2025 Holiday Gift Guide: Don’t let the Grinch play through!
In last year’s Holiday Gift Guide, I fretted about prices increasing. According to The Budget Lab at Yale University, the concern was warranted. The lab’s research shows that leather products, wearing apparel, and metal products – categories central to the golf industry – are three of the top four that have been hit hardest by…
L.A.B. Putters – “Feels like I’m cheating!”
I’ve been writing about golf equipment for almost 30 years. In that time, I have tested and reviewed close to 100 putters, ranging from household name brands to boutique start-ups. Many – by which I mean most – new putter companies fail within a few years. But every now and then, one of these plucky…
Sub70 JB Sugar Skull Wedges: Scary-good
If you’ve never heard of Sub70 Golf, you’re in for a treat. This boutique clubmaker based in Sycamore, Illinois, has been producing clubs that are of the highest quality, but at a very reasonable price-point. As I detailed in the profile linked above, the philosophy at Sub70 is “If it isn’t better, don’t release it.”…
May your Ryder Cup be Filled with Cool Merch
The Ryder Cup rolls around every two years, and golf fans anticipate it as eagerly as Olympians await the Olympics or soccer fans crave the World Cup. With the Ryder Cup being held at Bethpage Black this year, and Keegan Bradley representing a new generation of US team captains, golf equipment and apparel companies are…
Hot Summer Golf Gifts
It’s been a hot summer, but my golf game has been hot and cold. Those of us doggedly pursuing lower scores through the heat and humidity deserve some treats in these waning dogdays, don’t you think? I’ve rounded up some of my favorite golf gift ideas to help pull you out of the doldrums, celebrate…
TRUE Linkswear: More than snazzy golf shoes
My car trunk is full of golf shoes. Like, 25 pairs, maybe 30. My buddies laugh, but write a lot about golf shoes. And I like to match my shoes with my outfit for the day. Because I walk most rounds, I like to rotate shoes to cut down on potential blister hot spots or…
Father’s Day 2025: Gifting up to par
If you’re a golfer, but others in your family are not golfers, you have doubtlessly received numerous golf gifts that were well-intentioned and given with great love but which were – let’s be honest – completely and utterly useless. I just ran across one of these of my own in the back of a drawer.…
2025 Season Opener Gift Guide
For golf fanatics, The Masters counts as a holiday. Like, a MAJOR holiday (pun intended). And for golfers who live in northernly climes, it also marks the start of the golf season. Or close to it anyway, depending on how far north you live. Given this auspicious time of year, when hope for lowered handicaps,…
Cleveland HiBore XL Driver: All-in on AI
Golf equipment companies known for their drivers – like Callaway, TaylorMade, and Ping – have turned in recent years to AI applications to rethink and redesign their big sticks. Now Cleveland, a legendary equipment company traditionally known more for wedges and putters, has entered the AI arena. Released December 6, 2024, the Cleveland HiBore XL…
Get ‘em before they go (up): Holiday Golf Gift Guide 2024
Another year is almost done. I hope it was full of memorable golf, camaraderie, and fun. I have no idea what’s in store for 2025, but if certain widely promoted plans come to fruition, I do know that the vast majority of golf clubs, balls, gadgets, and apparel will be significantly more expensive next holiday…
Be a Well-Adjusted Walker with Sun Mountain Ridgeline 3 Push Cart
I prefer to walk when I play golf. Since at least 2009 when my lower back began balking at the weight of my golf bag, I have been a staunch proponent of push carts. I review a lot of gadgets, balls, clubs, drinks, snacks, etc., etc. nearly every round, so my bag is often stuffed…
Cleveland CBX 4 Zipcore Wedges deliver spin and confidence
I just finished playing 18 with a nice young man – 30 years old, struck his woods fairly well. But he gave away at least 12 shots around the greens – full wedges off the toe or high on the face, chunks, duffs, lack of spin. Sometimes technique was to blame. Others, though, I would…
2024 Father’s Day Golf Gift Guide
It’s Father’s Day again! Seems like the last one was just a year ago. Time flies like a McIlroy drive, as they (should) say. Let’s get right to the point: The best gift you can give to old Dad – or any father-figure or mentor in your life who happens to love golf – is…
Cleveland Golf Launcher XL2 Driver is a Fairway-Finder
Golfers’ single-minded pursuit of distance at the expense of control reminds me of the way some people – mostly young people – drink the strongest booze possible, flavor be damned, just to “get there” faster. With age, one realizes that savoring a fine bourbon is more enjoyable than slamming shots of swill. And on the…
Cleveland Golf HALO XL Hy-Woods: Blurring the lines, filling the gaps
Twenty-five years ago, I could really bomb my fairway woods. I didn’t know where they were going, but I knew they were going far in some direction. The rare occasions they went straight were the rare occasions I scored well. Then something happened. Slowly, sort of like how you gain weight. Doesn’t seem bad at…
Cleveland Golf ZipCoreXL Irons: Make Forgiveness Sexy Again
Over 3.5 years ago, I reviewed my first set of “players distance” irons. I admitted in that review that I had reached a certain age when I needed a little assistance from club-making engineers to maintain distance and accuracy, even on mis-hits, while preserving some semblance of shot-making control. I have been playing with those…
