Building an Affordable Set of Used Golf Clubs with Ryan Barath

00:00:00
Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset. And when I find my ball in a fried egg Friday egg, the dreaded Frida egg, Frida Egg, Frida egg Egg, Frida egg bride egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off the golf course. All right, Welcome everybody to the Frida Egg Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison, and today is a bit of a departure from our usual subject matter. We're talking about golf equipment, specifically used golf equipment. I've wanted to do an episode on this subject for a while now, in part because it's pretty hard to get a hold of new golf clubs these days. Obviously, the supply chain backle has affected every industry, and the golf equipment business has not been spared. So I thought it would be interesting and potentially useful to you to talk about how to build a bag of really cool, affordable used clubs. And I figured that in talking about that, we would end up exploring the history of these clubs, what they represented, and overall, how the equipment industry has changed in recent years. So basically, when it comes down to it, bread and butter, fried egg stuff. And I have no doubt that the best person to do this experiment with is Ryan Barrath. Ryan works for Tour Experience Golf or TXG, which has a popular YouTube channel you might be familiar with, and he's an absolute encyclopedia of golf equipment, especially when you're talking about stuff from the past twenty five years or so. He knows everything. So let's get to it. Let's talk equipment, let's talk use clubs. Here is Ryan Barrath.

00:02:03
Speaker 2: So, for me, I was a kid that always took things apart. Basically, I was one of those kids. I was lucky toaster breaks down. My dad let me rip it apart, law more breaks down, doubt let me rip it apart. Never had to put it back together, thank goodness. But for me, it was always being able to kind of get inside of my hobbies. So if I rode a bike or rode a skateboard, I always took those things apart as well. When it came to golf, the exact same thing happened, and I immediately got hooked on golf equipment, watching the PGA Tour, watching television, not so much seeing commercials because I know a kind of joke. It always dates me. But like pre Internet, there was golf magazines and club building magazines, and I would get these catalogs and I would just comb through them over and over and over again. And for me that was kind of the stepping point into equipment and being a kid. I got my first kind of like knockoff set of golf clubs, and then I always really wanted, you know, for me, an aspirational club at the time was like a ping I three, because I guess that would have been like or like late nineties, right around two thousand. But I didn't realize because again the Internet really didn't exist. You couldn't find all this information that the the Eye two was not the precursor to the I three. There was all these irons in between. And because I couldn't, as a fourteen fifteen year old, could not afford a brand new set of eye threes, I bought it twos. And then I kind of learned as I went on all these different elements of like fitting and lyingle and because when I got them they actually didn't fit me very well. Didn't know that at the time, and someone helped me with that, and from then I was hooked as soon as I realized you could change golf equipment to help it make you play better. Instantly with something like that, I was I was completely hooked into the into the industry and then from there.

00:03:43
Speaker 1: So this was before you had a job in the equipment industry. When you were a kid, you were just kind of tinkering with clubs to make them fit you.

00:03:51
Speaker 2: Better, always tinkering like it was just something I could not I was always trying to figure out a way. And I mean I was a decent player. I started off as like a high handicap like everybody else, and then after a few years I got down to probably like the mid single digits, and then it was like I was trying to search for every edge because a lot of the kids I was playing with were better than me. So, like anyone, I think any gearhead, any start of the gearhead that kind of gets into golf is like, okay, I kind of figured it out to a certain point, how can I make my equipment better for me? And then when I went to school, that was when the actual job came into play, because I started working at a big box retailer.

00:04:25
Speaker 1: So a few years ago you were working for Golf WRX writing articles. Now you're with TXG. Your title is lead Content Strategist, I believe. Yeah, So tell me a little bit about TXG and tell me about what you're doing there right now.

00:04:40
Speaker 2: Yeah. So TXG we are a custom fitting studio, so it bespoked club fitting studio. And the big thing for us, and a lot of people might be familiar with our YouTube channel with the end is that it's all about sharing information. It's about educating people. And you know, for me at TXG again I we are there to help people find the best equipment for their bag. And you know, the best way to describe it is we are a custom tuner shop for golf clubs. So people come in, it's a one on one experience and they get to work with one fitter kind of through the entire process from putter to driver, using the basically the highest level of technology including Foresight and Quintic and all these high speed camera pieces of equipment to help you get dialed in whether you're trying to play on tour or trying to break ninety. We're here to help everybody play their best golf by making sure their equipment fits them absolutely to the best as possible, kind of like, you know, you go get fit for a suit, We're going to make sure everything is just tuned for you.

00:05:39
Speaker 1: So we are recording this on an interesting day for TXG. There is now a partnership between TXG and Club Champion, But my understanding is that the YouTube channel is going to continue to produce content and so fans of that are going to continue to get a lot of the same type of content.

00:05:57
Speaker 2: Our goal in our strategy is not changed whatsoever. We are when it comes to our club fitting. We're completely brand agnostic. If you come in and you want a specific brand, we'll help you find something to get into that. But if you'll come in and you know, you end up with a pink set of irons and title as Ferrywoods and a tailor made driver and some Calloway wedges, like, that's the goal and none of that is changing, you know. Club Championship. Club Champion Sorry, is obviously a large retail chain in the United States, gone through a lot of expansion and for us, we're in Toronto, we have a lot of people are very familiar with our social media presence and our YouTube presence, but you know, we are two locations, and we do have a full built shop, a full like manufacturing facility. It's not enormous, but we have a fairly large space that we build golf clubs in for people and send golf clubs essentially all over North America and the world. So we've always wanted to continue to grow and this partnership helps us with that.

00:06:53
Speaker 1: All right, So what we're going to be talking about today is sort of to the side of what TX do you club fitting business is really about, you know, TXT fits people into new products. We're going to be talking about a much cheaper way to engage with golf equipment, looking for used clubs and kind of getting into the history of these clubs and hunting for deals and things like that. So that's where we're eventually going with this. But before we get into building a specific bag, I thought it would be a good idea to talk about some general trends in the equipment industry where you see things going zeroing in specifically on when you kind of started working in the equipment industry. This was in the early two thousands, mid two thousands.

00:07:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, roughly around I would say two thousand and four, two thousand and five and that would have been when I started in the like kind of the big box space. And I joke with people now that it was like the golden age of technology. I know, obviously Friday we always talk about not we sorry, you guys talk about the like the golden age of architecture, right, like the way things kind of were at a certain time. And I with people of my own age being thirty five, now that for me growing up like that was the golden age of like technology advancements, Like I remember the first four hundred cc driver, the first four to sixty cc driver, the first adjustable driver. Nowadays, like direct to consumer brands off for adjustable drivers, they're they're everywhere. It's something you can just readily get it. It's not even it's not even a second thought at this point that you can go in and find something that's going to be adjustable with your driver and your ferry Woods and all those different even hybrids at this point. But back then that was a massive leap, and I can remember all those different elements coming into play, and people would come in and it was just like this is insane, like how does this work.

