During the Irish Open at Portmarnock 20 years ago, Doug McClelland was in a two-ball behind Christy O'Connor Snr. While waiting on the tee, the Englishman, with a professional's curiosity, looked into O'Connor's bag. Horrified, he exclaimed: "Don't hit, Christy. You've got three seven-irons in there."

Indeed he had. And if the former amateur international had looked more closely, he would also have seen the way certain grips were crudely fattened up with insulating tape. Either way, O'Connor ignored the well-intentioned interruption and sent a sweetly-struck tee-shot into the blue.

The point was that despite their decidedly odd appearance, each one of those clubs was effectively customised by O'Connor to suit his needs. We are talking about the sort of feel which Lee Westwood clearly gets from the Ping clubs he uses - and which prompted a struggling Bernhard Langer to stop using Pings and revert to his old Wilsons.

Professionals often change clubs at their peril, as the 1995 US Open champion, Corey Pavin, discovered. So, one can only speculate as to the difference the correct clubs would make to an amateur's game. The best driver on the market is the one you can hit. But how can you be sure of acquiring the right model?

Tony Nelson believes he has found the answer. Indeed the vice-president of Nilar Golf Labs in Ohio, claims that his company is set to revolutionise the industry through the imminent introduction of the so-called Tru-Flex Precision Fit System.

Nelson claims that most golf manufacturers provide the average player with only five shaft flexes, using technology dating back to the 1920s. In sharp contrast, he has patents on a graphite-shaft system which provides for as many as 30 shaft flexes, while cutting the shafts to fit each golfer's specifications.

Since clubs are swung at different speeds, these shaft flexes are geared towards a golfer's clubhead speed for each club in the bag. For instance, additional shaft length would contribute to swing speeds of 95 m.p.h. with a driver, whereas the same player could swing a six iron at 75 m.p.h. So, each club requires a different shaft flex.

It means that in addition to having the proper lie (Ping offer 10 colour-coded choices), loft and length, each Nilar club will have a shaft flex delivering the maximum load and unload in the club. This, says Nelson, is the key to distance and accuracy.

"Most new ideas in golf equipment are items, not concepts," he added. "In the absence of any current guidelines, we have a concept that we hope will become the industry standard. Right now it's all arbitrary." Sounds impressive. But could it deliver a variety of seven-irons to satisfy C O'C's needs?

"I have done some things in the past and I regret certain incidents. But when you look at certain players on the American tour and certain players in Europe, I'm an angel."

- A certain Colin Montgomerie, speaking in Dubai last weekend.

My copy of Ian Bamford's history of Royal Portrush GC carries the message: "To Dermot, with best wishes from Robert Lowry 21st June, 1988." Which adopted a certain poignancy when the former Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland died last month.

Memories of Lord Lowry are further prompted by a delightful letter from Maurice McDonough of Rathfarnham GC, in this, his club's centenary year. He writes: "During my captaincy of Rathfarnham in 1988, I had the honour of playing with Lord Lowry during the centenary celebrations of Royal Portrush GC.

"He was captain again for that special year and because of the climate of the time, our fourball was accompanied by two burly `minders' and a trained alsatian. He caused them considerable consternation by disappearing for some minutes into the bushes to answer nature's call!

"By my great good fortune, I had packed an engraved Rathfarnham Medal Glass (one of my very few) and after our game, we exchanged gifts. He was overjoyed with his Glass, as he explained he had begun his golf on the old Rathfarnham course in Bufferfield, when he stayed locally with some elderly aunts during the school summer holidays."

The letter concludes: "I remember him as a charming and self-effacing man with a great sense of humour and I treasure his gift of a specially-commissioned Bushmills Whiskey decanter which has, over the year, been frequently emptied and re-filled."

Leonard Owens was intrigued to hear that Laura Davies has taken to playing golf left-handed. It reminded the Royal Dublin professional of his own venture into sinister swinging about 10 years ago. After only three months' practice, he played a level match with 16-handicapper Frank Carthy for "a good punt" - and won on the 18th.

"It had the effect of revitalising my game - I got great fun out of it," said Owens, who is shortly to partner Noel Fox in the Sunningdale Foursomes. "I never quite mastered chipping and it took me almost the entire three months to hit tee-shots with a three wood. So I was pleased to reach our two longest par fours, the fifth and 13th, in two."

Davies, a former world number one, did it on the naive assumption she could play left-handed as an amateur. "Who knows, they may change the rule," she said hopefully. In the meantime, television pictures of her striking perfect, left-handed iron shots, prompted my customary anger at extravagantly gifted people.

Experts studying Tiger Woods's swing on his way to victory in the Buick Invitational last weekend, were drawn to comments made some years ago by one of the game's great shot-makers. Tommy Bolt, the 1958 US Open champion, claimed that if an accomplished player hit a shot that didn't curve even slightly left or right in flight, it was an accident.

The remarkably straight-hitting Henry Cotton, a three-time British Open champion, was reckoned to be a notable exception to Bolt's rule. Otherwise, golf's cognoscenti take the view that flighting the ball straight, on demand, is the game's most difficult shot. Which is why players are defined either as faders or hookers.

Woods, however, is different in that his shots follow a distinctive, "S" shape, curving left initially and then back to the right. "When a player with Tiger's kind of clubhead speed hits the ball with a lofted club - about a five-iron or less - a highly unusual dynamic takes place," said Dr Alastair Cochran, co-author of golf's technical bible Search for the Perfect Swing. He explained: "Instead of acquiring the usual combination of sidespin and backspin, the ball spins on an axis similar to that of a rifle bullet emerging from the barrel of a gun. The ball can then curve in two directions."

Because the ball rises so sharply due to the lofted club, air resistance, apparently, comes from above rather than forward. This causes the ball to curve in a given direction, say right to left. Then, on the downward arc, resistance comes from below, causing the ball to curve in the opposite direction. As it did on his victory surge at La Costa.

This Day In Golf History . . . On February 20th 1955, Mike Souchak set a world aggregate scoring record with rounds of 60, 68, 64 and 65 for 257 and a seven-stroke victory in the Texas Open. It happened on rubber tee-mats at the decidedly open Brackenridge Park stretch in San Antonio.

The opening 60 contained a remarkable inward nine of 27 and on five occasions, powerful striking left Sauchak with no more than a wedge second-shot to the green. The figures were: 2, 4, 4, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 2. Though he never won a major championship, the native of Pennsylvania had a remarkable run in the US Open from 1959 to 1961, finishing third on each occasion.

Teaser: A player hit his tee-shot deep into the woods on the right. The player then hit a provisional ball into the same woods. The player did not search for either ball. The player declared his first ball unplayable, said he was abandoning his provisional ball and hit a third ball from the tee. The player maintained that his third ball was in play and that he was lying three. He based his argument on Rule 28, which states that the player is the sole judge as to whether his ball is unplayable, and on Decision 28/1, which says in effect that a player may proceed under the stroke-and-distance option of the unplayable ball rule, without finding the ball. The committee ruled that the player's stroke with the third ball was his fifth stroke. Did the committee rule correctly?

Answer: Yes. The player may not declare his first ball from the tee unplayable, disregard the provisional ball and put another ball into play under the stroke-and-distance penalty because, having played the provisional ball, he must find the original ball before he can declare it unplayable. Unless the original ball was found, the provisional ball would automatically become the ball in play. This case differs from Decision 28/1. No provisional ball was played in that case.