Every golfer has had this thought.

You hit a few bad iron shots. Your driver spins too much. Your distances feel inconsistent. And somewhere between the range and seeing the latest Titleist ad, the question pops up:

“Do I need new clubs?”

It’s a fair question. Golf equipment does matter. But after years of playing competitive amateur golf—and now building a golf technology company—I’ve learned something important:

I recently ran into a conversation that has me questioning if my equipment is reason for my struggle with irons. In this episode, I’ll tell you what signs to look for and how to use data to tell the difference between an equipment problem and a skill problem.

I was playing a round of golf with ZeroToScratch. Brandon is trying to go from zero golf experience to scratch in a year. A tall task.

We were filming a recent round to get a baseline for where he is when ScratchToTour (Clayton) had some comments that caught me off guard. I was explaining how I have struggled with irons and approach for quite some time and I just can’t seem to figure it out.

The first thing he asked is ‘what irons are you using?’ So I showed him bag full of beautiful blacked out Titleist T200’s.

Honestly… I hadn’t really thought of the impact of the clubs on the total performance. I’ve been gaming some variant of the T200 / AP2 for well over a decade, but before we get into my specific case study…

Before you jump to the conclusion that new clubs will help, you should understand your strike patterns, tendencies, and misses. Tangent can help with that if you track your shots.

If you’re spotting specific trends or significant distances in performance from club to club… then it may be an equipment issue.

You’ve probably been told that you need to get fit for a personalized set of golf clubs and there is a lot of truth to that… Here are some simple equipment symptoms to look out for:

Probably the biggest issue I see when playing with strangers… too much spin on their drivers. If you struggle with a driver that has too much curve, goes too high, or feels like you should hit it further… You might have too much spin on your driver.

This can be caused by a variety of things. Usually in my experience… It’s too much loft. Loft = spin. If you’re hitting a high spinny ball… Most drivers these days are adjustable. Try taking some loft off and see if it gets better. I have an upwards Angle of Attack, but I play an 8.5° Driver for reference.

Head design can also play a role. A driver with a CG that is further back will spin more. It’s intended to add forgiveness… but it can cost you distance if you have too much spin.

A shaft that is too light, too flexible, or just mismatched for your swing profile.

Ball choice. Softer balls or Urethane cover tour balls tend to have more spin.

There are also swing mechanics at play, but just getting into a better fitting club can make a big difference with no swing changes.

Check your lie angle. Often times if a club is too upright it’ll cause the ball to miss left (for a right hander). Too flat… and you’ll miss right.

This one is sneaky. I was doing some wedge drills and noticed that when I switch to my 56 I’d consistently miss to the left by 5 yards. The club was 1° flat compared to my standard setup of 2°. I fixed the issue by having a fitter bend it flat and hitting the target became easier… without changing my swing.

Shaft length / profile can make it hard to square the face. Too long… you’ll tend to miss right.

Alright… you get the point. It may not be you, it may be your equipment, but let’s get back to this anecdote… was it me?

When I set out to ponder Clayton’s suggestion, the first thing I did was go to my Tangent data. I have over 500 rounds tracked, but I only need to look at my last 20 to get a feel. In my profile, under the data tab, I found the Strokes Gained by Club:

The first thing I noticed… There is a huge falloff in performance when I go from my 52° to my 48° wedge. And sure enough… that is where I switch from my Titleist Vokeys to my Titleist T200s.

I am close to Strokes Gained neutral with the Vokeys. A pretty good player inside 115 yards. But as soon as we switch to the T200s, I’m a bit all over the place.

Let’s review how I am losing strokes. That might be a hint.

Sure enough. I lose most of my approach strokes due to distance control. I’m also missing short and long. Finally… it makes sense… and while strike quality plays a small role, it points to the fact that I cannot control the distance well on my current iron set.

So am I a bad iron player? Or do my clubs not work as well as they could for me? Or maybe both?

The next thing I like to look at is my club gapping. From the home screen of Tangent, hit the club icon in the top right → Gapping in the lower right to bring up the dispersion view of your bag.

This gives you a pretty good idea of how your bag is setup, as well as the gapping, distances and dispersions of each club. Each box represents the expected outcome for that club. The bigger the box, the bigger the uncertainty for that club. Smaller boxes are better.

Once you’ve played enough rounds in the system, you can toggle the switch at the bottom from ‘Caddie’ to ‘Actual’ to see what your clubs are actually doing.

At a glance, I have pretty nice gapping. Good spacing between most of my clubs, very little directional bias, and not too much overlap.

However, a couple things jump out.

1) My dispersions more than double as soon as I switch from my Vokeys (52° and higher) to my T200s (48° and lower). Particularly vertically (distance control).

2) My dispersions get quite wide when we get to the 6I. I need to work on my long irons.

3) My 4H has no business being in this bag. The dispersions are way too big… how could you trust it? <I don’t>

Your bag may look different. You may have uneven gaps. You may have different clubs with strong directional bias left or right (check lie angle first). This is the place to go to get some answers.

Don’t know how to analyze it? Take the data to a club fitter or shoot me a message and I’m happy to take a look. Especially now that its pretty easy to share the data in the Tangent Community.

Well… we had a had a hypothesis and the data seems to support that my irons are not helping my game. They are significantly worse than my Vokeys.

Why?

The clubs are constructed completely different. The Vokeys are more of a solid body that is going to add consistent and higher spin… but will be more penal on mishits.

My T200’s are designed to be more forgiving on mishits. That means less distance loss, but they are also lower spin. I’m trading control for forgiveness.

Thats a good trade if I’m consistently mishitting the ball, but its not a great trade if I’m struggling to control distance. It might just be time to start shopping.

We’ve built Tangent to help you answer these questions quickly on your game. Often times, we’re working on course management, target selection, and skill development. Things we directly control… but that data can also tell us about our equipment.

So now I can justify that expense to the Mrs.

It’s simple. Subscribe and start tracking your shots with Tangent. In no time you’ll have all the data you need to start playing your best golf, buying better equipment, and having more fun.

Isn’t that what it’s all about?