How to play golf on a budget

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The cost of living crisis is forcing many of us to tighten our belts. However, you don’t want to do something daft like stop playing golf.

Yes, there are new drivers on the market that retail for more than £500, and a dozen premium golf balls can set you back nearly £50. However, golf doesn’t need to be expensive, and there are several ways you can be smart and save money.

Here’s how to play golf on a budget…

 

Head to the supermarket before you play

It’s important to support your local pro, but if you want to save a few quid—and this can add up to a fairly chunky number over a year—fill your bags with snacks and drinks before you play.

Why pay £2 for a bottle of water, or £2.50 for a protein bar, if it costs you half that at the shop around the corner?

 

Buy a reusable water bottle

Just think how much money you spend on bottles of water over the course of a year. £20 a month, maybe, if you play a couple of times a week. Over a year, the amount of money you’d save with a reusable water bottle could be put towards a new driver—plus, you’re doing your bit for the environment. This is one of the simplest ways to save money.

Related: The 10 best insulated water bottles for golf

 

Play twilight golf

Most golf clubs offer discounted green fees at certain times of the day, particularly later in the afternoon, after most members have had the opportunity to play. Sometimes, this discount may be as much as half the normal rate.

Sometimes you’re allowed to play as many holes as you can fit in after a certain time. Twilight golf is a real treat in the summer, too, so it’s not as though you’re losing out—you just need to be a bit more flexible.

 

Play more nine-hole golf

As well as twilight golf, a lot of clubs offer nine-hole rates. If you’re put off by paying £50 or more for 18 holes, just play nine, which also gives you more time to enjoy a glass of something cold in the clubhouse afterwards.

Related: The UK’s best 9-hole golf courses

 

Try playing a non-premium ball

Stocking your bag can be expensive, especially if you’re struggling with the driver. The best golf balls on the market will cost you close to £50. However, some manufacturers have closed the gap between the top-performing urethane models and the more mid-range offerings. Give them a go, and you might be pleasantly surprised by what they offer.

 

Don’t swap balls so frequently

A slight blemish on your golf ball isn’t going to make a lot of difference. Professionals might notice the effects of a little scuff, but these guys have a different level of feel to the average club golfer. Keep using them until they’re worn out—then pop them in your practice bag.

 

Internet lessons

There’s nothing better than visiting a qualified PGA professional face to face, but if you’re looking to save money on lessons, there’s no shortage of free tips and advice on the World Wide Web.

There are a handful of YouTubers, too, who take great pride in helping you to improve and enjoy better golf—golfers like Alistair Davies, Ged Walters, and Matt Fryer. It’s certainly worth subscribing to a few channels, most of which are free.

Related: Q&A with golf YouTuber, Alex Elliott

 

Clean your grips

As a general rule, it’s recommended that you change your grips once a year. However, many of us, even those who are members of a club, simply don’t play anywhere near that much. Grips will get grimy regardless, but that doesn’t always mean they need a change.

Fill a bucket with hot water and washing-up liquid and give them a good scrub with a brush or cloth. A 14-club re-grip may cost you in excess of £125, whereas a thorough scrub at home in the garden won’t cost you a penny.

 

Re-grip yourself

This isn’t such a difficult process—and it’s actually quite rewarding. If you’re looking to get all 14 clubs re-gripped, you’re probably looking at somewhere between £3 and £5 per club—so a bit of DIY can make you a tidy little saving.

Related: How to regrip your golf clubs

 

Flexible memberships

If you’ve caught the golf bug and are considering joining a club, this is something worth considering. Generally, the way it works is that you pay a reduced annual fee and then buy credits depending on how much you intend to play.

By playing at less popular times, say, a Tuesday afternoon, you can still get a decent number of games in, too. Overall, it means you have greater control over how much you spend on playing. At the same time, you enjoy pretty much most of the same benefits at the club as a ‘full’ member.

 

GolfNow Hot Deals

If you’re flexible and happy to wait until the last minute, you can often grab a cracking deal with tee-booking websites, such as golfnow.co.uk.

Pick where you’re looking to play, the date and the time of day, and your price range, and you’ll get a list of options. According to the website, you can save up to 80%. There are some wonderful courses on there and some attractive green fees, too.

 

Buy second-hand clubs

Sure, nothing beats shiny, new gear, but buying used or second-hand clubs is a fantastic way to upgrade your equipment without hurting the wallet.

