Traveling With Golf Clubs

I recently flew to California to visit my dad and brought my clubs so we could play golf during my visit. Before this trip I had been renting clubs on my visits and simply got fed up with the worn out clubs that the vast majority of courses and even country clubs provide. I decided it was time to start bringing my own clubs on these trips. After a couple weeks of research I purchased the Club Glove Last Bag collegiate travel bag. The purpose of this post is to simply detail my experience and offer some advice to others thinking of doing the same.

First, if you’re a mid-handicap or better golfer, I shouldn’t need to convince you to buy a travel bag and bring your clubs with you on vacation. Club rentals are always a frustrating experience and generally lead to a frustrating round of golf. For me anyhow, no amount of good weather and scenic backdrop can make up for crappy shots. So do yourself a favor, stop deliberating, and just buy the bag.

Second, when you do acquire the bag, you’ll also want a stiff arm to protect your woods. I read of people cutting broomsticks and other such McGyver tricks. All of that is nonsense, you’ve spent a silly amount of money on your golf equipment already, spend the extra $60 to protect it. Sacramento airport oversize luggage carousel is just the baggage slide, and while the airport baggage worker was being respectful of my clubs, I was still glad the stiff arm was there to take the brunt of impacts. I also took the driver head off and secured my woods and driver shaft to the stiff arm with a twist tie.

Which leads me to my praise of the folks working airport baggage at Sacramento International. My clubs received white glove treatment from the oversize baggage handler. I don’t treat my clubs with even half the respect that worker did and I wish it was customary to tip baggage workers. My Vancouver experience was different however. My clubs came out underneath about 100lbs of other people’s shit and I wish I could have kicked that worker in the balls.

At this point, everything was pretty well protected but my irons were still sliding and clanking around. I took the towels off my bag as well as my golf jacket and sort of stuffed all that into my bag to keep the irons from moving about. The experience on the whole was a positive one. We played a few rounds of golf and while I didn’t play my best golf I wasn’t cursing the club worker for giving me a set of chunky worn out irons. In all it cost me about $25 on either end and was cheaper than renting clubs. It was well worth the purchase and I look forward to many more golf vacations with my own damn clubs.