What to Keep in Your Golf Bag

Twelve things earn their weight: balls, tees, a marker, a divot tool, a glove, a towel, a brush, sunscreen, water, a rain jacket, an umbrella and a small first-aid kit. Everything else is optional, and if you carry your bag, the difference between that list and a full bag is several pounds over five miles.

The list, and why each item is on it

• Golf balls — six to nine. More than three, fewer than a dozen. If you lose more than nine in a round, the problem is not bag capacity; see our recycled ball page and stop spending four dollars a ball.
• Tees — a dozen, in two lengths. Long ones for the driver, short ones for irons off a par three. They weigh nothing and running out is genuinely annoying.
• Two ball markers. One in your pocket, one in the bag. A coin works; the point is having one.
• A divot tool. Etiquette, and it takes ten seconds. A pitch mark left unrepaired takes weeks to heal; repaired within minutes it heals in about a day.
• A spare glove. The single most useful thing on this list on a wet day. A soaked glove is a slipping grip, and a value glove costs very little to keep in reserve.
• A towel, ideally wet. A damp towel cleans a clubface properly; a dry one smears. Clip it outside the bag where you can reach it without stopping.
• A groove brush. Clean grooves are worth measurable spin on approach shots. This is the cheapest performance item in golf.
• Sunscreen. Four to five hours of direct exposure, twice a week, for decades. Not optional.
• Water. Dehydration costs you concentration on the back nine before you feel thirsty. An insulated bottle in the cooler pocket, filled before you leave.
• A packable rain jacket. The one on our rain gear page that folds to a fist. Weather forecasts are not accurate enough four hours ahead to leave it at home.
• An umbrella. In the sleeve, permanently. See the umbrella roundup for which one.
• A few plasters and painkillers. Blisters and a headache are the two things that actually end amateur rounds early.

What to leave at home

The audit is simple: anything you have not used in five rounds. In practice that is usually a second towel, a rangefinder battery pack, three-quarters of the tees, a rule book nobody has opened, and a sleeve of a ball model you stopped playing two seasons ago.

Weight is the reason to care. A carry bag with the twelve items above sits around 25 to 28 pounds fully loaded with clubs. Add the accumulated debris of a season and it climbs past 32, which over five miles of walking is a genuinely different afternoon. That is the same argument behind our lightweight bag roundup — the bag is only half the weight equation.

How to organize the pockets

Most golf bags have between five and nine pockets, and most golfers use three of them randomly. A system takes one minute to set up and saves you rummaging for the rest of the bag's life.

• Top ball pocket (highest, easiest reach): the balls and tees you are using today. Nothing else.
• Velour-lined valuables pocket: phone, keys, wallet, rangefinder. This is the only lined pocket and it exists to stop a screen getting scratched.
• Full-length apparel pocket: rain jacket, spare layer, spare glove. It is the biggest pocket and it is meant for clothing, not balls.
• Insulated pocket: water. That is what the foil lining is for, and using it for anything else wastes the one pocket that keeps a drink cold for four hours.
• Small side pocket: the boring essentials — sunscreen, plasters, brush, spare markers. The one you never have to open in a hurry.

If your bag has a full-length divider top, put the wedges and putter in the same section every round. Knowing where the putter is without looking sounds trivial until you have played with someone who does not.

The three things worth adding if you play a lot

A rangefinder or GPS, once you are consistent enough that yardages change your club choice — our budget rangefinder roundup covers the value tier. A pair of alignment sticks, which live in the bag and cost almost nothing. And a second, older glove specifically for wet conditions, because a glove that has dried stiff is still better than a glove that is soaked.

The seasonal reset

Twice a year, empty the bag completely onto a table. You will find broken tees, a ball with a crack in it, a moldy towel and about four pounds of things you forgot were there. Wipe the pockets out, check the strap stitching and the stand feet while it is empty, and repack from the list above. It takes fifteen minutes and it is the closest thing golf has to free maintenance.