Why I Stopped Carrying My Bag and Started Pushing

For twelve years I carried my bag on my right shoulder. Eight clubs, a dozen balls, a rain jacket I never learned to leave home. By the fourteenth hole I was setting it down every fifty yards and rolling my shoulder like a man trying to loosen a stuck bolt. I told myself that was just golf.

The morning after was worse. I would swing my legs out of bed and sit on the edge a minute before standing, because my lower back had that hot, tight feeling that says somebody worked it over. Carol would ask if I was all right. I would say I was fine. I was not fine.

I asked my doctor about it in the spring of 2024. He asked his questions, poked around a little, and told me it was ordinary wear and muscle tightness, not a disc problem. His advice was to stay active, warm up before I play, and keep doing the core work my physical therapist gave me three years ago. He did not tell me to stop walking. Riding a cart never appealed to me anyway.

In April of 2025 I bought a Caddytek CaddyLite 11.5 V3 push cart off Amazon. I did the reading first, the way I did for thirty-four years on airplanes: the listing, the specs, the review count, the complaints at the bottom. Aluminum frame. 13.8 pounds. Three wheels. A foot brake. A TPR handle that adjusts to your height. It folds on a quad-fold frame into something I can lay flat in the back of the CR-V next to my bag.

The first round with it was a Thursday. I set my stand bag on it, raised the handle a notch, and pushed off the first tee. Two things surprised me. The cart tracked straight with one hand on the handle, and I stopped thinking about it by the second hole. My bag weighs more than the cart does. That is the whole point I had missed for twelve years.

I am not going to tell you it fixed my back. It did not. What it did was take the bag off my shoulder, and my shoulder is attached to my back. The last four holes stopped being a negotiation with myself.

My bag weighs more than the cart does. That is the whole point I had missed for twelve years.

Here is what I actually use on it. The drink holder holds a normal bottle. There is a mesh net under the handle where I keep balls, tees and my keys, a magnetic pad above it, and an umbrella holder I use maybe five rounds a year when the Tennessee summer gets serious. The foot brake is the one part I had to learn. I have walked off with it set twice and dragged a rear wheel ten feet before I noticed.

The wheels are why it feels easy. Dual 11.5 inch rears and a 10.5 inch front, and they are EVA, so there is no tube to inflate and nothing to go flat on you at the turn. It rolls over cart path seams and through the rough without me wrestling it. Two seasons on the Caddytek now and the wheels still run true.

It weighs 13.8 pounds, which matters at the end of a round when you are tired and the trunk sits high. I lift it in with one hand. Folded, it lies flat next to my stand bag in the CR-V and does not slide around. Setup at the car takes me under a minute, and I am not a fast man in a parking lot.

What it does not do: it does not warm me up, it does not strengthen my core, and it does not make a bad swing easier on my back. I still run the physical therapist's routine before I leave the house and I still swing easy for the first few minutes. The cart is one piece of a bigger fix, but it is the piece I noticed first.

A word on the other carts. I read the reviews on the cheap ones and the reviews on the expensive ones. What sold me on the Caddytek was the review count and the fact that the complaints at the bottom kept repeating the same two small things and never the frame or the wheels. Two seasons in, I understand why.

One more thing and then I will let you go. My stand bag stays on the Caddytek in the garage between rounds. I fold the cart, lean it against the wall, and that is the whole ritual. Nothing to take apart, nothing to remember.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

If your back is stiff after a round, look at what you carry before you look at what you swing. That is not medical advice. I am a retired airplane mechanic. My doctor is the one who told me mine was ordinary wear and tightness, and the rule he gave me is the one I will pass along: if the pain is sharp, if it runs down a leg, or if it does not settle in a couple of weeks, get it looked at. Do not take my word for it, and do not take anybody's word for it on the internet.

If it turns out you are fine and just tired of hauling, then a push cart is the simplest fix there is, because it does not ask you to change your swing or your Saturday. You set the bag on, you push, you play. I wish I had done it in 2013 instead of telling myself a carry bag builds character. It does. It also builds a sore back.