00:08:42
Speaker 1: That's why I'm particularly interested in talking about the early two thousands, so like two thousand to two thousand and five. We're going to kind of focus on that period quite a bit in this episode, not exclusively, but we're going to talk about that period specifically. Think about what happened in that era. You know that basically the advent of the four hundred and sixty cc titanium driver happened in that period. There were big drivers before that, but that's when it really became common and mainstream for drivers to be that size and be made out of that material. The popularization of the hybrid that was happening at around that time, the introduction of the solid core eurothane cover ball, so the pro V one the pro V one X was two thousand and three, the two her accuracy Nike two accuracy was before that, like nineteen ninety nine, and so what's happening in this period is really interesting in the sense that it kind of set the stage for what's happening now. Right. What's happening now is in many ways just an elaboration of what was going on in that period. And you know, also from from a general perspective, what you saw in that era was much faster product cycles, right, because if you think about the nine to seventy five D driver from Titleist that was introduced in nineteen ninety eight, and it stayed on the shelves for a while.

00:10:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, it just hung around like that was. That was probably the biggest change that I saw in the industry. And you know, I think companies have really started to change that method. You know, we saw around two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight when they realized that, okay, maybe we shouldn't try and sell three four different drivers a year and try and come up with a new product quarterly or whatever. Because at that point, right there was not that there was less advancement, but people were like, okay, well, I'm starting to kind of realize that maybe fitting is probably the better option than just trying to buy something new every time and.

00:10:33
Speaker 1: To put a finer point on it. In the eighties and nineties, companies would keep a certain product on the shelf as their iron or their driver for a long period of time, in some cases for years. Right the ping I two irons, My understanding is that that was Ping's like sort of lead iron for more than a decade.

00:10:57
Speaker 2: Maybe it was. It was the ping I two lasted for more than a decade as their premium product. Now, it did go through some different iterations, like you can see different patent numbers and soul grind. So there was the Eye two. So as the golf ball advanced, they started offering stronger lofts, so that anything you see a plus is the Eye two with different grooves and different shapes like they did always tune them.

00:11:19
Speaker 1: But that was it.

00:11:19
Speaker 2: It was like, you know, there wasn't the consumer demand for new, new, new, new new all the time. And you know we see that now with phones and computers and anything that's technology driven. There's this greater desire to have something that's new, and you know that's consumer driven, that's that's company driven, that's OEM driven. Do I need a new computer, No, but I want a new computer because it's got a nicer camera and it's got a keyboard that does something different. And there's that element of golfers that want stuff. And then there's the golfers that you know, I just want to go out, I want to have fun with my friends and I'm not really too concerned about equipment. And those people exist, like coexist fantastically in the golf industry.

00:11:56
Speaker 1: And then it sounds like from something you said earlier that maybe around in two thousand and seven two thousand and eight, companies actually backed off that a little bit, that it got to a point where new models were coming out so quickly that there started to be a problem with kind of oversaturating the market. And since then we've seen a little bit of a pullback there.

00:12:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, the industry was driven by people buying off of I Want It Now, going into a store and immediately walking out with the set of golf clubs. Again, talking about those times when I was working in the big box retail I won't name the company, but you know, we would get a couple times a year a palette, like you know, it seemed like Costco at the time, a palette of golf clubs. We're talking sixty seventy sets of irons, half regular flex, half stiff flex steel standard grips, kind of basically just in a box and maybe maybe a couple of years old. They'd show up on the middle of the week. Receiver would get them. You put them right at the front lead of the aisle. They'd be in a flyer and people would walk in and go, oh, where's the four ninety nine set of irons and you point down and they go thanks, and they'd grab the box and they'd walk out. There was no fitting, there was none of that stuff, because that was just the way people perceive buying golf going. It's like I am stiff steel, I'm regular steel. Let's get out of here and let's go let's go play some golf. But even I think all of the OEM's driven by ping from kind of basically when they started, thanks to Carston, is fitting, fitting, fitting, fitting, and you see that now. So if you walk into a big box store, you probably see a lot more clothing now than you do floor space for golf equipment because they're not carrying the inventory because they want you to get fit. And in that time period, as the cycle was increasing and increasing, you could, I mean not to blame the guy, I mean he revolutionized the industry with Sean Tulan, who was working for Tailormate at the time, basically said we're not gonna come up with one driver, We're gonna come with three drivers. The three hundred series, which is three hundred three to twenty and three sixty, and at the time three sixty was again a massive looking golf club and they said that's gonna be a flop like that Big One. No one's gonna want it. And what happened. It was the number one selling driver by a massive margin because it was more forgiving, and people immediately went, why do I want the three hundred cc one? This is ridiculous, this is this is like my old driver. I want the big one. I want the quote unquote toaster on the stick because people, to all their pride if they hit the drive two hundred and fifty yards, you know, it's always the benchmark number for a lot of people. And that set a revolution off for every most not every, but a lot of OEMs. It's like wow, like if we aw And it was a custom fitting story as well, because you know, you want workability, you want forgiveness, and that set off the industry of you know, we got to give people if they want options, we can give them options and producing overseas and all those things kind of led to that perfect storm. I think of what was two thousand and eight.

00:14:43
Speaker 1: So what are you what do you think are some of the biggest things that have changed between say two thousand and eight since we just mentioned that year and now in the equipment industry, the.

00:14:54
Speaker 2: Two biggest things would be adjustable hozzles and adjustable weighting in drivers, and we see it now too. With again, we are at a point where most companies are releasing say two to three drivers to fit different customers. But I think it's it's much more. It's much better in the sense of the way they're doing it, because it used to be, you know, you have one driver and it'd come in three different loft options, so a store would have to carry all those. Now you have something where you have a drawbias driver, more of a player's driver, and like a super forgiveness driver for most companies. You'll see like a three two to three model options for most OEMs. And then from there you have adjustability. You have adjustable weight and all of a sudden you're dialing people into these products a lot better. And I think those are the biggest things. Is that is the adjustability element. And then at this point now it's the manufacturing side of things. Debailability to cast extremely thin, forge and weld and get into these products. There's no there's very little, almost zero wasted mass inside of a clubhead to create mass properties. Whereas if you ever to open an old driver, like a war Bird or something like that. There's a lot of stuff going on in there that you know is just there because it has to be, because that's just what happened.

00:16:07
Speaker 1: It's more of a solid hunk of metal. Those clubs very much.

00:16:11
Speaker 2: So. I've talked to people that worked at CALLOWI kind of during that time, and like, you know how difficult it was to know because those drivers when they came out were also very expensive. The Great Big Bertha was considered an enormous driver at the time. Yeah, it was what was it two fifty I think it was around two fifty CE season. That was the biggest big Bird. That was the biggest one you could possibly buy.

