Cleaning Out The Golf Stuff In The Garage

Cleaning Out The Golf Stuff In The Garage

A slipped disk in the lower back has kept me on the sidelines for the last week, so I decided to spend some time sorting through some boxes of old golf stuff in the garage.

Most of the hoard was useless junk I’ve accumulated during seventeen years of golf writing. I get a LOT of things sent by people hoping for a favorable review. My policy, however, is not to waste time writing bad reviews. If I try something and it’s bad, you’ll never hear about it. Thus, most of the stuff I get sent, you will never hear about.

The single largest category of junk were things designed to keep your grips out of the wet grass when set your clubs down at the greenside. None of these ever made sense to me. A towel is easier and cheaper.

A tote bag of promotional towels went in the trash. So many promotional towels. And baseball caps. And cheap plastic ball markers

Also out with the trash: a haul of putter and swing trainers. I haven’t seen many of these lately, and the ones I have seen, such as the Putt Out Mirror Training System are actually pretty good. There was a time a decade or so ago, when my mailbox was full of weird contraptions, many of which involved strapping something to a club shaft that involved dangling balls, aiming points or protruding plastic bits. One involved a complicated arrangement of gyroscopes.

Most of these actually were in pieces. On top of their other failings, they were not durable.

Not in the trash: a box of scorecards from the 250 or so different golf courses I have played over the years.

I also had accumulated a very large collection of balls in various stages of deterioration. I kept a couple of specimens as exemplars of particular balls and ditched the rest.

Among the balls was a sleeve of Strata Professional Balata balls. I noted with amusement that the sleeve advertises that the model “maintains roundness for truer putting.”

That’s not a problem anyone thinks about these days.

I remember being told to float my golf balls in a bucket of water and epson salts to determine whether they were “balanced.”

Also in the pile was a partially used box of Black Widow cleats. I haven’t used shoes with cleats in many years. I’ve found that cleatless shoes are much better for walking. Also, at my swing speeds, I don’t have a footing problem.

To go along with the cleats was a cleat remover tool. I actually had to think for a second before I recognized it as such: “What the? Oh. Yeah.”

After a long day’s work, I reduced the pile of golf junk to a very manageable trio of three-foot-long shelves. The gear now is stored in clear plastic tubs that let me easily find what I need.

An update on the bulging disk: a week of steroids, muscle relaxers and physical therapy have finally calmed the pain and I am walking again. I actually feel good enough to play golf in the near future.