In our forums, our members have been discussing the merits of playing with less than 14 clubs. WRXer ‘Royal Mustang’ kicks off the thread, saying:

“I had this debate with a group over on Reddit (got downvoted to hell). I argued that you don’t need 14 clubs and that it may be to your advantage to play with 8 or 10. Sure, it’s nice to have, but a better player can go out with 10 clubs and probalby shoot the same score or maybe lose a stroke. Even 8 clubs is fine: a good player doesn’t need a 7 because they can work their 6 to the same distance. This excludes obvious situations like a 235 yard Par 3 where you need a strong 4-iron or 3H/7W and you don’t have that in you bag. The pro at the course I grew up at (who was a helluva player but never played-he was a touring pro at one point) broke par at our course with 5 clubs once. That’s all he ever played with (and putted with driver); he walked with one of those 70’s era Sunday bags that held 6 clubs max.  

I’d love to hear your thoughts.”

And our members have been weighing into the debate in our forum.

Here are a few posts from the thread, but make sure to check out the entire discussion and have your say at the link below.

• Ca3l: “I’ve played a decent amount of golf with 6-7 clubs. I think 8 is a good number. I can’t agree that most people would play better with less clubs, but I think most could stay within a few strokes going down to 7, and course dependent prob end up within a couple by having 8. There’s a whole long and popular thread about this, minimalist bag I think it’s called.”
• kwcsports: “Obviously if you’re a scratch or very good player, having a full set will be needed to hit all the yardages. Me being an 8-10 cap, I can seriously use a driver, 5 wood, 3,5,7,9,pw and sw and shoot the same scores as carrying a full set. I’ve played with 8-9 clubs in a Sunday bag and shoot exact range of scores I always shoot.”
• notgreatnotterrible: “I can get behind this because I am 100% convinced that certain clubs can actually add to your score.  I played with a 60* for a couple years, and that dang thing added probably 2 shots/round to my score.  Same with a 3i—I’d pure it every once in awhile and it made me think I was better with it than I actually was.”

Entire Thread: “How many clubs can you eliminate before you ‘lose something? – GolfWRXers discuss”