New Year’s Resolution #5: Resolve To Be More Frugal
Golf doesn’t have to be expensive. You do not, for example, need to play with $40 a dozen balls, when there are any number of wonderful orbs available at half the price. My curent favorite is the Bridgestone E6. For $25 or less a dozen, you get a great feeling, three piece surlyn ball with plenty of spin.
GigaGolf offers great bargains on clubs. For example, the PowerMax KC2 425 Ti offers a supersized moveable weight driver for as little as $88.50. When ordering from GigaGolf, you can customize it to your specifications, and the clubs all come with a 30 day playability guarantee.
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Amen, Brother.
Let me add to that the idea of playing on reasonably priced courses—or playign at lower-priced, non peak times. Most of the public courses I play at I get on for under $25.
I was playing the E6 quite a bit last year. I like it, but I have switched back to the flaming balls now : the Fire, HX Hot, and Ignite. I think Bridgestone should have given the E6 some high-temp name too. Of the 3 balls above, I am going with the Fire, at least for a while, if nothing else for the cool flame on the side of the ball, (which if you are going to putt bad anyway, at least if you use the red flame-line to line your putt it looks cooler than using the two arrows with the product name (i.e. “<HX HOT>”). The other more obvious benefit of the Fire is it is $5 cheaper than the E6, HX Hot, or Ignite.
I have had two retailers in town actually discourage me from buying a HX Tour & Pro V1s because they don’t think any bogey golfer should be paying $45 a dozen. I don’t understand this marketing strategy, but it does make me more comfortable about spending other money in their store.
Oh, yeah, one other thing about playing with any of the 4 balls above. I never have an issue of mixing up balls with the guys I play with. There are usually 3 different numbered Titleists, and then my odd-ball.
There is another reason why most golfers shouldn’t play TOUR level balls like the ProV1 or the ProV1x. Most amateurs put way too much sidespin on the ball. The ProVs are great for good players who don’t put much sidespin on the ball.
But if a bad player (who likely puts a lot of sidespin on the ball) hits the ProVs (which are designed to spin a lot), those two-piece balls will put even more sidespin on the ball and actually hurt the bad players.
So, even if ProVs cost the same, people who put a lot of sidespin on their shots shouldn’t play the ProVs.
I liked the E6. I’m trying out the Nike Juice ball today. One of its main marketing features is that it reduces sidespin (and its advertising and “fake hazard warning” labels on the box are very funny). It’s only $19 a dozen, I believe.
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On a side note, I highly recommend that everyone spend the $30 (or more for an extended session), and get on a ball launch monitor (its $30 at GolfGalaxy). It was one of the most interesting golf things I’ve ever done. It takes a super high speed photo of the club at the moment of impact (while you’re hitting the ball into a net). After your shot, you can see how far the ball went and what direction, but more importantly, it tells you precisely how many degrees open or closed your clubhead is at impact, the launch angle that the ball is taking, and the clubhead speed.
For instance, let’s say that the launch angle was 11 degrees. However, the ideal launch angle is 13 degrees. You can then see what would happen had if you had all other factors equal, but changed the launch angle.
By doing this, you can find what your big problems are that you need to work on. Finally, they change clubs and balls around to show what the computer says is the ideal club.
It’s very cool, and definitely worth the money.
I have been playing recently with Wilson Smartcore. It was a very popular ball several years ago. It now sells at most retailers for $19.95 for 2 dozen balls. It’s a deal!
I had two Dick’s gift cards for $50 each…I went the other day and bought a Maxfli A10 driver for $99 at Dick’s…it has draw weighting and when I hit it at their store it seemed to feel a bit better when hit than my present $50 RAM driver, and it seemed more durable, too. It is the one ‘expensive’ club in my bag (it lists, apparently accordding to Dicks for $199, which may or may not be actual truth). It suits me fine, so far.
I have all plain-jane off the rack equipment…Pinemeadow hybrids and Acuity irons from one of their complete set deals sold at Dicks…the clubs suit my game fine at this point.
I play Nike power soft balls…$16 a dozen around here, or I play Top Flites. Pro V1’s, recycled, too…although they dont improve my game.
I got a new Intech push/pull cart for Christmas, it was the one that I asked for from my wife, it was a good balance between price ($60) and weight / quality. Why plunk down $130 for a cart, in my opinion?
I have kids going into college…along with private schooling at present, this, to me, is more important than investing hundreds of dollars for the latest driver. When they are done in school, maybe I will plunk the cash down for big ticket golf items.
You don’t have to spend a lot of dough to enjoy the game.