The Golfing Lad

There’s a moment that happens to nearly every golfer who visits Ireland for the first time. You’re standing on the first tee at Ballybunion or Lahinch or Royal County Down, the wind is doing something rude to your hat, the Atlantic is grey and churning in the distance, and you think: This is why I came. Not for the Guinness (though that helps). Not for the scenery (though that’s extraordinary). It’s the golf. Raw, humbling, brilliant links golf on courses…

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Scotland isn’t just a golf destination — it’s the golf destination. Every serious golfer owes themselves at least one pilgrimage to the place where the game was born, where the rules were written, and where the wind off the Firth of Forth has been humbling grown adults for six centuries. No resort course, no parkland classic, no sun-baked fairway in Arizona can prepare you for what Scottish links golf actually feels like. It gets under your skin in the best…

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Arizona’s desert golf experience is unlike anywhere else on the planet. I’ve played in Scotland in the rain, tracked down links courses in Ireland, and teed it up at classic parkland tracks all over the Southeast — and nothing quite prepares you for the first time you step onto an Arizona course and realize the rough isn’t rough at all. It’s cactus. And rocks. And things that bite. Arizona desert golf at its finest That’s not a warning — it’s…

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Let’s be honest — California might be the best golf state in America. You’ve got ocean cliffs, desert canyons, redwood forests, and wine-country rolling hills all within a few hours of each other. Nowhere else can you play links-style golf with the Pacific crashing below you on a Tuesday and then tee it up in the Sonoran Desert by Thursday. That’s the California golf trip: wildly varied, occasionally wallet-punishing, and almost always worth it. California golf ranges from coastal links…

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Florida has more public golf courses per capita than almost anywhere in America, and I say that not as a fun trivia fact but as someone who has spent way too much money and time proving it. From the panhandle down to the Keys, from the Gulf Coast to the Atlantic side, this state is absolutely stacked with tracks you can show up and play without a membership card or a sponsor invite. Whether you’re planning a dedicated golf trip…

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If you’ve spent any time hunting for a wedge that genuinely bites the green and stays put, you’ve probably heard the buzz around the Callaway Jaws Raw. And yeah, the buzz is mostly justified. These wedges are loud — not in a bad way — but in a “this thing means business” kind of way. I’ve been gaming a 56° S Grind and a 60° Z Grind for a solid four months now, and I’ve got real opinions about what…

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If you’ve spent any time watching professional golf over the last decade, you’ve seen the TaylorMade Spider on tour. It’s practically ubiquitous. Dustin Johnson won a Masters with one. Rory McIlroy has leaned on it. And on any given Sunday, a good chunk of the world’s best players are rolling putts with that unmistakable spider-leg frame. So when TaylorMade released the Spider GT, people paid attention. I’ve had the Spider GT in the bag for a few months now —…

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Mizuno has earned legendary status for iron feel, and if you’ve ever flushed a shot with a Grain Flow Forged iron you already know exactly what I’m talking about. That soft, almost muted thud at impact — like the ball just melted off the face — is something you spend the rest of your golfing life chasing. The Pro 225 is Mizuno’s attempt to bottle that sensation and make it accessible to players who can’t quite pure every iron shot…

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The Srixon ZX5 Mk II irons occupy a genuinely interesting sweet spot in the iron market — one that most manufacturers talk about but few actually nail. You want a set that bails you out on the bad ones, still fires the good ones straight at the flag, and doesn’t look like a kitchen spatula when you set up over the ball. That’s the pitch here, and after spending several weeks putting these through their paces on the range and…

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I’ve put a lot of launch monitors through their paces over the years, and most of them do one thing pretty well: give you numbers. Ball speed, launch angle, spin rate — you get a readout, you scratch your head, and you try to figure out what it means for your swing. The Rapsodo MLM2PRO does something different. It gives you the numbers and the video to go with them, automatically, on every single shot. That combination sounds simple on…

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