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Half the fun of golf is the gear. From clubs and clothes to indoor simulators and club sensors, the list of things you can buy to improve your game, enhance your experience, and express your style is pretty much endless. But it can be tough to separate the worthwhile items from the worthless. To give you a hand, we’ve picked 10 proven products that can help you play a bit better, keep you dry on rainy days, and even carry your clubs around the course.
Best rangefinder
Rangefinders are a must for anyone who plays bogey golf or better. Not only do they deliver to-the-yard accuracy, eliminating the need to count paces from sprinkler heads and yardage stakes, they can help you better understand your club distances and improve scoring. This laser-guided Bushnell is a great midrange model, featuring 6x optical zoom and a slope adjustment mode for easier club selection when shooting up or downhill.
Best club cleaning tool
Golf clubs have grooves for a reason: They create friction with the ball and impart spin. When they get filled with dirt and grass, your ball spins less. That’s why good players clean their iron grooves after each shot. The smartest engineered groove cleaner on the market might be Frogger’s BrushPro. Its nylon and phosphorous bronze bristles dig deep without scratching the club’s finish, and it has a foldout metal nub for stubborn grit. Plus, it attaches to your bag with a retractable cord so that it’s always at the ready but never in the way.
Best portable launch monitor
A good teacher is the best way to get better at golf. Short of that, a launch monitor can provide some extremely useful feedback on your swing. This portable mobile model works in conjunction with a phone app to provide accurate data on club speed, ball speed, launch angle, spin rate, and carry. Sign up for a Garmin subscription and you can play simulated rounds on over 40,000 courses in the comfort of your backyard or garage. All that, and it’s thousands of dollars less than the industry-leading SkyTrak system.
Best mid-price golf balls
You’re going to lose golf balls. It’s unavoidable. And the worse you are, the more it will happen. That means you probably don’t want to spend $100 per box. But you also want a ball that doesn’t feel like a rock when you hit it, and spins well when you strike it just right. The answer? Titleist Tour Soft. These balls feel great off the face, wear well if you happen to go a round or two without losing them, and sell for under $50 per box. They’re an ideal mid-price ball.
Best remote control cart
Going for a nice four-hour stroll through nature? Count us in. Doing it with a 12 kg bag strapped to your back? No thanks. You can make your time spent walking on the course a lot more palatable with Bat-Caddy’s X4R electric cart. It does the hard work of carrying your clubs to your ball, rolling along smoothly with cruise control and slope sensors that automatically adjust speed and direction. All you need to do is casually walk behind it, providing occasional guidance with a small pocket remote. No more arriving at your next shot struggling to catch your breath.
Best golf umbrella
Anyone who’s ever been caught on the course in the rain without protection knows how important an umbrella can be. They’re essential to keeping both you and your clubs dry (wet grips are a recipe for disaster). This giant double canopy umbrella from Tour Trek provides a great shield not just from the wet stuff, but also the sun’s damaging rays, thanks to its UV SPF 50+ coated nylon. All that and a reliable auto-open spring, to boot.
Best mid-range golf watch
Preloaded with information from 43,000 courses, this relatively inexpensive GPS watch from Garmin is like having a caddy on your wrist. It provides precise distances to greens and hazards, and lets you manually position flagsticks on the green. Better still, it automatically tracks shots, both keeping score and recording distance. Great for just about any course, but especially handy when you’re visiting one for the first time.
Best spikeless golf shoes
After a set of golf clubs, a pair of shoes is the next thing an aspiring golfer needs. You walk several kilometres each time you play, so you want comfy footwear. Plus, grass can be slippery, especially when wet. These affordable shoes—available in women’s and men’s styles—are from Footjoy, an American cobbler that’s been in the golf business for over a century. They’re ultra comfortable, provide great grip (without the hassle of spike replacement), and sport a classic golf style that never grows old.
Best putter (for every/any skill level)
When it comes to choosing a putter, it’s more about feel than technology. That said, a little AI-assisted engineering can’t hurt. Odyssey’s Ai-ONE has an aluminum backer that’s molded to a urethane striking surface, meant to create consistent hits across more of the striking surface. It’s also a treat for the eyes, thanks to a navy and white “jailbird” pattern designed to help encourage steady, even swings.
Best putter (for every/any skill level)
Got golf on the mind even when you’re not on the course? This is the book for you. Published just a few years before his death in 1995, teaching legend Harvey Pennick pours a lifetime of wisdom onto these pages, discussing swing mechanics in simple terms while delivering personal anecdotes that will entertain players of all skill levels. It proves the old adage that golf is indeed 90 per cent mental.
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