A Whole New Game

Joyous shouts of celebration erupt at Flat Creek Country Club in Peachtree City, Ga., sending a doe and her fawn scampering from the back of the fourth green. Three women cry out "Eaaagle!" while dispensing congratulatory high fives as if they've just won an Olympic gold medal. Jenny Holder, a 44-year-old real-estate investor from Columbus, Ga., who rolled in a 20-foot putt for a coveted 3 on the Homestead Course's tricky par 5, glances down at her new, unconventional-looking Heavy Putter. "It's amazing, I never would have given this club five seconds had I not tested it," she says. "I hadn't heard of Heavy Putter before and it's ugly. But look what I can do with it."

Holder and her playing companions, Debby Lichtman, 56, a retired nurse from Peachtree City, and 57-year-old real-estate agent Jodie Shepard from Newnan, Ga., are acquaintances who had participated in a Golf For Women day of new equipment testing in Pine Mountain, Ga., in October 2006. The clubs available were the newest drivers, fairway woods, hybrids, irons and putters from every women's-club manufacturer in the industry. The golfers were treated to a selection far more extensive than any recreational player would ever encounter in a single store, and it was an eye-opening experience for them. "Before that day, I never realized there were so many clubs available to women, or that they were so good," Shepard says. "I was used to playing men's clubs. Whatever my husband had in the garage that he wasn't using, I'd pull out. But the newer clubs were great. They worked a lot better."

The testing day led to a three-part series in GFW called Try & Buy. In Part I ("The Case for New Clubs," March/April 2007), we published the results of a comprehensive reader survey that revealed how little women golfers know about the technological advances in golf equipment. In Part II ("Can I Get a Little Help Here?" September/October 2007), GFW investigated the golf retail environment and offered solutions for navigating the typical challenges that women face when buying clubs. In this, Part III of our series, we follow up with three women who tried new clubs, and who proceeded to revamp the makeup of their bags. The results speak for themselves.

TAKING STOCK

After the club-testing day last October, Holder, Lichtman and Shepard all took a closer look at their own equipment. "I realized that my bag was frozen in time," says Holder, a 4-handicap who plays with her mother and father twice a month and was the first girl to play on her high school's boys' golf team in 1980. Holder carried a 2-iron while playing collegiate golf for Troy University, in Alabama. Never one to easily adjust to new clubs, she hadn't bought new equipment in 14 years. Her bag contained a set of Ping Zing irons, a Ping Eye II 5-wood, a Callaway Big Bertha 3-wood and a Callaway Great Big Bertha 9-degree driver, all with men's regular-flex shafts. Hindered by old technology and an inability to spend as much time on the practice range as she once did, Holder's game had begun to stagnate.

As a member of the Georgia Women's Golf Association and the Georgia Senior Women's Golf Association, Lichtman, a 10-handicap, was playing more golf than ever but still struggling with her approach shots in the 140-yard range. Several of the par 4s at Flat Creek, Lichtman's home club, force players to carry a water hazard or a bunker before landing the ball on the green. "You don't want to lay up when you're at 140 yards, but standing there with a 5- or 6-iron over water is nerve-racking," Lichtman says. Last year, she played with TaylorMade Rescue Dual hybrids but wasn't completely satisfied with their performance: "I was hoping to find approach clubs that would get the ball airborne a little higher and carry it farther," she says.

For Shepard, a 6-handicap who plays golf two or three times a week, participates in a West Georgia women's league and competes in numerous tournaments around the state every year, distance wasn't an issue. However, she says, "my irons always felt too heavy and I had to swing hard at the ball to make it go." She was playing Callaway X-16 irons with steel shafts purchased in 2003, which she had reshafted with lighter graphite. "Even then, the clubs were still heavy, especially after playing in a three-day event," she says. "That's why, after trying the new clubs, I decided it was time for a change."