(The below is taken almost verbatim from a recent e-mail to my particular friend Fred, because I am lazy.)
I have been thinking a lot lately about modern v. traditional, with regards to golf. I clearly prefer the traditional, natural links courses over the modern American over-watered, paved-cartpath strip mall courses. My recent thoughts have been to clubs, and if I should revert to my beloved collection of persimmon woods.
There was a time that I actually played with hickory-shafted clubs, circa 1910s-20s.
Although giving up dozens of yards on every shot, I played with a sense of appreciation of the past (and, I confess, a deeper appreciation of my self for appreciating the past).
I graduated from those clubs to a set of ca. 1930s steel-shafted Bobby Jones clubs. (Although R.T. Jones, Jr. never used steel shafts, the sets of clubs bearing his moniker had his seal of approval.)
From there I went briefly through a set of cast (not forged), perimeter-weighted, offset, oversized King Kobra irons. I was using these when I first met and worked with Duncan McCallum, my Scottish golf pro who worked at the (now defunct) driving range in Mission Bay. Duncan used beautiful forged Ben Hogan irons, which I loved. Justin Leonard, whose career I was following after his improbable come-from-behind Open Championship win at Royal Troon, also played Hogan blades.
Blades (irons made from forged-not cast-steel) are as notorious for their accuracy as they are for their lack of forgiveness for even slightly mis-hit shots. (If you’re ever in the clubhouse at Pebble Beach, which is a public building on a municipal course, you can see a glass case with one of Gene Sarazen’s original sand wedges. There is a visibly worn circle, right in the middle of the sweet spot. A woman asked Sarazen why he had sanded down the middle of the face of the club, to which he responded that he hadn’t, that was the result of hitting so many balls there. She refused to believe that EVERY shot it exactly in the same place. But that’s why he was a professional golfer. And she was not. But I digress.) I was not ready for forged irons, but I found a cheap set of used Hogan blades and have used them ever since.
At the same time, I got three persimmon Hogan woods (1, 3, 5). I used those for years and years, but over the last few years I have phased them out in favor of metalwoods. For the most part, my metalwoods have been very traditional looking (if not sounding), based on the standard dimensions of wood clubs. My latest club is a new Hogan driver, which is not obscenely, space-agely large, but it is slightly outside my comfort zone. This club has perhaps made me re-think my decision to abandon the persimmon.
I also recently added a matched set of hybrids, which I greatly love. Hybrids became fairly big about five or so years ago.
As you are no doubt aware, golf manufacturers are always looking for the next big thing to foist off (at grossly overblown prices) to their desperate consumers dying to improve their game. About 15 years ago, the latest wave were the Adams Tight Lies fairway woods (metals), which offered long and accurate shots from good lies in the fairway. Soon after, there were dozens of replicas flooding the market.
The Tight Lies revolutionized the average player’s conception that fairway woods were impossible to hit, instead fostering the belief that fairway woods were much easier to hit reliably than the hated long irons. This thought process has now been taken to a (logical) next step, the development of the hybrid sets. Adams again is leading the charge. In their flagship A4 set, the low irons/wedges have a fairly typical modern look, not unlike other wedges and low irons on the market. (The high loft of these clubs make them fairly straightforward for the average golfer to hit reliably.) As the clubs get longer, they morph more into the fairway metal look, so when you get down to the 3-iron, it is essentially a small version of the Tight Lies. The wide, rounded body distributes the center of gravity and allows for the forgiveness of the fairway metals. In between, there is a series of clubs, not unlike the old illustration depicting evolution: ape to man. Each descending club is a little bit less like the wedge and a little bit more like the fairway metal. The end result – the hybrids – look almost identical to the original hickory-shafted, long-nosed woods used in the 17th and 18th centuries in Scotland.
It’s come full-circle.
