Self adjustable golf clubs at PGA Show are annoying from any distance

I’m not even at the PGA Show in Orlando like WorldGolf.com’s version of Jack Lemmon (out cold by 8 p.m. every night, Tim McDonald) and Walter Matthau (can’t find anything better to do at 9:45 p.m. on Friday night in a party town than stare wistfully at his gratis energy drinks and wait for McDonald to wake at 5 a.m., Brandon Tucker) and I’m already sick of self adjustable golf clubs. From the vantage point of a hot tub, these clubs seem almost as completely ridiculous as they certainly do in person.

We’re not talking about the club heads and shafts that a head pro or club rep can mix and match on a range to try and find you the right fit. No, I’ve almost come around on fitted clubs, if you get them done by someone who really knows what they’re doing (the chances of your head pro being that person is about 10 percent, but that’s another story).

No, the latest pox on the golf world from the equipment industry are these drivers that regular golfers who have no idea what they’re doing can adjust depending on the conditions in the weather or their game that day. You get to the course, find out its freezing (because you’re not smart enough to realize this when you left your house) and you can put in a shaft with a softer flex. Or maybe you decide you need less loft this day because of how you’re hitting them on the range (and we all know how you hit them on the range always carries over to the first tee) so you switch heads.

Best yet, you get to do it with a little screw/wrench device that makes you look like the cast from Beauty & The Geek (and not the ones in the bikinis).

Oh, all the club manufactures try to make their little tools look like something cool enough for James Bond. And they all fail miserably. You’ll look like a dweeb. Even the Golf Channel’s near fawning on-site reporter couldn’t make the tool seem at all cool.

None of this is my chief complaint though. Rather it’s the inevitable truth that someday soon we’ll all be stuck behind some genius hackers who are adjusting their clubs between shots. Sure, the Rules of Golf (which changed to allow these clubs on Jan. 1) still say you cannot change the clubs around during a round.

And how everyone follows the Rules of Golf so closely.

Get ready to get stuck behind your neighborhood Inspector Gadget.