00:16:29
Speaker 1: I remember when the Great Big Bertha came out because I was about eleven and I was really into golf at the time. That driver looked huge and it was very expensive. There was no way I was going to be able to buy it.

00:16:41
Speaker 2: Hugely expensive. Yeah, and that was like me with the like the Ping I s I like tech. That was the next one that came after the I I was huge. I knew somebody at the golf course where I played had one and it sounded loud and I was like seven hundred dollars. I'm a fifth year old kid, That's like, what's I don't know, Yeah, there is no parallel line for me to that, And so that's you know, that's how I got into gear because I you know, I wanted to figure out the best way possible, and taking things apart was just kind of part of it. And the other thing too, which I should have mentioned, as far as technology is concerned, launch monitors. You see them on the PGA tour. That is literally the biggest advancement other than equipment. If you didn't have a lunch monitor, you didn't understand the datty you just look at a ball flight like. The ability of tune equipment now is thanks to that stuff. You know. That's that's really probably the best answer when it comes to equipment is launch monitors and then everything else.

00:17:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, what do you have when you're when you're getting a fitting. It's all based on the launch monitor and the information that's coming out of that, and then it's up to the fitter to use the adjustability of these new clubs to find the right combination for the individual player. And I should mention that I find all of this fascinating, but I also find it somewhat disturbing because the equipment has gotten so good in many ways, there's not a way to put the genie back in the bottle, and I am concerned for golf courses.

00:18:05
Speaker 2: I always say that I ride a very fine line. I ride a tightrope with this because I do see both parts of it. You know, part of me wants to see the best players in the world play events with persimmon and half sets, and we see it with the Wishbone event that they hold. I think Link Soul holds it at goat Hill Park where they have the pros and they play with persimmons and things like like that's so cool because, like, you know, they miss it a little bit. You hear someone like Jeff Ogilvie talk about, no, if you neck one, it goes to twenty, Like that's just the nature of like what happens when you use that equipment. And I have bags of persimon equipment. I love playing with old equipment, but I also understand and know that when I see golfers come into a fitting and they're hitting their driver two hundred yards or two hundred and twenty yards and they all of a sudden they hit it two hundred and forty five yards. That is hugely helpful and beneficial to them with new equipment. Just say twenty five, thirty, maybe forty years ago this, you walk in a store, the only clubs are gonna get were blades, Like that was it. And whether you were beginning golfer a pro like you're using blades, and now pros use blades, some low handicap amateurs use blades. But the amount of technology that's in golf clubs to help people enjoy the game, I think is massively beneficial to the biggest part of the bell curve when it comes to golfers. What we're seeing is, though, is this technology that when it comes to the professional level and the high level, like we saw at Kapalloua recently, scoring records broken not once, not twice, but three times in one day at basically at the end of the event, that there's something up And I know the golf course can be soft, and you know, people will joke the greatest advancement in golf courses is the lawnmower because of consistency and roll in all those different things. But they're hitting it so freak and far, and part of that is because the technique has changed with the equipment. You can't swing like you can with a persimon driver. I know because I've tried. You can't hit three degrees up in three degrees out to try and smash this draw at swinging full out, because if you hit it half an inch off center, it's going to go one hundred and eighty yards in duck hook, whereas if you do it with a modern driver, you're just down the lost side of the fairway.

00:20:09
Speaker 1: There's a lot that I agree with there. I think the place where we might disagree or just have a slightly different point of emphasis is when we talk about fun and the modern average golfer. Because you know, you and I both remember the before times, so to speak, the times before the prov one, before the Titanium four hundred and sixty cc driver. I remember that people had a lot of fun playing golf in the nineties, and it was players of all abilities who had fun. I'm not sure I see evidence that those same players are having more fun now. Do you think equipment advances since the mid two thousands or even before that. I guess maybe we should put the market like nineteen ninety nine. Do you think the equipment advances since then have made the game more fun for the average player.

00:21:03
Speaker 2: I think they make it more Yes, I do. I do believe it. Like and again, I my default, because I'm close to this person all the time, is my dad. My dad started playing when I started getting it. He always played, but he never played as much as when I got into playing golf because it was like a thing that he could do with me, and so we would go out and play, or he dropped me off and go play or whatever. And before then, he never like played in a golf league. He never did any of those things. And I can remember helping him get fit, like really get fit for a set of golf clubs. And you know, he doesn't practice really that much. His backer elbow can bug him once in a while, and all of a sudden, it's like I don't have to work as hard to not that he would always shoot a like X score all the time, but like just because if I mis hit a shot, it wouldn't hurt as much. That's a big element where you know, if you hand someone just swinging a really heavy golf club that has a stiff shaft and hits it off the toe of a blade, that's gonna sting a lot. So I think that that side of it is where like the fun l can make it easier for people versus the always focusing on the score, because it is the experience of playing and in many cases, if you can hit a golf clip it doesn't hurt to hit, then that can be a big proponent of like a big component of being able to have fun, just being out there with your friends, not being in pain, not being literally like literally not being in pain, having soft grips on golf clubs, all of those things where you know they weren't always an option, can be the fun element of just being out there and enjoying the game as a whole. And I think equipment helps with that, but I don't think for depending on your level, depending on how you want to enjoy the game, you can go and play with percimon and blades. And I know a bunch of sickos that like to do that, just like myself. And you know, I remember your podcast with the hickory open like those are like those are the serious that goes there, right and their way of enjoying the game is to have it like exist in a certain era for them or whatever. People want to play it, and you know, if it means doing that, and you know, having a stinging shot once in a while, that's okay. For a lot of people. It just means going out with their friends and making some shots a little bit easier.

00:23:06
Speaker 1: Yeah. Fun as always is a very complicated topic in golf and quite subjective. Obviously. The discussion of whether there should be new club regulations and whether they should apply to only pros or apply across the board to everybody in golf deserves its own podcasts. We don't need to keep going down that rabbit hole right now. I'd like to start to push us toward building a bag of used clubs. But just to kind of clarify one part of why we're doing this right now, people are having some trouble getting a hold of new clubs.

00:23:44
Speaker 2: So I again, I will I'll keep my i'll keep names out of it when it comes to companies, But there are companies that are struggling with getting product to the point where there are almost unknown lead times, which is pretty insane because of manufacturing, because of logistics like ports, all of these different things, even materials that makes it difficult for us and for everybody in the industry. I get emails and messages all the time of like, you know, how long would this take if I get it, or how long of those kind of things. Certain clubs like You're get like they'll be here in June. And that's that's just the nature of the beast across the board. And you know that applies to you know, I drive by car dealerships every day, and there's a car dealership and my couple of car dealerships have four cars in the lot used to having not maybe close to one hundred. And it's because of material shortages, whether it be like a single part or something like that. And we've seen it with with grips and shafts and club heads. Across the board. Everyone's doing their best. Some companies have started express flying product over, which becomes more expensive. It's all part of a cost that adds up. So we see these equipment costs rise because people want them sooner and just like because of those things, you know, it is becoming more expensive, and it's it's just across the board difficult.

