What Do You Need in Golf Stand Bags?

Golfing from the convenience of a golf cart is a great thing. That’s all the more true if the course is particularly large or the day is particularly hot. You can compound that truth by adding on a need for a larger variety of specialized equipment or a large number of clubs. Some courses are much larger, more complex, and thus more challenging than others, necessitating a larger collection of equipment to tackle them.

Therefore when you can enjoy a day on the course alongside the company of a golf cart, it’s a beautiful thing. You might start to work up a sweat while you’re thinking about the number of strokes it’s going to take you to sink a ball, but you won’t have to sweat carrying around your clubs or your golf bag. Plus, a golf cart keeps you near a certain measure of shade and certainly takes a large amount of the load off, so to speak.

The cart can give you a central place to organize all of your equipment in addition to your clubs. It can give you a space to bring along refreshments like water, and it can even give you a comfortable seat to take a well-earned break out of the heat of the sun. Plus, it will make it much easier for you to get from hole to hole on the course. Again, as we stated, that alone is worth its weight in gold on larger courses and even more of a boon when the weather is less than amenable.

So while it’s no surprise that a golf cart can make it a lot easier for you to get through a challenging course and give you plenty of room to store your gear, what can you do about those occasions when you won’t have access to one?

The truth is that not all golf courses are accessible by golf cart and some have to be walked. We haven’t compiled an exhaustive list of courses that allow or offer golf carts as opposed to those that don’t but at some point in your career you are likely to come across a course that won’t allow you to use one. At the very least, some courses just may not offer them, allowed or not.

So what can you do when you won’t have access to a golf cart? It’s not as though you can go without your essential gear, but you probably also won’t be able to practically carry around your cart bag with all of the equipment that you keep in it, either. Most cart bags are just too big, too heavy, and equipped to carry too much to be carried around all day. They make it a lot more convenient to use a cart as a base, but as soon as it comes to portage, they become a bear.

All of a sudden you will have to prioritize and figure out which clubs, equipment, and accessories are actually necessary to successfully navigate a course and be comfortable throughout the day. That requires additional planning beforehand, and part of that planning takes the form of picking out the right golf stand bag.

You might be wondering why you might need golf stand bags to take the place of cart bags if you have never used one before or maybe never even heard of one. In the same way that cart bags make it easier to take on a course from the convenience of a cart, stand bags make it easier for you to navigate a course on foot, and are built with some important features in mind to make that more practical.

Whereas cart bags are designed to offer the maximum amount of space in a practical configuration, stand bags are optimized with other features in mind. Cart bags typically are designed to hold as much as possible and to arrange it in a way that it is all easy to access from one side. They don’t place as much of a premium on weight considerations or on the comfort of carrying as they do on optimizing for space and convenience.

So, what do you need in a stand bag if you’re going to be walking the course? There are a few key things to look for in golf stand bags to make your life easier. Consider some of these key things to look for - there aren’t too many, but you will know the difference between a good stand bag and a shoddy one if you spend the whole day carrying it around.

Weight

Weight might be the number one thing that defines a golf stand bag as either desirable or undesirable. Remember, the key thing here is that stand bags are designed for players who walk the course, so in general, a person, whether the player or a caddy, is going to be carrying the thing around all day.

Imagine a summer day on a course in the south, perhaps even somewhere around here in our own state of Texas. Summers around here get so hot and heavy you could practically karate chop the air in half. If you aren’t a summer person, you’d be sweating torrents just going outside in the summer around Dallas, let alone carrying a golf bag loaded with clubs and accessories.

Even if you aren’t invested in keeping the weight down in the face of the summer heat and sun, you can just get plain tired walking an 18 hole course over a long day. You’re on your feet the whole time, and let’s face it, most golf bags aren’t designed the way some hiking packs are. They can be comfortable, but the focus is to hold your clubs and gear. Weigh one down and you will tire yourself out. 

Therefore, to put it plainly, weight is just really important in a stand bag. A heavy bag will tire you out and will end up being uncomfortable (see our section on this below), so it just isn’t practical. One of the first things that golf stand bags are designed for is a lightweight end product.

That’s why so many of the stand bags on our website here are really lightweight - like really, impressively lightweight. We’re talking only a handful of pounds empty. The 2020 Sun Mountain 2.5+ stand bags that you will find on our site weigh under 4 pounds empty.

