hybrid across handicaps and distances, the 7 wood hit more greens in 28 of 40 comparisons (Golf Digest, 2022). Some of the best players in the world carry a 7 wood. I swapped my 2 iron for one, and not because of a chart. The 7 wood fit what I needed from that spot in the bag, and the 2 iron did not. That is the whole lesson: tools that fit your needs. Your Club Tally will tell you if a long iron is earning its spot in your bag.

What a fitting is for

I could not find an independent study that shows a fitting lowers your score. Every number you have heard, 3 strokes, 6 strokes, 21 yards, comes from a fitter, a retailer, or a magazine test of 7 to 9 golfers run inside a fitter's shop.

Here is what I would check, and this is my view from about 8 years of fitting, not a research finding. Grip size. Shaft weight. Length, on every club. Grip size you can check yourself: hold the club, and your fingers should not dig into your palm. The other two you cannot check yourself. That is what a fitting is for. It is a measurement service. Judge it by what it measures and changes, not by a promised stroke number.

Your one action this week

Start a Club Tally on your next round and keep it up for 3 rounds. If you are not playing until spring, spend an hour in a simulator bay and write your carry numbers on the Carry Card. Then take out the club with no marks, or the one that does the same job as its neighbour. Buy nothing this week.

If you log your rounds in the app, it records the club on every shot, so the tally keeps itself.

Don't copy my bag. Copy the test.

Next week: before you buy a training aid. Three tests that take two minutes and save you the money.