Wood-Club Tournament Recalls the Game’s Roots
By LISA D. MICKEY
TEMPLE TERRACE, Fla. — Cars driving on the neighborhood streets surrounding Temple Terrace Golf and Country Club slowed to a crawl, their drivers craning their necks for a better look at yesteryear.
It was as if the knicker-clad, sweet-swinging ghosts of Walter Hagen, Tommy Armour, Jim Barnes and Gene Sarazen had returned to play another round at the site of the 1925 Florida Open.
In a salute to those stars of the 1920s and the history of golf, two dozen players showed up Monday for the second annual United States Professional Hickory Golf Championship. They walked the venerable 1922 Tom Bendelow course, carrying small bags of wooden-shafted clubs.
Men in ties, caps and argyle socks and women in skirts and stylish hats played low bump-and-run shots into the greens. They used clubs with names like mashie, brassie, niblick and jigger stamped into the tiny club heads, some irons looking more like straight razors than golf clubs. They played with replica rubber golf balls from the 1920s that usually landed at least 10 yards short of typical targets.
“It’s like we stepped into a time machine,” said Kevin Weickel, the 2011 North Florida Golf P.G.A. pro of the year and the tournament director of the P.G.A. Tour’s Children’s Miracle Network Hospital Classic in Orlando. “You almost see the ghosts of those old pros scattered around the first tee.”
He added: “Some of these old trees were here back in 1925, and they were a part of that tournament. Looking around today, it makes me wonder if this is my field of dreams.”
Mike Stevens, the tournament director and the club pro at MacDill Air Force Base in nearby Tampa, decided to bring a hickory golf tournament to the area after he won the 2005 and 2010 National Hickory Championship and competed in the World Hickory Open in Scotland, where hickory golf is popular.
Because most golfers do not own hickory-shafted clubs, he also asked Jay Harris, a retired dentist in North Carolina who collects the vintage clubs, to supply clubs for contestants. Harris took 40 sets of hickory clubs with him, giving players in the event a chance to practice with them a day early.
Like Stevens, Harris is an ambassador for the game’s history. And he says he wants golfers to know more about the roots of the game.
“Baseball fans know their history, so I would hope that golfers have a curiosity about their game,” said Harris, the winner of the 2008 United States Hickory Open championship.
It takes players more enamored of the romance of the game’s rich history than by the repetitive act of muscling shots on 7,400-yard layouts to show up for an event like this. Just as they did at the 1925 Florida Open, contestants faced a course measuring less than 6,400 yards.
While Temple Terrace lacks the length found on modern PGA and L.P.G.A Tour courses, the real challenge in hickory golf is mastering the clubs. The wooden shafts torque differently in the swing process from modern-day equipment, forcing players to adapt to different timing. The most successful players resist the temptation to overpower the ball.
“The challenge is hitting a ball with a less-than-perfect implement, but when you pull off a good shot, it’s exhilarating,” Stevens said. “Hickory golf is difficult, but it really opens up your imagination.”
Eddie Peckels showed some imagination when he holed out a mashie, the equivalent of a 7-iron, from 170 yards on the par-4 12th hole for an eagle. Peckels, a pro at Tuscawilla Golf Club in Winter Springs, Fla., shot a three-over 76 to win the event. Jim Garrison, the Temple Terrace host club pro, also carded a 76, but hurt his back late in the round and conceded the playoff.
Jennifer Cully, who shot an 85 and won the women’s tournament for the second time, said “today’s modern clubs feel like cheating” when compared with hickory clubs.
“The hickory clubs are pretty whippy, so you have to have good timing,” said Cully, a teaching pro at Apollo Beach (Fla.) Golf Club.
Tom McCrary, the head pro at Glen Lakes Country Club in Weeki Wachee, Fla., assembled his set of hickory clubs after he helped a neighbor clear out an attic. He said he enjoyed the challenge of hickory golf even though he had to sacrifice the normal length of his modern clubs.
“It’s a different technique and a different strategy playing with these clubs,” he said. “You don’t just hit it hard.”
Curiosity is often the driving force for players to try hickory golf. That was the case for Gregor Jamieson, the director of golf at Lake Nona Golf and Country Club in Orlando, who played with hickory clubs for the first time Monday. His father was a clubmaker and the longtime head professional at Turnberry Resort in Scotland, who Jamieson said played with hickory clubs for 15 years after steel clubs were introduced.
“Golf is not easy anyway, but this brings it to a new level,” Jamieson said. “You’re not getting any help from these clubs. You have to hit the ball with precision.”
Of course, precision is not easy with the hickories, but the quest for it is enticing, said Brian Schuman of Long Island, who began the Metropolitan Hickory Society in the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut region.
“With these clubs, you feel history in your hands and the emotion of the game,” Schuman said. “Sometimes, I wonder where these clubs have been.”
