Wood Brothers Sand Wedge

I bought a used Wood Brothers Sand Wedge lately, and I loved it immediately once I tried it out. Easy to play with both from sand and from turf, has a Brunswick steel shaft in it and 54 degrees loft. Polished out the worst dings and scratches, mounted a new grip and did some moderate rework on the paint fillings.

Although ball contact feels kind of soft, club head material appears to be investment cast steel. At least, there definitely is no chrome plating on it.

I was wondering who built these club heads for Wood Brothers back in the days, and what kind of steel was it made of?

Regards, Joe

These were the cast version of the famous, scarce, and very collectible hand forged Championship Balance irons.

The hand forged clubs were made by Mizuno's Master Reference Model maker - his ancestors were Samuri sword makers - sword making was outlawed after WWII - so he turned to club making.

Since Mizuno was the Japanese connection or the originals, its likely they were involved with the castings also.

BTW - my avatar is a Wood Bros hand forged prototype A wedge. Check that Serial No.

Texsport

Joe-

...And according to Texsport, there were LH WB Championship Balance iron models, but NONE made it out of Japan...

rex235

That information on LHers came directly from Dave Wood.

Texsport

Tex-

+1

Knew that, since you told us in an earlier WB thread...

Neat wedge. If it's definitely not plated I would suspect it's made of stainless steel.

Yes and the originals were hand forged stainless steel - you can see what look like layers of metal in some of the forged clubs.

Texport

Those blades are gorgeous Tex

Mine are sitting close by!

My son and I both played sets of the forged Championship Balance irons for a while - he participating in D-1 college golf.

Eventually, we both stopped playing them in a desire to preserve these true masterpieces.

Dave Wood developed the original forged clubs with the help of several PGA pros - Crenshaw, Kite, Sluman, etc. The project started as a conversation during a rain delay at a PGA Tour tournament. Dave Wood related to me that he asked the pros, "what the perfect iron would look like."

Ultimately, the clubs were hand forged by Mizuno's Master forgings maker in Japan - the gentleman who made Mizuno's master reference models.

The clubs were used to win the PGA Tour Qualifying School immediately following introduction and were used on Tour by several pros, without being paid to do so. Not long ago I had a delightful conversation with former PGA and Champions Tour player, Pat Burke, recalling his use of the forged WB irons and Texan driver on Tour.

The Japanese master also made the extremely rare WB Bench Mark 60s forged putters.

Hand made putters are treasures - each of these Wood Bros hand forged irons and putters are in the same category IMO.

W B cast irons, though scarce, were Dave Woods effort to bring the world class design, including a slightly wider sole, to a larger market.

Texsport

Thank you, Texsport, for sharing your knowledge with us!

Joe

Have tried to share Wood Bros info widely.

An internet search would likely yield more info.

Texsport

Thanks Tex,

It’s you, and guys like you, that are willing to reminisce, and share your experiences with us in the rank and file, that truly make this corner of the site special.

All you guys know who you are, so a heartfelt BZ to you all.