The Magic of New Golf Clubs

A top notch instructor and friend in Australia sent me a couple of rather formidable questions.

"Why is it that people really think they play better with some off the rack stuff that is suited to bugger all people? Why is it that they may score better for a couple of rounds and then the magic wears off?"

That's heard a lot, too, isn't it? I wonder if there is a golfer alive who has not had some variation of the experience that prompts the question. New putters used to be my thing. And up until more recently, even Arnie used to haul five or six out to the putting green before playing to see which one would work best that day.

We call it the "distraction factor." Anything new requires a different focus of attention from the usual. That takes the mind away from mechanical issues for a moment or two, and that's when things get better. Never mind that it's an unfinished form of the principle. It will work in the short term. The moral is that we could go through golfing life changing our equipment every other day (disregarding the cost, of course) and likely play better until that drained us of money or pleasure.

The sad part is that no one bothered to check into the principle lying behind that phenomenon. Most players keep on trying to think about what they are doing while they are doing it - which is a procedure containing several fatal errors.

A new piece of equipment stops, or postpones that kind of thinking for a day or two, till the player becomes accustomed to the "new" and it is now "old," so it's back to the same "old" kind of thinking.

What makes that "fatal" is the mismatch occuring between thinking and acting. We can think much faster than we can act, which in nature's scheme, inevitably produces either a balk or "hot pursuit" trying to catch up. Either of those is ultimately fatal. Oh, of course, we get away with our misses, even teach people that's a desirable way to go, but it is a "wounded" way to go.

So all us clever folks thought up what can now be seen as a "tic-tac" solution - get a new set of clubs. And the rest of the story is, where this message is concerned, it makes no difference if they are "fitted" or just off the rack, since it's not the clubs. Its the NEW in our minds about the clubs.

If that's not an elongated way to face a problem, then we've missed something somewhere.
Cheers