Tashyboy
Please don’t ask to see my tatts 👍
No probs me man, I don’t think he knew how old they were. They can go back in the garage.
Vintage Golf
- Thread starter Crow
- Start date
sunshine
Well-known member
Never looked at this thread before...
I would like to politely ask some questions:
1. How do you define vintage?
2. How many sets of clubs do you have? How many do use for playing and how many are museum pieces only?
3. What do you do about worn grips?
4. Is your other equipment vintage too, e.g. balls, tees, bag?
5. Do you eschew all modern equipment e.g. GPS, laser etc?
6. Do you also wear vintage clothing? I'm thinking about shoes and gloves in particular but other golf clothing too?
7. And the big one... why play with vintage equipment at all?
Thanks, no obligation to respond, i'm just fascinated!
I would like to politely ask some questions:
1. How do you define vintage?
2. How many sets of clubs do you have? How many do use for playing and how many are museum pieces only?
3. What do you do about worn grips?
4. Is your other equipment vintage too, e.g. balls, tees, bag?
5. Do you eschew all modern equipment e.g. GPS, laser etc?
6. Do you also wear vintage clothing? I'm thinking about shoes and gloves in particular but other golf clothing too?
7. And the big one... why play with vintage equipment at all?
Thanks, no obligation to respond, i'm just fascinated!
Crow
Crow Person
Good questions! I'll do my best to answer them all.
1. How do you define vintage?
There isn't a formal definition, unlike Hickory golf where generally it's agreed that the cut-off date is 1935 and clubs must be made before that date, although proving your hickory clubs are of a certain date can be tricky.
For vintage clubs different people have their different views but most would say that vintage are clubs made before the demise of the wooden driver, approximately 1985.
It generally means blades for irons too although early cavity backs are sometimes played.
Putters should also be of similar era.
2. How many sets of clubs do you have? How many do use for playing and how many are museum pieces only?
Iron sets are my weakness and it scares me to have to admit that I have about 50 sets now
I've got a lot of woods too but a many of those need restoration before I'd be happy playing them.
Putters, around 40.
I try and play them all on a rotational basis (unless they need some work doing as per the woods), the only set I'm unlikely to ever play are a ladies set from the 1930s.
3. What do you do about worn grips?
If at all possible I'll keep the grips that were on when I got them but some are too far gone and I'll just replace with cheap new ones.
Old leather grips can usually be brought back to a playable condition.
4. Is your other equipment vintage too, e.g. balls, tees, bag?
For general play I use modern balls but if I'm meeting up for a game with other vintage club collectors then we'll often use old size 1.62" balls, Dunlop 65s for example.
I also use old bags (unless it's going to be raining in which case I'll use a new waterproof bag. Occasionally I'll wheel out an old trolley.
Tees are hard to tell apart anyway but I don't use plastic.
5. Do you eschew all modern equipment e.g. GPS, laser etc?
If playing hickory then GPS is frowned on in competition.
If playing vintage clubs then GPS is generally accepted, try and find a course planner these days!
But when you're playing a different set of clubs each week, knowing exactly how many yards you've got left is often the least of your concerns... What loft the club you're holding has and how long the shaft is are more important questions....
6. Do you also wear vintage clothing? I'm thinking about shoes and gloves in particular but other golf clothing too?
I guess that you're referring to steel spikes for shoes? It would be nice but most clubs frown on these.
I've found the occasional vintage glove at the bottom of a bag of clubs I've bought but the last thing you'd want to do with one of these is try and put it on!
Vintage style clothing is encouraged for hickory but it's a loose term and anything goes really.
If you've got some 1970s check trousers in Jack Nicklaus or Tom Watson style then go for it!
I prefer to steer away from the latest shoe fashions and if a decent pair of old shoes come up in my size I'll consider them.
7. And the big one... why play with vintage equipment at all?
The toughie!
I started after watching a YouTube Vlog with Steve Buzza and Rich Woods which just looked great fun, I'm sure it's referenced early on in this thread if you look for it.
There were four forumites who met up for that first game at Whittington Heath, I enjoyed it so much that I started playing more and more with vintage clubs and then hickory.
But I'd also become disenchanted with modern golf and the push by manufacturers and coaches to place more and more reliance on technology which has led to the one-dimensional "driver, short iron" golf often debated in other threads.
I wanted to play the whole game; fairway woods, long iron approaches, etc.
I didn't want my driver to look like a toaster on the end of a stick, or my putter to resemble a Klingon starship.
