Let me open my first entry in my new golf blog by laying out what has come to be my philosophy of the game: Keep yourself off balance.

I've been struggling with my golf game for close to forty years now. I've never been what I would consider a good golfer. I've flirted with adequacy off and on over the years and now, having just passed my fiftieth birthday, I've kind of stumbled into a kind of weird philosophy of the game that I doubt that any pros out there would embrace.

Have you ever noticed that whenever you acquire a new club and take it to the driving range or the golf course for the first time it's the straightest, longest club you've ever hit? That lasts for about a week or two and then your mind and body gather together all you bad habits and apply them to the new club to bring it down to your level.

It;s kind of like when you don't play golf for 6 or 7 months and then you go out and shoot the round of your life. You think that you've somehow discovered the secret of golf though your time away from the game. Sure enough, after a week or two or scores creep back up to their familiar and comfortable levels.

Over the years I've noticed these types of things happening over and over. So, I've come to think that familiarity breeds complacency which leads us to take our golf games for granted. We start to think that certain clubs will lead to certain results. We tend to not concentrate on our stance, or our grip or making good contact with the ball. Now, if I were a good golfer, with good golf habits ingrained into my game, this kind of careless second-natyre approach to the game might be a good thing. But I'm not a good golfer.

So my theory is that when we use a new club or play for the first time in several months we are forced to focus a little bit more on the task at hand, thus the temporary, surprising improvement in our game.

This theory led me to wonder, about a year and a half ago, what would happen if I used a different set of clubs every time I went out to play. And that scary little thought is why, 18 months later, my cars are parked in the driveway to make room for a garage full of used golf clubs.

I innocently bought a set of used cavity back Ram FX irons. Sure enough my score improved slightly. I heard about how a set of hard-to-hit forged blade irons could give you more control over the spin of the ball and thought that might be interesting to experience, so the next thing I knew I had an old set of Jack Nicklaus Muirfield forged irons. This compulsive club buying went on and slowly started to pick up momentum. When I went out and shot an 89 (good for me) with a set of Ben Hogan Directors, I was hopelessly hooked.

It's been a fun and interesting year and a half. It's funny how some irons give you a good, strong confident feeling when you hold them, while other seem so small and thin that you feel like you have to swing out of your shoes to hit the ball anywhere. I bought an old TaylorMade Burner 5 wood that I couldn't hit a bad shot with if I tried. That lasted for several months, but the TaylorMade Burner has recently dropped out of the starting lineup in favor of an old Tommy Armour 5 wood.

I can't remember the golfer I was 2 years ago when I couldn't bring myself to buy a second set of "travel" clubs because I was afraid I would be able hit them. My club buying hasn't sowed down much, as I continue to search for my next hot hand. I like some of my clubs better than others (see my Equipment page) but I'm afraid I'll have to invest in a storage shed if I ever want to park my cars in the garage again.