00:24:59
Speaker 1: And you know, so one thing I believe is that the best way to get the best the best equipment for your game. If you're looking at finding that edge, if you're really interested in having the best tools possible at your disposal, getting fit for new equipment is obviously the way to go, but it is an expense, and so I was interested in looking at another way of engaging with equipment. There's a different way to do that, and you don't have to spend a whole lot of money doing it. And that's kind of looking at the used club market. And by the way, these days, when you buy a used club on eBay or on one of the used club outlets online, it'll arrive pretty quickly. There's no particular delay for used clubs. They're already there. They're they're going to get sent to you. And so that's maybe part of the appeal right now of this particular hobby. What are some of your tips for hunting for cool used clubs? What are some kind of general techniques that people can use if they're doing this.

00:26:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, my quick list would be looking at the Farrells, which is like the little plastic part between the head and the shaft. If they all match on a set of golf clubs, it means that they were probably never reshafted. If something was broken at some point, one of those might mismatch, which is always an easy thing to spot. And then asking for length a lot of times. I mean I've literally made the mistake of going into a used club store buying a set. They were like bundled up, they were a good deal. I walked out and I got home and I was like, these things are an inch over length. They didn't even check, Like what ant Like, just stupid mistake to make. So those little things where you can just ask those small questions, if you can ask for the li angle of the golf club, some cases, most forge golf clubs and some cast golf clubs can be bent fairly easily and almost at no cost. If you're buying them from a lot of stores, they'll just they'll do it for you. That's not a huge issue. And then grip condition is the other one. You know, if you want to go through the expensive of getting new grips, you can a lot of times you can wash them and they do freshen up quite quickly. But it's looking at the little things where it comes to like larger rock things. When it comes to irons or wedges, you can see those really quickly, but it's the faral any bends in a steel shaft where you can see it. Most sellers will let you know if there is any issues. Most of the time there's not. And then grip condition as well. So those are the big kind of like really quick things to look for. And if you have them in person and you're not sure, just ask about the lion goal because that is something that is crucial even if it's if it's if it's way off, you're going to be in big trouble. At least if it's like close, you're going to just enjoy it so much better.

00:27:41
Speaker 1: Before Ryan and I get into building our bags, i'd like to say a quick word about Frida Egg events. Our first three events opened for registration on January third, and all of those are currently sold out. But a new batch of events will become available for sign ups on February seventh, that's Monday, February seven. One of those events will be the Banker at Dorna Hills Country Club. Dornic Hills is a pretty special place. It was Perry Maxwell's first design. In fact, he built it on his property and it was sort of his laboratory for architecture ideas before he went on to design Prairie Dunes, Southern Hills and the other great courses that are on his resume. Just last year, Dornic Hills was restored by Tom Doak and his team and it looks incredible. So that's the venue for the Banker, which will take place on June sixth, and we'll open for registration on February seventh on the Friday dot Com. All right back to the episode. So each of us researched two bags. Bag one is what you might call an optimal set of used clubs for a total of less than seven hundred and fifty dollars. That was the number that we kind of set ourselves, right, We got to stay under this price for the full set of clubs. Two is a set of used clubs from before two thousand and five, so clubs that were released before two thousand and five, and we set a price of four hundred dollars for this total set of clubs. Each bag has a driver, a fairway wood, a hybrid, a set of irons, two or three specialty wedges, and a putter. We used eBay as a reference point for prices just to make things easy while avoiding sketchy sellers on eBay who are pretty easy to spot. I mean, if the shipping charge is one hundred dollars, then don't deal with that seller. But we basically looked at eBay for these prices clubs in decent condition. This is one thing that I kind of you know, yeah, you can get some clubs for really really cheap, but if there are sky marks on the fairway wood, I don't really want it, you know, I don't necessarily want junk, and so I'm looking for things that are in like fairly nice condition, you know, seven out of ten, eight out of ten. Somewhere around there. We're choosing clubs that were just they're just suited to our games, right, And you mentioned earlier you're you're like a mid single digit handicap. You've gained some speed lately, you've been doing some some speed training, so you're a pretty strong player. I'm a very average player, you know, somewhere around a ten handicap, very average swing speed, one hundred miles per hour or so. And so we're not going to speculate about what an average golfer wants because everybody's different and so we figured might as well just find stuff that would suit us. All right, So why don't we get started. Let's dive in. Let's start with the driver. So for the for the sub seven hundred and fifty dollars set, what I picked, and I'll explain this in a second, is the Shrixon Z seven eight to five from just a couple of years ago, twenty eighteen. So basically I was looking at the seven hundred and fifty dollars budget and thinking where do I want to spend my money? And I thought, I want to spend it on driver and wedges, getting some nice clean wedges and getting a driver that's fairly up to date. And this driver is two hundred dollars right now on the US market, and so that that's where I think i'd go. Where were you at for your driver on this?

00:31:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, So for myself, you know, being the club nerd, this is kind of a game that I used to play all the time just because I could, because that's what happens. I actually had two options, but I will go with the titlest nine to ten, so a little bit older. For my set. I wanted two fairrywoods, so I stretched the budget on the driver a little bit, but in most cases with the titlest nine to ten driver, it offers adjustability. It has a couple of different models, so there's the D D two and the D three, so you can D three's a little lower spinning, a little smaller D two. But I found a Titleist nine ten D three with a stock shaft, which the Titleist ones all have in that era, had some really good options.

00:31:50
Speaker 1: Great stock shafts. Yeah, that's the big appeal of the Titleist woods, by the way.

00:31:54
Speaker 2: So they're not like the same aftermarket, but I like from I actually worked for Titleists during this air for a season, so I'm quite familiar with the product and I was I loved, I love this driver. I always thought it was a really good driver, and because it offers adjustability, that to me is my was my go to for the with the driver was the nine ten D three, all right.

00:32:15
Speaker 1: Going to pre two thousand and five for driver, my choice was the ping G two and this has an i think it's pronounced Aldilla, Aldila al dela stock shaft with which is a good stock shaft. It's fifty five bucks. This is a four hundred and sixty cc driver, so It almost feels like cheating for this category to choose this one, because it is effectively a modern driver. I know this one would be would be pretty effective. So what did you go with for pre two thousand and five?

