Why You Need This: Today, I'm going to give you a look inside the bag I'm currently playing.

I'll show what I'm playing and what I think is important to consider when deciding what you should play.

I'll give you some tips on what to expect from the different types of clubs, shafts, weighting, etc.

So, come on with me, and let me take you on a journey into my golf bag in 2018!

Let's get started.....

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 16:28

Video Transcription:

Hey, it’s great to have you here today, and I’ve got a special video for you. I’m going to go through my clubs as I play them right now, this is the 2018 bag.

The reason I wanted to do this video because I’m at a bit of a crossroads and I’d like to hear your feedback on this.

Up until now I’ve always paid for all my own clubs. I do have a few things I’ve gotten for free, but I’ve always paid for the majority of my clubs.

That way when I do a review, I can say, “Hey, this club’s no good, I don’t like it at all,” or, “This club is great.”

Now if I go and get a bunch of free stuff. I’ve gotten several offers to have bag, clubs, drivers, balls, all that kind of stuff for free. That’s pretty cool, it’s always fun to get free stuff.

But I’m afraid it might skew my opinion to where if I see a club that I really like from another manufacturer, maybe I’ll be less likely to do a review on that because I’ll feel like it’s kind of hurting the company that’s helping me, that kind of thing.

Or if I have a club that I don’t like, I may not voice my opinion as strongly why I don’t like it, if they’re giving it to me for free.

I’m going to do my best, whichever I decide, to always give you 100 percent accurate feedback, and that’s what you’ll hear here when I talk about a couple of the free clubs that I got. I’ll give you my 100 percent honest feedback on this.

All right, let’s dive in here. Let’s get into the bag. Let’s start with the wedges and let’s move forward from there.

One of the clubs I actually did get for free is Cleveland sent some wedges. They sent me a 50, 56, and the 60, that’s the range I like to play. They’re RTX-3 Cleveland wedges.

I prefer to have a little bit more higher bounce, so there’s usually three different markings on these. A low bounce, which is going to get a little bit sharper interaction with the turf, a mid bounce and a high bounce.

I like the high bounce because it really allows the club to guide through the turf. You have to be on some really tight hard pan to really need anything other than high bounce.

Here’s the reason why. Whenever I get forward shaft lean like I should have on mmost of these shots, that bounce is sticking down when the club shaft is straightup and down.

If I’m hitting this shot correctly, and I have forward shaft lean, that’s taking the bounce off of this. The bounce really doesn’t play much until you hit through the shot and toward the end of the divot, then your bounce is going to be helping to help that club glide through the turf.

I always like high bounce clubs, but it’s really just personal opinion, personal preference as to what to pick.

Now with these particular wedges, this is the best designed face. When I look down at these, these look really great. That’s the key. All the companies are making great clubs. St

Pick the one that you look down at it and you think it’s a nice shape to the head. I grew up playing Cleveland wedges, I think they’re fantastic.

Now the downside to these wedges, and what I really don’t like about them as much, they’re just not nearly as soft as say like I Vokey wedge, or some of the other wedges that are out there. They just have a little bit harder face, not quite as soft of a feel to them.

Doesn’t really affect the performance at all, but man, when you hit a Vokey and it’s nice and solid, it just has that extra little bit of soft feel to it, which is one of the things I wish that Cleveland would take that same kind of play and make a little bit softer wedges, especially with the type of metal they’re using.

Now let’s move to the irons. These irons, paid for myself, and these are the AP2, Titleist AP2. The thing I love about an AP2 is it has some perimeter weighting in the heel and the toe, and that allows the face to be more stable.

Usually when you get the old-school, let’s say it’s a cavity-back iron, it’s just solid metal. There’s nothing inside of that. All the newer irons, the best irons out there, are using weights inside the head to pull the weight to the perimeter of the club.

What that does, is when you hit the shot it’s less likely to twist open, or twist closed on the club face, makes the shots go a little bit straighter.

Essentially what this is, this plays like a club that is more forgiving than the size of the head it is. If it had a bigger head and more perimeter weighting, it would be more forgiving. This is actually a more forgiving club for the head size.

Now one reason I need to get some new clubs, you’ll see on these wedges too that I’ve talked about, some of these faces are getting really worn out. I don’t know if you can see those wear spots on them.

