"Oh, they're all good."

What’s your handicap? Double digits? Then listen for a second. Every equipment company perpetually spends nauseating amounts of money to convince you that their brand is much better than the competition. Here’s the scoop: It’s not.

It’s all the same. Everyone is trying to do the same things with pretty much the same materials. Titleist, Taylor Made, Callaway, Cobra, Cleveland, Adams, Ping and even Nike. They make all the same stuff. Yes, there are differences in materials and club design, but these qualify as little more than glorified gimmicks, at best. The specific differences are generally moot to the average or less-than-average player.

Besides PGA Professionals and scratch or single-digit handicappers, no one should care where the weight chips are placed in the sole of the clubhead. No one should care what those weight chips are made of. No one should care what’s behind the club face or the composition of some new composite. It doesn’t matter. The bottom line is that every average player needs a playable club with a large sweet spot, a low center of gravity and – for drivers – a high COR. If you slice, as the majority of average players do, possibly a little offset or draw bias. That’s all you really need. Every equipment company will provide that in some way or another. And to you, it really doesn’t matter how, as long as they all work, which they generally do.

To the true hackers out there, to whom a draw means nothing more than what you do on your notepad when you’re bored at work, a word of advice: Just skip the pro-line section and pass right on into the crap. You can dribble the ball off the first tee box with a 2-by-4. You don’t need to spend $1500 to suck. You can do that for much cheaper.