Welcome back to the MyGolfSpy series where we take the golf clichés you’ve heard forever and figure out how well they hold up. The goal isn’t just to call them true or false. It’s to find the part that has been oversimplified and get back to the lesson golfers should take from it.

Next up: “You can’t buy a golf game.”

What does “you can’t buy a golf game” mean?

A new club can sometimes feel like the clue you’ve been missing. Maybe this driver will finally get your spin under control or a new putter will turn all those missed six-footers into makes. Those new irons are the answer.

Then you go play.

Your score doesn’t suddenly drop five shots. You still hit the occasional tee ball into the trees. You still miss greens and leave putts short. The game has a pretty good way of reminding you that you can’t simply buy your way into becoming a better golfer.

And for the most part, that’s true.

But I don’t think that means equipment can’t make you better. There are some situations where buying the right equipment can make the golf game you already have considerably easier to play. Here are the situations where I think new equipment has the biggest impact.

When the equipment is fighting your natural motion

One of the best examples came from our own putter testing.

The worst putter among the 17 golfers who completed our blade, mallet and zero-torque testing had a +4.55 PuttView Handicap with blades and +3.98 with mallets. With a zero-torque putter, he improved to -0.97.

The zero-torque didn’t make him a great putter. In fact, he was still below the overall zero-torque testing average but the equipment helped.

Something about that putter design worked considerably better with the stroke he already had. His measured performance improved by more than five strokes compared to the mallet without him practicing or learning a new stroke.

If that isn’t technically buying a better golf game, it’s getting pretty close.

When your specs are sending the ball somewhere you aren’t trying to send it

Lie angle is probably the simplest example.

If your irons are a poor match for how you deliver the club, the lie angle can influence start direction. For a right-handed golfer, a club that is too upright can make the golf ball go left while one that is too flat can make it go right.

You can try to compensate by changing what you do in the golf swing or you can get the equipment adjusted.

The second option hasn’t made you a more skilled golfer but it can produce a better shot from essentially the same swing. With an incorrect lie angle, you might not even have to buy new irons but a slight adjustment can “buy” you a better game.

When your equipment can’t produce the ball flight your game needs

If you struggle with things like too much spin, launch that’s too low or you’re not getting enough distance, it may not always be a swing problem.

If a properly fitted driver gives you better launch, spin and dispersion with the same basic swing, your golf game just improved. Replacing that unusable 4-iron with a hybrid can give you a reliable 190-yard shot that launches high enough to hold a green. In that situation, you’ve added a shot to your golf bag without having to learn how to hit one.

When your misses are being punished more than they need to be

If your typical miss loses ball speed, comes up 15 yards short or creates a much wider dispersion pattern with your current clubs, another head, shaft or setup may handle that exact same miss better. You still missed the center of the face. Equipment didn’t fix your swing. It just stopped that miss from costing you as much.

Over 18 holes, that can be the difference between carrying a bunker and landing in it, finding the front of a green instead of coming up short or keeping a drive in play instead of watching it disappear into trouble.

So can you “buy” a better golf game?

Not exactly.

If you slice one drive, hook the next and hit the third off the bottom of the face, there isn’t a driver you can buy that suddenly makes all of that disappear. Equipment needs a specific problem to solve.

But that’s the part of this cliché that gets overlooked.

When equipment is fighting your natural motion, your specs are wrong, your clubs can’t produce the ball flight you need or your normal misses are being punished more than necessary, changing equipment can make you perform better without first asking you to become a better golfer.

You can buy equipment that lets the skills you already have produce better results and sometimes that’s enough to lower your scores.

• “Practice Like You Play.” Is That Even True?
• “Fairways And Greens.” Is That Even True?
• “Let The Club Do The Work.” Is That Even True?
• “Never Up, Never In.” Is That Even True?
• “Drive For Show, Putt For Dough.” Is That Even True?
• “Swing Easy When It’s Breezy.” Is That Even True?