Lessons and Fittings

This is my opinion reading your post.

You can go to any Edwin Watts, Golf Galaxy, PGA Tour Superstore or maybe your local golf shop and get fitted for a few things, your club head speed, lie angle and length. You don't have to make good contact with the ball, and it doesn't matter what direction the ball goes with these measurements. The club head speed for flex of shaft, lie angle for either standard, flat or upright and length if your tall or short. You don't need to buy a whole set of new clubs and get fit for exotic shafts and $600 drivers to getting started. With that information you can see if what you have will work or if they, if possible, can bend your club for lie angle, can either put extenders or cut down shaft for length. Flex is important but not the be all end all. If you want, you could trade your set in on another used set that fits you without breaking the bank. If your driver is within 5 years old or so, it's fine getting started. After you get your clubs set then invest in lessons. They will help tremendously.

Once you have your swing path down, can for the most part make good contact with the ball, can shoot under bogey golf consistently and are serious about improving, then go get professionally fitted for a set of new clubs from driver all the way down to putter. In this fitting you will probably hit 500 golf balls, it wore me out. They will try every manufacturer, shaft combination, steel, graphite, different weights, and even what ball fits best. This fitting dials in your dispersion, shot groupings and overall try to gain distance. This is where you can spend some money. A driver can cost over $1000 with certain driver/shaft combo's. Heck, there's a shaft out there called the Autoflex that's almost $800 by itself. They throw a lot of info at you but you don't have to buy anything from them. You can take the information and weigh out the pro's and con's of each and make your decision at another time but once you get to the point where you can get professionally fitted, a custom set will definitely help your game.