Golf Club Gapping Chart: How to Space All 13 Clubs

A gapping chart is the simplest piece of equipment analysis you can do, and the most useful. It lists every full-swing club in your bag, what each one actually carries, and the distance between neighbours. Done properly, it answers one question: for any yardage inside your range, is there a club that owns it?

If you want to skip ahead, the free CarryMap Gap Checker builds the chart for you from your own numbers and flags the weak spots automatically. This guide explains what it’s doing and how to act on the result.

What a gapping chart should contain

A useful chart has more than one column of numbers. At minimum:

Club	Loft (optional)	Carry	Carry window	Gap to next club	Flag
7-iron	—	157	150–162	11	Ideal
8-iron	—	146	140–151	10	Ideal
9-iron	—	136	130–142	12	Ideal

Illustrative example numbers only. Not averages and not targets.

• Carry, not total. See carry vs total distance for why.
• Carry window: the shortest and longest carry you’d trust from a normal, good-but-not-perfect swing. This is the column most charts leave out, and it’s where most of the insight lives.
• Gap to next club: the longer club’s carry minus the next club’s carry.
• Loft, if you know it, so you can see whether a strange gap is caused by the equipment or by the swing.

The 10–15 yard heuristic (and why it’s only a starting point)

Many fitters and coaches use something like 10–15 yards of carry between full-swing clubs as a working target. The logic is practical. Gaps much smaller than that usually mean two clubs are doing the same job. Gaps much larger leave a band of yardages where you have to swing harder or softer than normal, and that’s exactly where distance control falls apart.

The CarryMap Gap Checker starts with these flags, which you can edit:

• Under 8 yards: tight or overlapping
• 8–9 yards: watch
• 10–15 yards: ideal
• 16–18 yards: watch
• Over 18 yards: gap

Two adjustments are worth considering:

1. The top of the bag. Driver to fairway wood, and fairway wood to hybrid, often carry bigger gaps. Long shots are less precise and you rarely need to hit an exact number with them. The tool has an option to allow a few extra yards at the top.
2. Swing speed. Slower swing speeds compress the whole ladder. If your 7-iron and driver are both shorter than a fast player’s, the yard differences between your clubs shrink too, so a slightly smaller “ideal” range may suit you better.

Why single numbers hide the real problem

Here’s where most gapping charts mislead. Suppose your 7-iron “goes 157” and your 8-iron “goes 146”. An 11-yard gap looks perfect on paper.

Now look at the windows. If your 7-iron’s honest window is 150–162 and your 8-iron’s is 140–151, the two windows just about touch. Nothing is missing. But if your 7-iron window is actually 161–170 because you were measuring a lot of flushed shots, and your 8-iron window is 140–151, then nothing in your bag covers 151–161. That’s a 10-yard hole the single-number chart never showed you.

This is the core idea behind CarryMap: you have a playable carry window, not one perfect number. Switch the Gap Checker to Carry window mode and it measures exactly that:

• Uncovered = longer club’s minimum − next club’s maximum
• Positive means a hole. Negative means the windows overlap.

The most common gapping problems

1. Long irons that bunch together

Many golfers find their 4-, 5- and sometimes 6-iron carry within a few yards of each other. The lower loft isn’t producing more distance because launch and spin are too low to hold the ball in the air. The fix is usually a club swap, not a swing change. A hybrid or higher-lofted fairway wood often launches higher from the same speed. See 4-iron vs 4-hybrid.

2. The pitching wedge cliff

Iron sets have been designed with progressively stronger lofts, so the pitching wedge in a modern set can be considerably stronger than a traditional one. If you then add a sand wedge from a separate wedge line, the jump from PW to SW can be large. This is one of the most common gaps on any chart. Check your actual lofts and read gap wedge vs pitching wedge and what wedges should I carry.

3. Hybrid and fairway wood overlap

A 5-wood and a 3-hybrid can easily carry the same distance. That isn’t automatically bad, since some players want two different flights for the same number. But it usually means a slot could be better used elsewhere.

4. A huge driver-to-next-club gap

If you carry driver a long way but your next-longest club is a hybrid, there may be a big band of tee shots and long approaches you can’t hit with a stock swing. Whether that matters depends on your course: on a tight layout you may hit a lot of controlled tee shots that need a club in that band.

How to fix a gap or overlap

Work through the options in roughly this order. The cheapest and least disruptive come first.

1. Re-measure. Make sure the numbers came from a real gapping session, not memory or a handful of best shots.
2. Adjust loft and lie. Many forged and some cast irons can be bent a degree or two by a qualified club builder, which can close or open a small gap. Ask about the effect on bounce in wedges.
3. Change wedge lofts. Re-spacing your wedges from your actual PW loft is the most common fix in the scoring zone.
4. Swap a club. Replace a long iron with a hybrid, or a 3-wood with a higher-lofted wood, if launch is the problem.
5. Remove a redundant club and add one where the hole is. With a 14-club limit, every slot matters.

Whatever you change, test it the same way you measured the original gap. You want the new club’s window to sit in the middle of the hole, not overlap the clubs on either side.

Building your own chart in five minutes

1. Pull your numbers from your last range or simulator session.
2. Open the Gap Checker, choose your clubs, and enter carries (or windows).
3. Read the ladder top to bottom. Red dashed bands are holes or big gaps; violet bands are overlaps.
4. Read the top 3 weak spots. They’re written in plain language, like “nothing covers 152–161”.
5. Copy the share link, download the PNG, or print it for your yardage book.

The takeaway

A gapping chart isn’t about hitting the ball further. It’s about making sure every yardage you face has an owner, and knowing which club that is before you pull it out of the bag. Start with honest carry numbers, look at windows rather than single points, and fix the biggest hole first.

FAQ

What is a good yardage gap between golf clubs?

A common starting heuristic is roughly 10 to 15 yards of carry between full-swing clubs, with a little more tolerated at the top of the bag and slightly tighter, more controllable spacing in the wedges. Treat it as a starting point and adjust it to your speed and the shots you actually face.

Should I use carry or total distance for gapping?

Carry. Roll changes with turf, slope, weather and ball flight, but carry is what decides whether you clear a bunker or reach a pin. Gap your bag on carry and treat rollout as a course-condition adjustment.

How often should I re-check my gapping?

Whenever something meaningful changes: new clubs or shafts, a swing change, a different ball, or a noticeable change in speed. Many golfers also re-check at the start of a season.

Can I gap my bag without a launch monitor?

Yes, but it takes more care. Use a laser on a range with flat, visible landing areas, hit to targets, and note where the ball lands rather than where it stops. A launch monitor simply makes carry easier to measure precisely.