Playing Hickory Golf

[84425]

Yep that is correct.

[oldschoolrocker]

An update on my hickory round with the senior tourament group.

 

First, I had done my homework, with regard to the course beforehand, and determined it was not what one would call "hickory friendly" in the fact that it was narrow, OB and/or water lining both sides of every hole, elevated greens, and most with deep front and side bunkers. A very nice, yet resort target golf on Seabrook Island next to Kiawah.

Armed with this knowledge, yet still determined to put the hickorys in play, I decided to only break out the Driver/brassie on perhaps 3, or 4 holes at the most. My intentions being to hit mostly irons off the tee and on most holes defer to a pitch, or chip and hope to one putt.

That was my intention....not my reality.

Once on the course, I decided to us it as my field laboratory, and play the wooden club on all holes except the 3 pars.

The fly in this ointment was I had not counted on my overly excited state and my inability to throttle back on my driver swing, which in turn produced an array of shots OB, which were no fault of the club, but the torque which I was not yet factoring in.

Finally, I gave up on my attempts to hit a draw, my drive of choice with my persimmons and modern, opened up a bit, took the club a hair outside on the backswing and produced a quail high bullet thst hit the ground running. This, of course was on the last hole of the day.

The irons, outstanding implements, but, once again when I wanted a little extra and played the hard draw, they didn't know when to stop and the ducks on the pond weren't the only creatures quacking. The majority of the iron shots were played as a high fade and picked clean, and they flew true.

Pitching and chipping, about as expected, but with about a quarter more rollout.

Putting. For some reason I thought I would need to totally revamp my putting stroke with the hickory blade on faster greens. Not good. I finally reverted back to my normal putting routine and stroke and all was right once again in the putting world.

At the end of the day my ineptness to appreciate the subtle differences and nuisances of the hickory ballooned my score to 20 strokes over my norm.

A great day, all in all. Now I am beginning to learn the clubs and what each one will and will not do for me.

 

 

[ebeer]

Now I am beginning to learn the clubs and what each one will and will not do for me.

 

Sometimes, ok often, I believe the list of what my hickory clubs will do is much shorter than the list of what my hickory clubs will not do.

[oldschoolrocker]

ebeer,

in the round today I found myself questioning club selection, with regards to a specific type of lie, or shot shape. Would this best be played with X, or Y. Things of this nature that only come with experience.

A whole different kettle of fish, even from persimmon and blades, where this situation requires X as the most prudent play.

And, I have got to get the tee ball thing ironed out. There has to be some Goldilocks equation of "just right" amount.

[bajadulce]

... figured that it wasn't the speed or force of the downswing alone, but the transition between backswing and downswing, so tried to smooth that transition.

 

...Doing this I could even go after the ball much more than I had expected. Started hitting much better balls after that.

 

^^ This. You can swing hickory clubs very very hard, it just has to be a smooth acceleration as you mention. Some of my best shots w/ hickory have been when the situation required stepping on the gas to carry some obstacle. Sometimes I find myself swinging overly daintily in which case I tend to steer the ball. Sometimes you just have to give it a decent rip! :)

[Blade Junkie]

Just heard that UK hickory legend Stixman has just won the Net Division of the BGCS Scottish Hickory Championship !

 

Way to go at 70+ years old ... super stuff Chris !!! You are the Bernhard Langer of our hickory world LOL.

 

They've had a good weather week up there judging by the various pics posted on facebook ... rounds at Nairn, Brora, Royal Dornoch and Tain ...

 

 

 

 

<< Edit: And congrats also to Ben Hollerbach (hollabachgt) for defending his World Matchplay title in Philadelphia !!! >>

[stixman]

The shy, retiring and unassuming gentleman referred to above would like to point out that he won the George Colville Trophy at Brora on the Wednesday AND the BGCS Scottish Hickory Championship at Tain on the Friday despite having his handicap savaged after Brora!

The itinerary was Nethy Bridge, Nairn, Brora, Royal Dornoch and Tain.

 

He is now at home with a wet towel around his forehead.

 

btw, thanks, BJ

[Bella Woods]

Congrats stixman!

[oldschoolrocker]

BZ Stix

[jonnygrouville]

Great stuff! Do we get a winning "What's in the bag?" like they do for tour events and stuff?

 

[Kirasdad]

Bravo!

