I play a lot of my golf with someone who carries seven clubs, at the most, and shoots in the mid 70s, at the most. He hits a lot of half shots, he plays all his chips with the same club and he putts well.
He’s never been on a launch monitor, or anything even slightly resembling it, but he’s 53 years of age and he can still do it. He can hit the majority of fairways and most of the greens, and he’s got zero interest in smash factors or even his own clubhead speed.
He does a lot of nasal breathing, meditates and flat lines his way around the course.
A lot of the above has rubbed off on me, the main takeaway being that I don’t need 14 clubs. Historically, I’ve obsessed about my gapping and 14 wasn’t even close to having enough implements to perform the operation.
I’ve generally had four clubs with headcovers, plus the putter, and at least four wedges. Then there would probably be a chipper. At one point I had a squad of 18 who were coming and going with every new round.
There is also the small issue that my trolley tipped over in the winter and snapped, so I’m now back with the Ogio pencil bag, one of those cool leather Sunday bags which I picked up for £21 in lockdown due to a stitching irregularity.
This is another huge plus in my thinking as, in my head, it makes me feel I’m cool, which is sadly offset by the rest of my appearance.
My club line-up
Starting at the top of the bag, this winter I’ve added a 7-wood to the arsenal. This is the new Mizuno JPX One which, given I de-loft everything, I’ve increased the loft of and banished the 5-wood.
The simple thinking is this gives me a club that can cover 200 yards, is easier to hit than any other wood that’s ever been in the bag, provides a bit of cover in case the driver is all over the place and comes close to the yardage of the next club to make its way out of the bag.
We all have an iron that we don’t really like and, like most golfers, mine is the longest in the bag. My thinking, weirdly, is that the 5-iron is somehow a different species to the 6, even though they’re identical but for three degrees of loft and a tiny amount of length.
If I’m going to shank anything it’s this and that shot generally sets me back about two months. I very rarely smoke one from 185 yards onto the green and I can't really hit the ball above head height, so I might as well come up 10 yards short or fashion/ease up/balloon the 7-wood.
I have considered alternating and going odds or evens with the irons, but I’m not ready for this. I’m already tedious enough these days, just waiting for the right moment to reveal that I'm performing all these heroics with four fewer clubs than you are, without also having to inform everyone that I didn’t have the right iron for every shot.
I've kept faith with the 6, 7, 8, 9 and PW. Then we come to the A wedge, which, like the 5-iron, I've always viewed with great suspicion – and some degree of confusion as I still genuinely don't know what the A stands for.
I’ve never got my head round why a gap wedge should cause any undue concerns – maybe because it’s the last of the P790s before we move into the wedges and therefore I tell myself too often that I’d be better off with a more specific wedge.
I have actually holed out with this club – from 123 yards at the 11th at Moortown, since you asked – but it still seems like an outlier.
I’d like to say I’m good enough not to leave myself a shot in of around 110-115 yards, but the reality of always coming up short means that I just hit the pitching wedge and very little has changed. And so this has also gone.
The non-negotiable is the Ping BunkR wedge which is saved for pretty much all bunker shots. The amusing fact that I carry a wedge of 64.5˚, given a 20-year chipping affliction, is rarely lost on me, but this is too useful a club to exclude (see above comments on de-lofting everything).
So we’re then down to the 54 and 58˚ wedges, which is probably the easiest choice – a) I need something that travels 100 yards and is in the same parish as the pitching wedge, and b) I have some very dark memories of the places the 58˚ has put me in.
There will be occasions when I’ll face an 80-yard shot to a pin that’s perched and just sitting a few yards beyond a bunker, but this isn’t a shot that I generally play with any confidence anyway. So, my line-up is as follows:
1) Driver 2) 7w 3) 6i 4) 7i 5) 8i 6) 9i 7) PW 8) 54˚ 9) 64˚ 10) Putter
Ten years ago, this would wake me up in a cold sweat. The glaring omission is the lack of artillery at the top of the bag. I’ve had fittings where I’ve fixated over filling the gap from 215-230 yards, but the stats would then suggest that a) I rarely faced this yardage, and b) I would get so giddy at trying to hit a par-5 green that I would put myself into some sort of mess.
Now the likelihood is that I will hit a better shot and just come up a bit short. I'll make more pars than bogeys and everything will be okay.
It's the same with the 5- and 6-iron and, in a different way, the 54 and 58˚. The three clubs that put me in the most trouble have now gone, and even someone as negative as me has a bag full of clubs I have some confidence in.
The real perk of this, other than lightening the load and carrying again, is that you have more understanding of your own game. We all read about how we should spend the winter playing with a half set to spark our imaginations, but then we’re expected to just go back to 14 clubs.
So far, my scoring hasn't suffered at all and I think it will improve throughout the warmer months as I’ll be in less trouble and I’ll be more familiar with what’s in my bag.
There will be moments when I will fall off the perch and throw in the 58˚, but this is definitely a new era in my golfing journey and a welcome decluttering process.
