~ CHAPTER 2. ~

On Clubs and Balls.

We are always inclined to think, when we see a thing well done, that its excellence depended greatly on the tools that were used in the doing: it is a notion so much more flattering than the idea, sometimes perhaps equally accurate, that the workman was inferior to that great majority to which we belong.

And it is this disposition in human nature that is mainly responsible for the changes in the fashion of golf clubs that have taken place during such time as golf has been matter of history.  We see this man or the other—Allan Robertson, long ago; young Tom Morris, later; Rolland, Vardon, or whom you will, in modern days—playing a peculiarly fine game with a club of a certain fashion, and at once the generality of the golfing world, concluding that this and no other is the fashion of club with which good golf is to be played, at once set to copy it, and play on the whole very much as they did under the previous regime.

IN OUR FATHERS’ TIME.

There is no doubt that we are better than our fathers in this matter—clubs and balls have improved; but they have improved chiefly by reason of the material of their manufacture, less by reason of their shape.  The great master clubmaker of the past was Hugh Philp.  Specimens of his art have come down to us, and nothing can show greater or nicer skill than their manufacture. They are perfectly finished; they are light, very slender in the shaft, long in the head, and the faces not nearly so deep as the faces of most clubs that are made to-day.  Old Philp, however, who made these perfect clubs, was scarcely our fathers’ club-maker; he worked rather for the grandfathers of most of us who are of the rising generation. No matter that he who writes is of the generation already, some while ago, risen.  One writes for the benefit of the generation that is rising, and the “we” is the symbol of that generation.  In Philp’s day golfers were few, there was but a moderate demand for clubs, and there was leisure to finish them perfectly.  In the time of our fathers, that is to say about twenty years ago, the demand began to be somewhat more than moderate, excessive—in excess of the reasonably good supply.  For one thing there was no time to season the wood; club-makers had to turn out clubs as they receied the wood—green; to turn out the balls as they received the gutta-percha--soft, and of indifferent quality. In Philp’s time, of course, the balls were of feather, of feathers packed within a casing of leather, which, after placement, was sewn up. These balls were laborious to make and expensive to buy.  Moreover, one good “top” with the iron would cut a hole in them, and the feathers would come out, as if out of a pillow: it is said that they were so closely packed within a ball that one ball’s feathers would “fill a top hat.”

Balls thus manufactured made golf a costly game, and few played it.  It was the invention of gutta-percha, coinciding with other influences, that made golf popular.  But, by all accounts, the old feather balls flew remarkably well—quite as well as the new “gutty” balls.

THE BALL FOR BEGINNERS.

But after a certain season of this green wood and this soft gutta-percha, the outcries of golfers aroused the makers at least to a sense that something better was needed.  They now, at any rate, make efforts to give one seasoned wood and seasoned gutta-percha. They are not always successful, but it is something that they realise the want, and on the whole they supply it fairly—much better, at all events, than they used to. A few years ago a ball called the “Eclipse” and more familiarly the “putty”—because “putty” and “gutty” rhyme, and because the new ball was softer than the other—came on the market and did excellent service.  It is on the market still, but some of its good service had the effect of running itself off the market. It had the effect of making the manufacturers of “gutty” balls attend to making them better, and with their improvement they have rather ousted the “putty” ball.  The “putty” is much cheaper; it is a wonderful ball for putting with—though its nick-name did not aim at the atrocious pun it might seem to imply—nevertheless it is not quite the same ball as the “gutty,” does not fly with the same flight, or go off the club with the same click, and it is better to make a beginning with the ball which you are likely to use when you grow up.  When it is said that the “putty” is cheaper, it must be understood to mean that it lasts better; its soft, elastic surface comes out again after being dented in, so that it does not show the effects of ill-usage.  It is also a very good ball in a wind, but it is almost impossible to stop it at all dead after a loft with the iron or mashie, and on the whole, after a very fair trial, it has failed to hold its own with gutta-percha.

IRON V. WOOD.

A change in the fashion of the game, that was in a measure due to the introduction of the gutta-percha ball, was the disuse of the old “baffy” spoon, for approaching. This was a club with a short stiff shaft and a very much “spooned” or laid-back face. It is rarely seen now, everyone approaching with an iron or a mashie. But in the days of feather balls, when, as has been said, a good hard “top” on the head meant destruction to the ball and a pecuniary loss of something like four shillings, it was not likely to be the habit of any man, least of all a Scot, to use the iron when wood would answer the purpose nearly, if not quite, as well. Therefore they used the baffy;  and there are a great many men who make very indifferent work, even to-day, with the iron for approaching, who would do a deal better to betake themselves to the “baffy.” There is more to be done with the iron, in the hands of a man who can use it skilfully, than with the baffy. With the iron a deal more cut can be put on the ball, so that it stops deader on alighting. But to use the iron moderately well is much more difficult than to use the baffy moderately. The fatal errors that ensue from misuse of the iron are not no likely to attend bungling with the wood; therefore many a man, it he would only pocket his pride, would find his game greatly improved by the substitution of baffy for iron. The green keeper’s mouth also would be full of blessings for, on inland greens at least, the iron in the hands of a duffer is much more severe on the turf. It was about in the beginning of “Young Tom” Morris’s career that the iron was coming into use, superseding the baffy for approaching, and he and David Strath, and other young professionals of their time, brought the use of the iron to such perfection, that, according to the law laid down at the commencement, all the golfing world began to follow them, so that a “baffy”is almost an obsolete club to-day.

