A cursory glance into my golf bag is enough to give some people a spark of nostalgia. For some younger players, the equipment will immediately brand me “old.” Some of the junior players can’t believe that I have had the same set of clubs for more than a year.

“Don’t you want to upgrade your clubs?” they ask.

When I ask them why, they shrug.

“It’ll make you better, right?”

The endless lines of self-deprecation flicker like a message board in an arena in my brain. Finally, I settle on a simple retort. “At this point, it’ll take a miracle of God and a lot of practice to make me a better golfer,” I said. They laugh, but they don’t get it. To them, and to too many golfers, getting better means getting better equipment that sometimes isn’t as good anyway.

Growing up, I made fun of my father’s clubs for the same reason. He had PGA irons, blade backs with the smallest sweet spot you can imagine, and a self-built driver from a kit for which he had sent away. The head on the driver might have been as big as the period at the end of this sentence, or at least it seemed that way compared to the Big Bertha, the Bigger Bertha or the other drivers with heads so big they need a separate bag (and caddie).

“Modernize,” I used to tell him.

The only retort he needed was, “Why?”

He always beat me, and for years he was a near-scratch golfer. He would get upset when he didn’t break 40 for nine holes.

The golf clubs didn’t make him a better golfer, and they didn’t make him worse. He made himself better. With practice.

Somewhere between those days and now, I heard what he was saying. Yes, I have cavity-back irons now, just the second set I have owned since starting to play high school golf 12 years ago. My driver, while fairly modern, is still 40 percent smaller than the typical driver I saw while covering pro tournaments this summer, and my putter is – get this – an antique. I still putt with a copper-toned Bullseye putter made by Acushnet, well before Titleist got its hands on them. There is no two-ball design and no triple sights, and the head isn’t weighted. But I can still hit the ball 290 yards, and I can still putt.

Golf is about feel, about being able to tell the ball where you want it to go without having to say anything. The only way to get better at that is by practicing. Money can buy new clubs, but it can’t buy the desire to get better.

Justin Pelletier is a staff writer. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected]