MAKING MISSES BETTER! Best Fairway Woods of 2025

This video features the best fairway woods of 2025 as decided by 2nd Swing Golf’s 2025 Fitters Choice. The 2nd Swing award-winning master club fitters have analyzed millions of swings and thousands of club fittings on the best fairway woods of 2025 and voted on their favorites in the 2025 Fitters Choice survey. This video in particular highlights the Best fairway woods of 2025 including the Titleist GT2 and PING G440 Max.

0:00 Intro
3:17 Testing – Titleist GT2
10:51 Testing – PING G440 Max
16:05 Data & Conclusions

In this 2025 Fitters Choice video, 2nd Swing’s Drew Mahowald is joined by master club fitter Tyler Fitzel to test and review two of the best fairway woods of 2025, including the Titleist GT2 and PING G440 Max.

Learn more about 2025 2nd Swing Fitters Choice: https://www.2ndswing.com/fitters-choice

Schedule an award-winning 2nd Swing Tour Van club fitting: https://fitting.2ndswing.info/schedule-now/

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today we’re back with another fitter’s choice video in the tour van today it’s fairywoods core/max fairywoods we call them the standard model in the series we’ve got our fitters choice results and we’re going to highlight the two best models and tell you why these two in particular are the best fairywoods of 2025 hey golfers I’m Drew Holder Second Swing Golf here in the tour van at Second Swing Minnetonka tyler Fitzell’s with me master club fitter and as I mentioned this is a fitter’s choice video so um I’ll let Tyler explain exactly what that is but essentially our fitters got together and voted and um had a list of what was the best in every category and Ping G440 Max Titus GT2 were the top in this category so can you give me a little bit more detail on fitter’s choice and also we’ll kind of lead into then what you’ve seen from these two models uh and why maybe they were so highly thought of by the fitters yeah one of the things that we see on a day-by-day basis with our customers is you know we’re trying some of these products is like every company’s got their new stuff we want to find out well how is this working what is it doing is it getting someone you know more launch more spin is this uh something that’s more workable less workable like all of the options that customers are looking for so we’re trying to get to those in a fitting and we’re doing it with the these um brands of equipment so all across the board um we ask our fitters to please uh kind of give their thoughts in well what what’s been doing well uh so we come across the last couple here uh and especially in the fairway woods we get to these core models these are the best on the market that we’ve seen it doesn’t slight anyone at all everyone’s making great product i like to tell people it’s like your best shots are going to be your best shots no matter what you’ve got what we’re all every company is looking at is trying to kind of get the miss better so if you if we’re talking about hey if I’ve been a fairway guy um and I’ve been hitting a certain brand for a while is you get in here and you try a couple of these things out you might find hey this is a different brand for me now yes um but we’re just highlighting what we’re seeing what our customers are seeing the success that they’re seeing with it and we’re just trying to relay that message on uh to you guys i think it is important to make that note that just be I mean there’s only two that we’re going to highlight today um for this video but you know there are also a plethora of really good options in this category so uh you have Ping G440 Max I have Titus GT2 others that were close closely in contention tailor made Qi35 Callaway Elite Cobra DS Adapt X I’m sure those all have all done really well for you fit several golfers into those models um so what we’re going to do today is test just do a little head-to-head test here see what how these two in particular compare talk to me about what we’re doing in terms of a shaft here as well yeah so one of the things I did was just grabbed kind of the 75 g low launch low spin shaft uh that’s one of the things I want to try to just keep as a constant not necessarily a variable so we’re not changing up um you know every company’s got a multitude of different shafts to choose from so I just kind of wanted to keep that you know your swing types a little bit on the faster side so I want support and stability that’s one of the reasons I grabbed these sure yeah and then we got three woods 15 degrees we’re going to hit some shots let’s do it starting with GT2 um what I like I mean with with titalists they don’t go away from what works and what works um for a lot of people is just how clean and straightforward the look is yeah um every year with their woods they haven’t really you know going back to really all the TS series been clean black they have the little icon at the you know for alignment purposes but there’s nothing else there to distract you whereas you know other brands kind of throw colors or lines or you know other things on there to um not I want to say distract you but to make it a little bit unique there we go yeah good swing there mhm