Best club in your bag

gloucesteroldspot · October 17, 2018

This is an interesting thread and I've been ruminating on it in my head for a week or two. I guess if you made me choose one I'd go with my MacGregor MT2W aluminum insert driver...but if you didn't make me then I would not choose anything to stay in my bag permanently.

I think sometimes I get a performance boost (short term only, for sure) from changing out clubs. Especially so with the putter but also from iron sets and woods.

Does anybody else feel this way? Anybody have a theory on why this might be so? Maybe its just a mental refresher. Or maybe I'm just mental. Or I get bored easily. But it always has seemed to me that the longer I played with the same putter the more its performance suffered. Then I switch to putter B and get an immediate boost...but after several rounds with the new putter, eh not so much. So then I switch to putter C and go through the same pattern. Eventually I cycle back to putter A and find that the magic has returned!...briefly.

I think there's something about changing things out that is stimulating to the brain somehow, possibly causing a new or improved focus. Maybe its a different visual look at address, or different kinesthetic feel of the grip, or different club length or heft. I don't really know, its just a theory.

My neighbor with whom I play most of my golf is completely the opposite. He never changes his clubs. Especially his putter. And I know that, until he lost it recently, he'd been playing with the same sand wedge for 20 years. I could never do that. And I could never settle on a Bag For All Seasons.

We'd been playing together for two years when I showed up several weeks ago with a set he'd never seen, my '62 Hogan Power Thrusts. I promptly shot a 74 with them, right out of the gate, my best score in years and about 8 shots better than my norm. I also was employing a long putter that I had not touched in at least 5 years. Both the irons and the putter were nearly perfect.

His line to me was, "You better keep those in the bag." My reaction was along the lines of, "Meh, I'll ride this pony while its frisky. Then I'll find something else."

Yeah, I'm probably mental.

I don't think you're mental at all. I am convinced that changing clubs gives your game a boost. For me, I'll play whatever set feels right on the day. I'll admit it's partly aesthetic and mood-dependant, but I think there's also some advantage in changing the feel by switching them around, which results in a cumulative improvement over time. Many times when I've been struggling with a particular fault - in my case it's usually contact, catching it fat/thin - I have swapped to a different set of irons and fixed it. Sometimes the new set brings in a fault of its own, which in turn is fixed by another set - and so on until you arrive back where you started, only without the original fault. By process of iteration does improvement become manifest.

It seems particularly effective with putters, for me at any rate. The feel of a putter is more important than its mechanical qualities. I'm an inspired putter, by which I mean I can stand over some putts and just know I'll make them - even quite difficult ones - whereas others cunningly disguise the correct path and won't reveal themselves no matter how hard I look. As a result I am not a mechanical putter who sets up the same and performs an identical stroke every time; some times I putt off the right toe, others I'll put the ball forward with an open stance and push it towards the hole. I even deliberately slice/hook putts to hold the ball up against slopes. I get particularly nervous over putts of less than five feet and often see breaks that don't exist, probably because I'm looking straight down at the ball and the hole rather than sideways towards it. I am contemplating wearing my reading glasses in future to impair my vision on short putts as it might prevent me seeing the tiniest inconsistencies in the green's surface and over-compensating for them. I have terrific depth perception at ranges beyond about two feet and can see a thousandth of an inch difference in two pieces of fishing line, but anything inside twelve inches is, these days, a blur. If I can impair my vision sufficiently to render the ball and the hole just visible on the ground in front of me, but make anything smaller indistinguishable, it might allow me to just knock the ball towards the hole without over-thinking it.

And you thought you were mad?

Jackfan · November 8, 2018

"Modern" set I'd struggle to choose between a Taylormade V-Steel 4-wood and Ram Zebra Z7 putter (a mid 90s version of the Zebra). Both are permanent fixtures in an ever changing bag.

P&B, would have to nominate my Paul Gibson Hand Made persimmon 6-wood ... just a great club off the deck for 175-190 and for long par 3s.

In the hickory bag, I have a few hardy survivors from my first ever bag of hickory originals back in 2012 ... a Bulldog (fairway wood) by W.Jeffery of Saunton GC, a dot-faced Tom Stewart Mashie by W.Hallam, Ormskirk, and a dot-faced Stewart Spade Mashie by JC Smith & Sons of Monifieth. Until yesterday, there was a 4th club, but sadly my lofted driver, which was a second option off the tee if the lower-lofted one was mis-behaving, and which was also a club I could hit very well off the deck, died a sudden death on the 5th tee last night. It's now on paperweight duty ... :)

So pleased someone has a Paul Gibson wood! I have a beautiful set of 1, 3 and 5 woods (below) that Paul made for me in about 1990. They are wonderful. Paul is sorely missed

Jackfan · November 8, 2018

Just adding the Paul Gibson woods....

James the Hogan Fan · November 9, 2018

I’m currently in Finland 7,000 miles from my primary set, so no pictures, but that bag has two sych clubs: A Stan Thompson Stainless pitching wedge that I got for free that is go-to from 110, and a Dunlop Solution Rescue 22 degree hybrid, neither of which I have ever seen anywhere else :D