“I should’ve known right from the start when I got a new set of irons and all of a sudden struggled pulling every shot left.”

Robert Lusetich writes about Matthew Goggin, Dale Lynch's other student (besides Badds) winning on the Nationwide Tour last week. Goggin credits Lynch and an equipment change.

“To go from making $1.5 to $2 million a year to not being able to make a cut, it’s just brutal on you psychologically,” Goggin said from Bogota, where he plays this week on the secondary Nationwide Tour.

His is a salutary lesson.

Like many golfers who find themselves thrust into the spotlight, at the end of 2009 he took the easy money — in his case from Callaway Golf — and dumped his old clubs in favor of those made by his new sponsor.

“It was a big mistake,” he says now.

“I should’ve known right from the start when I got a new set of irons and all of a sudden struggled pulling every shot left.”

But Goggin persevered, believing that as the new clubs were similar to his old ones, the fault was with him, not the equipment.

“I just thought it was me. I kept trying to change what I was doing in my swing and the more I tried, the worse it got,” he said.

“It’s hard to hit a shot that your coach (Dale Lynch) says is pure and you look up and it’s 20 yards left of where you’re aiming.

“I just lost a lot of confidence in myself.”