GOUGE: E-mails and cryptic letters (you know the kind, with individual characters cut out of magazines to spell the words) have been flooding the Bomb & Gouge World Headquarters here in Connecticut, detailing just how pathetic some average golfer’s equipment selections have become. It’s all part of our search for the Most Obsolete golf equipment in the land. It is a true American golf tragedy.
Nothing in my line of work makes you feel like an ineffective, bloviating failure than when I see average golfers using ancient relics to pretend to play golf. Because that’s what they’re doing when they have clubs not even from this century, they’re pretending to play golf. If they really were playing golf, they’d investigate recent technology. And once they investigate it, they’d commit themselves to taking advantage of it. Maybe I hope for too much. But you all know me to be a dreamer, don’t you?
Nevertheless, in an effort to illustrate just how bad it is out there, we’ll be showing you on a weekly basis some of the latest candidates for our “Are You Obsolete” contest that was announced in February’s Hot List issue.
One favorite: the set from Andrew with the Lynx Liberty Bell irons and an original LiquidMetal driver. He says he won’t change his clubs because “I’ve catered my swing to them. If I don’t hit one square, they let me know.” And, Andrew says, “I won’t retire my equipment until I shoot under 80.” Let’s put it this way, if you break 80 with these it says a lot more about you than it says about the effectiveness of the Liberty Bell in your iron design.
You got any candidates in your mailbag, partner?
BOMB: You bet I do, but before I get to one of my faves from David in Burlington, Vt., I take a little bit of exception to your thought that we have somehow failed. Fact is, I was an obsolete golfer until only recently despite the fact I am a golf “lifer.” Caddie at age 10, worked in a golf shop after that and in the golf publishing industry since 1986. Yet until probably 2003 or so, I was swinging Ping K-1 irons, a Cobra Trusty Rusty sand wedge with the grooves so worn down that a groove rule wouldn’t have been necessary and, as I know you remember, that beautiful little Ray Cook Blue Goose 5-wood that had a head smaller than most of today’s hybrids. You remember all those clubs. I used them when I kicked your butt in one of our interoffice matches at Tashua Knolls GC.
Fact is, those who use obsolete clubs do so for various reasons. Some people simply can’t afford new clubs. And if that’s your reason, we have not failed in our jobs. I’m never going to tell anyone to buy new equipment instead of putting food on the table or putting cash in the college fund.
It’s the other reasons, though, that are indeed fundamentally flawed. Andrew’s “I’ve catered my swing to them” is nonsense. So is the aforementioned David from Vermont, who writes, ” Obsolescence, in my mind, didn’t apply to my golf clubs until I saw the head of my Wilson Staff 5-iron skipping down the fairway two years ago … A not-so-subtle hint that those Firestick-shafted irons need to go the way of hickory. My 20-year-old lead-taped Service Merchandise putter, original Raylor, and nearly groove-less Cleveland wedge should probably be laid to rest too.” Why use such clubs? According to David, he could break 90, beat the GM at his club and he considered himself, “a traditionalist.”
Trust me, there’s nothing more traditional than getting the ball in the hole in the least amount of strokes possible.
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