We can definitely see it in my 7 iron, this is one I hit on the range all the time. We’ll give you some close-ups of this, but the face is really getting worn out on a lot of these, so I’m going to have to get a new set of clubs.

That’s one thing that I’d recommend. If you buy used clubs, make sure that you get one that has good condition on the faces.

If you want to get that nice spin going into the greens, you want that to be really, your ball to react well to the faces, they need to be new.

So if you get a used set and the faces are worn out, even if you get a great deal on them, they’re really not worth much. They’re not going to perform that well.

You get a little bit of grass between the ball and the face, you get a little bit of water, anything like that, and it’s pretty much shot.

You’re not going to get the results, you’re not going to get the spin and the performance you want.

Now I use an extra stiff, I love these KBS shafts. These are really my favorite feeling shafts that I’ve tried out. Just use a KBS Tour, extra stiff, a little bit on the stiffer end which I like.

I think they may be tipped a half-inch, or something like that, so a little extra stiff. Just the stock grips that come with them, I’m not too picky on that.

Although, I do love, my favorite grip is the PING, I think it’s called the iD8, it doesn’t have a logo on there, but this PING grip, I’ll go over that, that’s on my driver. That is the best grip that’s ever been made, in my opinion.

So I’ve done wedges, irons, I even have a lost 6 iron, this is an old iron that I had. I lost my 6 iron giving a lesson or something, left it somewhere, put it in somebody else’s bag, or somebody put it in their bag.

This is the old, old, old Adams CB2, this is a forged iron, this is one of the softest, best-feeling irons. This is a set that I used to have before these. These things are awesome.

You can’t really find them with good faces hardly anymore, because they are so old. These are probably 8, 10 years old, something like that. But man, these were a good set of irons, really felt great.

These had the KBS also, but these were a stiff, so it wasn’t really the best fit. They tend to go a little too high and balloon on me a little bit with those, it’d just be a little too weak.

This is not probably what you guys are going to expect, these are fairly newer clubs, but I’m not a big club guy. If you guys have heard me do reviews on clubs, you heard me talk about how I play some club that are older.

This hybrid is pretty dag-gone old. I got this one in, probably, 2000-, let’s see, 2011, 2012, something like that. I love this hybrid, there’s really no reason for me to go to anything else.

This is an old TaylorMade Rescue club, you’ll see a picture of it, we’ll give you some close-ups on this. You’ll see I still have the paint on it when I did a video talking about sweet spots.

You know, they make all these new clubs, there’s not really any technology that’s going to be any better that’s coming out.

You can make a hybrid that goes longer than this one. I could get a brand-new hybrid that’s got all this new technology that goes 10-15 yards farther, but I don’t really want my hybrid to go 10 or 15 yards farther, I’m trying to get it to fill a certain gap.

If I kill my 3 wood, and I kill my driver, and I kill my hybrid, and they all go really, really far, well I don’t have anything for those middle yardages between my long irons, and my hybrids, and my woods.

This one’s really good. This probably goes around 240 to 250 if I really swing at it. The one thing I love about this, this is the most consistent shaft that I’ve ever had.

Now it’s not very long, this is not going to be a distance shaft. This is the Aldila RIP, it’s the TP version, and it’s a 105 gram shaft, so a heavier gram shaft, and an X flex.

I believe it’s tipped a little bit, so it is super, super stiff. What I like about this, I can swing as hard as I can and it’s going to stay pretty straight.

Now I’m going to lose a little bit of distance on this. If I was to lighten the shaft up, I’d be able to swing a little faster, and I’d get a little bit more yardage out of it, but I’m really looking for more consistency.

That way if I hit it on a really tight par 4, maybe there’s trouble up and I just want to hit a shot off the tee to lay up.

Or, if I’m hitting it into the fairway, out of the fairway into the greens, I want this to be able to be pretty consistent and go straighter more than go far. I’d hit a 3 wood if I wanted to go farther.

Now this brings me to another great point. Whenever you’re buying clubs, this club is based on my swing.

So if you have roughly 120 miles an hour club head speed, this may be a good shaft for you. If a player is swinging an 80 mile per hour swing speed, this club may be the biggest piece of junk you’ve ever had in your life.

