We Built The Ultimate Golf Bag From 2002

Right, welcome back everybody. Today I'm going to take you for a little walk down memory lane

I've put together my ultimate bag of 2002. So I've teamed up with Golf Clubs for Cash, one of the leading retailers of pre-loved equipment

and they've helped me find some absolute gems as they do for a load of these videos

So if you want to know more about those, check them out in the description below. But why 2002? Well, I was 19 years old, so I'd just come out on my junior days and I was getting

particularly obsessed with golf equipment. So what you see in this bag is kind of a look into my brain

in 2002 and I've got some absolute beauty. So let's get started with the driver

So for my driver from 2002, I've picked the tailor-made R510TP. Now this one holds a very

special place in my heart because it was actually the first ever club I got for free. I just started

getting on the England squads at that point and they start offering you a bit of equipment. This

is the very first individual golf club that I ever didn't have to pay for. So it really is dear to

my heart because of that. And it was an absolute cracker. I kept this driver, I think, for nearly

three years. I found it superb, hence why it's made the bag here. Now, I've picked this up for

£29.99 from Golf Club Slacash. And this was used back in the day by players like Ian Poulter

Paul McGinley, who were both tailor-made staffers at that time. And it was designed to give you a

really sort of low penetrating ball flight. Interestingly, sort of contrary to what we do

nowadays, the TP head, which is kind of the better player head, if you like, was actually 60cc bigger

than the more generic kind of core model that they made. It was just the 510, not the 510TP

which is a little unusual. Normally, it's different nowadays. They flip that around, try and give you more mass in the sort of the more mass market model, if you like

What I found really interesting when looking this driver up was the tech story

And why I found it interesting is because it's kind of the same as it is today. We're 23 years on now, and I found the actual sell sheet for the R510TP

and they're talking about, I'll probably pop it up on the screen for you now, they're talking about creating the biggest area they've ever had above the CG

to allow you to hit above the CG, creating those high launch and low spin shots

Where have we heard that before? Well, that was the whole story from the QI35 range this year

So again, 20 plus years on, we're talking about really similar stuff

So I was really interested to see this similar technology, how it performs

So I've hit a few up against each other. Let's take a look at them and I'll come back with the data. Well that's just taken me right back to my happy place. I really enjoyed hitting that R510TP

but what I didn't enjoy as much was the data which is pretty comprehensive when we talk about

the difference between this and that QI35LS that I was hitting. Now there are some mitigating

circumstances. I've been completely fully fit for the QI35 model there. It's got a very expensive

upcharged shaft. It's got the Ventus Black, the new Ventus Black in there. So that model of driver

is going to set you back the best part in that specification, best part of 800 pounds. This is

less than 30 pounds. So we're always going to see some of that difference. Most notable differences

would be the ball speed. So I was getting eight miles an hour more out of the QI35 LS. The spin

rate so this was spinning up a little bit more kind of 2,600 revs as opposed to about the 2,000

mark with that LS which obviously resulted in some sort of distance discrepancies the best part

of 30 yards in carry but like I said this isn't all about that performance there's some intangibles

here at play some unquantifiable stuff I absolutely loved looking down on this again the sort of squat

head in behind the ball the slightly neater profile and the feel of the face it's just

exceptional. It's just a really deep feedback. It's unlike anything on the market today. Feel

has really changed over time. And I would expect the performance, as I said, to be a lot, lot

difference. There's been 20 years. It's one of the main focuses for all these equipment companies

is driver tends to be the flagship model. It's where the most research goes. So you're likely

to see these jumps. However, could I still gain this to an extent and be reasonably competitive

Yeah, I think I could. I'm still getting out there 285 yards through the air. The extra spin

might keep it in play a little bit more so quite frankly you're not going to talk me out of things

I still like this driver this was my first love and I'm sticking with it. So my choice for fairway

wood now I've got this again for under £30 this is £24.99 this is the Callaway Steelhead 3 now

it's followed on from the original Steelhead and the Steelhead 2 as you would imagine and this was

around the time where Callaway were really dominating the fairway wood market I would argue

nowadays in 2025 for me, TaylorMade tend to have that title particularly on tour, we've seen the

QI10 and the QI35 this year in a lot of players' bags, non-contracted players as well which is

really where you sort of get the sign of what's working out on tour. Now this was a three-piece

construction so it had a very light but strong crown and that was welded to a very heavy face

and body so to try and manipulate that CG a little bit lower, provide the launch that we all know

and I saw this in so many players bags around this time at 19 That was my county era when I was getting in England squads and things like that And this was really that better player fairway wood that everyone who was anyone had in the bag

