Golf Freek One Man's Quest to Play As Many Rounds of Golf As Possible. for Free.

One Sticks and Stones (or How Technology Saved My Game) I've never been much of a planner. Under normal circumstances I pack for two-week trips an hour before leaving, buy birthday and holiday gifts the day before the blessed event, and make dinner reservations from my car as I pull into the restaurant parking lot. Not that I have anything against planning ahead. I'm just not very good at it. But despite my admitted planning deficiencies, I wasn't about to venture into the belly of the golf beast unprepared. Step one was getting a new set of clubs. "Please tell me you're kidding," Debbie said when I'd finished my "prepared adventurer" spiel. "I have to be equipped," I said. "If I were climbing McKinley would you deny me a new set of crampons? If I were diving the Great Barrier Reef--" "You can stop now." "A wet suit?" "That's enough." "If I were trekking the Congo--" "I have a feeling this free golf thing is going be a lot more expensive than I expected." A quarter-century ago, purchasing golf clubs was a simple, intimate ritual. Like the best blind dates, friends matched you up with the hottest new clubs --"Harvey, you should see the heads on those Dyna-Powers! Va-va-voom, baby!" or, "Man, did you see that MacGregor Tommy Armour driver in Jimbo's bag? Made my knees weak!" Even armed with such endorsements, initial contact with new and untested equipment remained tentative: fear of rejection high. Once a player mustered the courage to pick up a new club, the first impression was crucial to the relationship. How it looked, how it "set up," what it felt like as you waggled it in the store all were harbingers of what would either be a fruitful or tempestuous marriage. Again, like finding a suitable date, the only technical elements worth considering were how much it weighed, and how stiff you wanted it. All irons were "blades" in those days: thin, forged instruments with long, lean furrows connecting the tiniest of heads to tapered steel shafts. The longer ones (including those now-extinct relics, the one-irons) looked like the love children of straight-edged butter knives and custom pool cues. The leading edge (that area of the club where face meets sole) was as harsh and angular as a dull ax blade, and the top line looked like the vertical sight of a rifle scope. Woods, now called "metals" by the tradition-challenged, were teensy-weensy whittled chunks of persimmon. A serious golfer always checked the grain in a wooden club before venturing too far, cradling the head in the palm of one hand while running the pad of a thumb along the top edge. Good blocks were honey-finished to show off a tight grain that tapered to a point near the toe. After caressing the club for a few minutes, players would invariably place it on the ground near a curb or crack, any straight line, to check the bulge and roll of the face. Loft was not an issue. As Clay Long, the former chief designer for MacGregor, told me, "All our drivers had ten degrees of loft. If you couldn't hit a ten-degree driver, tough, get a two-wood." Looks and feel mattered most. Irons had to be "square," and woods had to look solid. Other than that, a fruitful engagement consisted of caressing a club in the presence of a pro and taking a few long, slow, deliberate swings in the shop. Alas, those clubs and the ancient sacraments that went with buying them have disappeared like last year's money. Today, just as the youthful rituals of courtship have given way to "hooking up," buying a golf club is like online dating: You fill out personal date forms, lying to both the respondents and yourself about your abilities. No more ginger touches, no more romance: Shopping for a golf club today requirEubanks, Steve is the author of 'Golf Freek One Man's Quest to Play As Many Rounds of Golf As Possible. for Free.', published 2007 under ISBN 9780307337436 and ISBN 030733743X.