With trusted sources like Golfbidder, all golf clubs are checked and rated. And if you’re selling, it’s a good place to get a fair price for your old clubs, too.

How to effectively practice your short game at home

Posted by & filed under Playing Tips.

The article below was written by Ben Outhwaite of National Club Golfer.

If you want to get better at golf then it needs work. But it isn’t just about smashing balls on the range – it’s about discipline. Allow us to help.

Struggling for time to get down to the golf course during the week? It’s an issue that plagues us all, unfortunately. Long working hours, strict deadlines, and those so-called lunch breaks that are becoming increasingly non-existent. We get you. So why not practice golf at home? Especially your short game…

We’ve all tried quick fixes. Head down to the driving range in the evening, or take a day’s holiday here and there to play during the week. Sure, it might make you feel like Tiger Woods reincarnated after thrashing them a few times, but it costs money. And that’s one thing that’s tight for everyone right now.

 

Train smart

You don’t need a PGA professional on call 24/7 or fancy video analysis from an online lesson to improve your golf game at home, and that’s a fact. Making your home a golf academy can be done yourself easier than you think.

There are many ways to practice golf at home. But forget chipping plastic balls from one end of the garden to the other and start practicing your short game properly. So do yourself and your scorecard a favour and do some short game practice properly with these drills at home (And keep reading because you won’t find out how to otherwise…)

 

Learn from the experts

The overall aim of golf is to shoot the lowest round possible, right? In order to do that, you’d be wise to listen to the pros, because they really do know what they’re talking about.

Renowned golf researcher and coach Dave Pelz, known for his expertise and published writing on the art of the short game, spent most of his time following PGA Tour players around the course during tournaments tracking a statistic called “PEI” for each player, which stands for Percentage Error Index, which measure the accuracy of each club in a golfer’s bag.

After several years of tracking different players, Pelz found something very interesting…

  • The No 1 ball-striker on tour (according to his PEI metric) finished 10th on the money list over a three-year period. 
  • The No 2 ball-striker on tour finished 200th on the money list over a three-year period.

But what does this tell us?

It tells us that the long game has very little to do with a professional golfer’s success.  If you’re an average ball-striker on the PGA Tour, you can easily make up for it with a killer short game.

 

And learn from the mistakes

The average club golfer generally doesn’t hit nearly as many greens as the average pro.

In other words, an amateur golfer has an even greater margin for improvement when practicing the short game compared to the professionals!

 

Top tips straight from the tour

Low chips

Best used for when you have lots of green to work with, the trundling low shot will tend to roll more than it flies:

1. Use a pitching wedge, 9-iron, 8-iron or 7-iron, depending on how much green you have to work with
2. Play it back in your stance
3. Think draw-in-to-out club path

 

Medium chips

For something a little higher – but not an out-and-out flop shot – choose a club with a bit more loft and move the ball a little more up in your stance. The key tip for this is to look at the spot where you want your shot to land while you’re making practice strokes:

1. Use a club with more loft, such as a pitching wedge 9 iron
2. Same choked-up grip
3. Small amount of forward-lean shaft
4. Look at where you want the ball to land in your practice swings

 

High chips

Moving all the way up the spectrum, to loft one high, the first step is to reach for your highest lofted wedge and to open the face wide. Combine that with a bigger, steeper swing, and you’ll get a shot that starts high, lands soft, and spins a lot.

1. Grab your highest lofted wedge
2. Just behind middle ball position with narrow stance
3. Open the club face significantly
4. Bigger swing and steeper attack angle to create that ‘check’ spin

If you’re after even more drills and tips for your short game, scroll to the bottom of the page for links to other NCG instruction pieces.

 

Change your game

We make time for things we love in life. So make time for golf. Your lunch break is an ideal time for such things.

Split it in half. Eat, then practice. Practice, then eat. But don’t do both at the same time, that doesn’t count. You’re smarter than that. Use a room that has enough space for a medium-sized putt with decent lighting. And make sure you have some privacy to concentrate. Get in the zone.

Discipline.

Celebrating the most influential women in golf history

Posted by & filed under Women's Golf.

The article below was written by George Cooper of National Club Golfer.