[scomac2002]

Great stuff! Do we get a winning "What's in the bag?" like they do for tour events and stuff?

 

Indeed! A winning WITB should be a requirement. ;)

 

My congratulations as well!

[Blade Junkie]

What rules??? WHO/SoHG rules?? Tad

 

Sorry Tad - missed your question originally ... it was not a BGCS event, so we used WHO rules, which are in effect the BGCS version of handicap adjustments anyway :)

 

Pros - zero shots

0-3 handicap - 3 shots

4-8 - 4 shots

9-14 - 5 shots

15-20 - 6 shots

21+ - 7 shots

[stixman]

Great stuff! Do we get a winning "What's in the bag?" like they do for tour events and stuff?

 

What? You mean like Ibuprofen and Talisker? :D

 

Seriously, I'll post tomorrow.

[mtg6193]

I have a buddy that's into this and he loves it. He plays great golf with those hicks. I've hit the irons and they aren't much less forgiving than my old Titleist blades.

[jonnygrouville]

Yes! Deep Heat, Red Bull, Black Label.

 

There's your autobiography title for free.

You're welcome.

 

[bajadulce]

Congrats Stix. Yes, a WITB sounds mandatory. Look forward to reading and seeing some pics. :)

 

Congrats Ben. Wow, repeat match play champ vs the pro in the final! That's fantastic. I read your comment over at GCA.com about there being no collars or transitions from rough around the greens? That would certainly wear me out mentally.

[stixman]

Here we go, see what you think. All the irons were sourced on Ebay UK and were 'sleepers' in mixed lots.

 

 

 

 

 

The driver is James Anderson, St Andrews, original shaft lengthened 8 inches to compensate for cut down, reseated of course.

The fairway wood is a Forgan Patent Maxmi wieghted to D2. The original weight is located immediately behind the insert, predating TaylorMade by 80 years.

The 80 year old 'rescue' club is a Mills BSI No 1, reshafted with new hickory this winter....amazing club!

Putter is a New Ray Mills which has been my 'go-to' for 21 years.

 

Now the irons....all Nicoll. The 3, 7 (mashie-niblick) and 8 (niblick) are stamped by Frank Guise, pro at Ilford, Essex (the Club 'which refused to die' apparently) Interestingly there are no other markings, so I guess it was a special order. I should love to know where the missing clubs are. All reshafted with Tad Moore shafts and play D0-D1, beautifully.

The 5 iron, Mashie, also has a Tad Moore shaft and is stamped Ballantyne and is a Moortown club, 1929 Ryder Cup venue. I was a member there for 24 years so it has a special place in my bag.

The Sand-wedge is an early Howitzer, D5 which I've had for a couple of years.

The bag is a Whitehurst and the head covers are PGF Kangaroo skin.

 

Talisker and IbuProfen need no introduction.

[ebeer]

^^wow^^

 

Nice work, looks like some patience and diligent searching. Congrats...beautiful.

[majic]

Very Stix. Nice set. Good to see you got the win. Tad

[stixman]

Thanks Tad.

The colouring and grain enhancement I get on the shafts are my own concoction and get much admiration as 'looking really old and authentic!'

[Blade Junkie]

Good to see that you knocked back half a bottle of Talisker en route to your success ... :)

 

 

I've always loved your "can do" approach to club maintenance. Not many people would even attempt a 3 inch extension let alone 8 inches. Good stuff !

[MoaningM]

And the annadin in readiness for the morning after the Talisker :)

 

Would love to have seen how you restored/extended that shaft.

 

Congrats as well. :)

[jonnygrouville]

Splendid. Original heads like these with modern shafts from Tad?! That's pretty sweet.

 

Lovely looking insert in that Forgan.

 

Kangaroo scrotum presumably.

 

[Blade Junkie]

Those three Frank Guise irons look like unstamped Precisions ?

[bajadulce]

Wow! Those are some badazz clubs.

 

But I would expect that from a collector and owner of a club rental biz who has been doing this for so long now. Beauties! :) :wub:

 

Quick question... which I'm sure has been answered before and probably even in this very topic. I'm just too lazy to search. What benefit does whipping that extends all the way to the hosel vs that such as what Ralph advocated a half inch or so above? I've only experienced blowouts at the thin part of the shaft. Seems that all my failures at the hosel were something that no whipping could have prevented?

