BOMB: Greetings from Medinah, where the weather is hot, the golf hotter and Phil Mickelson is up to his old tricks again with his bats. Yep, one thing you can always count on from ol’ Lefty is that he’ll be doing something with his equipment. Two drivers at Augusta, a 64-degree wedge at Winged Foot. So what did Phil do next? How about using two drivers AND the 64-degree wedge at Medinah. And it’s not like he’s being Lawson Little and carrying 26 clubs. Phil simply left his pitching wedge and sand wedge out of the bag. Although I don’t really recommend not having a pitching wedge, I gotta hand it to the man. No player on tour in my mind so expertly matches set to course. Sure, some cynics, maybe even you Mr. Gouge, may say he’s over-thinking things, but I truly believe every player out there could learn from him by reviewing what clubs they do and do not hit on their home course during a round. Yesterday Mickelson said he hit each driver seven times and plans to stay with the pair all week because, “the two clubs I took out, the PW and SW, are clubs I really don’t need here.” And even you can admit that if you’re not going to use them, there’s really no use in carrying them with you.

GOUGE: You can praise Philly Mick all you want. In fact, logically all that you say makes some degree of sense, maybe even a greater deal of sense. Too many amateurs have stuff in their bags that does nothing other than take up space—and I'm not talking about that rotting banana from last Tuesday. The 14 slots in your quiver account for some dang valuable real estate, so if any of them aren't producing, it's time to get the plow out and grow a new crop. That means get rid of your long irons, check the spacing on your wedge gaps and maybe switch out that 3-wood (only tour players can consistently hit 3-woods off the deck) and sticking a 4-wood in its place. But let me throw something else out at you and Phil’s celebrated bag of tricks: Could it be that he is violating the spirit and intent of the rules, specifically the rules of the USGA and R&A about equipment. We've heard this all before at the Masters, but by incorporating a second driver into the mix, Phil reportedly can get two different results from the same swing by switching drivers. He's directly running counter to at least the words produced in the USGA-R&A Joint Statement of Principles. In part that statement reads: "The purpose of the rules is to protect golf's best traditions, to prevent an over-reliance on technological advances rather than sill, and to ensure that skill is the dominant element of success throughout the game." I'm not saying Phil doesn't have skill. They all do. But using equipment to achieve specific ballflight objectives (not unequivocably related to the swing you athletically produce) just seems wrong, like having a hole-seeking gyroscope in your golf ball. Yes, it requires skill to hit the driver with a square clubface at 120 miles per hour. I think the case can be made, however, that it requires the skill the game actually originally demanded, however, to make the ball draw off the tee on one hole and fade on another. The Joint Statement of Principles was an interesting document. Whether it’s actually an action plan remains to be seen. 

GOUGE: We have trouble brewing here at Golf Digest Equipment Central, like a hurricane warning or a tornado watch. What we have developing is an avalanche of new irons. Within reach from my desk right now are three new irons from Mizuno, two from Ping, two from TaylorMade, two from Nike, two from Bridgestone and a set from Adams. There's at least a dozen more from half a dozen other manufacturers soon to arrive. And we're not even counting new stuff from the component companies (a group that is not short on free-thinking, break-the-mold innovation, by the) or the handful of other surprise entries from what in wrestling-speak they used to refer to as "parts unknown." Irons are going to be big this year, and one of the things that's been rolling around in my head was something the great Dick Helmstetter, big thinker at Callaway Golf, once said. Helmstetter was talking about how driver design wouldn't stagnate just because there was a limit on spring-like effect. "Well," he said, "the COR of an iron hasn't changed in about a hundred years, but they sure have gotten a lot easier to hit than they used to be. You sure can do a lot more things in designing them." They may be getting easier to hit, but they're not getting easier to choose. And guess what, there's some even suggesting that in addition to easier to hit, the spring-like effect on some irons is actually changing, too. People need a gameplan for shopping for irons, and I'm here to tell you, it better be a lot more sophisticated than their approach to getting that new driver.

BOMB: Make that tons more sophisticated. The thing with irons my chopper friend is that they are far less emotional than drivers and in many ways incredibly more technical. And demoing them is way more difficult. Consider: When you test out a driver you're testing out exactly the kind of club
you're interested in. It's one club. And since you hit it off a tee, it really doesn't matter if you're banging balls off grass or mats, now does it? But with irons, you might get just a 5-iron to swing, likely not in your shaft choice and likely not with your proper lie angle. But of course you
want to buy them. Know why? Because every shot you hit off these makes you feel like you can hit more greens than this guy. Come on, people--wake up. Getting fit for irons is about the most intensive fitting you should be doing. And if you're not ready to do that, perhaps you should be reading this instead./Bomb & Gouge. But if you're willing to make the commitment, here are some
tips. First, hit off grass only when demoing. How the club interacts with the turf is critical. Next, if you're fitter isn't checking your lie angle, find another fitter. Also, if your retailer doesn't have a full set for you to hit, find another retailer or a friend who will let you try their set. After all, hitting just the 5-iron works only if you're playing this (oneclubgolf.com). Given the difference between a 4-iron, an 8-iron and a /wedge plus all the new offerings of all shapes, sizes and sweet spots and,
well, lets just say buying irons is not the time to get, in the words of the immortal Dean Wormer, "fat, drunk and stupid." It's the time to get serious.

GOUGE: It's even more complicated than that. Look at things like sole width (more if you're a chop, less if you're a player), and where you want the mass of your club to be (around the perimeter if you can't find the clubface, concentrated somewhat in the middle if your move is more consistent than not). And let's not forget that there's no law that says every iron set encompasses all things for each player in each iron slot. If you like the 3-iron on the Big Bertha iron, for instance, but aren't keen on the pitching wedge, there's no reason you can't mix up a set. And if you like to feather an 8-iron, but are just trying to keep a 4-iron on the planet, you can't expect to play with an 8-iron that's cut from the same cloth as your 4-iron. But get yourself in a situation where you're comfortable not merely looking at a certain club at address, but you're comfortable with where that club's shots end up going. What needs to be consistent is the fit in terms of lie angle, shaft flex and weight. If you want to mix in three different heads (some, like Adams Golf, already are doing that for you), so be it.