Pro Golf Now
Fansided

Golfers Speak: How Do We Select Our Clubs?

By Elizabeth Bethel

facebooktwitterreddit

I have to confess: I love getting new equipment.  Even though my rational self knows I can’t buy a better game, even when the sticks in my bag are working perfectly fine, I’m still tempted by something shiny and new.  I also love leafing through the December issues of golf equipment magazines, just so I can spend some time daydreaming about the phantom differences between the newest innovations from Callaway and Adams and Ping.

At heart I’ve always been a Callaway girl and for years I’ve embraced and stroked my Diablo driver with those flames licking up its shaft with an almost erotic passion.  Then one day after my lesson I asked Tommy what I needed to do to get 10 more yards off the tee.  He didn’t hesitate: “get a 13° driver.”

More from Equipment

The next thing I knew I was out on the range with Tommy and the Ping guy, hitting balls with various Ping drivers.  The Ping guy’s little machine was measuring my club head speed.  There were a bunch of guys standing around watching me instead of shopping for clubs or hitting shots, making me feel self-conscious.

“Ignore them,” Tommy told me.  I kept hitting balls. “Try this one,” the Ping guy urged handing me another club. “Let her try that hybrid,” Tommy called out to the Ping guy, who put a hybrid in my hands and made more notes on his clipboard.

Let me cut to the chase. I walked away from my first-ever club fitting with a driver that was getting me considerably more than 10 additional yards off the tee and two hybrids that replaced the 4, 5 and 6 irons in my bag that I haven’t been able to hit with any consistency for several years.

I don’t think I’ll ever buy clubs “off the rack” again, even though the best putter I’ve ever had, a TaylorMade Spyder, is a piece of equipment I bought on impulse because I liked the feel when I was playing with it in the Star Fort pro shop.  I can’t imagine rolling a putt with anything else and I have a near-mystical connection with that club that’s hard to describe.

As I reflected on my transformation from an off-the-rack buyer to an advocate of club fitting, I wondered how other recreational golfers selected their clubs, so  I asked the Google+ Golf Community how they go about selecting their sticks.

Here’s what the Golf Community told me:

None of the members of the Golf Community buy clubs just because their golf buddies are using them.  Interesting. That makes the two or three members of my women’s league who occasionally poach clubs a bit of an anomaly.

Live Feed

Hero World Challenge tee times, format, field, purse, how to watch
Hero World Challenge tee times, format, field, purse, how to watch /

FanSided

  • 3 Bold Predictions for Hero World Challenge (Can Tiger Woods Win?)Betsided
  • Tiger Woods Odds at Hero World ChallengeBetsided
  • The Netflix Cup: Swing to Survive cast: Who stars in the live sports event?Netflix Life
  • Butterfield Bermuda Championship picks 2023: Best bets for PGA Tour golf this weekFanSided
  • Clemson Tigers News: Scoreboard, Hunter Tyson, Miami oddsRubbing the Rock

    • I was initially a bit surprised to learn that 40% of the Golf Community respondents are playing with clubs they’ve had for five or more years, and felt a whole lot better about the set of irons I’ve had in my bag now for some time.

    But +Paul Dougherty, who claims he’s been playing with the same set of sticks for 10+ years and only buys a new set of shoes every other season, really stands out for equipment longevity. (I probably have way too many pairs of golf shoes when I compare myself to him.  Maybe I have a golf shoe fetish? That’s a topic for another time.)

    Whether we’re holding on to those clubs because, like +Skpknight, we also need “a new computer, and new tires, and a new wardrobe, so guess what, the clubs are out”  or, like +Glo Bie, because we don’t suffer from “shiny ball syndrome,” a substantial number of us have settled on a set of sticks that are working for us and we’re not inclined to make a change.

    Still, those who do buy their clubs off-the-rack aren’t complaining.

    "Had Wilson staff di9s, and just bought the c100s off the rack for 200 bucks. Wow. Seriously nice clubs for the price. hitting them right now at the range. – +poopdoggydog"

    And some of us, like +Rob Thomas, “fit” ourselves as we buy off the rack, a process he says is “probably like practicing medicine on yourself (to a lesser degree), but I buy what feels good for my game.”  And that, of course, is what club fitting is all about.

    The bottom line for golfers is finding the club that does the job and when I watched my friend Alma tell her clubs that “it’s time to wake up and go to work” as we walked up to the first tee I realized that for most of us, a successful golf shot is as much about what’s in our head as it is about what’s in our bag.

    Fore!

    Next: Celebrities in Golf Carts

    More from Pro Golf Now

    Home/Equipment