00:32:45
Speaker 2: G two is a freaking great driver. I had one of those things. I loved it. I actually went with because I was again I was trying to work with two Fairrywoods, and I like Irons. Irons is always like a big like I'm I kind of nerd on Irons a lot. So I went with the Cleveland Launcher four hundred CC's still pretty big. The four hundred came out around and the Cleveland Launcher Comp came out just after that time, and actually those are those still go for a lot of money. But I got this driver for forty five dollars with again a lot of diff like I think I had a Vista Pro like a Fujikur shaft in it, really good driver. Had a friend who had one of these, used one of these things for almost a decade, so another driver I'm very familiar with it well under the fifty dollars price range.

00:33:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, So the other pre two thousand and five candidates I was looking at there's the Cleveland Mantra series and it got up to four sixty eventually, but those where those were great drivers. The Titleist nine eighty three K, which is definitely smaller than for sixty because I believe the first four to sixty Titleist driver was maybe two thousand and five itself with the nine oh five R. Is that right?

00:33:48
Speaker 2: You got it? Yeah, there was the nine oh five S and T, which came before they were both four hundred cc drivers, and then the R kind of snuck up there, and all of a sudden they released the four to sixty version of it.

00:33:59
Speaker 1: And that's a super usable driver now too. R.

00:34:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a classic. That's that was the one Adam Scott used for a very very long time with a pro Force V two. I think Adam Scott sold a lot of pro Force V two shafts back in the day thanks to that driver.

00:34:13
Speaker 1: This was a This is an interesting era for drivers because they were changing so so quickly and really racing toward their modern profile. When you look at them down by the ball, when you see a nine to five R, it looks maybe a little more sleek than most of the drivers you see today. Of course, this is nine to five R is not within our date range because it is two thousand and five instead of pre But you look at it and you think, like that that's basically a modern driver. But if you went five years before that, the drivers would look a lot smaller to the modern ie most of the ones that were coming out from OEMs at.

00:34:49
Speaker 2: The time hugely different. Yeah, And I think that that's because where that two thousand thousand and five era is such a vastly like huge kind of almost a vacuum, big space of what was there before and what came after. It was almost like pre color TV and then all of a sudden color TV and you're like, WHOA, I was missing all of this stuff in the past. I mean, you can still enjoy it, but you know, it's a big difference in a big lead forward And yeah, that's that was the it came after. But that was a fantastic driver, all right.

00:35:18
Speaker 1: Fairway Woods sub seven to fifty bag. I went with the Ping G ten three wood. I believe this came out in two thousand and seven seventy dollars with a Ping stock shaft. I think Ping usually has pretty good stock shafts, and I could use this club day to day. I also just generally hit fairway woods from this era, maybe a little bit better than modern fairweight woods. I'm not sure if that's actually true, but I just feel like it's true, and I think fairwewood technology has changed in ways that haven't necessarily benefited maybe my particular delivery condition. I don't exactly know what's going on, but I just love fairway woods from this era, and I feel like I can use them almost more effectively than the new product.

00:36:07
Speaker 2: The G ten was such a great ferrywood. It was really shallow. There was a G ten. It was one of the first times I think Ping introduced a draw model. I thought it was a shallow, very very easy to hit, and that was kind of when there was a little bit beforehand. But miraging steel started getting used, not that it was used in that model, but a lot of carpenter steel and stronger steels were used in fairywoods, and you started to see this bigger jumping performance again, not quite to the titanium level that we're seeing now, but still a very playable driver or sorry, very playable fairywood. For myself, I went with the this is not quite now the driver is synonymous with not being very forgiving. I love the fairywoods. Actually still have a number of these ferries kicking around. And I got like this because I went less on the driver. I actually got two of these fairywoods, and that's the tailormate SLDR. Now, yeah, so I.

00:36:55
Speaker 1: Would not be able to hit that fairway with I love it.

00:36:58
Speaker 2: They're so they really are. They're small, they're pretty compact. They are adjustable as well.

00:37:02
Speaker 1: Now, now you're you're a high spin player, right.

00:37:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't have great delivery, so I naturally.

00:37:07
Speaker 1: Created the spectrum. Yeah, I can use help with spin. I think maybe that's part of why modern fairway woods don't really suit me, because a lot of them are really low spin, and and I can use that spin to to get up in the air a little bit. But SLDR was was a low spin like Bomber three wood.

00:37:25
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, it's like I had it until I had a driver. I had a fairywood for like a number of years, and I tried that and I said, this is it. This is the this is I literally hit five golf balls with it, and I said, yeah, I want to order one of these. Then I'll put a figure out shaft for it, uh and I played that for a very very long time. I remember getting fit for any fairyoh, and I brought it in. I said, good luck with this one. Guys like have fun and they beat it by a few yards and it was kind of interesting to see, but to know how good that thing was, Like, I talked to some of my club nerd friends and that's kind of still one of those models. Now, there was a couple of different versions. There was a later on there was a glued hotuzzle version, and then there was a c version which was like a less expensive version that came out in the marketplace. So you will see these different models. The prices will vary. But I found two of the adjustable SLDR fur was the original ones for ninety dollars apiece, and that kind of fit rain in my budget of under that seven to fifty and for me, like again, I own them now, so I definitely go on even and buy a couple more if I needed to.

00:38:22
Speaker 1: Okay, cool pre two thousand and five, what I went with was the Sonar Tech NP ninety nine for wood all dee La shaft thirty bucks.

00:38:34
Speaker 2: Nice.

00:38:34
Speaker 1: It wasn't in great condition, but it wasn't in terrible condition. This is sort of a classic fairway wood. And I thought of it because a few months ago, maybe Andy from the fried Egg, the founder of the fried Egg, posted something about Vince India's fairway wood, which is exactly this model Sonar Tech. It's from two thousand and four. Vince India, who is a corn ferry tour player, has been on the podcast, is still playing this fairway wood, and what he said about it specifically is that I appreciate having a fairway wood that if I miss it to high toe, it's not going to go miles, you know. And so I think that he too has maybe some trouble with with modern fairway woods, and he's still using this one that is, you know, eighteen years old now. So I figured that that would be that would be an interesting way to spend thirty dollars. I might still get it.

00:39:26
Speaker 2: That's a good one, and anyone who's curious, like Sounder Tech has a really very interesting story in North America if you want to dive deep on that. I have not really really written anything on it, but it's a fascinating story for me. I went with something that I consider an absolute cult classic and that is the tailor made V Steel. Oh yeah, you can find them with all kinds of different shafts. You can find them with steel shafts as well. They're probably one of the last ones that offered a steel shaft kind of stock. I know someone who still has a five wood in the bag, like looks really good, shaped, really nicely. You know, the modern tailor made for awards a couple of years ago they kind of reintroduced the V steel soul because it was popular design attribute and for me, I can go back to one of those V steels. Might not be the most forgiving, but gosh, it looks good and it still performs quite well.