It only fits your particular swing. If you’re a lower swing-speed player, you want to get a lighter shaft, you want to get a little bit more flex to help that ball launch up in the air and go father.

The reason I say that, is not to say that there’s one particular kind, but I see so many players out there that go and they rush to get the latest, greatest whatever Tiger Woods has, or Rory McIlroy has.

That may be the perfect club for you, but I recommend you get a basic fitting, get a right weight of the shaft, get the right flex of the shaft.

You can usually do that free of charge, they’ll let you do a few swings and give you some general recommendations if you talk to the pro that’s there.

So find something that you like, that you really hit well, and that’s all you need.

As you can see going even farther back, this is probably from 2007, 2006, something like that. I don’t remember when the R7 came out.

This is a TaylorMade R7 3 wood. I like this one a lot when I had it, because it’s a good club off the tee, it’s a 13°, so it really goes farther off the tee because it has less loft on it.

Typical 3 woods are 15°, and that’s probably the biggest thing that I wish was a little bit different. I wish I had a newer 3 wood that went a little bit higher.

Sometimes I’ll find myself hitting into par 5s in two, longer par 5s, and this one just doesn’t get up in the air enough. Even if it gets to the green it tends to roll over the green. This one, it’s about time for a new one, along with a set of irons.

The shaft of this one, I’ll show you some close-ups of this. This is a Diamana, what they call a blue board, extra stiff, tipped an inch.

This is a driver shaft, at the time, this was about a 300-and something dollar shaft that I picked up for this, and I really like the shaft. It’s pretty nice and feels pretty soft.

I really probably like a little bit of a stiffer one, probably should have got a white board. At that time, I had no money and somebody gave me this shaft, and I thought I hit the jackpot.

I didn’t care if it fit me or not. This was a pretty cool club, but just a little too dated. If you go back this far, the big difference between clubs now that they’re making and say 10 years ago, not a ton of performance.

I hit this one about as good as all of them now, but I could add a little bit more loft and the weight is designed a little bit better in the newer clubs to where they’ll go higher, and I can still get that kind of distance.

So with this one, I can get a lot of distance but it has the flight lower, and take the spin off of it, and really kind of runs more.

Whereas a newer club with a lower center of gravity, better, improved, maybe a carbon fiber on the top to take some weight out of the top of it, it’s got a little more technology in there to help you get the distance and still get some height of it, so maybe it will hold into the green.

But to be honest, it’s a small amount, it’s really not that much difference. So another old club that I’ve just had forever.

Then my driver, this is probably the one that you guys have seen the most, this is a club that I love. I’ve bought tons of new drivers.

I’ve tried my hardest to get rid of this club, but I hit this thing great. I always feel really good with it. This PING is an i15, so this is back from, I don’t when these came out, around 2009 something like that.

I didn’t go cheap on that, I bought this driver for $80, now I didn’t get this because it was cheap, when I originally bought the first one that I had, it was $400-something, and it was brand new.

The face cracks on them after a while, so you have to replace them if you’ve been using them for a long time like that.

Really like this shaft with it, it’s a UST Mamiya it’s the AXIVCORE, the Proforce, and it’s a Tour XFlex, the red one, so it’s a 69-gram extra stiff.

I just think it works really well with this head. I get the right launch, I get the right spin, man this thing just feels really good to me.

Again, the point I’m making with this is that I’ve tried new drivers. I’ve tried M2, M3, I’ve tried Titleist, I’ve tried the other ones.

Just because something’s new, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s that much better. The reason is they’re all limited in the amount of distance they can get.

If they make the driver any hotter, then they’re going to be illegal. So that rule has been around for a while.

The newer drivers may be slightly more forgiving, but I’m actually finding that not to be the case. What they’re doing in the new drivers to get the most distance, is they’re taking the center of gravity and they’re moving it closer to the face.

When you do that, the ball can get lower spin and more distance. So you will get a little bit more distance out of all the new drivers.

But what’s happening is, whenever you hit off the heel or the toe of the face, you hit a ball off the toe it really opens up quick, or if you hit it off the heel, it really closes it down.

If you’re looking for more consistency, take the weights that are in the bottom of your driver head, slide those back to the back of the driver, so you’re trying to pull some weight to the back of the driver, it’s going to be a little bit more consistent.

