The Golfing Lad

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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Let me be straight with you: the FlightScope Mevo+ is not a toy. It’s not something you grab on impulse or buy to feel good about yourself on the range. At $1,999, it’s a serious purchase for serious golfers — the kind of device that, when used consistently, actually changes how you practice and how fast you improve. I’ve spent months with this thing, indoors and out, and I can tell you it earns its price tag in a way…

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Look, I’ll be straight with you: the Garmin Approach R10 is the launch monitor I actually recommend when a buddy at the range asks me what to buy. Not because it’s perfect — it isn’t — but because it hits a sweet spot that nothing else in its price class touches. It measures the stuff you actually care about, it connects to simulation software that’s genuinely fun to use, and it fits in your bag pocket. For most golfers looking…

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If you’ve been standing over a 160-yard approach shot trying to remember whether that bunker on the left is 145 or 155 yards away, you already understand why GPS watches exist. The Garmin Approach S70 takes that basic premise — knowing your distances — and layers on so many intelligent features that it genuinely changes how you experience a round of golf. This isn’t just a watch with a yardage number on it. It’s the closest thing to having a…

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