"YOU CAN'T BUY A GOLF GAME"

Faithful reader(s) know I've struggled mightily with my golf game recently. I just don't play as well as I once did.

The solution must be in the clubs. Because I'm the same, right?

So I have recently bought a new driver, a Taylor-Made R 5, which is supposed to make me draw the ball. I still fade it.

I broke an old 7-wood last month. Because of a good shot. You see, they have more shots from 170-190 yards out in Arizona. At least it seems that way. I'm always at that distance and I don't have a club I hit consistently from there.
I was 185 yards from the hole on a par three at Starfire. I hit my 7-wood and I hit it well. It landed about 8 yards short of the green. "I can't hit it any better," I told my playing partner and lofted the club twenty yards to the cart. It almost landed in his bag, but it crimped the shaft. I wasn't real mad. I didn't throw the club. I just decided that if I couldn't hit it any better, I didn't need it.

For Valentine's Day, my wife decided I needed new irons. Oh, boy, did I agree. I rushed out to Golfsmith to purchase some Ping G-5's that I had admired for some time. The salesman asked if I had time to hit balls. He selected two other irons for me to hit, as well. Grudgingly, I did. Of course, I didn't hit the Mizuno or Taylor-Made as well, but I also didn't pulverize the Ping either. He critiqued my swing and told me it looked good, but my clubhead speed was terrible. He suggested lessons from something called Golf Tech where they hook you up to
cathodes like a CAT scan and they can find out what's wrong.

Having seen a nearby golf pro nearly ruin Courtney's golf game her senior year in high school, I declined. That's when he laid the line on me that it wouldn't do any good to buy the Pings, because "You can't buy a golf game."

At least he didn't tell me to re-shaft the 7-wood. That really would have made me mad.