Equipment Band Wagon

[erock9174]

I can understand your sentiments. At some point gear can only take you so far as we are the ones who have to swing the thing. But I think there is some merit in the “chase” of getting to that point.
I used to be “different clubs in my bag every time I showed up to the course” guy. My buddies would just shake their heads.

I was at Golf Galaxy, Dicks, Golfsmith and my local shops always scouring the used racks to find a deal or diamond in the rough. Often times I would buy clubs without even trying them paying full retail. All to sell or trade them the next week at a huge loss. A buddy of mine who is as big a club ho as me taught me spending discipline. He would often say if its not at the price point I am willing to pay I won’t buy the club. Now I watch ebay for deals and sometimes it takes ebay shop ‘Proclubs’ 10 times of lowing the price by 10% each time for me to finally pull the trigger lol.

Right now my bag is pretty much set. Love my hybrids (been in the bag for about 10 seasons now). Gott fitted for my Ping irons and I comfortable with my wedges and putter. The only club I continually mess with is the driver and honestly if I don’t find anything better, my M3 works just fine.

For me though it’s about the fun of testing. When I raced radio control cars at a highly competitive level years ago, I actually found practice night and racing against lap times on my watch more fun than actual race night racing against others. Always on the hunt for that slightest incremental gain.

My buddy and I play once annually when he is in town. We have a great time golfing but afterward we visit a local fitting center and he brings his CG2 and we probably have more fun doing that than we do actually golfing.
I have been known to borrow 2-3 demo clubs from a local store plus buy a couple online. Go to a course when it’s empty and park on a hole hitting drives for an hour or 2 measuring my distances with a laser just to see if there is any discernible difference in them. The crazy part is I have more fun doing this than actually playing sometimes.

I did find that bringing a club or two onto the course during a round and using it for score seemed to hurt my handicap. So now if I bring some tests clubs, my gamers still go for score and I hit the test clubs a couple times just to see how they perform. Make a decision on them and usually sell them back on ebay at breakeven or maybe a slight gain or loss.

 

[WMac19]

I've sporadically stuck with what works but I seem to be in the midst of a buying streak.

But rather than a conscious effort to find something better, most of my changes were the result of satisfying a curiosity. Like when I bought Shakey's CF16 irons. Sure the positive reports about the irons intrigued me some but I wouldn't have bought without the Steelfiber shafts. I only had less than positive results with Recoils in the past but was curious about Steelfibers.

The overall package of forgiveness, distance and feel blew me away and chased my, 8 years played at the time, Mizunos out of the bag. I'd been very happy with my Mizunos.

Similar with the Epic, it was one time where the buzz got to me. Still, I had next to zero expectations but was similarly blown away. Gone was my former 5 year rotation with the Cobra ZL Encore and Bombtech Grenade.

Same theme for my Fourteen wedges. I remembered from 10 years or so ago how much my buddy loved his Fourteen wedge and I was interested in finding wedges with a bit larger surface area. Callaway PM wedges were on the list, then so were the Fourteen RM-22J once I realized they had a larger version to the standard RM-22. I meshed so much better with Fourteen.

Mostly curiosity rather than any genuine hope for improvement. Improvement came but so did more frequent play so I can't apply any percentage of assumed responsibility. But I can say that curiosity led to testing which was at least met with a higher comfort and confidence level as to chosen equipment. That means something, at least.