There is another department of the game in which iron has very much, though less completely, superseded wood in the “putting.”  When the writer was a boy—say twenty years or more ago—such a thing as an iron putter was scarcely heard of.  They had been invented long before, but no one used them--for one thing “Young Tom” Morris used a wood putter, so all the world swore by wood. But in a very few years a wonderful change ensued. Iron putters became not only common but general, and to-day it is quite the exception to see a man using a wooden putter, though for the long running-up putts wood is certainly the better stuff. Off wood the balls seems to go in a more springy, bouncing fashionthan off the iron, which seems to keep it travelling more closely to the ground; generally there is rough ground to be passed at the start of these long putts, and with the bounding run that it gets off the wood the ball will pass over the roughness more easily and with fewer “bad kicks” than when running close to the ground off the iron.

A GOLFER’S PRESENT-DAY EQUIPMENT.

The tendency of the age has been to exchange wood for iron in golf clubs almost as much as in battleships. The old-time golfer used to carry a nicely graduated set of spoons, varying in length of shaft and gradient of face, from the long and practically perpendicular-faced driver to the short and much laid-back “baffy.” There were the “grassed club”—a slightly spooned driver—the long spoon, middle spoon, and short spoon. There were also the baffy spoon and the putter, both of wood;and probably the golfer of that day would carry but a single iron club, which he would call the “sand-iron.” The niblick is an invention not more than some thirty years old, and the mashie is a very much later invention  again. The cleek was sometimes among the old golfer’s stock-in-trade, but most of its functions could be performed equally well by one or another of his spoons. Compare this with the outfit of the iron-clad golfer of to-day. The latter has his driver and his brassey—this again is a new weapon, which, on its first introduction as a short-faced club, while the drivers and so on were still of the long-faced fashion affected by Hugh Philp, used to be called, by reason of its shape, a wooden niblick, and the addition of the plate of brass to its sole was a later notion, added for the sake of protecting it when playing off roads or the like hard and stony surfaces. But, to return to the point, the modern golfer carries driver and brassey, and more likely than not will exhaust theaccount of his wooden clubs. But of irons he has a plentiful assortment. He will have cleek, driving iron, lofting iron, niblick, mashie, and, most likely, iron putter. This list by no means exhausts all the possible varieties—their name is legion. He may have a jigger, or lofting cleek, he may have a nicely graduated set of lofting mashies or approaching irons, such as even so good a player as Bernard Sayers carries. In fact, he may, if it please him, with the addition of some of the fancy sorts, such as the “Fairlie” iron, etc., bring their number and weight up to such proportions that a small pony and cart would be the fitting means for their transport rather than a merely human caddie. The advantage of such a multiplicity of clubs is very doubtful. A man must be in very constant practice to have each one of such a multitude familiar to his hand. A comparatively few well-chosen ones will suit the majority of golfers better. Of wooden clubs, as has been said, a man will need a driver and a brassey, and it is always as well to have at least one spare driver in the set you carry, in case of accidents. Then, of iron clubs, taking them in the order of their driving power, we may begin with a cleek, or “driving mashie”—the latter being merely a short-faced cleek—an iron of medium loft, which may serve equally for work through the green and for longish approaches, a lofting mashie for the shorter approaches, and an iron putter. This probably will be found an adequate and reasonable equipment capable of dealing with all the ordinary emergencies of golfing life. If a man has the good fortune to be fairly ambidextrous, it will no doubt be useful to him at a pinch to have a left-handed club. There are circumstances in which a left-handed player might get a good ball away, while a right-handed man could do next to nothing with it; and I remember a notable instance of such a case arising, in whichthe late Bob Kirk, the St. Andrews professional, won an important match by virtue of having a left-handed club in his set and of his ability to use it. All men, however, are not given this ability, and to the majority a left-handed club is worse than useless.

To-day the fashion is for short clubs and light clubs. Vardon won his first Championship driving long balls with short, light clubs. The theory is that with a short club you are more accurate, and that with a light club you can impart more speed of travel to the head at the moment of impact. There can be little doubt, at all events, that a long club, putting a man at a distance from the ball, must make accuracy of hitting more difficult, and the best bit of advice you can give a beginner, even before you have seen his clubs, is probably to tell him to shorten them.

Good, too, both in theory and in practice, seems to be the present fashion of short-faced clubs, which thus have their weight and substance massed behind the point on which  the ball is struck. Of course, it is difficult not to believe that the fashion which we follow is the right one, yet all we who have played for twenty and thirty years must confess that we have followed many fashions, and trust we have held the same opinion about each. It is likely, therefore, that we shall follow many more before we finish, holding a like opinion about them too. Between the light and long-faced and moderately long-shafted clubs of Philp’s time came an era of heavy, short-faced, and immoderately long-shafted clubs. Now we are back at light clubs; we keep to the short-headed fashion, and we have reduced our shafts to shorter length than ever before. But who can say how long they will stay so, or when our clubs of to-day will take their place as fossils in the golfing museum at St. Andrews?

All original text and graphics on this site, as well as the particular layout and arrangement of text, graphic, and HTML elements, are © 2005-2006 by Steve Smith. All rights reserved: Neither this site nor any portion thereof may be copied or republished without the express consent of Steve Smith.