Golf clubs are not getting better every year.

Manufactures claim their golf clubs are BETTER every year because the designs are superior and the components are more expensive.

Most golfers, however, define a BETTER golf club as one which will help them achieve lower scores. With that definition, you'd have to conclude that golf clubs are not getting BETTER at all. If, each year, the newest design in golf clubs was able to save you just one stroke per round, you could improve through doing nothing more than continuously buying new golf clubs. Every year your handicap would automatically drop be a stroke.

That obviously has not happened and never will happen. Even though golf clubs are redesigned each year, they will never again offer the the average golfer a meaningful benefit in performance. This is because to produce a LEGAL golf club, manufacturers have to stay withing the very strict guidelines set forth the the United States Golf Association (USGA) and The Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, Scotland (R&A). These two governing bodies of golf are highly committed to protecting the integrity of the game. They have no interest in softening their rules. They're not going to allow golf club designs to make the game easier than it was intended to be.

In other words, the ruling bodies of golf have thankfully tied the manufacturers' hands.

For example, while new driver heads may look different and offer increased adjustability, they cannot be designed to be any more forgiving than they already are. Furthermore, the driver face cannot be designed to launch the ball any faster than it already does.

Now, there will always be changes in golf club design, but those changes are market driven and primarily cosmetic. just because golf clubs look different every year, and are given a different name, doesn't mean they're getting BETTER. If they didn't at least look different, golfers wouldn't keep buying them.

So, if you've been waiting for some future advance in golf club design to dramatically improve the performance of your game, you can forget about it. Regardless of what you might hear from manufacturers, today the magic lies in golf club FITTING not new high-tech DESIGN.