I’ve found in most of the new clubs they’ll try to cheat that way forward to get you some more distance there.

This one probably has a little bit more of a conservative center of gravity, but you’ll see it’s so old it doesn’t have any adjustable weights.

The shaft doesn’t come out, this is all just glued on. There’s nothing you can do with this one.

That’s kind of nice too, you start messing around with the weights and all the different adjustments when you have a bad day, I kind of like just having a club that’s glued together and you can’t do anything with it, that way you don’t mess with it after one bad round, that kind of thing.

Finally, I’ll go ahead and get my putter here, this one was from…Guerin Rife gave this to me when I visited his shop out in California.

This is the Evnroll putter. You probably remember Rife putters, the guy behind Rife putters is Guerin Rife. He had a new company which is called Evnroll. I really like this putter.

Even though he gave this to me for free, the reason I got this, a member actually emailed me and said hey Clay, there’s an awesome new putter out there, and it’s really doing great on all the reviews and everything.

I was kind of thinking, eh, I’ve had my Scotty Cameron forever, I’m not really buying into this, I’m just not a big tech guy, I don’t believe a lot of it.

Then I tried out this putter and I thought that it felt really good, for one, and I really believe in the science behind this.

If you look in the grooves in this, they’re thinner in the middle to actually make the ball come out a little bit more dead, and they’re wider or there’s more metal as you go toward the heel and the toe of this.

So what that does, if you hit one a little off the heel or the toe, it actually makes the ball go a little bit farther. You miss-hit it, which is going to make the ball roll slower, but then it has more metal to make it roll farther.

If you hit it a little off the heel, dead center or a little off the toe, it’s going to roll the same distance, whereas a traditional putter, those are going to be three different distances.

Now, I’m going to be honest with you, that is very, very little difference. We’re talking maybe one inch of a 20-footer, that kind of thing.

It’s not something that’s completely revolutionary that’s going to make you make all these putts, but what I like about it is I’ll take every inch that I can get as far as leaving the distance the same thing.

Maybe that’s the difference between me missing the putt one inch to the right, and making the putt. So I really like this putter. That’s it for my bag.

I might have a completely different back, all new clubs here in a few months, we’ll see how that goes. I’ll definitely be trying to give you guys the unbiased opinion on what I think is the best clubs, things to look for.

The main takeaways I would say from this, number one when you’re picking a driver, don’t go off the marketing. I think there’s a lot of things out there that makes things seem way better than they are.

Hit the driver. Take your driver that you have right now, or your club that you have right now. Hit some with it, and then hit some with the new club side by side.

If the new club goes way better, by all means, get it. It’s going to be a great club for you. But if you see the new, great club and you’re so excited to hit it, and then you hit it and it’s not outperforming the club you have right now? I wouldn’t worry about it.

I’m playing these old clubs, I actually hit these clubs better than the new expensive clubs that I’ve tried out. So make sure that what you’re getting is actually outperforming the old stuff. If it’s not, stick with the stuff you’ve got, it’s already working well.

If you’re a member of the Top Speed Golf System, I don’t want you to stop here. Clubs are great, but as you guys probably know, I’m not a huge club guy.

I’m not one of these people that stays up to date with all the latest, greatest stuff in clubs, and here’s the reason why.

I don’t think clubs are going to be the deciding factor between whether or not you play great golf. If you can take a club and you can deliver the sweet spot of that club to the back of the ball every single time, you can hit a divot the same spot on the ground every single time.

I can take any set of clubs that’s ever been played, or you can take any set of clubs that’s ever been played and play a fantastic round of golf.

That’s where I really want you guys to spend the majority of your time. Start out, what I want you to do next is to start out with the number one fundamental of the Top Speed Golf System.

Start with that Stable Fluid Spine. If I can keep my spine nice and stable at setup, at the top of the swing, coming into the downswing, you’ll notice how my head doesn’t move around at all.

That’s going to allow me to make more consistent contact with the ground. I can put that sweet spot on the ball time and time again, and then you can play with any set of clubs that you want. Let’s build that muscle memory.

Go to the Top Speed Golf System, go to the Stable Fluid Spine, start working through from level 1, level 2, level 3, get that to where it becomes second nature, you guys are going to be able to tear it up with any set of clubs that you choose.

I’ll see you in the Stable Fluid Spine.