The 2020 Sun Mountain Eco-Lite Stand Bag is also under 4 pounds empty. There are some on our website that come in under three. The math isn’t tricky - a light bag reigns supreme. You can carry them longer without fatigue.

A heavy stand bag is just pointless. It doesn’t do anyone any good and it’s going to result in excessive fatigue. If you carry around a heavy stand bag on the course all day, you’ll wish you hadn’t. Interestingly enough, there are other things to look out for in addition to weight while you’re shopping for stand bags. A lightweight bag is important, but it’s not the only thing to look for.

Strength

Strength is another thing to look for in a stand bag, but it’s a very particular thing to look for in certain attributes of the bag. To be specific, we don’t mean that the body of the bag needs to be strong - that’s more something to look out for in travel bags that are designed to keep your clubs and equipment safe in transit.

Rather, in the realm of stand bags, strength is a function of the legs of the bag. This is a tricky area since a stand bag is only a stand bag if it can stand, after all. Yet, the legs need to be strong while also remaining lightweight. We have already covered the importance of a lightweight bag, so what of the importance of the strength of the legs?

If a stand bag doesn’t have strong legs it won’t allow you to stand it up on the course when you are playing, and you can’t just lay your bag on the ground. If you have no one else to carry or look after your equipment, a stand bag has to do just that - it has to stand. But how do manufacturers create stand bags with legs that are strong while at the same time being lightweight?

Generally, golf bag manufacturers make their stand bags with carbon fiber legs. This accomplishes a double-barreled objective that knocks out two birds with one stone. First up is the fact that carbon fiber is extremely lightweight. A carbon fiber shaft such as one that would be used in constructing the legs of a stand bag is not even going to come in at an ounce - actually it will probably be a fraction of that. Second is the fact that carbon fiber, for its weight and density, is ludicrously strong. A good carbon weave can support many, many times its weight. Actually, it can support hundreds if not thousands of times its weight. That’s why many of the stand bags that you will find on our site are made with carbon fiber legs.

So far we have weight and strength as important considerations for stand bags, so what else is left? There are two more key things to look for, and one of them is comfort.

Comfort

What good is a cart that you have to carry around all day long if it isn’t comfortable? Not very good, which is why comfort is another one of the key factors you should take into account when shopping for one. Many of the stand bags on our website are made with features to enhance their comfort so even if you rely on them to golf on some tough courses you will be comfortable and easy all day long.

It goes farther than the fact that some of our stand bags are built with easy lift handles. That does make it easier and more comfortable to load them up and get them out, but some of them are built with enhanced hip and shoulder pads as well. In fact, some models of stand bags on our website place comfort at such a premium that they add a little bit of weight to build in more comfortable features. The 2020 Sun Mountain 3.5 LS Stand Bag comes to mind, as it added almost a pound in the form of a shoulder strap that is significantly more comfortable than previous year models. Some of them even feature breathable pads too, so even when you’re carrying them in the heat you can stay cool and comfortable.

Comfort, strength, and weight are all very important and go into the making of a quality stand bag. All that being accounted for, there is still one more thing that you should keep at the forefront of your mind when you are shopping for a stand bag.

Room

The idea is not just to create a stand bag that is comfortable, light, and strong. If that was the only aim, you could just wrap your clubs in bubble wrap, bind them up with tape and be on your way. That would be light and comfortable to carry, but it would lack a key feature - usability, and more specifically, space.

The perfect stand bag is not just light and comfortable. It is a balance between these factors and the inclusion of as much space as is possible, or practical, as it were. While many cart bags have 10- or 14-way dividers and can carry tons of clubs, most stand bags give you for slightly fewer - although this is not always the case and some offer more room.

At the same time, the idea is not to strip the bag of all of its pockets, either. Many stand bags will give you almost as many pockets, although less space, than comparable cart bags. The idea here is to make it possible for you to carry only what you need while shaving down weight.

At its most basic, that’s what goes into the making of the best golf stand bags. There are many available on our site, so really all that’s left for you to do is to figure out what size, weight, and features are most desirable to you and to pick one out. We offer many models from Sun Mountain, Datrek, Titleist, and more, and if you need some suggestions or have any questions on our products, feel free to give us a call at 800-955-9550.