The SoHG’s tips for tools, supplies, and repair techniques
As SoHG members take up their hickory journey, many wish to learn how to work on their own clubs. Historically, this was a job left to the club pro, back in the day when the sport was largely a country club affair and members were too busy with other leisure pursuits to do this sort of thing. The pro cleaned your clubs, built new ones and generally kept your bag in ready shape for whenever you turned out for a round. As more of the public took up the game, especially following Francis Ouimet’s 1913 U.S. Open win, the public course layman, if motivated, might keep his new set of Spalding Kroflites or BGI’s or MacGregors clean and somewhat playable. We’ve all seen the results of common clubs that were used and abused, rusty old relics with warped and cracked shafts.
Today’s modern hickory player is drawn to the game for a variety of reasons. It may be the company of the delightful cast of characters who comprise the SoHG, it may be the thrill of a tournament, the satisfying mystery of a well struck mid iron, or it may be the simple joy of discovering more about a game from the baseline of the clubs themselves; creatures of wood and iron, organic in nature, each with its own unique playing characteristics to be discovered on the laboratory of the links. They have much to tell us if we are willing to listen. For the man who takes his own clubs to the workshop, takes the time and effort to carefully restore them – clean the shaft, study the loft and lie, re-set the head, apply new grips that he selected and cut himself – for this man, the clubs take on a deeper role much more than a numbered loft to reach a certain distance. They become, as Bernard Darwin intuited, part of your golfing “society” whose presence you will sorely miss should it break or become lost.
When you pull a club from your bag that you have restored, from shaft to clubhead, grip to hosel, you have a greater connection to that club and thus the shot at hand and by extension the very soul of the game itself.
With these thoughts in mind, we are happy to present here the beginning of a series of tips from various restoration experts. Their thoughts and techniques are uniquely their own, as much as the clubs in their own bags. Each man who works on his own clubs employs similar techniques that may vary in style and substance, including the tools and supplies themselves.
It is our hope that all of you who work on your own clubs will respond to this series with your own unique advice so that all who work on their own clubs may be the more enriched. Is there a special tool you like? Let us all know. Is there a technique you have discovered that makes a certain chore easier? Please share it. And keep an eye on this page as the list grows.
Ours is a unique Society whose members belong to a “club” welcoming only to the discerning few. What we read and share here propagates and perpetuates that rich heritage we call hickory golf.
Enjoy.
From the workshop of Tim Alpaugh of Randolph, N.J.
Essentials and Other Items
The Grip
Club Triage Part 1
The Art of Whipping Hickory Clubs
From the workshop of Gary Eley of Burlington, Vt.
Patrick Kennedy club straightening tool (YouTube video)
Re-pinning an iron head, Part 1 (YouTube video)
Re-pinning an iron head, Part 2 (YouTube video)
Gripping and whipping, Part 1 (YouTube video)
Gripping and whipping, Part 2 (YouTube video)
Gripping and whipping, Part 3 (YouTube video)