Add yards to your drive!

Shopping in a golf store is a bewildering experience. When I first started in golf, you could buy a 1,2,3 or 4 wood. 5 woods hadn't been invented yet. And those woods, well they were made of wood. You know, the stuff that trees are made of. Nowadays, drivers are described in cubic centimeter sizes and not only can you buy an Eleven wood (made out of steel, naturally) but one of the worlds top pro golfers K J Choi has more woods and hybrids in his bag than traditional irons. 

It's the same with balls, putters, even tees for goodness sake. Wherever you look, there's a product that will shave shots off your game or help you hit the ball yards further. Yards. 

There's a couple of really important pieces of advice to help any golfer choose his best equipment. Unfortunately the one piece of advice NOT to follow is to ask the bloke in the golf shop. 

The most important club you will buy is the one that gets you on the fairway off the tee as often as possible and as far down the fairway as possible. While getting personally fitted for every club is ideal, I strongly recommend you spend most of your time finding that club. 

Firstly, find a driver that looks good to your eye when it sits behind the ball. Does it naturally point down the right line? Is it easy to line up. Does it make you feel like it's just a matter of swinging it? Yes? That's the first decision made. 

When choosing loft for a driver, the current industry view is that the higher the loft the better. For certain, don't be choosing anything lower than 9.5 degrees of loft. The forgiveness that you sacrifice won't be paid back in length. Life's not that simple. 

Choosing a shaft is more difficult. But if you're not able to get yourself fitted, watch out for the trap of thinking that good players play a stiff shaft. It's absolutely the stupidest decision golfers make. In fact, rather than choosing between stiff and regular, it's much more important to think about quality. A shaft in an off the shelf model will be a mass produced, mass assembled component that will have been produced as cost efficiently as possible. Here's a secret. It's the same for stiff shafts cause guess what. Most amateurs choose stiff because that's what their ego says is right for them.

Don't make the same mistake. Instead look for a regular shafted driver that is not one of the standard off the shelf model. If you're buying an R9 or Razr, you can easily pop your own shaft in by a couple of quick turns of the tool they provide. The best investment you can make is on a better quality shaft. Read online forums and magazines to find out what the good names are, consider people like Grafalloy, ProForce and Matrix and search ebay and second hand stores for good deals.

The big manufacturers have got wise to this over the years and now every big driver launch seems to use a shaft that is produced in partnership with one of the big names. Trouble is, the shaft in those clubs, even if it says Matrix or Ozik, is a mass produced version of the original. And it's the original you want. No substitutes. 

Choosing a putter is the exact obvious. Choose the one that gets the ball in the hole. Full stop.

Apart from the above, my best advice on buying clubs is to play the equipment manufacturers at their own game. In the last year, Taylor Made have released at least three new drivers. They're all top drawer and all have their own strengths. The best buy of all of them will be the one that came before, especially if you can find it in packaging and with the shaft you want. 

Golf clubs do not wear out, especially those that are "old stock" and it's common to see $500 drivers being knocked out as floor stock a year later for under $200. Same with irons. Shop around. Forget the new. Buy well known brands that feel good. 

And forget stiff shafts!