With just a few holes left to play on Friday, it looked like 65-year-old Fred Couples and 67-year-old Bernhard Langer were going to defy the odds and make it through to Masters weekend. While a couple of late stumbles saw both of them miss out by the narrowest of margins, it did not diminish the magnitude of what both these great champions achieved on Thursday and Friday at Augusta National. With Langer averaging little over 250 yards off the tee against a field average of 295 yards, to miss out by just a single stroke was nothing short of remarkable, and Couples was just a shot further back - ahead of the likes of Adam Scott and Brooks Koepka.
As an equipment writer, I am always fascinated to delve into the bags of these great players to see what the rest of us can learn, and Fred Couples may be offering us all a valuable lesson. If you include his putter, currently you will see seven headcovers in the bag of the man dubbed “Boom Boom” in his heyday, SEVEN! Freddie is currently using a Driver, 3 wood, and 5 wood, followed by a 4, 5, and 6 hybrid, with his longest iron being a 7. With so many players out there still holding onto the belief that ‘real players’ use long irons, I would urge you to go and watch back Couples’ 36 holes at Augusta this week and tell me that isn’t a ‘real player’.
What Couples has done here is brilliantly set aside his ego and simply worked out the best equipment setup to help him shoot the lowest score possible. Freddie has had some pretty consistent and well-documented back issues over the years and had simply found himself in a position where he just “couldn’t hit” his mid-long irons anymore. So, instead of belligerently carrying on, Couples swallowed his pride and turned to the world of high-lofted hybrids as iron replacements, and the results have been fantastic. So fantastic in fact that he even holed out from 191 yards with his 28-degree 6-hybrid on the 14th hole on Thursday for an eagle en route to a fantastic first round of 71.
While not quite as deep into the hybrid game as Couples, Bernhard Langer still had both 18 and 22-degree Adams Idea Pro hybrids in the bag this week, relying heavily on them for his second shots into many of Augusta’s long par four holes.
Of course, these things are player-dependent, but I would urge many of you out there to give this strategy at least some consideration. As a PGA Professional who still plays in a number of Pro-Am tournaments each year, I would conservatively guess that 50% of my amateur partners have too many irons in their bag and would significantly benefit from dropping at least one of those in favor of a lofted hybrid. The benefits are vast. Ball speed increases, peak height, steeper descent angles and simply ease of use, these clubs can seriously enhance not only your score but also your pure enjoyment of the game.
Freddie has been using the TaylorMade Qi10 hybrids, which performed very strongly in our testing, but there are plenty of other options out there to help you find one of the best hybrids on the market. Furthermore, if you are even more committed to the concept of hybrids replacing irons, then you could even go down the route of full hybrid sets such as the Eleven Golf hybrid iron set or even the Cleveland Halo XL Full Face hybrid irons, which offer the benefits of hybrid-style performance all the way down to the wedges (something I have even forced upon my own parents!).
We all know how tough this game can be, so if you can make it just that little bit easier, it can only be a good thing, right? And if you don’t believe me, ask Freddie!