nice yep just a little bit open face but yeah that feels pretty good and that’s actually that’s a pretty good spin rate to to monitor right you probably wanted around 3,000 with 3-wood for the and and you know we that that question comes up quite a bit especially in our fittings as a customer of this it’s like well what should I be should is a really tough word in this game because it’s not what it should be it’s what it is mhm in other words but on a shotby-shot basis you’ve got different environmental conditions different um just different swing conditions so uh you’d like to have a range and that’s a nice range for that launch yeah I like that a lot i mean if I can hit that a few more times I’ll feel pretty good about this club that was a good ball right there yeah it’s a good swing so good uh well club speed and ball speed smash factor we talk a lot about the smash factor with the driver because it’s on a tee and there’s shouldn’t be a whole lot of resistance to it we start talking about fairway woods that smash factor is still a factor but it’s also a little bit more dependent on the the turf condition and the type of hit that you get out of it right but it can’t really be more than 1.50 and that at 1.49 so we’ve got really good launch really good spin really good carry distance excellent yeah this says that one felt really good yeah let’s hit another one hey one probably slightly on the toe there which actually helped in terms of distance because that spin went down a little bit there’s another good one yeah again really nice great carry distance uh launch spins good smash was 1.5 again yeah I mean that’s that’s right there is my my standard shot shape I guess yeah see if I can get it i mean it’s See if I can get one maybe a little higher in the air that definitely launched higher it’s probably going to be a little knuckler because it was a little bit kind of Yeah yeah it was but that’s okay too again it’s the the exact same shot it’s very predictable for that yeah i mean if that’s the the you know miss Yeah that’s very Yeah like you said very acceptable let me see if I can get one more good one here okay so that that’s I was curious about that one because that was definitely far off the heel we did see that carry distance dip you know probably what from the average probably 10 to 15 yards in terms 15 towards 20 yeah and it was it was a good hit um in terms of that you had the ball speed again smash factor was high with it so it was a solid hit but yeah the launch is a little lower and the spin went up um yeah it probably was a little on the heel uh that’s one of the things that we talk about like with with either one of these is uh the companies are really trying to gear the equipment for the miss and so when we talk about if you were to hit it low that was a low launch but it had a lot of spin so that actually kept that ball in the air a lot longer and that’s an important factor to this is that spin helps to create that lift and we want that lift to keep that ball moving yeah um all of the the fairway woods now are designed this way but you know there’s spa pay special attention every company has got some sort of a unique design um in titleist they’re they’re talking about the the way that they’re engineering that whole face yeah and we’ll we’ll talk a little bit about kind of that LC cup uh yeah yeah forge Lup face yep correct so yeah and that one you know we’ve Kevin talks about the quadrant of death where you hit low and in the heel which is what that one was y um but yeah I think I mean overall with this club I know there’s probably Yep that makes a lot of sense with how that how that played out yeah i mean but though I mean I I what I like about this club is it seemed pretty easy and it had a ton of ton of pop off the face when Yeah and I hit a few a few of those solid right and you know the four you know solid swings I put on the ball all carried 260 yards and then I had obviously the one kind of heel ball that again we’re talking about the carry distance dripping or dipping about 15 yards probably 10 to 15 yards on that one um so that is worth noting but um again super hot and again clean to look at as well anything else that jumps out of you from from these uh five swings here you know well like I I mentioned uh I think that the smash factor is an important uh an important piece of data that we look at and it really is geared towards the driver but it tells us a little bit more about how it’s going with any of these clubs and so for the fairway wood to have a smash factor this high you’re hitting it very solid so club speed’s there ball speeds there um this is a really nice launch and spin like we mentioned we had one that was a little low and on the heel that’s okay and so we’re gonna have that it’s still on the edge of the fairway and it’s it’s still goes 260 and it’s still two you know carry-wise it’s 200 i’m just hitting maybe another club or club and a half into the green that I wouldn’t with the other shots up there but um still really you know I think it’s pretty darn I can see why there’s um some love from the fitters here and then you know in a if we really wanted to do a deep dive and you