Get Ready For 2025: Three Key Tips To Prepare Your Golf Equipment for Success Next Season

For most golfers, winter can be a time of reflection.

It’s a time when we assess our performance over the past year and set goals for the new year.

Each of us will set our ambitions for the new year. You might be planning an assault on becoming club champion next season, getting your handicap below ten for the first time, or breaking 90 in competition.

This can also be the time of year when we start making decisions regarding the clubs we have been using. Maybe it’s time to consider replacing the driver or swapping out worn wedges.

Golfers who are really into their golf equipment will also start to see grainy images of new clubs appearing on the USGA’s approved list on their social media feeds.

Images of pros testing the latest golf driver or other equipment will appear before it’s released to the public in January/February, sparking much interest and speculation about the latest tech.

Our guide will help you properly prepare your golf bag for the 2025 season. We’ll help you focus on the following aspects:

• Servicing Your Existing Equipment
• Refreshing Accessories
• Is Next Year The Time To Make Club Changes?

Servicing Your Existing Equipment

Your golf clubs can have a hard time throughout a long season. It’s not just the amount of play and practice that can take their toll, but also taking your bag in and out of cars, or maybe even you’ve taken your clubs further afield and been abroad on a golfing holiday.

The obvious place to start when assessing the current state of your clubs is the grips. Grips will wear over time and will wear out quicker if we have played a lot of golf. If you fall into the latter bracket, golf grip experts Golf Pride recommend changing your grips after 40 rounds of golf.

Playing with worn grips can impact the quality of our play.

When the grips start to wear, we tend to grip the club a little tighter. Gripping tighter gives us the impression that we can retain control over the clubface during the swing.

As we grip tighter, the muscles in our hands running up our arms, shoulders, and back tighten, lessening our chances of swinging with any freedom and fluidity.

In the worst-case scenario, gripping the club too tightly can aggravate old injuries or create new ones because the muscles do not work effectively in the swing.

We provided some useful tips to help you maintain the life of your grips in a previous article that you can read here. However, if you haven’t been so diligent in looking after your grips, here are some telltale signs that your grips aren’t fit for purpose anymore:

• The grip’s surface takes on a shiny look.
• The grip starts to feel hard to the touch.
• Paint can begin to wear out within the grip’s markings and manufacturer logo.
• Depressions start to appear on the surface of the grip, especially around the area where you make the “vee” with your lower hand.

If you see any of these signs on your grips, it’s time for a change.

Along with replacing worn-out grips, you may also want to investigate whether you are using the correct thickness. Grips that are too thin or thick can lead to inaccurate shots during a round. A professional fitter can properly assess the correct thickness of grip you need, and you can use the winter period to get used to any changes made before the new season starts.

Remember your putter when assessing the condition of your grips. We use the putter the most during a round of golf, so it is also prone to getting worn out quickly.

Lofts & Lies

If you have enjoyed the playability and feel of buttery-soft blades throughout the summer, getting their lofts checked out in the off-season is worthwhile as part of your maintenance plan.

Forged iron heads can get their lofts thrown out of sync through continuous use, leading to inconsistencies creeping into your distance gapping.

For example, if you practice a lot using a 7-iron, the original loft can be weakened through constant hitting, leaving your 7-iron’s loft closer to that of your 8-iron.

You can start to get the impression lofts might be out and need checking if you consistently come up short on shots where you know you had the right club to cover the necessary distance and feel you’ve hit a shot right out the centre of the clubface.

You can also gauge the trajectory of your shots. If you notice your 7-iron is going exceptionally high compared to your 8 or 6-iron, it could indicate that the 7-iron loft is weaker than it should be.

Lie angles can be affected over repeated use. If you’re starting to feel that a lot of your shots are coming out of the heel or toe on good swings, or you feel like you have to make subtle adjustments in your setup to ensure the sole of the iron is flat on the ground, it’s time to get the lies checked.

A professional fitter can measure the loft and lie angles to determine if any problems need fixing.

Refreshing Accessories

It’s not just our golf clubs that can look and feel a little tired at the end of a long season. Our golf bags can also receive a lot of punishment.

Golf bags can be damaged by being taken in and out of cars, shoved in lockers, endured baggage handler treatment at airports, and exposed to different weather conditions.

If you carry your golf bag when you play, check for wear in the straps or damage to the bag’s material, which can lead to frays or, worse, tears.

If holes or tears are in the bag’s material, it’s time to consider a replacement.

The same can be said of headcovers. If your headcovers are looking worse for wear, chances are they’re not effectively protecting your clubheads, so it could be time to consider new ones.

We can also get into the habit of buying new golf gloves and forgetting about the old ones, which can build up in our golf bags throughout the season. It’s time to take all the gloves out of your bag, assess which ones are still viable for use, and throw out the ones that have more holes in them than a slice of cheese.

Is Next Year The Time To Make Club Changes?

Manufacturers like TaylorMade and Callaway update their flagship lines each season, so we can assume that new introductions will continue in 2025.

At this time of the year, the major manufacturers are starting to sneak out their new lines on the professional tours. This leads to pictures leaking on social media and speculation about what powers the latest clubs. Images from the USGA’s conforming website help add more detail about how the new clubs will look when they are fully released.

Information about new technologies or materials being used will start to break in January, and reviews will hit social media platforms like YouTube.

All this helps heighten our awareness and make us more likely to consider changing.

As part of your project to play better golf next year, you may be considering making equipment changes. This can be brought on by seeing one of your regular playing partners start to knock 20 yards past you off the tee after they invested in a new driver.

If you keep stats, maybe your greens in regulation percentage are low due to a poor iron game, or your scrambling stats indicate you don’t have the correct arsenal to handle every scenario.

Understanding your weaknesses helps you identify the areas of the game you need to address. Seeking the assistance of a qualified teaching professional can improve your technique, and equipment changes are enhanced by seeking the help of a qualified fitting professional.

Working with a fitter, you can isolate the area of your game that needs attention and analyse your performance with the help of a launch monitor.

Using your existing club or clubs, the fitter will gather baseline figures via the launch monitor and show you the good and bad points the data represents. From there, the fitting session focuses on finding a head and shaft combination that can improve the key metrics identified at the outset.

A custom-fitting session isn’t just about finding more distance and accuracy. It’s about making your equipment more predictable on good and bad shots, elevating your confidence when you play. Understanding exactly how your equipment performs is critical to achieving your golfing goals in the new year.

Professional golfers are renowned for the levels of detail they go to to play golf well.

Amateurs aren’t always as diligent. However, taking time to assess what maintenance work needs to be carried out on our existing equipment or understanding where we need to make changes can lead to significant improvements and reaching our 2025 goals.

Changing grips and checking loft and lie angles on your golf clubs helps prolong the life of your golf equipment and prepare it for the new season ahead.

It’s easy to get carried away and think about buying new golf equipment at the start of the new year based on the promises of marketing campaigns that accompany the launch of any new clubs.

However, take the time to assess the areas of your game that need improvement. If you feel you have weaknesses from an equipment standpoint, seek out a professional independent fitter like Nine By Nine Golf.

Our qualified, experienced fitters work with golfers of all levels who are seeking to improve their golf by transitioning to custom-fitted golf clubs.

You can check on our website at the different fitting sessions you can experience and browse the latest releases, which can all be customised from manufacturers such as Titleist, Cobra, Callaway, PXG, and TaylorMade.

Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions about the importance of preparing your golf bag for the new season ahead or the custom fitting process.