Can We Win A Professional Event With Golf Clubs Found At The Dump?

Last year, I had the surreal experience of playing a professional event with an exact replica set of Bryson DeChambeau’s clubs – one-length, cricket bat-sized grips, 7˚ upright et al. Somehow, I won the tournament, which was a thrill, but it left me with a nagging, slightly masochistic question: if I could win with the most advanced, custom-spec equipment on the planet, how would I fare at the absolute opposite end of the spectrum?

I decided to find out. The challenge was simple but daunting: build a full set of clubs from my local rubbish dump, ‘fix them up’ with premium components and compete in a sanctioned PGA of GB&I tournament. I wasn’t looking for a specific budget, but the goal was to spend as little as humanly possible to see if retrofitting high-quality shafts and grips could make literal rubbish competitive at the pro level.

WATCH: Joe takes on Weston-super-Mare golf club in a regional PGA event to see if he can win with a set of clubs picked up from his local dump.

Dumpster diving

First, I enlisted my Kick Point: The Golf Gear Show podcast co-host, Dan Parker, to join me at my local recycling centre. I wasn’t sure what to expect – perhaps a few rusted 7-irons and a broken umbrella – but I was shocked to find the ‘sports’ section brimming with numerous golf club options housed in several large, overflowing bins. The first usable discovery was a genuine relic: an old TaylorMade Tour Spoon. At 13˚, it looked more like a ball scoop than a modern fairway wood, but in the absence of any 460cc drivers, it seemed to be my only viable option for teeing off, so into the ‘yes’ pile it went.

Next, after sifting through hoards of mismatched single irons, I struck gold – or at least, rusted steel – by unearthing a full set (4-PW) of Ben Sayers forged blades. Granted, they were heavily dented and had some of the ‘boxiest’ profiles I’ve ever seen, but knowing they’d be getting a workshop upgrade, I couldn’t turn them down.

For my short-game needs, I picked a Slazenger US Masters Jack Nicklaus sand wedge. The best I could say for this one was that it had a semi-usable shape and, incredibly, a few grooves still fighting to survive the rust.

For the putter, with options severely limited, I opted for a Wilson 8802-style blade, tweely named the ‘Wee Snuggie’. I have more MOI in the knife I butter my toast with, but this old style felt apt for the challenge I was undertaking.

Finally, I threw in a disgracefully offset Nicklaus N1 3-iron in a hopeful, perhaps delusional, attempt to bridge the vast gap between my boxy blades and the golf ball-sized 13˚ Tour Spoon.

Triumphantly, I marched to the payment booth with my bundle of scrap metal. The man gave the pile a sceptical glance, performed a vague mental calculation and grunted, “Tenner.” Ten pounds. I was thrilled. The quality was dubious, but the value-to-weight ratio was off the charts.

The workshop transformation

The ‘fix-up’ challenge was officially sponsored by Golf Pride, and honestly, I don’t think I could have contemplated swinging these things without them. The grips I found on these clubs were a horrifying mix of cracked, slick, mouldy and downright unhygienic! KBS Golf also stepped up, kindly donating a set of shafts to bring these clubs up to a playable professional spec.

Back in my garage workshop, the reality of the task set in. The first step was removing the heads from their original, rusting shafts – a grimy battle of heat and elbow grease. Sadly, at this stage, we suffered our first casualty: the Slazenger wedge. The head was effectively welded to a shaft that featured a massive, unusable bend.

Despite applying more heat than I thought possible, it simply wouldn’t budge and I was forced to abandon it. I made a quick dash back to the dump, where I secured a Wilson Blue Ridge 55˚ wedge as a replacement (for £3).

Once the hosels were cleaned of years of grit, I carefully installed the new KBS shafts and, to finish the build, I fitted Golf Pride Multi Compound grips in a vibrant red. For the ‘Wee Snuggie’, I went with Golf Pride’s brand new Zero Taper putter grip.

I can’t overstate the psychological shift the new grips provided here. As the only point of contact between the club and me, having premium grips was a massive boost, masking the ancient feel of the steel. They made the clubs feel, for the first time, like actual usable tools rather than museum pieces.

The heat of the battle

The tournament day quickly rolled around. The venue was Weston-super-Mare Golf Club for a PGA GB&I National Winter Series event. It’s a classic links layout that demands precision, and as I pulled into the car park for my 11.10am tee time, the nerves began to jangle.