You were cool if you had one of these steelhead threes. One other thing that I think is really interesting to note

and sort of harks to the difference between the times we're in now

is they added this little kind of collar, this little loft sleeve, they call it

this fairway, even though it had nothing to do with the loft, shaft sleeve more like and the reason they added this shaft sleeve was because shafts back

even 20 years ago were a little bit more prone to breakage they weren't as sturdy and well

manufactured as they are today and Callaway who always historically and characteristically used

very very short ferrules didn't have much support for that bottom piece of the shaft they've actually

added this little plastic piece between the head and the shaft as kind of a structural element to

make sure we're not breaking as many shafts as we were. So that should tell you a bit of difference

between the manufacturing between now and back then. So again, I want to compare it to something

today. This is 17 degrees of loft because I've got forward here. So I've got a Callaway AI smoke

paradigm five wood, which comes in 18 degrees of loft. That's the closest I could get for

comparison. Let's hit some away again and we'll check the data. interesting so the first initial reaction when I hit my first shot I fell back in love it felt so

sort of a tingy strike to it a little bit of a spring and that yeah that kind of tingy sound that

really took me back to that era. A lot of the clubs nowadays with the introduction of multi-material

crowns and carbons and things like that have just got a little bit duller which some people love. I

still like that kind of feedback and the liveliness that you get from something that's got a bit of

that zing to it and that's what I was really feeling from the steelhead there and in terms of

the performance it really still stacked up. I mean again ball speed was a little bit down so

So 150 miles per hour I was getting with my steelhead and the AI Smoke produced about nine more

So again, similar to the driver there. We're seeing similar levels of discrepancy. The spin

however, was very interesting. So 3,600 revs I was getting from my steelhead, which is about where

I'd like to see this peak in. As I mentioned, the AI Smoke did have another degree of loft on it

and maybe that was contributing to the extra spin that I saw from that. So I was getting kind of

the 4,200, 4,300 revolutions per minute mark, but it resulted in a very, very similar kind of carry

There was only six yards in it in terms of carry. And again, when we're talking 20 plus years between

these clubs, I could quite comfortably game this and only spend £25. Right, I hope you're enjoying

this little look back. And if you are, if you could hit that like button and subscribe to the

channel, that'd be great. It really helps us. And comment down below, have I missed anything? Do you

think I'm wrong? Have I any glaring emissions that you'd like to have seen in this bag from 2002? Let

me know. So into the irons now. Now I've mixed it up a little bit in terms of genre here. I've

got a bit better playery there with that tiny little steelhead forward and the TP driver. So

I'm going with a bit more of a game improvement iron and I've gone with the Ping i3 O-Size. So

very much a cavity back, very much a game improvement style clubs. And I've picked this

for a load of reasons. First of all, I kind of just wanted to demonstrate the durability of

Ping Clubs. 20 years old, and this looks exactly the same as I'd have seen it when I would have

seen it in 2002. They barely mark up, and that's what so many of you like about Ping Clubs. You get

so much time out of these clubs still looking in their original condition, which I think is great

Ping were one of the very first companies to get heavily involved in custom fitting

and their color coding system made it really easy for the players to understand what kind of lie

angle and length requirements they had. You just knew you were a blue dot or a yellow dot or whatever

it was. That was super simple for people to understand. There was plenty of tech involved

in this iron as well, despite the fact that it just looks like a lump of metal shaved into a

cavity shape. This pad at the back, it just looks like a decorative badge, actually wasn't. It's

kind of a, they called it a custom tuning port where they put a bit of material in behind there

as well to help dampen vibrations and really help that sound. And even in the shaft of this golf club

Ping thought about that vibration dampening again with their Kush-in technology which is basically

a vibration dampening implement that goes down the shaft, sits at the fulcrum point so 14 inches from

the head so it doesn't affect swing weight at all and just takes vibration out so they were really

getting in depth in how this club would feel for the player back then. So again I want to hit a

a couple of ways, see how it performs up against the modern day equivalent. I've selected the

pink i530 to go against this. So let's hit a couple of ways and see what we get

Okay, some more interesting stuff. So there a little bit of a theme developing here and it seems to be ball speed in these kind of full swing clubs So like for like the Seven irons there five miles an hour in it more or less four and a half miles per hour So the i530 just jumping off a little bit quicker

