Historical Club Specs Archive

Hi All!

With the recent "controversy" of iron lofts getting ever and ever stronger, lower, or more distance at a given numbered club, it occurred to me that I would like to compile the factory specs for the various sets of irons that I have collected. I was able to gather a couple from ironfinder.com (a great resource if any members of your higher-end iron sets take a swim, have an unfortunate run in with your knee, or just forgotten next to the green), Titleist keeps a record of their historical product on their web site with specs, but eluding me are older Macs, and "department store" Wilsons and Spaldings.

Ideas anyone?

I have seen a spreadsheet of older Hogan irons and specs - I'll see if I can find it. Also take a look at golfclubspec.com.

TM has a page of specs for a lot of their older clubs. Not perfect but fairly complete back to '05 as well as sporadic specs back to '02. Golf Club Specs by Year | TaylorMade Golf

I also have used golfclubspec.com on several occasions.

Thanks- I did stumble on golfclubspec.com as well during my search prior to posting. I am looking for info on irons from 60's/70's/80's era, and it seems they only go back to about 2000 or so. I am baffled that this information would be so hard to find.

What was the recent controversy?

It is hard to find because the internet didn't become a thing until the very late 90's, thus specs from old clubs (1980 and older) were only put online if someone created an electronic document and placed it online on a website or posted on a website. And if someone took the time to do this and then the website shut down, poof, no longer available. For a while I saved my GolfSmith product catalogs. Then one day cleaning out the basement, decided to trash them, never realizing the data stored on paper one day maybe the only source for it. Somewhere there are guys who have dusty, musty boxes of old product manuals sitting in a basement or attic. Likely there heirs will find it and throw it in the trash. Remember floppy discs? Some people still have some stuffed in a drawer or file cabinet, but no current PC has a floppy disc drive, thus no way to read it. If you have a local club repair shop that has been around for decades, they might have some old paper manuals/company product catalogs sitting in a box.

There was a book on the Macgregors -- my father had a copy. It might be around somewhere, or it might have been donated. But I'm sure some of the guys in the classic club forum might have that info, too.

Maltby's book on clubmaking/repair, which I purchased in the 80s, has indices that list specs for many different manufacturers.

I'm new to Golf WRX, but if you can PM me, I can scan the info you need and email it to you.

Here is the Hogan spec spreadsheet that I have. I think I got this off of this site and I don't have record of who is the original author.
Hogan Spec Spreadsheet.xls

The GolfWorks people might have records of the factory specs.

A book by GolfWorks founder and club designer Ralph Maltby has a specs appendix. It contains factory specs for dozens of club models from the 1970s and 1980s. The book version I have is called Golf Club Design, Fitting, Alteration and Repair, 4th ed, from 1995. (1st ed was from 1974).

People who attend the GolfWorks schools often get a copy in their class materials.

I cant say i know when what happened, but Ben Hogans specs from 1953 seem to have been what we still see on "players clubs", with a #2 iron that had 18* loft up to his #9 with 42* loft, so Players irons seems to have been the same since back to 1953 at least, but this spec might have been common before that. I did just look for specs from the steel shaft area or time, and Hogans 1953 bag is of the famous one as example.

Not a true controversy, hence the ""s. But, it has been observed by some that this could be a marketing ploy, so when you go in to get fitted for a new set, you are impressed at how much farther you can hit your new 7 iron v. your old one, but the new 7 may have a loft more similar to a 6 or even a 5 iron from an older set.

Anyway, as far as my purposes for this thread go, I really just want to know, for academic reasons primarily, what the specs, or at least the factory specs, are for the vintage clubs that I have been collecting.

1958 Mac Tourney FC4000 PT2

Spalding Golden Bear Reg 086

Wilson Sam Snead One Hundred

I have a list of others that I want to acquire if I see them at yard sales/on facebook market/craigslist/goodwill etc., and may want to be able to look them up later. It may also be fun to build out a database for others to access as well.