As much as I agree that you almost have to buy new clubs to compete on BP, I do have to say that a little course managment would probably help wonders. I have the Tour driver and Tour putter, and the rest of my clubs are the basic Starters. I "only" shot an 8 over my first time playing BP. The only fairways I missed off the tee were due to shanking, not to distance. All the fairways were reachable. Yes, I need to birdie the Par 3's (when you can) and one putt par the rest to have a shot, but there's certainly no need to blast every shot. I laid up numerous times, but by laying up, I gave myself a short iron to the green and hopefully a reasonable distance to one putt par, instead of blasting into a bunker or the rough greenside and needing a chip or two to get onto the green and then two putting.
This all being said, I really do think there has to be some sort of RPG element added to this game. It's nice that better equipment will give you 5-10 (or even 20) more yards distance and better spin/control, but better equipment doesn't do that in real life. Practice does. Say you play 50 rounds (9 holes) and manage to average 220 yards per drive and have a fairway % of about 80%. This should boost a player stat like driving distance giving you an extra 5 yards on your driver/3 wood/3 hybrid etc. Hit a certain GIR % over a certain # of rounds, your player's iron accuracy stat gets boosted. These are arbitrary #'s I threw out, but I think it would be a welcome addition to an otherwise challenging game. People that want to put in the practice time to get better, get rewarded with better stats. Equipment will still provide a boost (someone with a Taylor Made driver will still drive further than a player with the same driving distance stat value using a Starter driver), but you can honestly expect Tiger Woods to play using my crappy clubs and suddenly start driving "only" 230-240 yards.
Overall, I think a lot of good things were done with the latest update, though there are a few areas of contention still (I thought the Masters group was going to be very difficult to get into???). Keep practicing and realize that BP is NOT Kiawah and we should expect it to be.