2023 Holiday Golf Gift Guide: New year, new memories
Another year is coming to a close, and for golfers in many places, another golf season is ending as well. I’m writing this a few hours after what might be my final round of the year, played on my local municipal course with two good golf buddies and my son, home from his sophomore year…
“Sustainable golf” with Sun Mountain Eco-Lite Golf Bags
Every year or two, some non-golfer commentator decries golf courses as environmentally disastrous or socially corrosive, or both. Calls to “liberate” golf courses for the masses ignore the fact that 75% of American courses are public. Criticisms of golf courses as chemical-laden monocultures are not without some merit, though: in the US, those private clubs…
Sub70 Golf: Boutique golf clubs without the boutique price tags
In 1835, Carlos Lattin built the first log cabin in the town that came to be known as Sycamore, Illinois. Today, on that same site, is the fitting center of Sub70 Golf, one of the fastest-growing direct-to-consumer boutique golf club companies since 2018. The recipe for this success is a combination of the highest quality…
Shop for Pop: 2023 Father’s Day Golf Gift Guide
I just returned from an annual 3-day golf trip with a group of guys who’ve been playing together once a year for 33 years. We don’t all go every year, and sometimes we don’t see someone for a half-dozen years. Yet somehow, I feel like I recognize these guys better than my own neighbors, and…
Cobra T-Rail Irons: Golf clubs for regular folks
Depending on which statistics one looks at, the percentage of golfers who never break 100 is somewhere around 50%. Of course, this estimate also depends on how you define “golfer.” Is someone who plays once or twice a year a golfer? We could argue about this all day. Irrespective of these statistics, though, everyone who…
Cleveland HB SOFT Milled Putters: Sink putts, not your budget
Your putter is the only club you use on every hole. This intense familiarity tends to breed a manic relationship between golfers and their flatsticks. One type of player largely ignores their putters – they’ve played the same one for 20 years, and the grip is glassy smooth, the head is dented, the shaft might…
Srixon ZX MK II Drivers: Consistency breeds confidence
It feels like just yesterday that I first received a dozen Srixon golf balls to review, despite it being nearly 20 years ago. I called them “The best balls whose name you can’t pronounce.” Srixon golf balls continue to be some of the best balls for the money at every price point. Moreover, Srixon has…
Titleist does it again with TSR2 woods
Golf equipment companies introduce “new” clubs two or even three times a year. Every time, without fail, these new clubs are “longer,” “more forgiving,” “better performing.” Heck, they’re regularly trumpeted as “the best ever!” I’ve been writing about golf equipment for over two decades now, and I am not the only person in the industry…
Honma BERES Aizu Line: Straight from the heart of Japan
Aizu-Wakamatsu City is remote by Japanese standards: just over two hours north of Tokyo by Shinkansen (bullet train), followed by a connection of another hour or so by local train. During the winter, heavy mountain snows can block those local tracks completely. The region’s isolation was a reason it became one of the final strongholds…
Should I play or will it snow, now? 2022 Holiday Gift Guide for golfers in all climes
Every winter, I think to myself: “Will I be able to get out to play before spring?” Despite living in central Illinois, sometimes I do – I worry about climate change while teeing it up on some random 45-degree February day. If you happen to live in a climate more conducive to year-round play, count…
Honma TW757 Fairway Woods boast tradition and tech
Japan is a golf-crazed nation. The sport is associated with status, leisure, and wealth. When I lived there in the early and mid 1990s, I would sometimes spend $200 in an evening just at a driving range–and the range was packed with golf nuts like me. Honma is one of the top golf equipment companies…
Bloodline Vale: Stand up for your putts
You’ve likely seen the infomercials for the putters that stand up behind your ball. This review is NOT about those putters. The Bloodline Vale (HPP) ($299) does stand up on its own, but there is no infomercial for Bloodline putters, the original self-standing putters. The Vale is Bloodline’s newest addition. It’s a mallet with a…
Edison Wedges: Invented for the average player
Terry Koehler has been in the golf equipment industry for 40 years. He began with Ray Cook Putters in the early 1980s. He joined Ben Hogan Golf in the early 90s. He founded both Eidolon Golf and Scor Wedges, where he developed the first progressive weight wedge system. Then he brought Ben Hogan back to…
2022 Father’s Day Golf Gift Guide
This Father’s Day, I’m particularly reflective. My son—the younger of my two kids—just graduated from high school, and he’ll soon make his way out of state for college. He won’t be playing golf there, but I hope he takes the work ethic embodied in the photo below with him when he goes. This was his…
2022 Masters Gift Guide
For over a decade, I’ve been writing a Valentine’s Day Golf Gift Guide. But realisticly, that’s not a day for golf gifts. What should be a holiday though, at least for those of us with green running through our veins and visions of birdies dancing through our heads, is Masters Week. If you live in…
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