What's in your bag ?

Much like you can tell a lot about an avid reader's personality from her bookshelf, here's a peek inside at a typical avid golfer's bag:

1. 65 wooden tees, long, short and medium scattered amongst the 12 pockets of the bag. Including that one pack of 20 which is in the secret valuables pocket that's so secret you've completely forgotten about its existence

2. 12 newfangled brush-tipped tees that you bought for $20 because the blurb on the cover promises longer distances, straighter shots and less friction.. but in real life breaks after the first use and causes your ball to slice so badly you could swear it's corkscrewing. Too expensive to throw away, it lurks deep within your side pocket, giving you a twang of guilt everytime you root past it to get at one of your El Cheapo wooden tees.

3. Gloves. To be exact, 2 Dunlop gloves, 2 Wilson gloves, 1 Callaway glove you got as a gift, and one ratty old Kasco glove which is actually your favorite one as it seems to make you hit straighter. The effect is purely psychological of course, but you've gone as far as getting it sewn up again and again everytime a tear develops. Female golfers, multiply number of gloves by two.

4. A golf umbrella given to you by your wife. It's a nice one, but in a shade of green that makes you pray for nice weather everytime you play so that you'll never have to use it in front of your buddies.

5. A crisp, clean miniature print version of the R&A Rules of Golf. Hardly ever used. Never thought of. Never opened, unless there's at least $20 at stake on the particular hole and you're arguing whether your opponent gets a free drop after plugging his shot into a fire ant hill.

6. 12 Noodle two layered balls, your favorite, that are marked what looks like hieroglyphics but is actually your adorable two-year old son trying to help by trying to write your initials on the balls. So cute.

7. 10 neon yellow Powerbilt balls that was on sale at Isetan and you bought on a whim.

8. 3 Titleist Pro V1x balls you have absolutely no business playing with. Found lying around the golf course in varying state of neglect. You're too afraid to use them but these are expensive balls you got for free.. can't throw them away !

9. A couple of range balls that, er, you picked up by mistake. Good for anger management when you feel like you just GOT to whack one into the lake on purpose for a change.

10. A 460cc, square headed, Callaway FT-I driver, your newest club. You're convinced that once you manage to get over the feeling of hitting a ball with a sledgehammer, you'll be able to hit it as far as the guy in the next booth at the driving range with a similar Nike Sumo who inspired you to buy the driver last week.

11. A Maruman 3 Wood. The club you normally use after the 3rd hole to tee off after your old driver pissed you off (but the new Square Driver will change everything ! Oh yes indeed )

12. A Dynacraft custom fitted 5 wood and a 7 wood. Yes, a 7 wood. The club fitter, after seeing your swing, correctly identifed that you need a dead-easy 7 wood. The raised eyebrows from various caddies when you ask for a 7 wood ("What ? Where got have 7 wood ? Hahha.. oh here it is, sorry") is worth it as this is one of the few working clubs in your bag. Yes, you had it club fitted after 2 very nice off-the-shelf sets did very strange things in your hands. The club fitter made the right clubs for you, unfortunately you have nobody to blame now for any weirdness other than yourself.

13.  Long Irons: a 2 iron and 3 iron that's absolutely spotless and without blemish, mostly from failure of clean contact ever being made with a golf ball. Hardly used. Mostly now taken off your bag completely and left gathering dust in your car.

14. Tour Edge 4 and 5 Iron Wood Hybrids. Now we're talking. These utility hybrids from a little-known (in Asia anyway) American brand is your lifesaver in the rough, in the fairway, when chipping and you've used it to actually putt out of a bunker once (no, really). Utility club indeed. Not prestigious by any stretch of the imagination but if you want prestige you wouldn't have been playing with a 7 wood in the first place.

15. Dynacraft custom fitted 6 Iron to Sand Wedge. This is your sweet spot. The bedrock of your game. Your source of consistency. No, seriously. OK OK so on some days you can hit a ball further with your SW than with your 6 Iron but nobody's perfect. Again, they are custom fitted, so you can't really blame the equipment.

16. A steel-shafted TaylorMade 58 degree wedge. So you saw this being used in the Nintendo Wii (see last blog entry) used by your Tiger Woods avatar to produce flop shots that STICK to the green. Of course when you tried it yourself, more often than not the ball zooms merrily across the green to the greenside bunker or pond. Still looks cool though.

17. Your 2-ball Odyssey putter. You once sank a 40 meter putt with this, making your flight mate buy the same one the next day. The fact that neither of you could ever repeat this feat again does not detriment of the permanent place this putter have earned in your bag.

18. A 3 metre long telescopic ball retriever. Has saved many a ball from a watery demise (or more likely, robbing the greenskeeper of a potential source of income).

19. Various bits and pieces: suntan lotion, scorecards from various courses, ball markers, 2 hats, club covers, raincoats, ball mark repairer, club brushes, a towel or two, your son's pacifier that he stuck in your front pocket 3 months ago just for the heck of it and has lain undiscovered ever since, and 6 driving range prepaid cards, 2 expired, one with no money left in it, and another one which closed down last year.

So what can you tell about our personalities ? Well, I guess neuroses-laden, highly disorganized, hard-headed and overly passionate about our favorite sport would be a few character traits. Which is why it's good that we're so wrapped up thinking about golf everyday. Without it, might not be a good idea to let us roam the streets unsupervised :-)

Just kidding, but one piece of advice: avoid walking courses. Your caddy could do without the hernia, thank you very much.

So what's in YOUR bag ? Do you have weirder stuff than this ? Click here to leave your comments ! 

-Himawan Prajogo, whose bag definitely contains even more useless junk than the above.