As someone who has been to multiple events on all tours, the place I find the most nuggets for my own game is on the Champions Tour.
Let me explain…
I am out at the Hoag Charity Classic in Newport Beach this week and being here has reminded of just how much I adore coming out to see these guys. For one, it’s all the players I grew up idolizing when I was younger: Els, Couples, Rocco, Harrington, Monty, Duval and so many others. From that angle alone it’s a no-brainer. Not to mention the vibe at a Champions event is no different than meeting up with your buddies for your Saturday game. It’s light, fun, laid-back; the pressurized life all these players knew is long behind them.
To be fair, the competitive juices are still here. Make no mistake: these lads are out to destroy each other. But the atmosphere really is fun. It’s just golf.
Selfishly, I come to these events for two main reasons. One, I want to see what gear players who live in the same speed demo as myself have in the bag. And two, I love watching these players navigate around a golf course. I’ve said on multiple occasions that if you want to study bags and learn how to play this game to watch the Champions Tour and LPGA. As exciting as it is to watch Rory and Co. hit it 340 over doglegs and smash 8-irons from 190, that’s not real life. Most of the rest of us have to play golf courses as they are designed. Those boys on the PGA Tour can eliminate a third of a course by simply hitting over it all. Fun? No doubt. But very hard to learn anything from, at least for a 48-year-old 2-handicap.
The Champions Tour is more chess than anything, though. The players’ golf IQs are through the roof and guys that used to bomb it are now surrendering to a style of golf that requires relentless precision and a level of self-awareness that I find inspiring. Want to learn more? Just look into their bags.
As I walked the range at the Hoag this week I found four main things from a gear perspective that can help you — and me.
1. Champs Tour bag setups are hybrid-heavy.
On a Champions Tour range you will see VERY few long irons and a TON of hybrids, lofted fairway woods etc. And no I don’t just mean for that after 3-wood section. I mean into the 4 and 5-iron section of the bag. Hell, Fred Couples’ longest iron is a 7-iron!! In fitting, EVERY player has a point of diminishing returns. What that means is there a point in the set where your swing speed plateaus (you swing 5-iron as fast as your 4, for example) and the gapping gets weird. That’s where we all can take advantage of modern technology: hybrids, 9-woods, utility irons. Those types of clubs are designed to make up for everything your speed can’t handle anymore. Couples, for example, was having trouble getting his longer irons in the air consistently. Can he still hit those clubs? Yes. But can he hit them when he gets deeper into the round? When it’s cold? When he gets tired? That’s the question we should all ask ourselves. Do the clubs in my bag help me ALL the time? Or just when my battery is at 100%? I was 46 years old when I realized that a 4-hybrid was far better for me than a 4-iron. That decision turned a part of my bag that was a Strokes Gained loss into a break-even. Think about that for a minute: do you have clubs in your bag that you may LOVE in theory but that cost you shots? Something Rocco Mediate mentioned once stuck with me: “I don’t score with 4-6 irons, I just need to make sure they don’t cost me a thing.”
2. Spin is cherished.
You’ve heard me preach that “Spin is King”. On the Champions Tour spin is something that is cherished. If the spin goes down for any reason, you’d better believe the player will find clubs that mitigate that with launch and descent angle, hence why you see more lofted fairways, hybrids etc. It’s not forgiveness pros want; they all hit it out of the middle a ton. But they desire launch windows that help them score. SPIN and its younger brother steep descent angle are paramount to control. It’s interesting to see that most of these guys have one shot pattern. If they draw it with one club, they probably do with every club.
3. Driver is the only club that they want to speed up.
These guys just have a different worldview than they did when they were younger. It’s more about feeling nimble and having longevity than trying to put on 20 pounds of pump to hit 190 ball speed. So, you’ll see players out here taking a few more wingers to get their equipment to speed up for them than on the PGA Tour. Whether it’s going longer in length, lofting down etc. You’ll see more players on this tour trying to sneak 5-10 yards out of driver than the younger tour. But it’s usually just driver. The rest of the bag needs to satisfy GAPPING.
4. These guys have no ego.
Take Rocco Mediate for example, he maxes out at around 150 mph ball speed but his bag shows very few signs that he is trying to hit it further. His irons lofts are the “old-school” standard (48 degree PW, 4 degree gaps) and he’s hit 7-iron 155 yds his whole career. Giving him a club he carries 10 yards further and he wouldn’t know how to play. What’s even cooler with Rocco is he doesn’t care. I watched him play a match yesterday with Doug Baron, Ken Duke and Shane Berstch. The whole round Rocco was 15-20 yds behind his counterparts but it didn’t matter. All day Rocco and his Caddy Pete Bender were looking to be in the 100-150 yard sections of the hole. That’s where Rocco makes his money and he knows it. He went on to shoot 30 on the back hitting nothing but 7-, 8- and 9-irons.
Golf in its purest form is mental gymnastics. It’s a game of strategy where typically the smartest player will prevail. What I see with ALL professional golfers and their bags is purpose. The bags are set up to help that player SCORE. As you can see, the Champions Tour is an even more relatable version of that. You get 14 slots in a bag and they all have a JOB to do. Your task is to get honest about what you NEED vs. what you WANT and I guarantee your scores will drop.
So why do I say this is a gear AND life hack? Well, self-honesty is key to anything in life. The more honest you are with yourself the better off you’ll be. That’s why golf is such a perfect mirror for life: when you start making ego-less decisions around your game and look at everything through a lens of efficiency and performance, things get better.
Funny how that happens.
Now go get fit for some new long-iron replacements.
Johnny currently serves as the Director of Equipment at Golf.com, contributing to platforms like Fully Equipped Golf. Prior to this role, he was the Content Marketing Manager at Callaway Golf, where he led “Callaway Golf’s World of Wunder,” a platform dedicated to in-depth golf equipment content. Before joining Callaway, he was the Director of Original Content and host of “The Gear Dive” podcast at GolfWRX.com. Beyond his professional endeavors, Johnny is an avid golfer with a deep passion for the game, having played since his youth in Seattle, Washington.
