Welcome to another edition of the Fully Equipped mailbag sponsored by Cleveland/Srixon Golf, an interactive GOLF.com series in which our resident dimplehead (a.k.a., GOLF’s managing editor of equipment, Jonathan Wall) fields your hard-hitting gear questions.
How good should you be before it’s worth spending money on clubs over lessons?
Working on your game and putting new equipment aside until things start to improve seems like the logical way to go about bettering your game. Assuming you’re a beginner, that means committing more money to key fundamentals and getting familiar with the sticks in your bag.
It seems like a prudent path to take. But I’ll let my Fully Equipped podcast co-host, True Spec’s Kris McCormack, offer a contrarian view for those who think that buying new gear from the get-go is a poor decision.
“If you come to see me as a brand-new beginning player, the angles you create as a player are more consistent than you might think,” McCormack said. “Hypothetically, let’s say you’re a player with a 100-yard slice, and I’m able to take the swing you walk through the door with, no lessons whatsoever, and build a golf club for you that produces a 30-yard slice. Angles you create are still going to produce a slice. But if I can build a golf club that helps you produce a 30- or 40-yard slice instead of a 100-yard slice, are you going to play better golf? Most people would say yes.
“Depending on what you’re trying to accomplish as a player, so long as you can get the ball airborne and going forward, we can find golf clubs for you. More often than not, that higher handicap amateur is going to see more of an improvement in consistency and performance if they get a set of custom-built clubs than a tour player. That high-level player is so in tune with their body, they can make an improperly fit golf club work a majority of the time. But if you’re somebody who’s just learning, the angles you create, building a set of clubs that complements what you naturally do will reward that player exponentially more.”
Cleveland Launcher XL Halo
It’s a thought-provoking answer, to be sure.
Assuming you haven’t played much golf and are currently weighing lessons versus clubs, springing for a custom fit set likely isn’t at the top of the priority list. But if your clubs have the wrong loft and lie angles and you’re presently playing a driver with a fade bias when you desperately need something to hook it back the other direction to keep it somewhat in play, it’s easy to see how new clubs might be a good first step.