00:40:08
Speaker 1: Yeah. V Steel was on my list too. Other candidates that I saw, or the Orlamar Trimetal that's from the late nineties. That's another kind of cult classic. And then any of the titleist fairweawos from this era are pretty pleasing. They definitely look a lot smaller than the modern fairwey wits. There is a kind of, I think, a kind of shock that you might feel if you're playing a fairway wood from the mid twenty tens or later. When you look at one of these from the mid two thousands and you think, Okay, that looks like a really long shaft and that looks like a small head at the end of it. But as I said before, I haven't really had much trouble playing these older models of fairway woods, and in some ways I have had some trouble with the with you know, kind of modern low spinning suit were bombing fairway woods. And I wonder if you've noticed players having that problem in that spot in their bag when.

00:41:08
Speaker 2: It comes to fairwoods. I think some people struggle off the deck, and larger fairwoods can be an issue. If someone's trying to lift the ball up, you know, they're they're not hitting necessarily down on it. I guess that's probably not the best way to describe it, but kind of a way to visualize it.

00:41:22
Speaker 1: If you're scooping a fairwood, if you're trying to lift it, often what's going to happen is that it's going to dive left right. Yeah, there's going to be no spin on it.

00:41:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're going to top it, or it's gonna like you're going to hit this kind of like low running one to the left for a right handed golfer. When ping was developing, the blueprint irons, which are there like tiny, tiny small blade irons. Louis Eustasen said, like, no, aim small miss small, like those irons are some of the smallest on the market, and that was something that they kind of found through player testing was in some cases when they were deciding on the blade size, smaller actually benefited the best players better because it offered them better turf interaction, there's less soul and also they you know, aim small miss small kind of thing. So I think that does apply to pharioiods as well.

00:42:07
Speaker 1: All right, let's move on to hybrid. This is another one where there are some cult classics in the in the category, I think Fairwywood is another one of those where you know, in this kind of era that we're talking about from between ten years ago and twenty years ago, there are a lot of clubs that people kind of feel nostalgic for. I think that's definitely true of the hybrids that I was looking at. So for the sub seven hundred and fifty dollars bag, what I ended up finding was an Adams Super Hybrid XTD nineteen degrees with what looked like a nice shaft in it. For thirty dollars, and I feel like that that would be a pretty smooth transition from modern hybrids. It came out in twenty twelve, I'm not sure there would be much given up there.

00:42:53
Speaker 2: You can see the lineage of like a lot of the hybrids from certain companies now moving forward because a lot of those engineers went to other companies. Chipburer, who works Callaway famously kind of made Adams what it is today. He was the CEO before he moved there, and before he was there, like Adams was really not like they were small. They kind of had their niche and all of a sudden, like their advancement of the hybrid was driven by their design elements, and they did some ridiculously good stuff. Again, I stuck to another fairly. I got a five wood, But my other option would be an atoms, just an Adam's idea. Pro They go for around forty to fifty dollars. You've got to find them with like a fancy shaft or find some newer models. You can find them for you know that fifty to sixty dollars. One of my favorites I still own it is the ninety thirty one. It's probably their smallest least forgiving hybrid was a white one. It had a slot on the soul and the crown that to me was probably like my favorite high You can find those for next to nothing online, definitely under the budget of the ninety dollars ferry with that I had for the five wood. So Adams is when it comes to that era, it's almost impossible to beat unless looking for something maybe with some adjustability, but even and then you can find some tailor made stuff, but Adam is really hard to beat.

00:44:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean I associate Adams with hybrids from this period for sure, and it's a company that I mean, they've kind of re emerged in a different form, but it was a company that was defunct for a while basically, and so people don't know as much about it, which means that the clubs maybe have a little bit less value on the used market, but they're still really playable, really excellent clubs. For the pre two thousand and five hybrid, I went with a nick Kent Gen X three DX ironwood at twenty degrees. That's twenty bucks, so that's super cheap. But Nikent is another one of these companies that isn't active Now I don't think right they went caput.

00:44:47
Speaker 2: Yeah. I actually wrote a deep dive story Golf to Rex about the the death of Nick Kent, which was I mean, it was a fascinating story. They offered a lot of really cool stuff, and yeah, I mean, to go with a hybrid. I literally can't not agree with the going with the Nick Kent because I had one. I had a lot of stuff if we started playing this game. It's like I say, I do own the world most of these things at some point, but the Nick Kent would be the one for me because it was the hybrid VET like was everywhere and it's still very forgiving for what it was and what it is and it hard to beat for the price.

00:45:22
Speaker 1: All right, let's go to the iron sets for the sub seven hundred and fifty dollars bag. I just found a set of Ping G fifteen irons, four iron through gap wedge for two hundred and fifty five dollars. Now, I don't have any particular opinions about the G fifteen iron specifically, but I think that Ping g irons throughout their existence. I'm not sure when the first Ping G iron was, but I feel like they've been around since at least the turn of the century. I feel like every iteration of that iron has been really playable for a huge range of players. I'm not normally somebody who would use is a super game improvement iron, but the Ping g irons appear to me to be perfectly playable, very forgiving. I've played with Ping G five irons before. Those are from two thousand and five, and I love those and I feel like, you know, there's just a certain magic to them where you wouldn't be surprised to see them in a twenty five handicaps bag and you wouldn't be surprised to see them in a five or lower handicaps bag. There's something about what they do with that kind of club.

00:46:32
Speaker 2: Yeah. They They've done a really good job with the G series. I think the G two was the first one around that two thousand and two mark, and in the G five came out the Actually, I mean kJ Choy used G fifteens, I'm pretty sure because he's a very shallow player, needed spin, needed something to get up in the air, so that was one that Again that's a tour player, so that's a great set of irons for myself. I did find a number of irons in the two hundred, two hundred and fifty dollars price point one trick and you mentioned it with Nick Kenton kind of with the Sounattacher earlier. Look for brands that either don't exist or might be kind of under the radar as far as equipment is concerned. I went with a set of Nike Pro Combos. Yeah, the original ones or the next gen. If you get into the VR stuff, it gets a little bit more expensive still. If you can find a set of those original and there's a lot of them out there, around two hundred bucks. Nike Pro Combos four set combos set lovely.

00:47:22
Speaker 1: Hard to say, a really cool looking and they they.

00:47:25
Speaker 2: Don't have any badges, so they don't really wear too poorly like some other stuff you might find. And for me, that was that was really hard to beat. I found those and they were right around tw hundred dollars. I try and stick to budget because like the driver in Fairwood's and irons, you can kind of pick and choose from me, Like you know, there's a lot of irons in that player's cavity around that sub two hundred and fifty dollars price point. So That's what I went with that because for me, the wedges offered a couple of different options, same with the putters.

