I’m a regular on the Internet golf forums and just the other day, I happened across an article on the Half Set on Golfwrx.com. It struck a chord with me as one of my favorite matches of my golf year occurs every January at Tagaytay Midlands Golf Club when the Xavier School Ryder Cup tournament comes around. For several years, I represented my team, the Tigers, in a 6-club singles match which was one of several formats we played in the series.
I absolutely loved it.
It was a chance to exercise creativity and shotmaking, things that seem to be conspicuously absent from the game these days. You played less by distance and more by feel and shape of shot. A couple of years ago, the tournament committee changed the tournament format in order to accommodate more golfers. One of the casualties was the 6-club singles match.
Modern golf has become a numbers game. You bomb your drive, get to your ball, get the precise yardage to your target and hit as short a club as you can right at it. There isn’t much room for creativity in that system. Even more damaging is the fact that if the golfer catches himself in between yardages, the solution is often to take the shorter club and hit it hard.
Now I know the higher handicap golfers among you are already thinking, “That’s all well and good for you since you’re a good golfer. I’m just trying to make good contact with the golf ball, that doesn’t sound like a game I can play.”
In truth, the newbies have the most to gain.
Think about it. Most beginners have trouble hitting one club in the center of the clubface. This is complicated by having a lot of clubs in the bag. In fact, I’ll wager that most beginners play their golf with just six or seven of the 14 clubs that they have their caddy lug around for them. So why not just simplify matters and reduce your caddy’s burden?
You’ll learn to judge distance by how hard you hit each club. If you play a normal length (as opposed to single length) set, it will reduce the number of clubs with which you need to develop proficiency. Last, if you’re in the process of putting together a set, it will reduce the size of your investment significantly.
Companies like Titleist, Ping and others will allow you to custom order a set of however many irons you desire. Or if cost is truly an issue, buy an experienced set and take out every other iron from the longest iron you can hit.
The first time I ever played with a half set or something approximating one was at a birthday golf game of a dear departed friend at Royale Tagaytay Golf and Country Club. I had already come from my Saturday game at Eagle Ridge when I got the call that the group was getting together for drinks and a game of night golf.
I got to Royale Tagaytay well before any of my friends and proceeded to have a couple of beers while waiting for them to arrive. Royale Tagaytay is a short course made up of seven par 3s and two par 4s. When we were complete, the game master announced that we would be playing the golf course with just six clubs plus whatever we needed to drive the green of the finishing par 4.
I hastily scoured the club scorecard looking for the longest of the three pars. I put the iron I needed for that hole and added shorter clubs to fill in the gaps down to my putter. We also stuffed as many bottles of beer as we could into our golf bags and set out on our round. I won’t go into the gory details but suffice it to say, we had a roaring good time.
I played my first game of the New Year with a half set at the Nicklaus Course of Forest Hills. The game started poorly; bogey-double wasn’t quite the start I had in mind. But I adjusted and the game began to flow. I worked my way around the course and finished at 1-under my handicap. The beauty of playing with a half set is the simplicity of the decision-making process and the commitment that you can give to each shot. A good result is almost a given with that sort of mindset.
The game of golf has undergone lots of changes in the last couple of years, all with the goal of simplifying the game and to make it more accessible to people that are looking to get into golf. One of the most intimidating prospects for a newbie is purchasing his first set of golf clubs. It isn’t just the expense either, having to choose your first set, that investment is no less daunting a task for the uninitiated.
This movement of simplifying the game has caught on with legendary iron maker Miura. Miura, together with the golf lifestyle brand, recently announced the Miura + Linksoul Color Theory iron set. This set is Miura’s attempt to increase its appeal and reach in a market now densely populated with competitors in the high-end golf club space. Ultra-premium offerings from companies like PXG, and mainstream OEMs such as Callaway (EPIC Forged Irons/Epic Star) and, Titleist (CNCPT) have all taken market share away from Miura.
1 comment
Great idea from Miura, less is more as they say.