Doug’s World

Rambling on about golf equipment

This summer the blog seems to be turning into a golf blog. Go figure.

My mother-in-law Lynn asked about buying used clubs over on Megan’s blog today. She and Elton are thinking of trying golf, and I’m like a pusher on the street corner when it comes to this topic. I tell everyone they’ll probably love golf, and unlike most people who’ve played a lot, I like playing with beginners. There’s so much macho nonsense in current American golf culture, and with beginners they don’t know about all that and they’re just trying to have fun, which happens to be my goal too. To paraphrase something a surfer dude says in a South Park episode, “the goal of golf is to have fun, so if you’re not having fun then you’re doing something wrong.”

Anyway, after answering Lynn’s question I decided I should post a bit about my clubs. I didn’t just write this in the 5 minutes since I saw her question, by the way — I had started this post over the weekend but was so busy playing golf night and day (71 holes this weekend) that I didn’t get around to posting it.

My Clubs

I love my golf clubs. I’ve dropped in at several Golf megastores in the last couple of weeks and looked at what’s new in equipment, and there’s nothing I really want right now. Sure, if I won the lottery, I’d play around with the new Cleveland wedges (and all the competitors — there’s finally a lot of competition in cool wedges), or a Tayor Made R7 driver, or some Ping I5 irons like my brother Greg recently bought, but overall I’m satisfied with the clubs I have. They fit me and my game very well, and I know it’s possible for me to shoot in the 70s with them if I get my act together. And I feel some loyalty to them, especially my putter (which Greg gave me for my birthday in 1987), and my trusty 2-iron (which I’ve had for over 10 years).

I’ve told Megan I want to get new clubs when I get to a single-digit handicap, which isn’t going to happen this year for a couple of reasons. One, I started pretty late in the season, in July. And two, I’m trying to play as much as possible with Megan, so that she can improve and we can have fun together. That means playing lots of par-3 courses and executive-length courses, which is great practice but limits my opportunities to post the kinds of scores from tough courses that will be needed to drive my handicap down. So I’m hoping next year will be my single-digit handicap year, and this year I’m getting prepared.

There’s only one thing that I don’t like about my clubs: I have Taylor Made Firesole irons with the graphite “bubble” shaft, and they can’t be re-gripped with standard grips because the grip end of the shaft is a non-standard diameter. You have to use special Taylor Made grips for those shafts, which only come in a couple of options. So I have nice Winn grips that I like on everything else, and a different half-cord Taylor Made grip on the irons. It would be nice to have the same grips on everything, but that’s not really worth buying a whole new set of clubs to change.

Everyone has a different attitude about their equipment. Here are a few attitudes I have about mine. Your mileage may vary, and I offer this not as advice, since everyone’s swing is different and everyone’s goals are different, but just as an example of one guy’s approach to putting together a bag full of golf clubs.

Club Fitting

Clubs that fit are key, and most people don’t have clubs that actually fit them. I never had my clubs fitted for the first 15 years I played golf, and just getting that done immediately improved my ball-striking.

Fitting clubs, by the way, doesn’t just mean adjusting the length of the shaft. Frankly, that’s the less important aspect: more important is getting the lie angles correct. This is the angle between the leading edge of the clubface and the shaft, and the way to adjust it is by hitting shots off a hard solid surface with impact tape on the bottom of the club. You want to have the irons bent to make the scuff mark on the bottom perfectly centered — if it’s too far out toward the toe or heel, your mis-hits will fly a lot more off-line. With my clubs fitting my swing, my misses go a lot straighter, and let’s face it, most of us miss a lot of shots every time out.

In general, I have slight flatter lie angles on my irons than standard, and all my shafts are cut down about an inch. (I know, that combination sounds weird if you know club-fitting, but I’m weird, and these adjustments fit me great.) I’ve also cut nearly two inches off my putter because I like to hold it with my hands unusually low and the toe a bit up in the air (ala Isao Aoki), and I cut down my beloved 2-iron 1.5″ because my goal with it is hitting fairways, not eking out a few extra yards.

Two other aspects of club-fitting that I have an attitude about are shaft flex and grip size. I think most male golfers have much stiffer shafts and bigger grips than they really need (insert joke here), and since both of those things tend to increase a slice, lo and behold everyone struggles with slicing on their longer clubs. I did the same until I got into more flexible shafts (mine are simple graphite R flex on everything except the putter and Cleveland wedges) and stopped building up my grips (I use just one wrap of tape). Now I almost never slice anything, and can hit a high draw with any club in the bag.

Four Wedges (two sets of two)

I like to carry four wedges. I know that has become more popular in recent years, but I’ve been carrying at least three wedges since the early 90s. When I’m playing a lot, wedge play is my favorite part of the game and the thing I do best (just because I love to practice it so much). I carry the PW and SW that match my irons, and I also carry two Cleveland 588 wedges, a 60-degree and a 53-degree.

Yesterday was the first time my wedges have felt good this year. I shot 40 on the front nine without hitting a fairway (and only two greens in regulation), so that was a lot of scrambling. Frankly, I think I got a bit lucky — I haven’t practiced the wedges enough this season to expect those results every time out.

I don’t buy into Dave Pelz’s rigorously scientifice graduated-loft approach at all: mine are really two sets of two wedges. The PW/SW have the same Firesole perimeter-weighted heads and graphite shafts as my other irons, and I often hit them with full swings (about 110 and 80 yards, respectively). The Clevelands have steel shafts and much heavier forged heads, so I never swing them all-out. Instead, I use them for everything within about 50 yards, including bunker play and chip shots as well as various types of pitch shots.