And that's what I've seen in my testing over recent years with a lot of these irons. We're dealing with more hollow bodied stuff

with faster flexing faces. So ball speeds, we're tending to see that little bit of a jump in irons

Launch angle, as I work up the data, pretty similar, a little bit lower from the i3 15.5 versus 16.6 and the spin rates are basically identical at 5600

revs and there wasn't too much in it in terms of the carry despite that sort of four and a half

miles an hour ball speed difference it's getting 189 out of the i3 which is still really healthy

and 195 at the i530 which i expected because that's one of the hotter irons that i've tried

recently looking at the data could i gain that i3 today and not be worried at all

Absolutely. Into the wedges. Now, this was actually quite a difficult category for me

and I've gone with probably the safer choice. We all know Vokey, and I've got a Vokey 200 series

here. Now, the reason I say it was a difficult choice for me is just before that era, Cleveland

was the really fashionable choice. When I was a junior and in all those sort of squads that I've

been talking about, all the better players had that Cleveland 588 wedge. And 2002 was about the time

where Vokey started to get a little bit more mainstream. The first Vokey is around the 1999 sort of year

and 2002, like I said, was when it was really getting established and really starting to see far more usage in better players' bags and on tour

And this is the first in the kind of 100 series, if you like. So this is one of the 200 series

We went on to 300 and 400 from there, obviously. I've got it in a 60-degree, this slob wedge

It's six degrees of bounce, and you'll see in a minute when I compare it with a modern-day SM10. There's not masses of difference in terms of the

overall profile or the look at all, really, because I've got that SM10 in a raw finish

What I was really keen to explore here, going back 23 years as we are, spin retention. How much

spin? We often hear about it from Titleist themselves, saying this is how often you need

new wedges because your grooves wear out, and if you don't have spin, you don't have control

So I've got something that looks a little bit dinged up here. It's 20 plus years old

So let's get it on the launch monitor and find out how much spin we've actually lost. Okay, so I've come to use the GC quad. I've got my 200 series in my hand

It's got six degrees of bounce. I've got a equivalent SM10 down there

It's the T-grind at four degrees, closest I could get of what I had again in the raw finish

Let's just clip a few away and see what those spin rates look like. I've decided I'm not going to go full shots or chip shots

I'm going to go with kind of a three-quarter in the middle pitch shot for me, which will land

hopefully around the sort of 75, 80-yard mark, and keep an eye on spin and launch here

It was a little bit low in the face, but I've pretty much hit my mark of 80 yards there

so it'll be interesting to see what that tells me in terms of launch and spin. So launching at 28

degrees just over 10,000 revs of backspin that's quite a lot of backspin for a for a shot of that

length let's hit a few more away again pretty good on my number I think about 83 there maybe

in terms of carry launching a little bit higher there near the 32 degree mark but again 10,600

revs of backspin. That's pretty healthy. Let's get one more for good measure. See if I can hit

it just on the 80 yard mark. 79, pretty good. Okay. Interesting again there. So 33 degrees of launch

really high backspin again there. 10,700 revs. So I'd say we're averaging kind of 10,500

with that. I'll give you the exact details in a moment and probably around 31 degrees of launch

Let's see what the SM10 has to offer. So using Pro V1 X balls here just for your reference

So let's hit these 80 yard shots again. Okay, pretty good again there. That's 78, I reckon, 79, 32 degrees of launch angle there

just under and 1100 revs of backspin so we're talking about 500 more there on that first one

I was expecting to see a little little bit different maybe okay 82 yards in terms of carrying similar numbers again there 31 degrees of launch

11,000, nearly 12,000 revs of backspin. So a touch more than what I'm seeing on the 200 series

but not by much. Give me one last one. Again, pretty consistent. I'm doing all right myself

here today. 31 degrees, 31.4 of launch angle, 10,800 and a bit of spin. Let's see what those

actual averages stack up like? Well that might be the closest comparison we've got yet

between these clubs from different eras. The main sort of parameters I was looking at

between the wedges here that I really wanted to see was spin rate and launch angle

Because what tends to happen when you go for a wedge that older or its grooves are worn out you tend to see that launch angle popping up and the spin rate coming down So you kind of get that high launch low spin shot which we know is more synonymous with

good driving of the golf. But what we're looking for in wedges is quite the opposite. You want a

nice low launch with plenty of spin. That's what all the tour pros are after in terms of optimal

flight conditions for scoring. So I was keen to see what we'd have there. Now, when I look at the

