Ever since I started playing golf, I have always put investment in my swing before investment in equipment.
You all know how much of a fanatic I am about Mizuno equipment, and it is the best, but I have always thought that spending money on lessons has been better for me than spending loads of money on kit.
I always laughed at people who thought that buying a new driver would make them hit it longer and straighter, or how a new putter would make them sink more putts, when clearly, their technique was poor.
I am still a HUGE advocate of custom fitting and using good quality equipment, but think that lessons should be the first thing someone invests in.
Thoughts?
I think there is a common misconception in this dichotomy of (training the) skills vs equipment. It's not so much an equation of summing up one against the other parameter (and making a judgement which of the two weighs more), but more a multiplication of several factors, equipment and skills being two of the factors. (and talent being a third factor. But when not comparing different people it's irrelevant, because for each of us our talent is a given constant more or less.)
Skills and suitability of equipment for the task multiply each other. Both are important.
If one is zero, you get nothing, regardless how good the other is.
In my humble experience, the difficulty is in finding
-a good coach
-finding equipment that is suitable for you
With coaches 4 out of 5 (random numbers but the general proportion is like that) are not able to help you much, beyond getting you up to some very basic skills. The problem is not so much how good of a golfer they are themselves, but about how well they understand the different needs of different mentalities and different physiologies and how good their methodology is to get the help across.
Maybe 1 out of 10 is really good and 1 out of 100 is worth a road trip for a one time instruction.
Regular practice obviously is the most important factor to get better, together with frequent supervision to not groove in bad habits and technique.
Now the question of what is good equipment and how to find it is even more difficult to tackle for the amateur golfer.
Obviously a static fitting (length of club, lie, grip size) is necessary.
Weight and consistency of weight and heft (MOI) is then the most important factor and most ignored in the average golfing population in my humble experience.
The state of the art of fitting is a disaster - at least in the general area where I live - and that is the bottleneck where the golfing industry suffers the most IMO. A good fitting with the correct objectives - not profit but golfer oriented - is very hard to find for amateur players.
In reality most golfers start out with badly fitted equipment (and fitting does not mean the new shiny stuff, but something with correct weight, length, lie, consistent MOI over all clubs, etc.) and thus they get better slower than they could get, even with good instruction and lots of practice.
E.g. a lot of today's lightweight equipment is good for the ageing golfing population, helping somewhat to offset their overall loss in muscle power, but the downside is less control and precision. It's not so good for the player trying to get better, since you can't feel the club's and clubhead's position well, and meaningful feedback is the most important factor in learning how to deliver the club face better toward the ball.
It's a tough game in a fake market full of thieves where good men die like dogs, and then there is also a bad side.