After a brief, inconclusive warm-up session in the nets, I headed to the putting green, which was quite frankly a confidence-sapping disaster. I was struggling to line the ‘Wee Snuggie’ up anywhere near the hole. The alignment line on top seemed to be pointing in a completely different direction to the face. However, with no time (or indeed option) to swap, I headed to the 1st tee.

Standing on the 350-yard opening hole, the difficulty of the task hit me like a ton of bricks. I tentatively placed the Tour Spoon in the address position and the head looked no bigger than the ball itself. An actual air shot did not feel out of the equation at this point.

I took a deep breath, made a smooth swing and... crack. The ball fizzed off the face, stayed about 20 feet off the ground and tore down the left centre of the fairway. The ultimate stinger! I scrambled par from the left fringe, and suddenly my goals began to grow loftier than the ‘please break 100’ thoughts I was having on my drive to the course. Strangely, the momentum built. Two more pars followed, then, on the tricky par-4 4th, I holed a 35-footer for birdie. Under par. I started to laugh.

By this point, I’d fully embraced the ‘missile’ flight of the Tour Spoon, and it was actually proving quite effective in the seaside breeze. By the time I reached the par-5 8th, I was staring down an eagle putt to go three-under!

Naturally, I three-putted for par, but a gritty seven-footer for par on the 9th saw me turn in a bewildering one-under-par. I couldn’t, could I?

Sadly, the dream unravelled on the back nine as quickly as it had appeared. After another solid par on the 10th, putting me in the top eight of the tournament by my calculations at that stage, I stood on the par-3 11th with the Ben Sayers 4-iron. I miscued it badly, leaving myself short-sided. A wildly clumsy chip went 35ft past the hole and an equally clumsy three-putt led to a deflating double-bogey.

Often in golf, when things go wrong, they go wrong quickly. The 12th is the most difficult tee shot on the course, and looking down at a 3-wood the size of a walnut, I felt the pressure to produce a perfect strike. Alas, I caught it fractionally off the toe, sending it screaming into the long grass lining the right-hand side of the hole. Another double-bogey. I had spiralled from one-under to three-over in a matter of just 20 minutes.

I managed to steady the ship with a few gritty pars, but a missed short putt on the 16th led to another bogey. I closed with a solid par on the 18th for a four-over round of 74.

Out of a field of 30 professionals playing that day, it was good enough for a share of 19th place.

So, can you play with trash?

Honestly, if you had offered me a 74 at the start of the day, I would have snapped your hand off for it. But having been under par at the turn, I’ll admit to a lingering sting of disappointment. However, this dump experiment taught me some fascinating lessons about equipment.

My biggest fear for the day was a lack of distance, but, in reality, the TaylorMade Tour Spoon was a revelation. Sure, it was scarily unforgiving on the mishits, but with its outrageously penetrating ball flight and subsequent run, it was actually only averaging about 10-15 yards behind the modern 460cc drivers my playing partners were using.

Arguably, my most frustrating challenge came with my irons and wedges. The biggest hurdle wasn’t the age of the metal, but the geometry. Modern clubs have ‘bounce’. These old Ben Sayers blades and the Wilson wedge had soles so sharp they felt like steak knives.

Not only were the leading edges incredibly sharp, but they all seemed to feature ‘negative’ bounce angles, with the leading edge sitting closer to the ground than the back edge! While this wasn’t disastrous on the full shots with speed, I was absolutely terrified of duffing every chip because the club wanted to dig straight into the turf. It made the short game a nerve-wracking nightmare.

And finally, the ‘Wee Snuggie’ putter would have to go down as an abject failure because the visual cues were just so contradictory. I simply couldn’t trust my eyes, and in a professional-standard competition, that’s fatal.

Ultimately, my biggest takeaway from this whole experience was the power of the contact points. Even with heads dragged out of a skip, the fresh Golf Pride grips made the clubs feel premium in my hands. For all my brain knew, I could have been holding a £1,600 custom-fit set.

It goes to show that while tech helps, the ‘engine’ (the shaft) and the ‘steering wheel’ (the grip) are what truly make a golf club functional.

Next time you see a used bin at the dump, don’t just walk on by – there might just be a 74 hiding in there.