The cheapest sensible way into a full bag
What fourteen clubs cost at typical used prices, which ones eat the budget, and where shopping around actually pays.
Starting golf from nothing is quoted in wildly different numbers depending on who is quoting and what they sell. Here is ours, and it is arithmetic rather than opinion: the typical used price of each club type, assembled into a bag.
A full set at typical used prices comes to £1476.00 for 13 clubs. Not the cheapest possible, which is a different and much less useful number. This is what you pay buying each club at the middle of its own market.
Where the money actually is
One line dominates. Iron sets at £550.00 are 37% of the total, which means every decision you make about the other clubs is rounding error by comparison. If you are going to spend an evening researching one purchase, it is not the putter.
And the irons are the one part where the obvious saving does not exist. Building a set from single irons comes to £531.93 against £550.00 for a set, so assembling is dearer. The full comparison.
Where shopping around pays
Effort is worth spending unevenly, because the spread is uneven. On putters the dearest live listing is typically 2.28 times the cheapest, so a second and third quote genuinely change what you pay. On the tighter categories the market has already agreed with itself and you are shopping for pennies. The gap by club type.
The bag you should actually buy first
Fourteen clubs is the legal maximum, not a requirement, and no beginner needs the number. A driver, a fairway wood or hybrid, irons from 6 to pitching wedge, a sand wedge and a putter is nine clubs, covers every shot a new golfer will face, and takes a meaningful bite out of the total above. The 3 iron you would have bought to complete the set is the club most likely to stay in the garage.
The bag builder prices a specific set as you assemble it, using the same figures as this page.
AdLinks to sellers are affiliate-tagged where we have a programme. If you buy, this site may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. It plays no part in any figure above, which are computed from prices before any link is built. How this works.
Every figure here is read from the tracker when the page loads, so it moves as the market does. Written by George Thirlaway. About this site.