00:47:52
Speaker 1: So yeah, all right, pre two thousand and five for irons, I went with tailor made rack LT irons your pitching wench and uh, you know, I feel like these kind of rack LT. There were a few different versions of the rack irons, right, and the rack LT it seems to me kind of occupied a category that's become a lot more popular recently, which is the cavity back iron that is aimed at players who strike the ball pretty consistently, so that's so called player's distance iron. And I think that the rack LT was sort of an example of that, am I right?

00:48:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were a player's cavity back the cast, so the cost was a little lower. They had the tuning cartridge. The RACK was like resident something something, frequency whatever cartridge in the back of the golf club. There's two versions. If you look at the LT, there's a badge on the back, like right in the back of the cavity there's actually almost like a little stickered badge. That second gen. First gen had the cartridge still, but the LT was written on the hozzle. Those are the more sought after ones. Both are great golf clubs.

00:48:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, I found them for two fifteen. I would imagine that they're not the sought after version if it's two fifteen for three through pitching Wedge. But they look pretty cool.

00:49:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean even sought after. That's probably the kind of the price point they fit in nowadays if you look at those irons. But they they were great, really really good set of irons. But for me, again, I had a couple options here. The one I'm going to go with just because and this is as I mentioned earlier when it comes to li angle, this is very easy to find out because Ping has their color code chart. Was the I three blades, the original ones. I found a set for roughly one hundred and fifty dollars. Oh wow, that was an asp like they were. They kind of fluctuated a little bit. That was on the higher point of like what I wanted to go with for the irons, you know, chicking with our budget. But you could definitely find them for one hundred and fifty dollars. There were sets there were more money, but a Ford Pitching Wedge set offered that price point. And Ping irons especially that era were almost bulletproof, so it's nice to be able to find those and have them in pretty good shape. So that's what I went with. And again Lyngele, you can see the color code on them, very easy to identify. So for a lot of people you are buying used pinging are very popular for irons because it's easy to identify. You know, I got fit for this li angele. It's easy to go and if you're looking at the use market to find something in that same lingele So wedges.

00:50:11
Speaker 1: I did an interesting thing with the wedges in that for the sub seven hundred and fifty dollars set, I decided to just get the newest wedges possible, because you know, I don't like the idea of buying a set of wedges that his where the grooves have worn down and where it just looks like they're not crisp anymore. And so what I actually found was two wedges fifty four and a sixty Mizuno MPT five wedges and their mint condition for seventy dollars apiece. And so I just devoted a little more of my budget to getting those wedges. But my thought with the wedges is that you just want to get a kind of nice, crisp pair of wedges, and you don't want to go super bargain basement on these. In my opinion, I agree.

00:50:57
Speaker 2: I think wedge spin is important when you're playing for a lot of different reasons, and so getting as new as possible or in best shape as possible. The nice thing is the wedges is a lot of times it's easy to find things in pretty good shape when because in most cases it's not a sexy golf club, no one's bragging about the distance they got saying, oh, you wouldn't believe I hit nine thousand spin on my sand wedge. When I hit a full one from fifty yards, no one's really bragging about that. So there there's a lot of good value when it comes to finding wedges like the T five. So I have two options here, and I want to make sure I say them both. The first would be Nike Engage wedges ones that I really liked. I have numbers, I have a set of them. But the one that I think people need to keep in mind. Maybe not all the OEMs are gonna like that. I say this either way if they're even bother listening to this, But when it comes to new product, I actually went with new wedges as well. I own a set of these. I work in the golf industry. I purchased the set of these my own cash money. Is a set of Kirkland wedges. So you get a gap wedge of sandwich at a lob wedge. In I believe they are one fifty nine, so I think in the United States they're one twenty nine. So one nine for a gapoage sandwich lob wedge, wide sole for giving golf club standard, true temper wedge shaft, a velvet grip, brand new grooves on these things. If you're not particular about wedge grinds, which I don't think a lot of people might be. If they're you know, they're trying to get into it, you literally can't go wrong with these things. It's it's pretty ridiculous. So that's that's why I went all a little off menu on this. So you know, pick up a jar mayo and a hot dog while you're out it. You'll probably still be under your budget. And i'd say some Kirkland wedges for sure.

00:52:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no, I agree with that approach. I think that you know, just trying to find the best deal possible on wedges is probably not the way to go, which means that searching for pretty two thousand and five wedges is sometimes in exercise and futility because you're you're not gonna necessarily find the nicest stuff. But what I ended up finding was a pair of Cleveland CG ten wedges fifty two and fifty eight, and that was for fifty four dollars total. And this is just kind of a you know, if you try to envision a Cleveland wedge, then that's basically what this is. This was really when kind of specialty wedges were becoming a big deal, right. That was another thing that happened in the early two thousands where this market for specialty wedges, and I think I associate Cleveland most with this category in that period, that's when that whole thing was sort of emerging, right.

00:53:29
Speaker 2: Yeah. There was like the VOT two hundreds around the same time period, which were very popular with five eighty eights had started to get into different finishes in different grinds. I much like yourself when it comes to the value under like pre two thousand and five, I went with two Cleveland five eight RTGs, like just the raw wedges. Ye, the raw wedges, they don't look like they're with chrome wedges or other finish wedges. They might look more worn at but they're actually not. If you're looking for something that is might be a little rusty, but actually is probably in pretty good shape, raw wedges are are the way to go. So the RTG five eighty eight are a classic wedge. They made them for much to your point of we talked earlier, they had those in line for a very very long time. We were talking probably close to a decade. And if you're looking for value, you're looking for a classic shaped wedge pre two thousand and five. That's going to be my go to every day a week.

00:54:20
Speaker 1: All right, putter category. I went cheap here because you know, I think putter is extremely subjective. You might find one from nineteen sixty seven that works the best for you. There are a lot of options today for new putters, and I think that that's maybe the main difference between today and back then. But you just never know what you're going to get. Along with putting is so much about feeling about mood and just about confidence, and so for the sub seven hundred and fifty dollars set. I just found a Cleveland Classic one putter, which is an answer style putter from two thousand and nine, and it was fifty five dollars in really nice condition. I feel like I could take that out to the course and be successful with it.

00:55:03
Speaker 2: That that was a great putter line. Cleveland has always offered really good value in their their line of putters, in the Classic line even now.

00:55:12
Speaker 1: So what did you go with for uh? For the sub seven hundred and fifty dollars set putter?

00:55:17
Speaker 2: This was one that I always really liked. This is it's a it's a brand that is very familiar with a lot of people, and it's the Odyssey White Hot Tour. So the White Hot Tour is very specific. It was around I want to say two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine. It could be I'm off, might be got by a couple of years.

00:55:33
Speaker 1: Was it kind of like darker colored, like yellow, maybe yellow writing on it or something like that.

