The Importance of Proper Clubbing

THE WORD CLUB pulls double duty in golf. It serves both as an implement necessary to play the game and as an institution that defines the people with whom we play it.

This issue devotes most of its pages to clubs of both kinds: the kind you swing at a ball and the kind you swing by for a round (there are two kinds of those as well) with fellow members.

In our annual Gear Guide (page 23), Ted Johnson provides a selection of the best new offerings to put in your bag, and why advancements in technology—in both materials and in club fitting— have created more options for personalization than ever before.

With those options comes the potential for greater confusion, but putting yourself in our hands and those of a professional club fitter should bring you more clarity and, ultimately, a better golf experience.

I began having those experiences many years ago after getting an Edel putter, for which my friend Stan Sayers fit me during his days at Green Valley Ranch Golf Club. In German, edel means “noble,” and I wanted to give David Edel a Nobel Peace Prize for resolving the ongoing conflict between me and the flat stick. My McKenzie putter— named for the fly-fishing river in Edel’s native Oregon, not the legendary golf course architect Alister MacKenzie to whom he also has a tie—was money.

By 2020, the man who had built a cultlike following for his putters and also developed Bryson DeChambeau’s single-length irons had sold Edel Golf to CoorsTek VP Doug Coors, whom he’d come to know during a putter fitting. The company now operates out of a facility in Denver, and as Andy Bigford reports in “A Custom Fit” (page 37), golfers looking for a long-term solution to their short- game woes may well find it just north of I-70 on Colorado Boulevard.

The only club golfers use more than the putter is the one at which they’re a member. Even with the costs of initiations and dues escalating, many clubs report memberships are at capacity and wait lists to join get longer by the day. Starting on page 63, Clubbing Up, our annual Guide to Private Clubs, spotlights several stellar clubs that may just be the spot for you.

We’ve all heard a variation of the Groucho Marx line: “I would never join a club that would have someone like me as a member.” Even if you’re happily playing in the men’s or women’s club at your local public course, it never hurts to peruse the directory that begins on page 80. As always, we list information for every private club in Colorado, and the numbers this year are quite eye-opening and may tempt you to take the plunge.

In the meantime, whether getting fit for club or trying to fit in at one, remember the wisdom of another comedian, Mitch Hedberg: “I order the club sandwich all the time, and I’m not even a member.”

Milkshake Mulligan

An issue spotlighting clubs seems like the appropriate place to run a better photo of the famous Castle Pines Golf Club milkshake than the one that ran in last issue’s Fareways column.