#177 Web TV: Golf Travel Bags - Which Ones Are The Best?

Golf Travel Bags - Which Ones Are The Best?

Have you ever wondered what you should be doing to pack your golf clubs, especially when you are travelling overseas?

Well, the lovely Ainslie here, from Golf & Tours and also myself, are going to show you; how to pack your golf clubs into a golf bag and we are going to give you a few options for you to work with.

Well, hello there, Tiff the Lady Golf Teacher here and Ainslie from Golf & Tours.

Tiff: Welcome Ainsley.

Ainslie: Thank you Tiff.

Tiff: What we are going to do here is to show you some golf travel bags options when you are travelling, especially when you are coming on golf tours with us, of course, but also if you are going to be travelling with friends, partners, husbands, wives, whomever. We wanted to show you a few different options that you can be working with, especially when you are travelling on a plane, what we can recommend for you and probably some options not to have.

Tiff: We are going to be going through those.

Ainslie: Yes. There is nothing more soul destroying than arriving at your destination and you golf clubs are broken, or busted or bent or whatever. They are expensive, very sad.

Tiff: Very sad, can’t use your babies.

Ainslie: Have to use rental clubs on the courses you have been so looking forward to playing. We want to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Tiff: So, we are going to show you one by one. Here we are with my favourite bag, I love it because it’s on a stand. However, I am going to show you what you can do to pack it up, but, I will say before we get started that I wouldn’t recommend you taking this specific type of bag. Because it’s quite thin, the shafts would worry me in actually getting damaged. But, I’m going to show you anyway.

Travelling in a car you can definitely take your own bag, but if you were to be going on a plane it can be a bit rough with the baggage handling and so on. We want to ensure that your bags are well looked after. What you can do here is to actually wrap some towels around your golf clubs, just so they are protected because as you can see here I have a very thin top. The thin top will actually go over the top (ha, ha, the thin top will go over the top, actually funny). What we can then do is to hook the top over, so we know the clubs themselves are secure because we have the towels wrapped around them.

The problem is that when you are moving the bag around it can be a bit of a pain especially if you are dragging your suitcase. You need your golf gear in the suitcase. Then you have to slip the golf clubs over your back and carry it.

Ainslie: Although you do look like a caddy, very professional.

Tiff: You have to lug the golf clubs and pull your bag and also your carryon baggage as well, so it can be quite difficult to work with. Especially if you don’t feel that strong or you have back problems or hip problems or knee problems and so on.

Ainslie: You don’t want to give yourself an injury before you even get to the golf course.

Tiff: Because, you’ll miss out.

Ainslie: One of the things with this bag is that if there is no other option for you and you do have to take this on a flight, when you get to the international terminals, they have people there with plastic, so you can wrap them right up and keep everything mush more secure and any other little things. It tightens everything in, it shrink wraps it but, again, it’s not ideal.

Tiff: It’s not ideal and I’ll show you one other little thing. On my first trip I thought “I’m just flying up to the Gold Coast, it doesn’t matter from Sydney, it’s only an hour flight, what could happen”.

Ainslie: What could happen what could possibly go wrong to this spindly little leg.

Tiff: Brand new bag, and the leg of the bag got injured and I was devastated and thought, “Oh my God Tiff, you know better”. I wanted so badly to take the bag and I just didn’t cater for that. I just want you to be aware that it’s probably not ideal to take this specific bag.

Tiff: Bag number two. This is more of a slender style bag. There are bags called pencil bags but this one tends to be a little bigger because you can carry all your golf clubs. I’ve actually got fifteen clubs in there. I know you are supposed to have fourteen clubs but I throw fifteen in there because I like all my wedges.

We’ll show you what’s inside. Ainslie is going to do the big reveal for us.

Ainslie: I can even be glamorous while I’m doing it. It’s quite handy how they fold down around the bag.

Tiff: As you can see, we’ll bring it up closer to the camera, so you can see that they all fit in. It’s great to travel with, the top part of the bag itself is cushioned.

Ainslie: The same as the body itself, it’s quite padded.

Tiff: The shafts, it really important that the shafts will be protected and also your irons and woods are going to be protected. I always like to throw in a towel to wrap around the clubs as well and then put the cover back on top, just for extra security. You don’t really need to do that, but I would recommend it and the other great thing about the top of the bag is you can carry a lot of balls and tees and markers and gloves and suntan lotion. Muesli bars?

