There is something in the modern hickory golfer’s soul that sets him apart. While it could be a simple streak of inherited eccentricity, or a misalignment of certain DNA strands, there is, it seems, a commonality of dissatisfaction with modern golf. Certain it is that modern golf is the direct descendant of Allan, Old Tom and others before them, but there is little these august forebears would recognize today in the royal and ancient game.
Clubs, balls and the field of play have all changed. These are the finite and quantifiable elements of the game. But the game goes beyond these. It lives and takes its measure of the player in the psyche. Here, in the metaphysical miasma of thoughts, feelings, emotions comes a man to a stationary ball for the purpose of whacking it toward a small, an “exiguous grave” as Haultain described it.
Setting aside the delicious ramifications of that delicate description, there remains the express purpose of the game and its methods. The modern hickory golfer, in the face of glamorous space-age tools, tools that modern marketing tells us will shave enumerable strokes from the gray purgatory of the 90s, perhaps even to glimpse 88 or 89, the modern hickory golfer examines old sticks. He puts down his TaylorMades, his Pings, and his Calloways, to take up a Nicoll, or a Gibson or a Stewart. He looks admiringly at the trade show tables, takes up a mashie here, a mid-iron there, or even spots a promising mongrel iron. The prospect is waggled, the shaft inspected, the head examined (heads examined!) and if the “feel” is right, the applicant is awarded a position in the play set among his brothers acquired in much the same way.
But stricter examinations must follow. The new brother must be field-tested. It must win its owner’s heart in a way that a modern iron could never do. And, if it be found worthy, if balance and swing and feel all come to a confluence of opinion that, yes, here is a club to wield, then its acceptance will be total. It will extract from its owner a loyalty unquestioned and its society in the bag a matter of respect among equals.
The owner, if he truly wishes to know the club, will take it to the workshop. Will clean the head, perhaps remove it to clean away dried adhesive from the hosel insert and apply a fresh epoxy along with a new pin. The shaft will be lightly sanded, slight bends eased, and the length examined for small cracks or other flaws. It will be treated with new stain and coated with shellac to prevent moisture damage. Lovingly will a new grip be applied, perhaps one the owner cut from a hide he purchased, checking its color, grain, texture, and thickness. The whipping applied, this final touch completed, the new – can it be new! – club comes afresh to its owner’s hand. He who has worked it, felt its weight, restored its fading and worn attributes, now takes it to hand and… now he understands. This club, this connection to the game, this marriage of wood, leather, cotton and iron, comes alive for him in a way a faceless, numbered, machined and cold modern metal club cannot.
On the course, the club, called from the bag, is worked into a golf shot in a way that the sterile modern club cannot do, for all its precision and luster. Here, in the old hickory is a way of rediscovering the art of what club and player can do in so many ways.
It is said in the Kama Sutra, the ancient Hindu art of love, that it is not so great a thing to have hundreds of different lovers, rather, it is a divine thing to pleasure one lover in hundreds of different ways. Making the rather large leap from the Kama Sutra to hickory golf, your author asserts that one appeal of our game is that one club can be applied in many different ways and that learning to do so is one of the great appeals of the sport.
So, take up your clubs and see how they work in any given circumstance. Enjoy the journey of discovery. There are many fairways and courses to explore, all that the game has to offer is before you. Enjoy the art of hickory golf, for it is an art and that is why we are drawn to it. We each paint, sculpt, create a game each time we go out. Results will always be different and that is why, as Shivas Irons once noted, that if we approach the game with all our hearts, we’ll leave the course with a new hold on life.