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Two good accessories for wet-weather golfers
The golf team of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro played in a big golf tournament last month (and came in third). Shortly afterward, I spoke with Bob Christina, an assistant coach. "Monday was a 36-hole day, and it rained," he told me. "You've got your umbrella, you've got a heavy bag with all this stuff in it, you've got everything, and by the time you get through that second 18 you're having trouble standing up. So we picked up three pushcarts, and the guys loved them."
There's still a prejudice against pushcarts in this country, especially among younger players, despite my ongoing campaign to shame all golfers into using them all the time. Still, as Christina says, pushcarts are awesome in the rain, even if you aren't short enough to take advantage of the umbrella holder that comes with most of the modern ones.
Recently, I acquired two accessories that make wet-weather pushcart golf even easier. Both are made by Big Max Golf, an Austrian company, which made my current ride, a super-compact "push trolley" called a Big Max Blade +. The first accessory is called the I-Dry Rainsystem:
It covers the entire bag, and has a transparent hood that fits over the tops of your golf clubs. The hood opens and closes easily -- sort of like, I guess, a breadbox. There are only two drawbacks: it's expensive ($80 or so, at various places online), and it's made specifically for Big Max trolleys. In fact, even to use it on mine I had to replace the cart's existing bag-holding "wings" with two included replacement pieces, which the hood snaps into.
A more economical choice -- and one that works on anybody's pushcart -- is the Big Max Rain Safe. You strap it to your golf bag like a miniature parachute:
Then you forget about it until it starts to rain, when you unfurl it:
It's not as substantial as the I-Dry, but it weighs next to nothing, and it doesn't get in the way, and you can keep it strapped to your bag even when the sun is shining.