Tiff: You can’t get golf shoes in there. That’s the only downside. It has a lot of things that you can actually carry. It has a little pocket down the front as you can see, you can fit golf balls in there, but you can fit them into the pockets on both sides of the actual travel bag.

This is a good one. The only downside is that it doesn’t have wheels. You actually have to sling it up over your shoulder again, we’ll pretend that it’s actually zipped up, but you can’t drag it along and it’s okay if you have no issues with shoulders and back and legs and hips and so on, you can just sling it over your shoulder and carry it, which is good. But, after you have walked from one end of the airport to the other it does wear your back out. There is an option that you can use this one, we’ve had people come on tours with us and taken these bags, but they actually don’t play with these bags because the fit is too tight, so they hire a bag from the local pro shop and then move their clubs into that. That’s another option for you.

Next step up.

What have we got Ainslie?

Ainslie: This is one of my favourite bags. It’s very convenient because it has wheels on the bottom. Walking through the airport with a suitcase and golf clubs and usually I have another small cabin bag but it is quite manageable.
You can see the pockets down the bottom are a little bit bigger which is better than the previous one because I need a lot of balls when I play.

Tiff: That’s because Ainslie has only just started to play golf this year, that’s the only reason.

Ainslie: My daughter gave me a driver cover for my birthday and it has been very handy when I travel because it helps to pad out the inside of the bag more than a normal cover would. Although it does get a bit squished up.
When I travel, I usually pack in around the shaft area, underneath the heads, all my wet weather gear and if I am travelling somewhere cold, my jumpers as well. I try to pack it in as much as possible.

Tiff: Do you find you have more space in here compared to the other one we just showed?

Ainslie: Yes.

Tiff: It’s a bigger bag. It’s about the size of an actual golf bag.

Ainslie: Yes, I could use this as my normal, everyday bag.

Tiff: A cart bag, as they call them.

Ainslie: Yes, it fits really well into the carts we use on the tour. It’s quite convenient, I attach the towel into the bag and then pop it out.

Tiff: Look! Golf&Tours towel. That’s pretty cool isn’t it. Where is the other one, the badge? Here it is, Golf&Tours and The Lady Golf Teacher.

Of course, Ainslie ahs hers wrapped around to Golf&Tours but if you see my bag, it’s the other way around, the Lady Golf Teacher.

Ainslie: We need two on each bag. This bag is pretty much a similar bag. One of the best benefits is that it has big side pockets where you can keep your golf shoes. One of the benefits of having your golf shoes in your golf bag when you travel, is that if you are travelling to a country that has strict biosecurity laws, they will want to check that your golf clubs and your golf shoes are really clean before you get into the country and start contaminating them with Australian dirt!

Tiff: We can’t take the Aussie dirt with us?

Ainslie: No, we want to keep it at home. It is quite handy to have the shoes in with your bag otherwise opening your luggage and pulling your shoes out, bras and undies are going to fly around and it’s not a good look.

Tiff: The other great thing too is there is a lot more storage in this one. You have pockets on both sides and also the front pocket, so you can put lots of golf balls in, which Ainslie likes to do. You can fit your golf shoes, your wet weather gear, jumpers, anything spare. You have 23 kilos to book your golf bag in, so 23 kilos to play around with, so you don’t have to overload your suitcase because you can always put some gear in here.

Ainslie: That’s right. Usually I go home a bit lighter because I don’t have as many golf balls.

Tiff: Yes, that’s right. We’ll be working on that one. Have we seen the wheels and everything on this one too? The same sort of scenario, very sturdy, nice big wheels, bigger than the other ones. The great thing is that you can just pull it along. Ainslie, would you like to go for a walk to show us? So that’s another option.

Now, check out this bag, it’s massive isn’t it. We call it the body bag. When you open it up you would swear that there is a body going to drop out of it. The lovely Kerrie, (you know who I’m talking about) had one of these when we went to the Gold Coast. This is actually Kerrie’s bag, we have done a deal, Kerrie and I. I loved her bag and she didn’t want it so I have inherited it, thanks Kerrie, I love it. Once we opened it up we were waiting for a body to fall out.

Ainslie: Who would it be?

Tiff: We know. Moving on.

