The Clubs Pros Refuse to Replace

Every January the golf equipment industry performs its great annual molt: new heads, new names, new physics, new reasons your current clubs are obsolete. The people least persuaded by any of it are the ones who get the new clubs for free. Across the 211 PGA Tour bags in our database, 115 of them, more than half, carry at least one club released before 2022. We count 181 such clubs in all, and the oldest of them were designed when some of their owners were in grade school. This is a tour of the tour’s most stubborn equipment, and of what that stubbornness says about which clubs actually expire.

The Putters

Where loyalty pays interest

Thirty-seven putters in current bags predate 2022, and this is the one category where the holdouts have a statistical case. The tracked players rolling pre-2022 putters averaged +0.118 strokes gained putting this season (24 qualifying players), double the +0.046 averaged by everyone on newer models (51 players). The honest read is survivorship: an old putter stays in the bag only as long as it earns its keep, so the survivors are, by definition, the ones that work. But that is precisely the point. Nobody keeps a 15-year-old putter out of nostalgia.

Harris English, who finished the season ranked 40th in the world, putts with a Ping Scottsdale Hohum, a 2010 release whose name has aged better than its paint. Denny McCarthy, perennially among the tour’s best putters, uses a Scotty Cameron GoLo N5 from 2013. Tony Finau is on a 2010 Scottsdale TEC, Alex Noren a 2017 Odyssey O-Works, and Taylor Montgomery a Ghost Spider from 2010. The flat stick, it turns out, is less a club than a marriage.

The Irons

The biggest category of refusal

Irons are where the numbers get loud: 86 of the 181 old clubs are iron sets, by far the largest group. The famous case sits near the top of the world ranking: Matt Fitzpatrick, world No. 4, plays Ping S55 irons released in 2013, buying used heads when his current set wears out. Collin Morikawa, arguably the best iron player of his generation, has 2017 P730s in the set. Patrick Cantlay carries 2017 718 AP2s, Viktor Hovland has never left his 2018 i210s, and Max Homa plays a 2018 Cobra combo. At the far end of the shelf: Scott Piercy still games Titleist 680 blades released in 2003, the oldest club design in our entire database.

A forged blade has no software to go out of date. Once it fits your eye and your turf interaction, the only thing a new model offers is difference, and difference is risk.

The Fairway Woods

The 3-wood time capsule

Thirty-two fairway woods predate 2022, and two of them are remarkable: Patrick Cantlay and Justin Thomas both still carry the Titleist 915Fd, a 2014 release, eleven model generations behind the club Titleist would prefer to sell them. The TS3 fairway from 2018 has its own society: Russell Henley (world No. 6), Thomas and Sungjae Im all keep one. Deeper in the archive, Spencer Levin hits a 2008 TaylorMade Burner TP and Andrew Putnam a 2010 Cleveland Launcher DST. A good 3-wood, the saying goes, gets buried with its owner.

The World No. 1

Even the most scrutinized bag in golf has one

Scottie Scheffler’s setup is inspected weekly by half the internet, and it still includes a Srixon ZU85 utility iron released in 2018, from a company he has never been sponsored by. One rung down the leaderboard of stubbornness, Jacob Bridgeman carries a TaylorMade Tour Preferred UDI driving iron released in 2014, a club old enough that TaylorMade has since released, retired and re-released its successor.

What Does Expire

The categories the holdouts avoid

The refusals cluster where designs plateau. Only 8 of the 181 old clubs are drivers, because driver technology is the one place the yearly claims are mostly true: faces, weighting and forgiveness still move, and pros chase them. And only 7 are wedges, for a blunter reason: grooves are consumable. A tour wedge is worn smooth in months, so even the most sentimental player replaces them like tires. Between those poles sit the clubs that are essentially solved objects: blades, putters, high-lofted woods. That is where loyalty lives, because that is where it costs nothing.

The Price of Admission

Yes, you can buy most of them

Here is the part the launch calendar would rather you not dwell on: nearly all of these clubs are still for sale, second-hand, for a fraction of a new release. As of our latest check, the Ping Scottsdale Hohum that Harris English took to 40th in the world lists used from $87.99. Matt Fitzpatrick’s S55 irons run about $284 a set. The ZU85 driving iron in the world No. 1’s bag is $135.99. Add up every buyable club in the table below, all twelve, and the whole museum costs about $1,871: less than three new drivers at this year’s sticker.

And some of them money cannot buy. The Titleist 680s, the GoLo N5 and Morikawa’s P730s turned up nothing in the used listings we checked; the 915Fd exists mostly in memory and in two of the best bags on tour. In golf equipment as anywhere else, the truly loved things eventually stop being for sale.

The Takeaway

What the holdouts know

The equipment industry’s calendar says a club is old at twelve months. The people who play golf for a living, with free access to everything new, behave as if a club is old when it stops working, which for a putter or a set of blades may be never. More than half the best players in the world are carrying at least one piece of proof. The next time a launch cycle insists your 3-wood is obsolete, remember that the world No. 21 hits one from 2014, and he is doing fine.