Buying Golf Clubs For The Beginner Golfer—Where To Start?

Tiger Woods has had a tremendous impact on the popularity of the game of golf.  Many new golfers, young and old, are learning and loving this great sport.  This has been great for the golf equipment manufacturers with many new customers to buy golf clubs, bags, golf shoes, accessories and more.

But for the many new golfers coming into the sport, it can be confusing at best when it comes to buying clubs.  First of all, the choices and variety of clubs offered today are mind boggling, even to more experienced golfers. Cavity back, oversize, graphite shafts for steel, offset or not, and so on and so on.

For years, golf had what I believed was the negative misperception that it was only for the rich and privileged.  And if you look at what you can spend on golf clubs today, it’s easy to see why that perception might have been there.  To buy a complete new set of golf clubs and golf bag, you can easily spend upwards of $3,000 if you aren’t careful.

So what is a beginning golfer to do? How can they figure out how to buy clubs without breaking the bank and have some money left for actually playing the game?

Well there are a few basics that I recommend.  Now bear in mind, if money is no object, then you may choose to ignore the rest of this article.  But for those of you like me where you need to watch what you spend, then keep reading and find some sanity.

First of all, my biggest recommendation for new golfers is to avoid going out and spending a lot of money on a brand new, complete set of golf clubs from the big name manufacturers.  There are some great clubs out there from companies like Callaway, TaylorMade, Cleveland, and so on.  And at some point, I think it can help your game to buy those clubs.  But when you are starting out, I don’t recommend it.

So where and what should you buy if you follow the advice in the previous paragraph?  Well, my recommendation is to go one of two routes depending on your budget.  If you have a little more to spend, I would recommend buying a used set of brand name clubs.  Ebay of course is a great place to shop. But the Internet retail sites are now also starting to offer used Callaway, used TaylorMade and other big name clubs at very reasonable prices.

But this may still be outside what you have to spend.  In this case, you can still get quality clubs at budget prices.  There are a number of quality “low budget” clubs that aren’t household names like the big guys.  And you can find them at many sites on the web.  The bigger key is probably to make sure that you buy them from a reliable site that has a good return policy and good warranties.

Now there is also another option that takes a little more work but can really pay off.  And that is looking for used brand name clubs from “former” golfers or at many of the used equipment retail stores like Play It Again Sports.  Many people have spent a lot of money on golf clubs only to give up the game for a variety of reasons.  And that means that there are some nice sets of golf clubs in closets, garages, and stores just waiting for you to snatch them up for a steal.

But whatever you do in purchasing your first set of golf clubs, the main thing is to enjoy the game and not let the purchase of those clubs get in the way.