I wrote yesterday about Austin Smotherman winning the Butterfield Bermuda Championship in that wild, wind-shortened playoff, and I could not leave it alone. I kept thinking about the one question every mid-handicapper asks after a tour win: what was actually in the bag?
If you missed that one, here is my breakdown of Smotherman's windy Bermuda playoff and the lesson in it for mid-handicappers.
Well, the winning-bag list dropped on October 27, and it is better than I expected. Not because it is full of clubs I want to buy tomorrow. Because it is full of clubs I should not copy blindly — and two or three ideas I absolutely should steal.
Here is the bag, as listed for Bermuda: Titleist GT3 driver (10 degrees), TaylorMade Qi10 3-wood (15 degrees), TaylorMade SIM Max hybrid (19 degrees), Titleist T100 irons (4-9), Titleist Vokey SM10 wedges (46, 50, 54) plus a WedgeWorks 60-degree, an L.A.B. Golf VZN.1i putter, Golf Pride MCC Align grips, and a Titleist Pro V1x ball.
The first thing that jumps out is that it is not a one-brand bag. Titleist driver and irons, TaylorMade woods, L.A.B. putter. No sponsor loyalty, no matching set, just whatever works. That is the most mid-handicapper-friendly lesson in the whole list, and it is free.
Steal this: the 19-degree hybrid instead of a long iron
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| The bag as listed, and the one idea I'd steal: the 19-degree hybrid. |
The star of the bag, for me, is still that 2020 TaylorMade SIM Max hybrid at 19 degrees. I wrote about it after his first win at the Bank of Utah Championship earlier this month — a tour pro winning with a six-year-old hybrid — and here it is again, winning in Bermuda in the wind.
This is the club I would actually steal, and I mean the idea, not necessarily that exact head. A 19-degree hybrid is the club that replaces the 3-iron or 4-iron most of us cannot hit reliably. It launches higher, it is more forgiving out of the rough, and on a tight hole or into the wind it is a fairway finder off the tee.
That is exactly my problem. On my 98 at RTJ Grand National Links last Saturday, the long-iron shots were where rounds went sideways. I do not need a prettier long iron. I need a club I can actually get airborne and keep in play. A used SIM Max hybrid is exactly the kind of club that shows up cheap because it is "old." Old, in this case, just means proven.
Skip this: the tour shafts, all of them
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| Extra-stiff, heavy tour shafts: the part of the bag I'm not copying. |
Now the part I am not stealing: the shafts. Smotherman's driver shaft is a Project X HZRDUS Smoke RDX Black TX 60-gram. His 3-wood shaft is a Graphite Design Tour AD IZ-7 X. His irons are KBS Tour 125 S+ — 125 grams, stiff-plus.
Those letters matter. TX and X are extra-stiff. 125 grams in an iron shaft is heavy. These shafts are built for a tour swing speed, and they are built to keep the ball down and left-miss-proof for a guy who swings it hard for a living.
If I put a TX driver shaft in my bag, I would lose distance, not gain it. The club would feel like a board, my timing would go, and I would blame the head. The lesson is not "buy the shaft the winner plays." The lesson is "buy the shaft for the swing you actually have." For most of us that means regular or stiff flex, lighter weight, and a fitting — or at least an honest look at how far and how fast we really swing — before we copy anything from a tour bag.
The same goes for the T100 irons. They are beautiful, compact, tour-style blades-in-spirit. Smotherman can hit a 4-iron T100. I mostly cannot, and I do not have to pretend otherwise. What I can steal from the irons is the setup: 4 through 9, no forced long irons beyond that, with the hybrid and fairway wood doing the long work above them. That is a sensible top-of-the-bag structure for a mid-handicapper, even if my irons are a lot more forgiving than his.
Steal this: the wedge gaps, not the wedge prices
The wedge setup is the most copyable part of the bag. Smotherman carries 46, 50, 54, and 60 degrees — roughly four degrees apart, with the 46-degree basically acting as his pitching wedge replacement and the 60 for the short stuff.
Four-degree gaps are the sweet spot. They are close enough that you do not have a 25-yard hole in your short game, and far enough apart that you are not carrying two clubs that do the same job. If you have a big jump — say, a 46-degree pitching wedge and then a 56 — that 100-yard-and-in range gets awkward fast, and that is where I lose shots.
I am not about to buy four new Vokey SM10s at full price. The idea to steal is the gapping chart, checked against your actual distances — my next wedge purchase will be driven by a gap in my yardages, not by a brand launch.
Steal the putter idea, test it before you buy it
Then there is the putter: an L.A.B. Golf VZN.1i. L.A.B. putters are the face-balanced, lie-angle-balanced designs that stay square through the stroke, and they are everywhere right now for a reason — a lot of golfers, pros included, are tired of fighting a putter that wants to rotate.
I wrote recently about zero-torque putters and my three-putt problem, and this is the same family of thinking. A putter that wants to stay square helps a player whose stroke is not perfectly repeatable. That describes me on a bad day.
But here is the honest part: I have not rolled this exact putter, and a putter is the most personal club in the bag. What works for Smotherman's stroke might feel dead or strange in mine. So the steal here is not "buy the VZN.1i." It is "go roll a face-balanced putter for 20 minutes and see if your start line tightens up." If it does, then start shopping — used, if you can find one.
And the ball? Steal the spin idea, not the price tag
Smotherman plays the Pro V1x. That is a premium, firm, high-spin tour ball, and it makes sense for him: he compresses it properly, he needs the spin around the greens, and he does not lose three a round.
I lose balls. I play used balls, and I like high spin on approach shots so the ball checks up instead of rolling through the green. The tour-ball lesson for me is not the logo, it is the profile: a urethane-cover ball with real greenside spin, at a price I can live with losing. There are plenty of ways to get that — previous-generation tour balls used, or a budget urethane ball — without paying full dozen price for the exact ball in the winner's bag.
That is the whole theme of this bag, really. Smotherman's win does not tell me to buy his clubs. It tells me to build my bag the way he built his: pick each club for a job, be ruthless about gaps, do not copy shafts or lofts that do not fit your swing, and let a six-year-old hybrid stay in the bag if it keeps winning you holes.
That is a bag-building philosophy I can afford. And unlike a brand-new driver launch, it does not expire next season.
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