Ogio Devolver Golf Bag Review

The Ogio Devolver is touted as a 3-in-1 golf bag. What does that mean? With a few zips here, a little bit of hooking or unhooking there, the Devolver can serve as a full-fledged cart bag, a lightweight cart bag, or a lightweight carry bag. Three bags in one.

But how well do each of these bags do their job - and how easy or difficult is the conversion process? Those are the questions that will determine how a golfer reacts to this bag.

Let's start at its full size. The Ogio Devolver isn't nearly as bulky as a full-sized staff bag, but it provides plenty of goodies in its cart bag mode. An oversized accessory wrap fits around the bag, offering multiple pockets and storage areas; there are pockets galore, including a velour-lined one for valuables.

And there are nifty features such as a Velcro patch near the 10-inch, 15-way divider top on which to attach your glove; plus a place on the exterior to secure a ballmark repair tool.

The lift handles are well-positioned and the rubber "feet" on the bottom of the bag help keep it from sliding around while riding on the back of the cart.

So far, so good. Let's break this bag down a little bit, to its "middle child" status as a lightweight cart bag.

The stripped-down cart bag is also sleek enough to ride easily on a push cart. And it could be carried by a walking golfer in this guise, although it doesn't qualify as a lightweight carry bag in this form. That's not what it was designed for, however, so anyone who considers it "carryable" in this mode would have to think of that as a bonus. It is light enough to easily take on and off the cart and carry to your ball, however.

The conversion is as simple as can be. That oversized accessory wrap mentioned above? It's secured on the bag with magnets and a couple hooks; pull that wrap off the body of the bag, unhook it in two places, and that's it. You're down to the lightweight cart bag. And even though the accessory wrap is now gone, the basic cart bag model still has four pockets, two big ones on the sides plus a ball pocket and one more smaller pocket.

The only thing that's changed is the removal of the accessory wrap, so the full-length dividers, lift handles, rubber feet - all that good stuff - are still doing their jobs.

Now, for the final transformation, let's turn the Ogio Devolver into a lightweight carry bag. For this trick, all we'll need is the accessory wrap. That wrap itself becomes the carry bag. Check the photo and you'll notice that it looks nothing like a traditional carry bag.

But does it get the job done? I was skeptical that this mode of the Ogio Devolver would work well. But that skepticism turned out to be misplaced. The accessory wrap converted into its carry-bag mode with ease. More detailed instructions on how to make that transformation would be nice, but it was fairly intuitive and took only a few minutes to figure out and accomplish. (Once you know what you're doing, the transformation takes only seconds.)

I didn't think the clubs would "ride" well in the carry bag mode; I expected them to be clanging around, and to be difficult to remove from and replace back into the "bag." But those preconceptions turned out to be misconceptions.

The carry bag mode is certainly unorthodox. It looks more like a sling than a traditional golf bag, after all. You may get some funny looks from other golfers. But it is lightweight, it offers enough pocket space, and it still provides a few of those nifty features such as the golf glove Velcro patch and ballmark tool slot.

If you use a cart more often than you walk, and especially if you walk infrequently, the "sling" will likely meet all your needs - one of which would be ridding you of the necessity of buying a separate carry bag. If you walk more often than you ride, however, a more traditional bag may be more to your liking. We think the Ogio Devolver's carry bag mode is pretty clever, and serves its purpose as part of the 3-in-1 approach.

The Ogio Devolver golf bag accomplishes its mission, and does so with style. How you react to it probably depends on your willingness to go a little unorthodox with the carry bag mode. For ourselves, we enjoyed getting to know this 3-in-1 golf bag.