200 series, I was getting an average launch angle of 31.1 degrees, which is pretty standard for me

from a kind of an 80-yard shot, and spin rate 10,600 revs, which actually did surprise me. I

didn't anticipate it being as high a number as that. Then when I flipped over into the SM10

my launch angle actually popped up a little bit, only 0.3 of a degree, so negligible and not

something you'd see with the naked eye to 31.4 degrees. The spin popped up a little bit as well

However, I would say it wasn't quite as extreme as I thought it might be. It was only around the

300 revs mark. So I was averaging 10,992 revs of spin there. So when you consider there's 23 years

and probably an awful lot of usage difference between these golf clubs, those numbers are

pretty extraordinary. I think that shows some real value in an older wedge. On to the putter

and I don't mind telling you I've blown my budget here and I've also cheated because this wasn't

released in 2002 but I'm having it in there because I was still playing this putter in 2002

and it's the Scotty Cameron Terillium. Now this is the long neck version now this was made famous

by Tiger Woods at the 1997 Masters he didn't use the long neck version but this is the version I

had so this is why I've picked it. Now the probably the most pertinent piece of technology around

this is all about feel it was about the pterillium insert which is essentially an alloy of 12

different metals that Titleist put together to create this what they call the pterillium insert

and it gives a really soft feel it was the softest feeling putter they'd made to this point and

again on the feel point of view these little white dots in the back here aren't just decorative

there's five rows of these and these are all about vibration dampening so taking away a sharper

impact feel sending nicer messages to your hand and really improving that feel now probably the

best thing to do here is I'm going to head over to the putting mat pop it down against the more

modern day Scotty Cameron so we can take a look at the visuals what's changed or what hasn't changed

and we'll see what the feel difference is like. So let's talk about the visuals and what I've got

to compare the Terrillium 2 is this Scotty Cameron Newport 2 Select model and it is a couple of

generations old and those of you who know you Scotty Cameron's will know there's a slight shape

difference between the Newport and the Newport 2 but what I really want to focus on is the colour

something as basic as the colour now Scotty Cameron in the last few years has really gone away from

darker finishes we see much more of this silver finish in the putters and just picking up this

Terrillium was a real look back to me and reminded me how much I like the darker shades in a putter

It kind of works a little bit like clothing. If you're a bit on the overweight side, you've put on a bit of weight like me, you will know that a darker, a black, for example, is slimming

It helps make things look a little bit compact. It's an optical illusion. That's what we see in putters and golf clubs

I see it in irons. I remember commenting on the Cobra Darkspeed irons a few years ago

They don't look as big as they actually are, which I think looks great

and that's what I see when I look down on this Terrillium to start with. I love the older, darker finish and how much more compact that makes it look behind the ball

But let's move on to the feel. That's what I really wanted to see here. So I'm going to hit a couple away with the newer version first

and get a sense of the impact sensation here. Lines up beautifully squarely

And a really sort of audible, kind of a click off the face. It felt pretty soft

I'm using a firmer tightless ball here in the Pro V1X. slightly clickier than I'd anticipated off the face

Yeah, very sound feeling putter there. I wouldn't say it was overly soft

but it was good feedback through the hands. Let's switch to Terillium now. It's been a while since I've hit a putt with this

It's been a good few years, so I don't know what I'm expecting. Probably a little bit less easy to line up actually

because there's no alignment aids on there. So I'm relying a little bit more on feel of that top edge

But yeah, off the face instantly I can feel, the ball just feels like it's on the club face a little bit longer

And I don't know if you can pick it up on the audio, it's just a slightly duller, more muted sound

There's a little bit more meat to the strike, so maybe it's my nostalgia, maybe it's the video we're filming

but I really do prefer the feel of that Terilium. Right, well, I hope you enjoyed that little trip down memory lane. I certainly did. Now, the purpose of these little look back videos is to compare a lot of things. Performance, yes, but also less tangible stuff. The less quantifiable things like aesthetics, like feel, like how the equipment makes you feel

and when I consider that holistic package from everything I've tried there personally and you'll

make your own mind up on this I think there's a lot of value still to be had in this second-hand

market yes in some of the longer clubs I was giving up something in terms of ball speed pretty

much through everything I tried there from driver fairway and irons but I was gaining back some other

stuff in maybe just nostalgia but also feel and I still really like the look in behind the ball of

some of these old clubs. So I hope that was interesting for you. Thank you very much for

watching and we'll see you next time