You get fourteen slots and the rules do not care how much you paid for any of them. This works out which clubs are actually earning their place, which two are quietly doing the same job, and which distance you have no club for at all. Runs entirely in your browser — nothing uploaded, nothing sold to you.
Score each club on how often you use it times how much you trust it — this free club gapping calculator flags the passengers and the 20-yard holes.
The Bag Audit is a free online golf club gapping calculator that audits all fourteen slots at once. Every club is scored on usage multiplied by confidence, then the whole set is sorted by carry distance so the gaps and overlaps become visible. If you want to audit your golf bag now before spending money on new equipment, this costs nothing and takes five minutes. If you are understanding golf club distance gaps, the target is 10 to 15 yards between clubs: over 20 leaves a distance you cannot cover, and under 8 means you are carrying the same club twice.
Carry is how far it actually flies, not the number on the receipt.
Uses is honestly how many times it comes out in a round.
Trust is 1 (fear) to 5 (would hit it to win a match).
Leave a club blank and it is skipped. Leave Uses blank and that club is measured for gapping
only, never flagged as dead wood.
Most golfers do not choose fourteen clubs. They accumulate them. A set gets bought, a driver gets upgraded, a hybrid arrives at Christmas, and the club that got replaced never quite leaves the bag. This is the audit nobody performs on themselves.
Uses per round multiplied by trust out of five. A driver you hit twelve times and rate 4 scores 48. A 3-wood you hit once and rate 2 scores 2. Anything scoring 4 or less is a passenger — and a club you never take out at all is not a club, it is luggage. It is deliberately crude, because the honest version of this question only needs two inputs.
Your clubs get sorted longest to shortest and the distance between each pair is measured. Over 20 yards is a hole you have no club for. Under 8 yards is two clubs doing one job, which means one of your fourteen slots is being wasted on a spare. Between 10 and 15 is where you want to live.
A 20-yard hole in your set does not show up as a bad shot. It shows up as a decision you cannot make properly — a club you have to hit soft or force, several times a round, every round. That costs more over a season than whichever driver you are being told to buy next.
This audit only knows what you tell it, and golfers are famously generous about their own carry distances. If your numbers come from the one you caught flush downwind, the ladder will look tidier than your bag actually is. Use carry, not total, and use the number you hit on a normal day.
Gaps sorted? The Round Autopsy finds which part of your game is actually leaking shots, the Tilt Meter works out what your temper costs you after a blow-up, and the Plays Like Calculator tells you what those carry numbers are worth on a cold, windy morning.
Between 10 and 15 yards is the target through the set. Anything over 20 yards leaves a distance you have no club for, and anything under 8 yards means you are carrying two clubs that do the same job and wasting one of your fourteen slots.
Fourteen, and the putter counts as one of them. Under Rule 4.1b carrying more costs two strokes for each hole where the breach happened, capped at four strokes per round.
If you rarely use the 3-wood and do not trust it, yes. A 3-wood needs a tight lie and high clubhead speed to work. Higher-lofted woods and hybrids launch easier from more lies, which is why a club you actually hit is worth more than a club that goes further on paper.
Multiply how many times you use a club in a round by how much you trust it out of five. The lowest scores are your passengers. A club you hit once a round and do not trust is occupying a slot that a wedge or a hybrid would earn.