Common Golf Club Lofts

The chart in this article lists out common golf club lofts. Understanding loft values is important in custom clubmaking. It can also be useful to consider lofts when comparing different sets of irons for purchase.

If you're new to the concept of clubface loft, let's take a brief moment and explain. Golf club lofts are stated in degrees (think back to your geometry or trigonometry classes).

The loft represents the angle between the golf club's hosel and the clubface. The picture to the right helps explain how golf club lofts are measured.

Before you shell out a chunk of money on a new set of golf clubs, you may want to check on the lofts for the set you're interested in.

The store manager should be able to provide these figures to you. Golf club distributors usually send include a few specification sheets along with the golf clubs they ship.

You can also often find golf club lofts by going to the manufacturer's website.

While most iron lofts are pretty standard, if you have a tendency to hit the ball too high or too low, you may want to look for a set of golf clubs whose lofts help balance out your trajectory patterns.

For example, if you hit the ball too high, a set of irons with lower lofts will help.

Vice versa for those of you who hit the ball too low - find a set of clubs that have lower average clubface lofts.

Since most golf club sets have fairly standard lofts between them, especially with irons, I wouldn't spend an inordinate amount of time comparing lofts. But it is one more consideration if you're struggling with your golf club purchase decision.

Golf Club Lofts Chart

There are a ton of loft charts out there. Unfortunately there aren't any standards, per se. The following chart takes a representative average across many different loft sources. I've also compared these figures with several commercial sets (irons and woods) to make sure the ranges are accurate.

You'll notice from the chart above that, while there are variations within each club, the difference in average lofts from one club to the next is fairly consistent. For example, in a matched set of golf clubs you would never find a 3 degree gap between the 6 and 7 iron and an 8 degree gap between the 7 and 8 iron.

A golfer playing with a mixed bag of clubs - clubs from differ net manufacturers - may hit a higher number club farther than a lower number. For example, they hit their six iron farther than their five iron. Why is this? Most likely, it's because their six iron has the same loft (or less) than their five iron from a different brand.

This is one of the reasons why it's important to play with a matched set of clubs. The loft gap between clubs in the set is consistent.

Finished with golf club lofts? Click for more equipment tips.