know make this video super long right we could get into the huzzle and all the different adjustments you can make there but yeah um really solid uh G440 Max now should we do it all right so let’s take a look at the Ping G440 Max this is um again one of the top fairway woods that we’ve seen on the market yeah along with the Titus GT2 that we we’ve been hitting here these are core models yes and what we’re looking at today in the fitter’s choice uh uh testing that we’re doing is just it’s like how are these looks feels Yeah comparing numbers and and seeing kind like is there a major difference between them now you’ve played ping yes I have um for a while so now I have the G425 LST so a couple generations but that’s the three what I’ve I’ve used now this is going to be my fifth year using it i mean I was G425 when it first came out i grabbed that LST and put it in the bag um I will say looks wise this there’s a couple things different obviously you know there’s you kind of see this carbonfly wrap a little bit on the back side there um and then also to me you just see a lot more of the like kind of the grooves on the face this you know they have them pretty distinctly kind of painted filled in there white and for some reason that’s jumping out at me a little bit um but the shape I feel like is pretty similar the just it’s obviously rounded a little bit um more weight more mass behind on these kind of core or max miles and the low spin ones so um yeah still I mean it’s a clean looking fairywood for sure well let’s see what this does that was slightly low on the face but I actually it’s pretty good results for all all things considered i I remember the GT2 that I hit low on the face ended up being I think pretty similar in distance so yeah yeah that’s exactly what it was it was like almost seven and a half degrees it was about I know the spin was in the 3000s that’s almost a carbon copy oh that felt pretty good oo well the one thing I I’m I’m seeing out of this at least for the moment is this is a a little bit straighter for you so far yeah yeah and maybe that’s just because you’re comfortable with kind of the size and the shape and the coloring right like this is this is essentially just the newer version of what you’ve already got in your bag um and that plays into this it’s like you get comfortable with that and you you’re hitting it like uh you’ve actually got your club speeds faster your ball speeds faster yeah i will say the spin to this point has been a little higher which again isn’t always a bad thing and for me it’s probably a good thing just because I I’m relatively low spinning and I I don’t I’m almost hitting up on the ball i am technically hitting up on the ball with my three right so you know if you look at the technology and that’s kind of where we talk about the core model here the reason we’re going with the core model is to kind of see was like this is the one designed kind of for everyone yeah but you start getting into the nitty-gritty of all of these club companies and you’re going to find a lower launch 3-wood a higher launch 3-wood you know Ping now bias yeah exactly with 3-wood even yeah yeah so it’s like it’s not when you start talking about a 3-wood right now um there’s at least five versions in every company yeah then of course as we mentioned with GT2 there’s adjustable hazel yeah or Yeah that’s right if we want to kind of start to include some of the mini drivers or the small the big threewoods oh there’s my first one that’s offline little open face there but one of the reasons I think we see the spin a little higher is that you do have a tendency for your attack angle to kind of come up slightly through and with lower strikes especially on the the ping they they talk about uh the technology that they have called spinicity and it’s this idea that that the the curvature of the face much like we talked about with the titleist as well the curvature of the face on the bottom is is got more curve to create more launch to create more spin on a bottom a bottom side hit that quadrant or the the two quadrants on the bottom that’s going to help achieve lift it’s going to help achieve carry distance basically it’s like slightly the loft is actually slightly changed on the bottom portion here a little bit different than what it’s stated to kind of right help with the misses when you hit down there because that is the common miss with fairywoods is hitting it low on the face for so many people especially off hitting off the turf speaking of low face yep i will say for the swings I’ve made I mean again I just had two that were wildly different and not good but the spin rate and the carry distance hasn’t changed a ton on them this one could dive left we’ll see yeah can um let’s you know you did this with the the titalist as well try to create a little bit more loft and see what happens just try the you know try to hit one higher and just see what happens yep okay definitely higher yep it was but we didn’t see a lot of difference in the spin one of the things that I’ll ask a customer as we’re in the process of fitting any club for that matter is let’s try and see what just try something yeah and see what