Have your say & ask the experts

Hi all,

allow me to give you my two penneth. There are so many variables to take into effect when getting a new set of clubs: your height affects the length of the clubs, the size of your hand effects how thick the grips need to be and your swing speed combined with the flex of the shafts opens up a whole new world of possibilities. As a beginner i started out with regular flex steel shafts and recently got fitted for stiffer shafts and they've definitely helped with consistency. I would definitely suggest getting fitted if you're considering buying any new set of clubs....

ta 

gpi:

Golf is a very silly game when you stop to think about it

P.S. - not having a go at tennis - I like it! You could easily say the same comments about football!

professorhat:

P.S. - not having a go at tennis - I like it! You could easily say the same comments about football!

Thaiman, much like Hi-fi, golf equipment is all about taste and your own preference.  With golf clubs your swing speed and angle WILL affect which club is actually best FOR YOU.

If golf clubs were speakers then your swing is the room size room shape and the position of the speakers - Imagine buying a £10k pair of floorstanders with booming bass and putting them in the coner of a 10' by 15' room, that could be like buying the wrong £300 driver.

You need to try before you buy - get down to your local pro and see what he has got, ideally you should be hitting around 20 balls with each driver you want to try. The single most important thing will be the shaft - it needs to be the right flex and have the right kick-point for your swing so don't discount ANY heads (read makes) until you have tried them with a range of shafts.  Try them out and buy the best one for your swing. If the pro you go to see has limited brands in stock make sure you visit more than one place.

Re the best club I cannot tell you and as I don't know what budget-ish is in £'s I will merely suggest some makes that IMO you should be trying out.... Taylor Made, Ping, Calloway and possibly Titleist.  Thes are likely to come in £200-£300 for the driver so make sure that your swing is not going to change dramatically in the near future before buying one of these - while it may suit just now there is little point in spending £300 to find the club is useless in 2 months when you have completed altered your swing.

I use the latest Taylor Made burner and love it - before that I had and loved the Taylor Made XR03  which is now illegal for competitions so you can see that I have a definate bias for Taylor Made. As I said before the shaft is the most important thing and I have replaced the standard Taylor Made Burner shaft with the Grafalloy one that came with the XR03 as this works better for me (much like changing to same value speaker cable/interconnects out of preference to what they deliver).

On another note are you having any luck getting rid of any of your hifi equipment? I would be happy to receive some of your kit in return for golf tips and advice.... or even for some clubs - I have a full set of Wilson Pi 5 irons that I am looking to change, perhaps a swap could be arranged???????????

If you just want to experiment with drivers, or any clubs really, ebay is the best place. Wouldn't have said that a few years back, but I no longer work in the golf trade, so I can be honest! Experimenting isn't a substitute for getting fitted, but it can be a lot more fun  If you go to a tournament you'll see the pros try several different drivers on the range!

If you buy something from ebay, you can try it at your leisure, in real world situations rather than on a range, and if you don't like it you can usually get your money back by selling it to someone else.

Shafts are by far the most important thing. With the wrong flex shaft it doesn't matter how good the rest of the club is, it just won't work. The difficult bit is that different brand shafts of the same flex can play to different stiffnesses! So if you can narrow it down to a specific shaft model that you like, then you're cooking with gas!

Currently, a lot the big name heads play very similarly, so if you get a shaft you like then it's possible that it'll work across a range of heads. However, if you find a head you like, there's no way it'll work across a range of shafts!

I've tested an awful lot of woods and irons, pretty much everythig on sale (and some not on sale!) and it's clear that if you pick any segment of the retail market, it's very likely that a lot of the products will perform similarly. The important thing is getting the product to fit you by getting it customised.

Golf isn't really like hi-fi, where two products of the same price can be entirely different. Golf manufacturers are at a point where they're very close to the limit of current technology. It's pretty hard to buy a technically bad club nowadays. But it's pretty easy to buy one than doesn't suit you!

If you don't like talking about this kinda stuff here, there are numerous forums, which I don't know if you've found? The ones I frequent are...

www.bombsquadgolf.com

www.golfwrx.com

www.golfopinions.com

Some of the mags have forum sections on their websites too.

Golf equipment forums can be very similar to hi-fi forums! There is a degree of snobbery in certain places, and there are an awful lot of people who have equipment for the pose value rather than it's performance! "Tour Issue" golf gear is as emotive a subject, and as hotly debated, as cables are on hi-fi forums.

Good luck!

Thanks for that blue :-)

As you might guess I already a member of Golf forum and have been warn about buying Ebay's golf clubs!  as many fake goods about!

I just bought myself (another) driver!  This time is MacGregor after have been using Taylor Made R7, Ben Ross Benny and Dunlop Loco!  I think I found the one that suited to my swing now (well you know me, until I found something else  

I manage to finnish a round yesterday on PGA tour course with under 100 shots! so I am over the moon.  Thx again for the links and advice which are always welcome

Congrats on breaking 100, it's a big barrier, so doing it on a PGA track is pretty impressive  

The ebay fakes thing is a problem, you'll soon realise which is fake and which is real though, certainly with new drivers. The real problem is people re-selling fake drivers they've bought, as it's harder to spot a fake second hand driver than a fake new driver. The new ones are usually just too cheap, so they're easy to spot!

MacGregor drivers are very underrated. Which one did you get?