Many of the sport’s biggest names have been involved in one way or another in helping women’s golf reach where it is today. To celebrate Women’s Golf Day, here is our tribute to the most influential women in golf…

 

Mickey Wright

The stats and figures on Wright’s record are incredible. Here are a couple of pearlers:

+ She won 13 major championship titles, second only to Patty Berg’s 15, and all these wins came in an eight-year period.

+ She holds – and always will hold – the LPGA Tour record for most victories in a single season with 13 in 1963. She is also second, along with Annika Sorenstam, on this list with 11 wins the following year. Forty-four of her wins came in a four-year period.

+ She also went 14 years straight with a win on tour. Mind boggling.

“She had the finest swing I ever saw,” Ben Hogan once said.

 

Annika Sorenstam

Another contender for the GOAT. Having retired with 93 professional titles and an incredible 10 major championship wins, Sorenstam really did achieve everything in golf.

She was very much at the head of the game as women’s golf continued to emerge from the shadows and began to become the spectacle that is it today.

 

Dame Laura Davies

Next is the lady who really sums up what it is to be a British golfing superstar.

Davies has won four major championships and proved that the LPGA Tour could be conquered by non-Americans when she became the first player from overseas to top the LPGA money list.

 

Se Ri Pak

The first Asian female to win a golf major and has since become a huge inspiration to many of those who have followed in her footsteps.

Incredibly, Pak won two majors in her rookie season on the LPGA Tour in 1998 and unsurprisingly, there was much more to come.

The Hall of Fame’s youngest ever inductee in 2007, Pak retired with 39 professional wins, including five majors.

 

Patty Berg

Berg still holds the record for the most major championships won by a female golfer with 15 under her belt.

Not only was she hugely successful in an individual capacity but she was also one of the 13 golfers that came together to form the LPGA and became the first president of the organisation.

 

Babe Zaharias

Alongside Berg and 11 other golfing icons, Zaharias was also a founding member of the LPGA.

Unlike many of today’s golf stars, she was not set on a career in golf from a young age but instead was competing in track and field events in which she won two gold medals at the 1932 Olympics.

Once golf was her focus, she claimed an impressive 10 majors.

 

Marilynn Smith

Nicknamed ‘Miss Personality’, Smith was a key founding member of the LPGA and her career outlasted that of all her co-founders.

She won 21 times on the tour with two majors before going on to become the first female to work on a broadcast of men’s golf.

A shout out too to the other LPGA co-founders: Louise Suggs, Sally Sessions, Betty Jameson, Opal Hill, Helen Hicks, Shirley Spork, Marlene Beuer Hage, Helen Dettweiner, Alice Beuer, and Bettye Dannoff.

All of these women played their part in creating one of the most successful golf tours in the game.

 

Michelle Wie

Wie burst onto the scene as a teenager and turned professional when she was just 15.

She has become an icon for the modern game and has helped the female game to move forward in terms of publicity and sponsorship as well as on the course.

 

Judy Rankin

Having turned professional in 1962, the American enjoyed a successful career on the LPGA Tour winning 26 times.

She has been an incredible ambassador for the sport and still spends a lot of her time around the game as she is now an analyst for Golf Channel.

 

PGA Tour winner sacked caddie for JT ‘sabotage’

Posted by & filed under Golf Updates, Majors.

The article below was written by George Cooper of National Club Golfer.

PGA Tour star Michael Kim has revealed he was forced to fire his caddie after he repeatedly tried to distract playing partners Justin Thomas and Bobby Wyatt during a round in their amateur days.

In a shocking revelation which he tweeted, Kim, whose only PGA Tour title to date came at the 2018 John Deere Classic, shared how his former employee deliberately tried to “sabotage” Thomas and Wyatt by making noise during their backswings in the form of scrunching up peanut butter cracker wrappers.

Although clearly no fault of his own, Kim took to social media to apologise to Wyatt and the 2017 PGA Championship winner, adding he is “still sorry to them to this day”.

Kim refused to expose which tournament the incident took place at, but the Korean did reveal that he was left with no choice but to fire his caddie immediately after the round.

A somewhat bewildered JT took it in good spirits…

Great stuff.

Fortunately, no harm was done and the pair can laugh about the incident today. As for the unnamed bagman, we hope those peanut butter crackers were worth the P45…

Where should the British Masters be held next?

Posted by & filed under Debates, Masters.

The article below was written by George Cooper of National Club Golfer.