00:55:39
Speaker 2: Bingo, you nailed it. So it was a it was a darker finish because that was a thing that they were doing with the tour players the year before, so they brought that tour look to it. So it was like a flame finish to make the metal darker. The insro was a little firmer, and they had they started to get into these heavier headweights, not crazy heavy like we see now, but a lot of different headshape. I just found I think it was a number one to like an answer style, but this was something where I got it. Actually, I got this for like sixty bucks in very good shape. So I think I was I was well under my budget when it came to everything, And again people are looking at this kind of category. There's a number of options within those models, within that specific brand, specific brand, sorry, that are easy to kind of locate and track down.

00:56:25
Speaker 1: All right, So you were well under your budget for the seven hundred and fifty dollars set. I think I was literally right at seven hundred and fifty dollars. But I need to once we finished talking, I need to go back and actually add it all up again. I probably should have done that before I started talking. But so it goes for the pre two thousand and five putter, you know, I was just sort of casting about randomly. I didn't really know where to go with this one because I don't know about many putters from the early two thousands really I mean, obviously you can you can just go get an old answer or something like that and it'll probably be just fine. Or a ping zing putter that would probably be just fine if if you have a sort of arcing stroke and you you like that look of putter. But I thought that the tailor made rasa line was pretty interesting, and the Manza in particular, it's a it's a mallet, and you can see kind of how Taylor made sort of gradually developed from the Manza, which was this mallet that had a few kind of weights back in it, to what's now the Spider, which is a very popular putter all over the world and on tour even where there's this kind of extreme you know, sort of putting the weight back as far as possible in order to increase the stability of the of the club. But this was kind of one of the first sort of attempts to do that, and you can see how it evolved from this Manza putter to what we now know is the Spider.

00:57:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean that was something where they were working with some new inserts at the time and trying some different things, and yeah, I thought that was a really good Again that that cagey look at the time, like, you know, very unusual looking, but now we were kind of used to almost putters looking like anything at this point. Anything that helps again in the hole me. I'm a classic guy. I like something that is very more traditional, more blade style, and I actually kind of we'll call it split the difference between what you mentioned, which was the zing and the answer, I went with a my Day. Oh so the my day is a zing head which has the curved back to it, but with the plumber's answer neck. A lot of people are familiar with that style. I just called the my day. A lot of people are more familiar with it as being known as like the one that Brad Faxon used the titleist style. So he went from a my Day to a custom made Scottie Cameron and used that putter for a very long period of time. And that's one that I've always liked. And now I wanted to go. I want to go a little off menu from the answer because I could. You could find a million answers online for under forty dollars, and I found mine, my zing bronze. I got a bronze one, one of the like Manganes my Day, you mean, yes, the Bye days, so I went with the manganese bronze my day forty bucks hard to beat.

00:58:58
Speaker 1: I mean the ping putters are They figured it out with the answer, you know, like decades ago, and people are still using that model of putter very very effectively. That's that's why the putter category is so interesting, is that certain ideas are are really really durable.

00:59:17
Speaker 2: The Mond's idea was crazy at the time, and now we see these big spider models the answer. At the time, people will call them crazy, and.

00:59:24
Speaker 1: They thought they were ugly.

00:59:25
Speaker 2: They thought it was just the most ridiculous thing. No one's ever going to use it, and it became the most iconic putter ever made.

00:59:31
Speaker 1: It's funny how in the late sixties tour players thought of the answer as being really ugly, and now we think of the answer as being a blade putter.

00:59:41
Speaker 2: I can remember when the two ball came out and everyone goes, that is the ugliest, weirdest, craziest looking thing I've ever seen. It was the number one selling putter, one of I think individual model like almost ever know. The answer obviously goes back for a long period of time, but that style basically opened up an entire new market for putter shapes.

00:59:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, Tubball came out first in maybe two thousand and one.

01:00:03
Speaker 2: It was because I think Anakis Stornstein used one when she shot fifty nine. It took it took a little longer to get into the play the pros bags because everyone thought it was like more of a game improven putter. But it was everywhere, absolutely everywhere.

01:00:17
Speaker 1: To tie this back to the theme of all the stuff that happened in the early part of this century in the equipment business, the early two thousands is really when you started to see these new mallet shapes coming onto the market and you started to see tastes shifting about it, people starting to accept that this could be a putter. And it happened pretty quickly, because you know, two thousand and four, the ping it's called a crazy just a psycho looking putter, as weird as anything that is on the market today, and that was out there being bought and used. And so I think that in that period, in that first part of the decade, things just shifted really quickly in the putter category, just as they were shifting in the driver category and elsewhere in the equipment business. And it really set up what we see today.

01:01:06
Speaker 2: I think because because the equipment industry was booming so much back then, you know, designers were willing to take a chance because the cycles were a little slower or sorry, quicker, pardon me. And because of that, it was like, let's try these bigger putters. And you know, the crazy for example, made Web Simpson and Kenny Perry a lot of money. And then same with drivers, right, a lot of people pre two thousand like I'm never using one of those big kind of tie it in right, Like, I'm never going to use that, it's too big. And nowadays very few people using a driver under maybe four fifty. But no, no one's calling a toaster on the stick anymore. It's just a driver, just the same way as a putter is like, oh, it's just a mallet putter. It's not a crazy looking, weird thing. It's just a mallet putter design to help you, you know, hopefully sink a few more putts or line up better at least.

01:01:50
Speaker 1: All right, Ryan, where can people find you? On social media?

01:01:54
Speaker 2: So I'm on Instagram and Twitter, RDS.

01:01:56
Speaker 1: Bath.

01:01:57
Speaker 2: It's just me some golf clubs and sometimes some peace. And then I also host a podcast with Mike Marty Savich over at TXG. You can find us on the TXG podcast channel. We host the Build Shops. It's a weekly show where we break down equipment, kind of nerd out on stuff like this. We talk about old school stuff, stuff we used to use. Mike and I are about ten years apart from each other, so our idea of classic equipment's a little different. But we talk about fittig with the goal to educate. I mean, just like you guys do, and they do a fantastic job. I've learned so much as far as the idea of golf course architecture and what it actually means and what it represents that we want to We're here to educate and hopefully make people smarter about their decisions because golf can be an expensive sport and we want people to get the best value they possibly can and a lot of times that just means being educated and being knowledgeable.

01:02:42
Speaker 1: Thanks so much, Ryan, thank you for listening to the Friday podcast. Just to give you some closure, my seven hundred and fifty dollars back it came to exactly seven fifty and my pre two thousand and five bag was three ninety nine, just under the four hundred dollars cutoff. Ryan sets were well under both of those marks. He's clearly better at this than I am. But just so you can visualize all this stuff a bit better, I'm going to make a post for this episode on the Friday dot com with pictures of the clubs that we chose and all that stuff. This post should be up by the day after this episode comes out, so if you're an early listener, it might not be up yet, but it will be soon, all right. Cheers