The Loop

Move over graphite, customs agents find $30,000 worth of cocaine stashed in golf club shafts

The equipment world is ever-changing. Just give our annual Hot List a skim if you don't believe it. Yesterday's hot new golf club trend is today's old-man gimmick. Tomorrow we might even be swinging lightsabers. Who knows. Despite the seemingly perpetual push toward bigger/lighter/longer, however, this week U.S. Customs agents in Miami got a sneak peek at an innovation that not even we had seen before: Cocaine shafts.

The unique set of clubs arrived Monday at an international mail facility in Miami-Dade County, enroute from Colombia to New York City. There they were intercepted by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents, who discovered just over a pound of cocaine inside after drilling into one of the shafts. Add that to the list of things to worry about when shipping your clubs cross country.

In a statement, Christopher Maston, the CBP’s port director of field operations at Miami International Airport said, “Our CBP officers are highly skilled in detecting all types of concealment methods to intercept harmful drugs and to keep them from impacting our communities.”

You'll have to wait for the 2021 Hot List to see if cocaine shafts really improve overall distance and accuracy, but early reports suggests they could increase club head speed (ahem) as much as 10%.