happens for a particular shot if we you know try two or three swings and we might see the pattern that develops from that yeah that that can be important it’s not that hey we’ve got concrete evidence that that XYZ is happening it still could have been A B and C but it’s this idea that hey I have the shot within this club too and we’re seeing that in here yeah we talk about also was like one of the reasons that we really like to look at our fritter’s choice um uh awards inside as what’s going on is that the variables are like next to nothing here so we we we we aren’t dealing with outside we don’t have wind or rain or environment the same spot every time yeah we’ve got the same spot we got a flat lie when we get outside all of this changes and so I like I I tell people all the times your the environment will change what happens to the shot so the results that you see from the club will change a little bit but you still the important thing is that you’re still confident in it yeah that whatever you end up getting fit for or the confidence you have in what you’re playing can kind of withstand these different variables that that pop up so I’ll give it one more swing here okay that turns over it should be pretty good i was going to say Oh it didn’t turn over interesting okay yeah you hit it really well well I saw that the ball speed pop up right away really good smash factor to that yeah yeah the face angle is just not quite uh you know a little behind the club path if you will there but so one of the things I’m looking at is we compare some of the numbers to this uh we’re talking a little bit about the the club speed the ball speed the launch and the spin um you’ve got really good club speed to ball speed your smash factor relationship here is 1.48 in the title list and 1.49 mhm uh so we’re talking about really solid hits if you look back at the titleist we had about 10 degrees of launch and 2700 RPMs on average yeah versus nine degrees and about 3,300 almost 3,400 so that spin difference is really one of the major driving forces in terms of the differences between these two clubs y you didn’t get as much spin and you had a little bit more launch with the titleist you got a little bit less launch and more spin with the ping you had the same sort of ball speed the same sort of club speed the same sort of efficiency in contact right it’s just that that spin is the driving force and the difference in the distance for sure y um because you know the ping again I mean the ball speed is literally the same on these particular selected shots that we you know the call it the you know the the main the swings that we’ve chosen that are you know worth being looked at here well the non-outliers yeah another thing to that too is if you want to talk a little bit about the swing itself your average club path was slightly into out as it normally is your your uh face angle is is slightly open but not as much compared to the path which it normally is your attack angle is the the same we’re looking at virtually two very similar clubs which is what we what we try to design them to do but now now you can see where if you come in to me and you don’t have enough spin I might be leaning between these two and saying “Hey the ping is our option.” Because what the ping’s going to do is it’s going to climb higher mhm it’s going to have a steeper landing angle and it’s going to stop a little bit quicker y and so if you’re coming in and saying “I really need that club at about 250 yards going into things like par threes or sorry par fives.” Yeah or if you’re looking at long par Yeah or along par three and getting it to stop yeah this this would be my choice for that so this again it goes back to well how does this fit for you right it’s not how it fits for me and that’s to be the big thing to me taking away from this um is it’s kind of nice for this particular you know fitter’s choice kind of results is that the top two in the category for us in this test have pretty distinct different purpose so you know if a player does have a lot of spin maybe they’re different swing than I than I have where they’re cutting across it they’re you know opening the face and they got a lot of spin and that thing’s kind of floating gt2 is a fairywood in this category that’s forgiving but also has pretty low spin to help that player get the distance they can out of their swing so yeah this is really good i mean this is kind of this is really nice to compare two of the the best furry woods out there um I think and again all the other options we talked about Qi35 Elite there’s really good options out there you got to come test them get fit with one of our fitters and Tyler’s been in the weeds on this all year long yeah working with golfers so uh but yeah these were two of the really good ones we saw that today um I didn’t put my best swings on them but I think we also saw right away a pretty distinct difference between which is the idea here to show people yeah totally well Tyler thank you for for joining us this is excellent i’ll let you sign off keep your grooves clean and stay razor sharp [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] heat heat [Applause] [Music]