Gearing Up

In This Chapter

_ Choosing a golf ball

_ Buying golf clubs

_ Knowing which club to use

_ Dressing like a pro

_ Buying accessories

In the last 100 years, golf has changed enormously, but the most noticeable difference is in equipment. The game may be inherently the same, but the implements used to get from tee to green and into the hole are unrecognizable compared to the rather primitive implements used by Young Tom Morris (one of the great, early pioneers of golf) and his Scottish buddies in the late 19th century. Okay, so early golf equipment had more romantic names: Niblick, brassie, spoon, driving-iron, mashie, and mashie-niblick are more fun

than 9-iron, 3-wood, 1-iron, 5-iron, and 7-iron. But golf equipment today is much better.

The old Scottish worthies (a great name for players) used clubs whose shafts were wooden — hickory, to be exact. Individually, these clubs may have been fine, but what were the chances of finding a dozen or so identical pieces of wood? Slim to none.

Nowadays, you have no excuse for playing with equipment ill suited to your swing, body, and game. There’s too much information out there to help you.And that’s the purpose of this chapter — to help you find your way through what can be a confusing maze of statistics and terminology.

Golf Balls: The Dimple Derby

Many technological advances have occurred in the game of golf over the years, but perhaps nothing has changed more than the golf ball. It’s no coincidence that the United States Golf Association (USGA) and Royal and Ancient Golf Club (R&A) keep a tight rein on just how far a ball can go nowadays. If

18 Part I: Getting Started: No, You Can’t Hit the Ball Yet

the associations didn’t provide regulations, almost every golf course on the planet would be reduced to a pitch and putt. We’d all be putting through windmills just to keep the scores up in the 50s. For the record, here are the specifications the USGA imposes on Titleist, Maxfli, and the rest of the ball manufacturers:

_ Size: A golf ball may not be smaller than 1.68 inches in diameter. The ballcan be as big as you want, however. Just don’t expect a bigger ball to go farther — it won’t. I’ve never seen anyone use a ball bigger than 1.68 inches in diameter.

_ Weight: The golf ball may not be heavier than 1.62 ounces.

_ Velocity: The USGA has a machine for measuring how fast a ball comes off the face of a club. That’s not easy, because impact lasts only 450 millionths of a second, and a good ball can zoom off at more than 170 miles an hour.

No legal ball may exceed an initial velocity of 250 feet per second at a temperature between 73 and 77 degrees. A tolerance of no more than 2 percent is allowed, which means an absolute max of 255 feet per second.

This rule ensures that golf balls don’t go too far. (In addition to balls, the USGA now tests bouncy-faced drivers to keep a lid on distance.)

_ Distance: Distance is the most important factor. For years the standard was the USGA’s “Iron Byron” robot (named for sweet-swingin’ Byron Nelson). No ball struck by Iron Byron could go farther than 280 yards. A tolerance of 6 percent was allowed, making 296.8 yards the absolute farthest the ball could go. Today the robot has some help from high-tech ball launchers in the USGA labs, and the upper limit has risen to 317 yards. Yeah, right. Iron Byron, meet the PGA Tour! Guys like Tiger Woods, Ernie Els, and their buddies just aren’t normal — they regularly blast drives way past 350 yards! _ Shape: A golf ball must be round. An anti-slice ball on the market a few years ago was weighted on one side and failed this test. Nice try, though! Even with these regulations, take a look around any golf professional’s shop and you’ll see many different brands. And upon closer inspection, you’ll find that every type of ball falls into one of two categories: Either the manufacturer is claiming that this ball goes farther and straighter than any other ball in the cosmos, or it’s telling you that this ball gives you more control. Try not to get overwhelmed. Keep in mind that golf balls come in only threebasic types: one-piece, two-piece, and three-piece. You can forget one-piece balls — they tend to be cheap and nasty and found only on driving ranges. So that leaves two-piece and three-piece balls.

Don’t worry; deciding on a type of ball is still easy. You don’t even have to know what a two-piece or three-piece ball contains or why it has that many “pieces.” Leave all that to the scientists. And don’t worry too much about launch angle or spin rate, either. Today’s balls are technological marvels, designed to take off high and spin just enough to go as straight as possible.