The short version: If the club is mostly for tee shots, most Forum members would take the mini driver. If you’ll ever hit it from the fairway, the 3-wood is the safer bet. Test both and check your gapping first.
Gaps in the bag are usually a wedge or iron problem. This one is at the other end and it started with a question from a real MyGolfSpy reader.
He’s a 9 handicap who carries his driver about 260 yards and his 5-wood about 215. He has one open spot in the bag and needs a club that carries 230-240 yards, mostly for tight par-4s and tee shots where driver brings too much trouble into play. He’s comfortable hitting the 5-wood from the fairway so this club doesn’t need to be an approach club. He has room for a 3-wood or a mini driver but not both.
We put the question to the MyGolfSpy Forum. More than 40 golfers answered and a few things stood out.
The mini driver won the tee-shot argument
Close to half of the responses leaned towards mini and the reasoning was consistent. If the club’s main job is finding fairways, a bigger head is more forgiving than a 3-wood.
One 4 handicap put it bluntly, calling mini drivers “a cheat code off the tee box.” Another golfer, a 20 handicap, said he had tried a 3-wood several times with no luck and then borrowed a mini and started finding more fairways almost immediately.
One response that stood out to me was the point that most mid-handicappers are better off with more teeing options than with a 3-wood off the deck. They called the 3-wood off the deck a low-percentage shot, especially when they already have a 5-wood they trust.
The fairway is the mini’s biggest question mark
Several golfers who like the mini off the tee said they struggle to hit it from the fairway. The larger head and lower loft make it harder to get the ball airborne and hold a green.
I tried a mini driver for the first time a few weeks ago and I was able to hit some decent shots from the fairway but it was inconsistent. It would absolutely take some getting used to. My 3-wood, on the other hand, I find easy to hit from the turf.
That matters less for this golfer since he’s told us he doesn’t need the club from the fairway. But it’s also the 3-wood camp’s best argument. A club that works only from the tee is one more specialist in the bag and if your driver is already doing that job, you’re asking a lot of the extra slot. Our off-the-tee vs. off-the-fairway testing shows how much that performance varies from model to model.
It may not fill the gap you think it does
For the golfer in this story, the goal is a club that carries 230-240 yards.
One Forum member who switched from a 3-wood to a mini picked up 10-15 yards of carry but still sits about 20 yards behind his driver. For our golfer, that puts the mini at 240, the very top of the range and close enough to the driver to be worth questioning. Part of the extra distance comes from length. Minis typically play longer than a standard 3-wood.
That’s why so many golfers, on both sides, came back to the same advice: hit both before you buy. One 9 handicap said their stock mini was awful until a fitter changed the shaft and adjusted the loft and weight. Another pointed out that you can add a degree and a half of loft or shorten the shaft to pull the distance back toward the gap.
Some of the best answers weren’t on the list
A few golfers rejected the either/or proposition. One suggested a titanium-faced 3-wood which gives you the ball speed of a mini with the playability of a traditional fairway wood, often for less money. Another thought a driving iron for a lower, more piercing flight in the wind would be more useful.
Another golfer skipped the options entirely and built his own mini by cutting down an old driver to 43 inches.
What would I do?
I’d put the mini driver in the bag, with conditions.
The scenario answers most of the questions for us. This golfer wants a tee club, he already has a fairway option he’s comfortable with, and the thread’s strongest 3-wood arguments are about turf play which he’s told us he doesn’t need. If the club’s job is to find fairways, I’d rather give him the bigger head.
But I wouldn’t buy one off the shelf. A mini at the top of that 230-240 range could end up too close to his driver so I’d look for one with enough loft adjustability to dial it down toward 235. And I’d hit it against a 3-wood before spending any money.
Matts
3 weeks ago
I note that the comments on this thread are from average to long hitting golfers. The requirements for mini driver for very short hitters is quite different and so is the rationale behind it. Without going into detail, think about the needs of golfers who a) have to select either a driver or 3 wood on long par 3’s, and b) can’t reach long par 4’s in two shots.