Time to embrace appropriate equipment

After years of persisting with the wrong clubs, my boss finally points me in right direction, writes Colin Byrne

I REMEMBER IN my early days of caddying when the year's end came, which was closer to September rather than December like it is today. Many of us loopers would receive an end of year bonus in the form of a set of old clubs from our bosses.

From the perspective of receiving a gift as a way of gratitude, rattling back home with a fancy looking set of golf clubs felt great. Great that was until as an average golfer you had to go and hit these clubs which were of course a total mismatch for the handicapped hacker.

I recall this one set of Wilson staff irons presented to me by my then boss David Feherty looking more like spatulas than club heads when I put them down behind the discarded Titleist golf balls that had been accumulated over the season. In the days before peripheral weighted oversized heads, the 1.68 golf ball all but made these old blades invisible. Needless to say, like with many gifts, my player would have been doing me a bigger favour by sending me home empty-handed for my long winter break. But the thought was nice.

I can feel the pain of yet another thin five iron heading out low and right with shafts that were better suited to building houses upon instead of linking my second-hand, under-sized clubhead to its over-used grip. You could feel the pain in your back teeth as the badly-timed shot came screaming out over the fading grass of late autumn and the contact off the bottom groove sent an electric shock-like sensation rushing through your limbs.

After a stubborn winter of low, poorly stuck shots the clubs usually ended up in the pro-shop when the tour beckoned again in the spring-time. That was back in the days when we wore hand-me-downs from head to foot and scuffed, over-used and discoloured balata golf balls were still treasured.

Of course in the modern era of an excess supply of golf equipment I am not too sure if any of my colleagues would still play with a discarded, slightly nicked professional ball; I think most of our ammunition comes out of the wrappers today.

With an unhealthy fear of change I can confess I am not a modern marketer's dream when it comes to golf equipment. I have managed to cling on to the old-time looper's mentality of a good golf club is a free one. Despite a ball flight that was more threatening to rabbits than birds I persisted for decades with inappropriate woods. So until my boss rescued me from unsuitable equipment a couple of weeks ago I was living in a dusty old world of totally inappropriate game-impairing clubs.

I was staying with Retief a few weeks back in America and we went down to the range primarily for him to hit balls. He was testing out some new drivers. I decided to test out the ones he didn't look like he was too keen on. Naturally my ball flight off the 8 and 9 degree drivers looked more like a wounded duck desperately attempting to get airborne.

In his astute, analytical fashion my boss observed my flat-flighted shots down the range and made an instant suggestion about what clubs I needed to perhaps make my game a little more competitive and a little less embarrassing for him to watch.

I took myself off to the very obliging TaylorMade club builders in the tour mobile workshop and made my requests for a super-quad driver with ten and a half degrees of loft, a stiff 44-inch, 65-gramme shaft, with a swing weight of D3. These were the strict instructions of my personal technical advisor Retief Goosen. They also made me up an R7 fairway wood with 15 degrees of loft and a slightly heavier, stiff shaft. What a loser I have been, living in total denial of the benefits of appropriate equipment.

I was back home last week and had my first opportunity to test my new TaylorMade, tailor-made clubs. The ball was taking off at a height that did not scare the rabbits, it carried further and the feel at impact from the shaft was that of a solid hit and not the numb thud like I had been used to with my previously good but mismatched woods.

Retief also kindly donated one of his old drivers to an auction which took place in Dublin last week which raised money for the Crumlin Children's Hospital. His driver was, curiously, bought by a young lady and not a man as I had assumed it would be. I met the woman who was proudly holding her Retief Goosen custom-made club. I figured she was going to use it as a keep-sake as he had signed the face of it. Apparently she had every intention of using the club on her next golf outing which was to be last weekend. I was trying to explain to her it might be better to get a weaker shaft so as to enjoy the experience a bit more. Like me in my previous life as an anti-technician she was adamant she was going to use as was. I really do hope she didn't hurt herself.