There are sports cars and economy cars, SUVs and vans. Sometimes it’s just nice to have a van, especially for a long ride.
The new Dri Lite Silencio 2 from Big Max is such a van, making it one of the best golf cart bags available. It has plenty of room and rides quietly, but there’s nothing particularly fancy about it, except the top. The rest is just plenty of room for anything you want to carry on this trip around the course.
Want to pack an extra sweater or two, plus your rain gear, rangefinder and maybe even a portable launch monitor? No problem. The pockets are huge. Do you hunt for balls when you’re on the course? With the Silencio 2, you can harvest a dozen or so, which will easily fit in the front ball pocket, even if you already have two dozen balls in there.
Want to stretch the rules a bit and play with 18 clubs? Well, you can’t do that, which brings us to the main feature of this cart bag -- the top and individual club slots. It’s the reason this bag rides in near silence. There are 14 receptacles, one for each club. Each of the slots has a slit, so you can position the head of each club so it can’t move. That means whether you’re using a push cart or a powered cart, they stay in place and do not make contact with the other clubs or anything else.
The way the top is laid out is also unique. The iron slots form a semicircle with the spots for the long irons higher than the short irons. They wrap around four slots designed for a driver and woods/hybrids. There’s also a large slot specifically for putters and their oversized grips. The pattern on top makes it easier to organize your clubs and take them out and replace them during a round. With other bags that have 14 individual slots, I often found it difficult to find the empty hole when returning the club I just used to the bag. Not so much with this one.
I used the Dri Lite Silencio both on a powered cart and push cart. I liked it better on a push cart. It balanced well on my Sun Mountain cart, and I found it easy to see my clubs when at rest, and all the pockets were easily accessible making this one of the best golf cart bags on the market.
On a powered cart, I found that it rode a little too high. At the Silencio’s highest point (where the longest iron would sit), it’s four or five inches taller than most of my other bags. Putting it on a golf cart makes it a little tougher for average height or shorter people to see over the bag during play.
Also, the strap channel (designed to accommodate the cart strap) is higher than the level of the strap that’s found on most golf carts. That wasn’t a big issue, though, since I was still able to access all the pockets. (The strap channel, however, was in a good position for my push cart.)
Speaking of pockets, the Dri Lite Silencio 2 has 11 of them as well as a nicely designed rain hood. Among the pockets is a cooler pouch for your drinks, and there are two good sized pockets for your valuables, one of which is waterproof. In fact, the entire bag is constructed with waterproof fabric, hence the name, Dri Lite, which we know is a name that provides some of the best waterproof golf bags money can buy.
There are also functional holders for an umbrella, glove, and a towel. The bottom line is that this is a golf bag that will hold everything you need, and works well with both push carts and powered golf carts. If you like to carry, you’ll need an additional bag, or maybe a bag like the new Big Max Dri Lite Hybrid Plus.
