I work with a lot of women golfers and I often find that their clubs are too long. Perhaps more than any other fitting metric, length can have the biggest impact on a golfer’s success. With the average height for women in the United States being around 5’4″ club manufacturers don’t always provide stock or custom options for women who are at or below the average.

When looking at standard length driver configurations manufacturers build drivers for women at a length of around 44 ½ inches and 45 ½ inches for men. With the average height for men in the States coming in around 5’9″, the length difference is disproportionate to the difference in height.

Why Does it Matter?

Club lengths that are fit to a person’s height and wrist to floor measurement can have a profound effect on their game. Inconsistent contact is perhaps one of the most common golfer frustrations and ill-fitted equipment is one of the reasons it happens. Since golfers need to have some shallowing of the club in the downswing clubs that are too long can cause ground contact before the ball or thin contact when the golfer tries to make in swing adjustments. Newer players tend to be steeper with their swing paths and longer equipment will make it worse as they try to get the clubhead through impact. This leads to bigger slices, lack of distance and higher scores. When those golfers try to shallow the club to fix the slice it inevitably leads to the contact issues which in turn creates frustration and regression. Regardless of how you swing the club too much length will have a negative impact on your game.

Author Recommendation

As the name suggests, U.S. Kids Golf primarily makes clubs for junior golfers. Recently, however, they have offered clubs designed for women whose height falls between 60″ and 66″ inches. Hopefully this trend will continue with other manufacturers but in the meantime these sets can be beneficial for those looking for a set of clubs matched to their needs.