Eschewing Numbers

You’ll notice I bash Dave Pelz quite a bit. It’s not really him, I just use him as a straw man for the scientific approach to golf, which I despise. In actual fact, I read Dave’s first book and learned a lot from it years ago, and I’ve been tempted to attend one of his short-game schools.

Megan pointed out recently that it’s strange I’m very mathematical in most things but on the golf course I avoid math and science as much as possible. I can’t explain it, but it’s true. To me, golf is a psychological and emotional problem to be solved, and not an engineering problem. When I hit a bad shot, I ponder what I was thinking about or feeling during the swing, but rarely give much thought to mechanical details any more. (And it shows: my swing is a lot uglier than it was 10 years ago, although I now find the sweet spot a lot more often.)

It drives me nuts when people are standing around debating whether they’re 150 or 160 yards out and things like that. The same players who hit, say, a 7-iron anywhere from 120 to 160 yards will stand over a shot and agonize over whether it’s 145 or 150 yards. Then they’ll hit a 7-iron long and say “I knew I should have hit an 8!” Geez. It’s embarrasing to be around that behavior, IMHO.

From 150, I might hit anything from 8-iron to 5-iron, and I wish courses and driving ranges didn’t have yardages marked at all. Look at the target, lock on to it, and let your body get the ball there: that’s how I like to play, all touchy-feely and slightly mystical. Hell, that’s how every golfer who ever lived played the game, until Jack Nicklaus came along in the 60s with his yardage books, he and his caddy always pacing off distances, and generally giving the golfing public even more crap to think about when they swing a golf club.

OK, I better calm down, this topic can get me all worked up. Bottom line, the only number I like to think about on the course is my score on the hole I’m currently playing. But if you like to think about numbers and you have fun doing so, that’s great — to each their own.

What’s in the Bag

Anyway, with all that said, here’s what’s in my bag these days. I also have the 3-wood and 3-iron to match these clubs, but I carry the 14 clubs listed below and will substitute either of those options occasionally if a specific course seems like a place I might need them. And I have a Bazooka Jmax hybrid, which is easy to hit but I’ve stopped swinging it because the swingweight is much heavier than my other clubs and I don’t want a variation like that in my equipment. Golf’s hard enough without those sorts of adjustments — anyone in the market for a barely-used left-handed hybrid?

Club	Mfg/Model	Comments
driver	Taylor Made 360	Hit this really great in 2003, but haven’t regained confidence in it since.
5-wood	Taylor Made 300 Series	Easiest-to-hit fairway wood I’ve ever swung, and the Titanium head delivers good distance (220-240 for me). Both of my eagles on #3 at Fairways West Terrace (Spokane) were with this club. I have the matching 3-wood, and all three of my titanium/graphite “woods” have the same swing feel.
2-iron	Callaway Big Bertha	My most reliable tee-shot club. Rarely hit it off the fairway, although it’s great for punching through under trees. This club just works for me — I hit it much more solidly and accurately than any 3-iron I’ve tried.
4-iron	Taylor Made Firesole	I bough these irons ten years ago, and love them. Their light weight and flexible shafts fit my swing, and they have the forgiveness of perimeter weighting without the anti-slice offset that makes working the ball difficult or impossible. The light weight makes feeling the clubhead a bit hard at times, especially if I’m tense or not playing well, but I’ve incorporated an upside-down practice swing into my pre-shot routine (holding the head end of the club and swinging the grip end), and after one of those swings the head feels nice and heavy.
5-iron	Taylor Made Firesole
6-iron	Taylor Made Firesole
7-iron	Taylor Made Firesole
8-iron	Taylor Made Firesole
9-iron	Taylor Made Firesole
pitching wedge	Taylor Made Firesole	My favorite club in the bag. When I hit balls at the range, I usually hit half of them with this club alone.
sand wedge	Taylor Made Firesole	I bought this on Ebay after many years of playing with the other Firesoles above. It’s the only sand wedge I’ve ever owned that I can swing hard without shanking. (Well, usually. :-))
extra wedge	Cleveland 588 53-degree	My favorite chipping club. If I’m 20 feet off the green with 20 feet of uphill green to work with, you can bet this club is in my hands.
extra wedge	Cleveland 588 60-degree	Change the above comment to downhill green, and this is the club I’ll be playing. An extremely versatile club for little pitch shots and short bunker shots.
putter	Ping B60	The “Dolly Parton” putter as it was casually called in the 80s, this head is great for retrieving balls out of the cup or off the green. I’ve been playing with this putter since my first year of golf, and it’s hard to imagine why I’d ever change to anything else. I hold it so low that the toe is up in the air a bit, but that feels right to me.

Golf Balls

One final piece of equipment: the ball. I like soft balls that feel good around the green and spin a lot for chips and pitches. Like many things in golf, I’m against the general trend: balls are getting harder, and are designed to spin less (to minimize the slices most players hit), so there are fewer soft hi-spin balls to choose from than there were when I started the game.

My current favorites are the Titleist Pro V1’s — the originals, not the “improved” ones that spin less. Problem is, they’re pretty pricey at $40-50 per dozen, so I’ve been playing the Bridgestone E5s, which feel OK to me and are about half the cost. But when we played Tyee, I found a Pro V1 that I played a few holes with, and it reminded me how great they feel. I just found a place online (OnlyGolfballs.com) that has Pro V1s for $29/dozen, so I ordered a bunch.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 31st, 2006 at 12:32 pm. You can subscribe to comments on this post through its RSS feed.