There is never a bad time to travel and play golf, but there’s also nothing worse than getting to your destination only to find that your clubs have been damaged along the way.
But if you follow these steps when packing for your next trip, the likelihood of damage is hugely reduced. That way you have one less thing to worry about when you hit the links. Read below, and watch the video above, to learn more.
The best way to think about your golf travel bag is like a car — the better-secured everything is inside the car the less it’s going to move around and potentially break. The tighter you can pack everything into your golf bag and then into the travel bag means less rattling, less compressing and safer clubs.
My two absolutely essential tools for packing my clubs are simple and extremely effective.
The first is a hard plastic field case (aka an ammo box) to hold all removable clubheads from my set for safekeeping during the trip.
By removing all the available clubheads you reduce the chance of your driver or fairway woods breaking in the most common place (the hosel) because you have eliminated the pressure point.
The second crucial item is a Club Glove stiff arm that goes into my golf bag and adjusts beyond my longest club. This holds the bag in place inside the outer travel bag.
The stiff arm works like a seatbelt to keep the golf bag in one place and to prevent top-to-bottom compression when getting moved in and out of an airplane cargo hold or the belly of a tour bus.
So wherever your golf game takes you, be sure to follow these steps to make sure your clubs stay safe too. You can watch the video above for more.
Ryan Barath is GOLF Magazine and GOLF.com’s senior editor for equipment. He has an extensive club-fitting and -building background with more than 20 years of experience working with golfers of all skill levels, including PGA Tour players. Before joining the staff, he was the lead content strategist for Tour Experience Golf, in Toronto, Canada.