Ainslie: It’s quite a good bag, you could put a lot of stuff in there, not just your golf bag.

Tiff: No. It’s actually fantastic, I show you shortly. But, again, it’s on wheels, larger wheels at the back and also smaller ones, underneath. You can do it two ways, do the Ainslie thing, walking off into the distance, or you can have it standing up. Obviously, we’re on grass at the moment, making it a bit difficult, but you can wheel it upright as well.

Ainslie: When you’re at the airport with the polished floors.

Tiff: We’ll open the bag up for you and as you can see you can fit your golf bag in. I like to travel with my bag, I put it inside and it’s secure, it’s padded all the way around, especially at the top.

Ainslie: When we go to Hawaii you will be able to put your beach towels and stuff in there as well.

Tiff: Absolutely. You can fit your golf shoes, golf balls, everything that you possible need for golf can go in this bag. Golf clothes, and yes, we could put lots of towels in there for Hawaii.

Ainslie: Cocktail shaker.

Tiff: Umm, Especially for those Lava Flows.

Ainslie: That’s right, you never know when there is going to be an emergency like a lava flow situation.

Tiff: Climate? As you can see, we have lots and lots of space in here. I love to travel with a bag like this, simply because we have a lot of kilos that we can be working with and we can fit a lot more gear in there. It’s something very convenient.

It is much heavier though. It’s a much heavier bag than the previous two that we showed you on the wheels and can fit straight into the golf cart. But, I love to travel with this one.

Ainslie: This one, if you are staying in a smaller hotel room, you would have to find a space to put this bag.

Tiff: Well, let me show you something. It does a trick. If you take the bag out and zipper up (all done in real time) and then fold in down to stick it into the wardrobe of the hotel or the house or whatever it is that we are going to be staying on our tours. It is very manageable.

Ainslie: The other thing that I think we need to talk about is making sure that your bags are labelled and also clearly identifiable as your bag. The last trip that I went on there were five ladies that all had the exact same travel bag that I had and mine had a hot pink ribbon on it so I knew it straight away. When you travel on a bus, you see a sea of golf bags and you want to be able to eyeball your bag to make sure that it is getting on the bus. A piece of ribbon, your name tag, a business card, should be attached to the bag.

Tiff: Golf clubs. So important to clean your clubs as well. Ainslie was talking before about making sure you get the dirt out of your shoes, especially when travelling overseas, you also need to make sure you do that with your clubs as well.

Ainslie: It is really important, quite often they will ask to have a look at your clubs. They just want to have a quick glance to make sure there is no dirt or grass or anything. It’s a good excuse to clean your clubs anyway. Not many of us would often sit in the back yard and lovingly clean our golf clubs. Do you?

Tiff: Yes, I like to do that. I like them to be clean.

Ainslie: Unless I’m going away on a golf tour.

Tiff: I’ll tell you why you should clean your clubs other than when going on tours. There are grooves in the club and you need to make sure that the grooves are clean because that’s how the club can grab onto the golf ball.

Ainslie: Oh, maybe that’s my problem. The clubs are impacted with dirt.

Tiff: The ball is not able to be gripped properly. You know what Ainslie will be doing this afternoon, and every afternoon after she has played, scrubbing.

Ainslie: It’s pretty easy to do thought isn’t it? To clean them?

Tiff: You can just use a nail brush because they are soft and then you can get into the grooves with some soapy water.

Ainslie: I usually use a bit of dishwashing liquid and I have just bought a dishwashing brush that I use for cleaning the clubs and I pop them into some water and it doesn’t take too long to do it. You can have a nice Gin and Tonic while you are waiting.

Tiff: A Lava Flow? Make sure that you clean your clubs, not only for golf tours but also for general maintenance.

Ainslie: It could improve your game!

Tiff: It will improve your game!

Ainslie and I hope that you enjoyed the information that we shared with you today for golf travel bags to use with your golf clubs. They are the most important thing when you are going on a golf trip.

I hope you enjoyed the tip today, love you to leave a comment and share with me what you liked best about what you heard today and if you have friends that you know will benefit from these videos, it would be absolutely awesome if you could share them, because we want to build the Lady Golf Teacher the Golf & Tours community as big as we possibly.

Have an absolutely awesome day, take care, and remember; Tee it high and Let it fly.