 

Also I started a topic in the club building forum about pouring an epoxy insert looking for suggestions/pointers. Here's a link

http://www.golfwrx.c...n-any-thoughts/

 

I have an old persimmon driver in which the face has started to cave in and am interested in adding an insert. I know fitting an insert is something that is done all the time, but was exploring the idea of pouring an epoxy one.

 

I have lots of fiberglass experience and just thought it might be a reasonable thing to try. The beauty being that poured epoxy would naturally be a perfect fit.

 

Some thoughts, ideas and experiments:

• Add a few screws into the face for the epoxy to grab a hold of?
  
• Add some tint to the epoxy so it wouldn't be "clear"
  
• Add some chopped fiberglass for additional strength?
  

Anyone ever do anything like this or have any pointers?

 

Thought I'd ask here too.

[ebeer]

Good article from Dave Wood who does incredible work: http://davewoodarts....ment.html. The biggest question here is where to get the insert material. I'm sure you could contact Dave Wood, Mike Just, or Tad Moore to get some of their insert blanks. For me (and my wood skills or lack of) cutting the face to a uniform depth would be very difficult. I would probably cut out either a geometric shape on the face (trapezoid or triangle) or maybe use a hole saw for a perfect centered circle. Drill out the center to relative uniform depth then epoxy fill, cure, and shape for a poured fancy face effect. Black epoxy would work fine and not require tinting of clear. Epoxy will haze during sanding, but goes shiny again with finish coat.

 

A favorite brassie of mine suffered a large face crack that ended up losing a big chunk during my round at USHO last year in Dayton. Fortunately Mike Just was on hand to lend some advice, which was to drill out to create bigger reservoir for epoxy. Pour epoxy, cure, and shape. I used a clear epoxy, which when finished clearly looks like a repair not an insert (an amateur one at that) but the face is smooth, strong, and has held up in play.

 

Maybe three overlap circles epoxy filled something like this?

 

[stixman]

Bajadulce,

To be quite honest, I don't know!

Ralph started doing it I believe to stop the failures just above the hosel, what I call a sheer fracture. At that time about 15 years ago this was the most common failure in my personal club shafts, even on brand new shafts. Against my sense of aesthetics I started doing this as well. Also it became common practice and I couldn't sell a club unless it had this feature.

Yes, I stopped getting fractures.

However, I also refined my swing, it became less handsy and smoother. I post-rationalised the fractures as being due to an over-fast transition at the top of the swing, in other words I jumped it at the top. This caused the shaft to overload the twist inherent in hickory shafts and by the time the club-head got to the bottom of the swing it was already over-stressed......and, ping , it sheered off.

[teevons]

Wow! Those are some badazz clubs.

 

But I would expect that from a collector and owner of a club rental biz who has been doing this for so long now. Beauties! :) :wub:

 

Quick question... which I'm sure has been answered before and probably even in this very topic. I'm just too lazy to search. What benefit does whipping that extends all the way to the hosel vs that such as what Ralph advocated a half inch or so above? I've only experienced blowouts at the thin part of the shaft. Seems that all my failures at the hosel were something that no whipping could have prevented?

 

Also I started a topic in the club building forum about pouring an epoxy insert looking for suggestions/pointers. Here's a link

http://www.golfwrx.c...n-any-thoughts/

 

I have an old persimmon driver in which the face has started to cave in and am interested in adding an insert. I know fitting an insert is something that is done all the time, but was exploring the idea of pouring an epoxy one.

 

I have lots of fiberglass experience and just thought it might be a reasonable thing to try. The beauty being that poured epoxy would naturally be a perfect fit.

 

Some thoughts, ideas and experiments:

• Add a few screws into the face for the epoxy to grab a hold of?
  
• Add some tint to the epoxy so it wouldn't be "clear"
  
• Add some chopped fiberglass for additional strength?
  

Anyone ever do anything like this or have any pointers?

 

Thought I'd ask here too.

 

Bellawoods had a large amount of fiber insert material ??

[Blade Junkie]

Bubba Watson apparently interested in playing in this year's US National Hickory Championship ?

 

http://golfweek.com/2016/06/02/tour-bubba-watson-us-open-tuneup-hickory-shafts/

 

That would be pretty cool !