Fairway Decision Ladder
Compare your driver against a safer tee club across wide, standard and narrow fairway corridors — from 15 to 50 yd depending on difficulty. Hit five shots with each club at every width, then see which club finds more fairways and learn when the driver's extra distance is worth the added dispersion.
Course Management Intermediate ~15 min 4 difficulty levelsDifficulty levels
Setup & execution
Mark three fairway corridors at 40, 35 and 25 yd wide. Hit five drivers and five shots with a safer tee club into each corridor — 30 shots total. Record each shot as a fairway or a miss left/right. The 25 yd corridor is where the driver-versus-safer-club decision gets real: this is close to a standard club fairway. Commit to a target line and a specific shot shape before every ball, and watch whether the safer club actually tightens your dispersion enough to matter.
Goal
Hold the corridor under pressure at the narrow station. Reach 17 or more fairways to pass, then read the per-width comparison to see where — if anywhere — the safer club earns its keep.
Tour context
The USGA considers a 32-yard fairway a good width for a scratch player to hit regularly — roughly the PGA Tour average. Most amateur driver patterns are 75–95 yards wide, so on tighter holes the felt tradeoff between distance and dispersion is exactly what this drill measures.
Scoring options
Pick how you are rewarded. Each option records different outcomes and feeds different insights.
Classic
Fairways found with both clubs. A miss costs you nothing.
Points
The fairway pays double; every miss costs you a point.
Directional
A strict net score on your two-way miss.
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