Following another successful British Masters at The Belfry, rumours have been circulating that the Brabazon has been earmarked to host the popular DP World Tour event for the next five years.

Since becoming formally known as the British Masters in 1985, the tournament has only ever been held on English soil. The event was played at Woburn for 10 consecutive years before moving around to the likes of Forest of Arden, Collingtree Park, and Close House, before a two-year stint at The Belfry.

So in light of emerging speculation surrounding the Midlands resort’s extended hosting rights, I asked my NCG colleagues, as well as our social media following where they would take the British Masters if it were up to them…

 

Like the hosts in previous years, I’d take it to my homeland. Logistics aside, an Open at Royal North Devon is the dream – but a British Masters will suffice.

Alex Perry

 

I was lucky enough to see the British Masters at my home course, Close House, so that is out. It’s far too small to ever hold it but I adore Swinley Forest and no professional would ever moan about spending a week round there.

Steve Carroll

 

Obviously, I’m going to pick somewhere in Yorkshire. I would love to see the pros battling it out around Ganton, preferably in some brutal wind and rain to make us all feel better.

Hannah Holden

 

As for me, well, I’m a member at Woburn so I’d say bring it back to the Marquess for another 10 years! But taking my biased hat off for a minute, Royal Porthcawl makes sense. A spectacular links which, if logistics can be worked out, is a future Open venue. The British Masters could be the perfect test run.

So what do our readers have to say? Here’s a pick of the bunch…

 

“Formby would be ideal. Good transport links and a fantastic course.”

Shaun Thomas

 

“There are enough courses to move it around without using the same one. Being British it could be St Mellion, Sunningdale, Gleneagles, Close House, the list could go on!”

Tim Unwin

 

“The Belfry was a great tournament with an amazing finish. That 18th hole always provides excitement. But Woburn is also a great alternative.”

Darren Ward

 

“Surely, it’s in the title. It should rotate around the home countries. There are plenty of courses that could accommodate it: Hillside, Royal Porthcawl, Portstewart, Trump International…”

David Owen

 

Royal Lytham as it appears to have fallen off the Open Championship rota.

Jeff Stewart

 

“JCB Club… one of the best!”

David Williams

 

Should move around. I love Forest of Arden and St Pierre in Wales which has held the Solheim Cup.

Howard Jones

 

“The Belfry is where I always associate the British Masters and have many fond memories of attending. The only other course I could think which has as good transport links and accommodation for spectators would be Celtic Manor.”

Paul Summerside

 

What do you think? Are you happy that The Belfry is set to host the British Masters for the next five years? Where would YOU choose to host the tournament if given the choice?

 

Top 10 players with the most PGA Tour starts

Posted by & filed under Majors.

The article below was written by George Cooper of National Club Golfer.

When Bill Haas chose his 68-year-old father Jay Haas to play alongside him at the 2022 Zurich Classic, it pushed him closer to becoming just the second player to make 800 starts on the US circuit. It got us thinking, so here are the top 10 golfers with the most PGA Tour starts in its storied history…

 

Top 10 players with the most PGA Tour starts

10. Bobby Wadkins

PGA Tour starts: 715
PGA Tour wins: 0

 

9. Raymond Floyd

PGA Tour starts: 726
PGA Tour wins: 22

 

8. Arnold Palmer

PGA Tour starts: 734
PGA Tour wins: 62

 

7. Doug Ford

PGA Tour starts: 744
PGA Tour wins: 19

 

6. Billy Mayfair

PGA Tour starts: 761
PGA Tour wins: 5

 

5. Mark Calcavecchia

PGA Tour starts: 761
PGA Tour wins: 13

 

4. Davis Love III

PGA Tour starts: 784
PGA Tour wins: 21

 

3. Dave Eichelberger

PGA Tour starts: 784
PGA Tour wins: 21

 

2. Jay Haas

PGA Tour starts: 799
PGA Tour wins: 9

 

1. Mark Brooks

PGA Tour starts: 804
PGA Tour wins: 7

 

That’s more than 7,600 appearances for 179 wins – including Bobby Wadkins, who holds the unfortunate record for most PGA Tour starts without a win. (His older brother, Lanny, more than made up for it with 21 wins, including the PGA Championship, and a spot in the World Golf Hall of Fame.)

Golf is hard, folks.