My ‘Lost’ British Airways Clubs Gave Me Reason For Concern

Fair Comment; Summer 2025

If I had a euro for every time somebody’s told me how glamorous my life is, jetting between continents to visit great golf clubs, I would be an ex-publisher. But, living out of a suitcase — indeed, my colleague David Bowers insists I could live IN a suitcase — is not all it’s cracked up to be. I seldom get to enjoy the exciting cities I fly into because I have meetings to attend and then must move on to the next destination.

And that means, I suffer from the curse of the frequent flyer as much as anyone, despite currently having gold ‘elite’ status with British Airways (BA). It doesn’t matter if you turn left or right when you get on a plane, we’re all still prone to fall victim to delays, cancellations, and lost luggage. And here’s the nub. For the second time this year, my clubs have been ‘mislaid’ by British Airways, which was, until recently, my first-choice airline for travel before they announced changes to their frequent flyer programme which makes achieving ‘status’ literally impossible. But, I digress...

My clubs were first delayed on a connection between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur in March — though, to be fair, they were sent on the next flight, delivered to my hotel overnight and were waiting for me in the morning. But still.

In May, they were lost on a BA flight back from Alicante, which was more of a pain as I was due to fly to Dubai — again with BA — two days later. I fly with my clubs around 30 times a year, and although I’ve been close to losing them completely before, it’s never happened, yet. They are insured with Golf Care, so when I flew to Dubai minus my clubs — and there was still no sign of them 72 hours later — I was already working out in my head what I would replace them with.

Fearing the worst, I booked a fitting session at the Titleist National Fitting Centre in St Ives, and would like to place on record my sincere thanks to Paul Thompson at Titleist, who went above and beyond in accommodating my request for an urgent appointment, as being without clubs in my line of work is a problem. And to reinforce that point, upon my return to London from Dubai, I was scheduled to fly straight up to Glasgow — note flying with easyJet and not BA — to visit Machrihanish Dunes; a visit I, sadly, had to postpone.

BA eventually found my clubs five days after they were ‘lost’, but missing out on a trip north of the border gave me time to think and formulate a premise for my latest comment.

I’ve always played Titleist, and use a Titleist flight bag — which bizarely is not lockable — although my matching Titleist suitcase is. When I thought my clubs were gone for good, I tallied everything up and the replacement cost for the contents of my flight bag — including clubs, FJ shoes and a Garmin GPS — was just over £3,500. Yet, from a security aspect, at most airports, golf clubs are classed as oversized luggage and are delivered to a specific area and not the normal carousel, so what’s to stop anyone just simply walking off with them, as I’ve never been checked leaving an airport.

I’m not advocating you read this, have a lightbulb moment, and start a black market in ‘lost’ golf clubs, just expressing concern that security around our valued golf clubs could — and maybe should — be tighter.

And why has no one marketed a GPS tracker for golf bags? Not a Bluetooth one, but one which works worldwide, so we know where our valuable contents are located at any particular moment. If anyone has, let me know, as clearly you could do with some effective marketing to the golf sector.