Home > Learning Center > Golf Equipment

Golf Equipment

Golf equipment can see a complicated and intimidating ordeal at first glance. You’re supposed to be sporting fourteen clubs, a handful of balls, a bag, boxes of tees, shoes for the course, a cart? Where does one begin? Well the basics are a good place to start, especially if you are new to the game.

To start, you don’t need a full set of clubs. If you are still working out what exactly your swing is, the difference between an eight iron and a seven iron is not going to be noticeable for you. What you really need for a round are about 5-6 clubs. One driver, a wedge, a putter, and a medium and long range iron will get a beginning golfer through the holes without being the worse for the wear.

So what do you look for in your clubs? Well your driver should be made of a high impact and lightweight metal, such as titanium. Titanium clubs are the gold standard of drivers, so they may be out of the price range you’re willing to pay for a new sport. If this is the case consider a steel or composite headed driver. The best drivers have graphite shafts, and if possible it is recommended that you buy a driver that has one. These shafts are light in weight and have great flex, both of which allow you for maximum force on impact, and thus greater distance from your shot.

Once you have a driver you should invest in a few irons for your next pieces of golf equipment. You should look for a long iron, in the 1-4 range to supplement your driver. A long iron will have a head with a low degree of loft and will be used for long, straight shots. After the long iron comes the mid range irons, numbered 5-8. Their loft ranges from 25-40 degrees and they are used for middle ranged shots and also when shooting from the rough at the edge of the fairway. The final iron you’ll want to acquire is a wedge, or short iron. This category includes the nine iron, the pitching wedge, and the sand wedge.  They have at least 45 degrees of loft on them, and are used for hitting your ball out of a sand trap, or short shots that require the ball to stay where it lands rather than rolling afterwards.

The last club you will want for any set of golf equipment is the putter. Your putter is very different from both drivers and irons. Firstly, it is shorter than the other clubs, and it has a small head with less than ten degrees of loft. When putting, the idea is to keep the ball on the ground and roll it into the hole to complete the hole of golf. The mechanics of a putt are much different than your other golf swings and the putter takes some getting used to. With a good short game however, you will be a formidable golfer indeed.

If the clubs are one half of your golf equipment; the other half is your ball and tees. The modern golf ball looks much different than its ancestors. It is designed to accentuate the spin imparted to it by the club. For pro golfers this is a great thing, for someone just starting out it means that you are more likely to hook or shank the ball because of the amplification of any spin you give it. A tee is only used on the first shot of the course, to give the ball extra lift from the driver.

 

Golf Equipment | Golf Bags | Learning Center | Site Map | Links | Contact | Home

Copyright © 2009