The Short Game

So your 7-year-old wants to join you on the driving range.

Should you dig out one of your old clubs and look for a hacksaw?

Or should you shell out $500 for--you guessed it--Callaway’s Little Bertha set, a driver and three irons, complete with $125 bag and $85 putter.

There are alternatives--from used clubs someone else’s child outgrew to less expensive junior sets selling for well under $200 to component clubs made by your local club-repair shop. And there’s nothing wrong with a single club, either.

The time-honored tradition of starting youngsters out on “cut-down” adult clubs is OK--although as pointed out by Tom Sargent, the pro at Mesa Verde Country Club in Costa Mesa, that’s a little like taking Mo Vaughn’s bat and sawing it off for a Little Leaguer.

On the other hand, “absent the opportunity to have a good club specifically designed for juniors, cut-downs are just fine,” said Sargent, who is a former PGA of America teacher of the year. “There’s a whole lot of people who started out with cut-down clubs. They can’t be that bad.”

If you do saw off clubs, by all means cut down a women’s club, whether it’s for your son or daughter.

Cutting off a club makes the shaft stiffer, and a women’s club will have a more flexible shaft than a men’s club to begin with. It’s also already shorter, meaning that cutting it off won’t affect the flex or lie as severely.

If money is no object--first of all, congratulations--some teaching pros say go for the top-of-the-line junior clubs, and you can even have those high-quality club heads reshafted as your child grows.

After all, that’s one of the problems with youngsters: Kids grow, and they outgrow clubs almost as quickly as they outgrow clothes.

“You’re looking at a financial question,” Sargent said. “Real young, I hate to see parents spend a lot of money because the kids are probably going to tire of it so quickly. A 4- or 5-year old, you just want to give them a nine-iron so they can hit the ball.”

Although most of the industry giants make junior clubs, theirs are rather expensive, though nothing is as pricey as Callaway. One of Taylor Made’s sets, for example, is $229.

But the junior lines tend to be an afterthought for the big manufacturers because the under-14 sector is less than 6% of the $1.9-billion market for sets of clubs, according to the National Assn. of Sporting Goods Dealers.

It’s a market so small that Tom Stine, co-founder of Golf Datatech, a market research company, said it doesn’t track junior sales.

Eager to tap that market, however, are a couple of manufacturers that have emerged in the last decade as leaders in the junior niche by creating clubs that are thoughtfully designed and also well-priced--such as La Jolla Club’s $140 set or U.S. Kids’ $129.99 set.

The prices go up with the youngsters’ height, but remain under $200. It’s also possible to buy individual clubs. A nine-iron and a putter can take a 9-year-old a long way.

“We’ve had the most success with La Jolla clubs,” said Sargent, who also rates U.S. Kids as “pretty good clubs.”

Paul Herber, president of La Jolla Club, founded in Vista in 1991, said 1999 sales are at $6 million, and the company expects to do $10 million next year.

Dan Van Horn, who helped found U.S. Kids in Atlanta in 1997, won’t release sales figures in the privately held company but said sales increased 163% in the company’s second year.

U.S. Kids emphasizes its specially designed ultralight club heads, which are made of zinc alloy instead of stainless steel and therefore are less expensive, though generally considered lower-end.

The driver designed for a 5-year-old has a head weight of 165 grams compared to 232 grams for the typical cut-down or junior club, and an overall weight of 9.2 ounces versus 11.8.

“Heavier junior clubs or cut-downs are fundamentally, we believe, terrible for kids,” Van Horn said. “An adult club, cut-down, is so discouraging. It almost ends up becoming work instead of play.”

La Jolla Club emphasizes its super-flex shaft, designed to flex at the slower swing speed of a youngster and help the boy or girl get the ball into the air and fly farther.

La Jolla Club uses stainless steel for most of its club heads, though its “Snoopy” set is zinc alloy.

“We try to keep the cost down,” Herber said. “What happens with most kids’ clubs, I can honestly say, is they’re like Rollerblades--four or five pair sit in the garage a lot, or the kid outgrows them.”

Of course, like plenty of other adult golfers, Herber learned on cut-downs.

“I was 7,” he said. “Mine were a set of cut-down little Ben Hogan clubs.”

But he remembers how his oldest son abandoned the game for years after starting on cut-downs, and says his 3-year-old daughter swings her child’s club night and day--”because she can get the ball up in the air.”

The key to the whole kids’ club issue might be loft.

“Their eyes get wide when the ball goes up,” said Sargent, the Mesa Verde pro.

Sure, Mom and Dad might be thinking Biggest Big Bertha.

But you might want to think nine-iron for Junior.

“You need to start with a short club, because the kid needs to get the concept of trying to get the ball in the hole,” Sargent said.

“If you stand on the driving range and bash the ball, it becomes, ‘How far?’ not ‘How close?’ ”