I've been unselfishly trying out different equipment and various swing aids this year in my tireless efforts to tell you what's new and cool in golf. OK, nobody's buying that load of bull. I'm just like you, an equipment junkie who's always worried that the other guy's grass, not to mention his titanium driver, is greener.

So here are a few golf items I have test-driven, if you know what I mean ...

3M Ultra-Grip glove: Here's a new wrinkle in golf gloves. The 3M Ultra-Grip looks like a normal glove but it's got a slash of different material -- 3M calls it Greptile -- that starts just below the base of the fingers in the palm and extends to just below the first knuckle. In other words, it covers the hand's gripping channel.

Greptile feels like the material in a rubber glove that you'd garden with. It does, indeed, feel rougher and gives you a firmer, tighter grip on the club. When you're not gripping a club, the Greptile section has a kind of crinkly feel that you may find distracting. I normally putt with my glove on, for instance, but I took the Ultra-Grip off because of that crinkly sensation. 3M claims tests have shown that the glove gives the wearer an increase of 0.7 mph clubhead speed. I don't know about that, but if you can get past the crinkly feel, you'll like the extra traction.

Wilson Deep Red Distance Irons: These cavity-back irons lived up to their name. I found myself hitting the ball a club further with these irons, and when I took them on a trip to the desert in Palm Springs, the heat and thin desert air had me hitting two clubs less than usual -- pulling a 7-iron from 180 yards became common. I don't think I've hit a set or iron that felt more solid or strong than these. The ball launched so well that I quickly got over the thicker-than-I'm-used-to clubheads. These are game-improvement clubs that work. My only problem was that they launched the ball so high so quickly that I wasn't able to hit a knockdown pitching wedge shot. I tried to hit a low, soft approach that would go 110 or 115 yards, and the Deep Red Distance pitching wedge sent me 125 yards, no matter what. I went long over eight or ten greens, trying the same shot, thinking it must be me before I finally decided the wedge's face was simply too hot. That also made them a little difficult to chip with.

"You're too good for those clubs," a playing partner told me when I mentioned the wedge problem. Well, that's not how I'd put it -- but as a low-handicap player, I'd say the Deep Red Distance irons are better-suited for mid- to high-handicappers.

ProAim Virtual Alignment Trainer: You've probably seen Butch Harmon doing commercials for these magic sunglasses. You just pop them on and bingo, you line up your putts better. That's how it's supposed to work. The ProAim glasses come with a visor over the lenses that gives them a science fiction look, but they're actually fairly low-tech. Some lines are simply superimposed on the lenses. There's one large vertical line, which should fit between your ball and your putterface at setup. There are two horizontal lines that, once you've set up properly provide tracking toward the target. They're not that easy to use, and I don't see what these glasses do that you couldn't accomplish by laying down two pieces of wood parallel to your target path.

One thing they accomplish that's important, however, is force you to keep your head still. The lines on the lenses can be distracting so you've got to keep your head still once you finally get set up. And you may be surprised to notice how much your head moves when you start your putting stroke because these glasses make it pretty evident. If the ProAim makes you keep your head still and inspires you to practice your putting, a part of the game most amateur hackers don't spend much time on, it's probably worthwhile. But I don't think it's the answer for alignment problems.

Cobra 440 SZ driver: I'd like to thank US Airways for losing my golf clubs on the way home from the Masters this year. I mean, they lost them permanently. I filled out an itemized list of my clubs (tip: save receipts for all your golf items over $250, including the travel cover) and exchanged several letters with the airline's claims department before they sent me a check for $2,500 -- much better than I expected. Especially from an airline that looks destined to be out of business within a year.

Anyway, my previous driver had been a Cobra 380 with a custom, lightweight graphite shaft. That was really the only club I felt anguished over losing. My old putter? Good riddance, you traitor. I contacted Titleist with my specs to arrange for a replacement and wound up with a newer -- and bigger -- clubhead, the 440, with the same lightweight shaft. I've hit it very well, straighter than I had been, it seems. The second-best thing about it is the sound. Callaway's original drivers were a hit, I always thought, because they made such loud cracks at impact. So even if you hit a poor shot, it sounded like you crushed it. Very satisfying.

When I was hitting balls on the range at Treesdale, my home club northwest of Pittsburgh, I happened to be a few stalls down from club pro Joe Boros, who was giving a lesson. After I thwacked a couple of drives, he turned and said, "That thing is deafening." Yeah, with hard-cover range balls, it is rather loud. Which, in my opinion, is a good thing.

I don't have the matching Cobra fairway woods, but I tried a set which belonged to a friend and I smoked several shots on the range with them. Cobra's profile has been down since the days when there was a Greg Norman commercial every five minutes, but their woods are definitely hot and warrant further research.

HOK golf shoes: HOK stands for House of Kangaroo. They broke into golf with some excellent kangaroo-leather golf gloves that were thinner and more durable than the top-selling brands. Now they're trying to get into shoes. The good news is, the model I tried is probably the best-looking, most stylish golf shoe I've ever had on. (Fill in your cheap shot on my lack of style here.) They're white with black trim, with black shoelaces and silver tongues. They looked good and felt good. The bad news: the shoes come with traditional non-metal spikes that screw in, not the newer ones that turn and lock. I'm not sure why, but I keep losing one or two spikes in each shoe in every round in the HOKs. After the first two rounds, I made sure to tighten all the spikes. Didn't matter. I came up missing one on each shoe in the next round, too. When I got the shoes from HOK, they came with a little plastic bag of extra spikes. I thought it was a nice perk, but maybe they knew something.

Sonartec NP-99 3-wood: In the search for a 3-wood I could hit off the fairway better than my 13-degree MacGregor (which is monster long off a tee but a little difficult to hit from anything less than a perfect lie), I was pleased to discover the Adams Ovation fairway woods. The Ovation 15-degree 3-wood is just a good-looking club. I liked the lime-green Aldila shaft, which matched the black-and-lime head cover, and the shallow, sleek clubhead (reminiscent of the early woods that put Adams on the map) was easy to hit. I would've been happy with that in my bag if I hadn't tried the 14-degree Sonartec club. Like the Adams, its head is shallow and sleek and it, too, is easy to hit. The 14-degree loft gives me a few yards more carry. You can't go wrong with either club, but the NP-99 is currently in my bag and not going anywhere ... unless, of course, US Airways gets its hands on it.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Gary Van Sickle writes for the magazine's Golf Plus section and is a regular contributor to SI.com.