Complete Sets – Getting Better All the Time

We’ve never featured complete sets before but, with so many new golfers teeing it up, now might be a good time to start.

Twenty, no, make that 30, years ago, if you were out of town, showed up at a course without any clubs and asked for a rental set, you’d invariably end up with a strange assortment of bargain-bucket sticks with slick grips cobbled together and slung in a huge cart bag from the 1950s with no head covers. Winston Churchill’s well-known quote about golf being a game played with “weapons singularly ill-designed for the purpose” fit the situation perfectly. These days, of course, you get a set that is frequently far superior to your own, and if it weren’t so expensive some golfers might consider just forgoing their own clubs and hiring every time they played.

It’s going the same way with complete sets…kind of. It wasn’t all that long ago a complete set was a painfully sorry affair, consisting of very basically-designed clubs made with poor-quality components and sold at Costco for $250 (the $300 set might come with a cheap, synthetic glove and a sleeve of balls).

For the majority of manufacturers, the complete set was an afterthought, something they might assemble with parts left over after making more important stuff. They were for golfers who might play three times a year and who had to be reminded which end to hold. Okay, that might be a stretch, but it’s safe to say they weren’t very good.

Today, though far from ubiquitous and hardly blue-ribbon items that appear on the front page of manufacturers’ web sites, complete sets are at least considerably better than they were and their prices reflect the huge improvement.
Last year, when covid lockdowns hit the nation, scores of people who’d never played the game before sought new ways to relieve boredom and get some pleasurable exercise, and half a million (according to the National Golf Federation) chose to do so by taking up golf. The surge in golfer numbers meant a significant increase in the demand for starter sets, and that, in turn, saw manufacturers focusing more time and attention on them.

“We’ve had a big run on complete sets over the last year or so,” says Tom Olsavsky, Cobra Golf’s Vice-President, Club R&D. Noelle Zavaleta, PR Manager at Cleveland/Srixon, confirms the spike in orders. “Our Bloom set has been extremely popular,” she says. “We’ve had trouble meeting demand, in fact.”

As we say, these package sets probably won’t be appearing on the front page of any web sites or in major manufacturers’ ads. But they’re there, and they’re pretty good. Here’s five sets including Cleveland’s Bloom, because somewhere between a quarter and a fifth of all golfers are now female. Bear in mind, some, if not all, of these sets are selling quicker than manufacturers can make them and are liable to be out of stock at any time. And it may take manufacturers months to restock.

Wilson Deep Red

Set includes:
460cc, 10.5° Driver (graphite shaft)
3-wood (graphite shaft)
#5 hybrid (graphite shaft)
Cavity-back Irons – 6, 7, 8, 9, Pitching Wedge, Sand Wedge,
Soft polymer insert putter
Lightweight carry bag
Three head covers
Right-hand only
$400

wilson.com

 

TaylorMade RBZ SpeedLite

Set includes:
460cc titanium driver with speed pocket and ultralight 50g RBZ shaft.
The original RocketBallz 3-wood, repackaged in a lightweight 180cc clubhead (graphite shaft)
5-wood (graphite shaft)
4 RBZ Rescue (graphite shaft)
5 RBZ Rescue (graphite shaft)
Cavity-back, low Center of Gravity (CG) irons – 6, 7, 8, 9 (steel or graphite shaft)
Versatile, C-Grind, high-volume grooves PW and SW (steel or graphite shaft)
Mallet putter with PureRoll technology (grooves angled 45˚ downward to prevent skidding)
Lightweight cart bag
Three head covers
Right and left-hand
$1,300

taylormadegolf.com

 

Cobra XL Speed

Set includes:
460cc, 10.5°/ 11.5° Driver (graphite shaft)
3-wood (graphite shaft)
5-wood (graphite shaft)
4 hybrid (graphite shaft)
5 hybrid (graphite shaft)
Cavity-back irons – 6, 7, 8, 9, PW, SW
Blade putter
Premium cart bag
Right and left-hand
$900

cobragolf.com

 

Tour Edge HL4

Set includes:
460cc, deep-face, sloped crown, 10.5° Driver (graphite shaft)
3-wood (graphite shaft)
5-wood (graphite shaft)
4 Hybrid (graphite shaft)
5 Hybrid (graphite shaft)
Cavity-back irons – 6, 7, 8, 9, PW (steel or graphite shaft)
Super-spin 56˚ SW
Mallet Putter
Cart Bag
Five head covers
Right and left-hand
$900

touredge.com

 

Cleveland Bloom

Set includes:
460cc, 14˚ Driver (graphite shaft)
3 Wood (graphite shaft)
5 hybrid (graphite shaft)
6 hybrid (graphite shaft)
Irons – 7, 8, 9, PW, SW (graphite shaft)
Mallet Putter
Cart bag
Five head covers
Available in black/mint or black/lavender
$700

clevelandgolf.com