After a while I wanted to try playing old clubs in competition, but this led to another problem - handicaps.
If I played a few games with vintage gear then my handicap would most likely go up, but what would happen if I switched back to new gear with that higher handicap?
I'd effectively be cheating.
So for me it meant I had to make a decision, either only play modern clubs in competition or go the whole hog only play vintage clubs all the time. It was an easy decision for me!
The history side of golf has become more and more interesting to me as well.
I've even bought clubs I've seen on ebay for the sole reason that if I didn't then it's highly likely that they'd end up going to landfill.
Unfortunately both the size of my garage and the health of my marriage mean that there are limits to how often I can do this though.
fundy
Ryder Cup Winner
sunshine
Well-known member
Thank you for the full responses. I admire your integrity regarding your handicap. I've heard people say that using modern equipment is akin to cheating, but for you it's reality! The evolution of woods is clear, but is there a huge difference between a modern set of blades and a set from the 80s?
I can understand the appeal of playing a traditional course with the equipment that was around when the course was built. The idea of playing it how the architect had designed it. I think you can hire hickory clubs to play the old links Musselburgh, which sounds really interesting.
The bit which is arbitrary is deciding which era of technology to go with. I guess you have picked your favorite era. But if you are using 50 year old clubs, at the time they were considered modern technology and are much more advanced than 100 year old clubs! Where to draw the line!
I can understand the appeal of playing a traditional course with the equipment that was around when the course was built. The idea of playing it how the architect had designed it. I think you can hire hickory clubs to play the old links Musselburgh, which sounds really interesting.
The bit which is arbitrary is deciding which era of technology to go with. I guess you have picked your favorite era. But if you are using 50 year old clubs, at the time they were considered modern technology and are much more advanced than 100 year old clubs! Where to draw the line!
Crow
Crow Person
The biggest changes in irons was the introduction of cavity backs in the 1970s which gave less loss in distance and direction when the sweet spot was missed.
Recently the focus has been on hot faces; thinner faces with a greater trampoline effect as used in most hollow headed irons on the market today. These look similar to a blade but have a hot face and also allow for perimeter weighting so they're much easier to use than a 1980s blade.
In my book a blade is an iron that is forged or cast from a single piece of metal with very little weighting to influence ball flight, for instance a mussell back would still pass as a blade.
Before the introduction of cavity backs there'd been little change in irons for about 80 years apart from a gradual thickening of the head and a small reduction in size.
This is why I draw the line at metal woods and cavity back irons, not so much for the date as for the massive shift in the way the game was played.
I don't stick with one era of clubs and play from hickory clubs of around 100 years ago to mid 1980s clubs, so a 70 or 80 odd year span.
But most of my golf I play with sets from the 1950s to 1980s as these can be competitively played in a game against anyone using modern clubs by the fact that my handicap has self-adjusted to suit the limitations of these clubs.
As I said above, 50 year old clubs are not that different to 100 year old clubs apart from the shafts, hickory was very variable as you can imagine and top players would hit handfuls of clubs trying to find a shaft that felt good. In fact in hickory days clubs were usually acquired one at a time (often ordered from the Pro who would make a club to suit the golfer) and a set was made up of different clubs from different makers, it wasn't until the late 1920s that "matched sets" started to appear.
The growth of golf in the 1920s and 1930s and the demands for good hickory shafts was one of the influences on the development and eventual adoption of steel shafts. The same is true to a lesser degree with persimmon heads, most of the best persimmon (old growth with tight grain) had been used by the 1970s and right up to the arrival of metal woods Pros would search for 1950s clubs which had the best grain and cherish these as long as they could.
sunshine
Well-known member
Great stuff.
What about modern blades? I'm thinking classic Mizuno MP irons, MP4, MP5, MP18 etc.
Even Taylormade, which is probably the epitome / nemesis brand in terms of making their clubs look like they belong in a spaceship, make a one piece blade.
https://www.taylormadegolf.eu/P7TW-Irons/DW-AL447.html?cgid=taylormade-irons#start=8&
Are these already vintage?
What about modern blades? I'm thinking classic Mizuno MP irons, MP4, MP5, MP18 etc.
Even Taylormade, which is probably the epitome / nemesis brand in terms of making their clubs look like they belong in a spaceship, make a one piece blade.
https://www.taylormadegolf.eu/P7TW-Irons/DW-AL447.html?cgid=taylormade-irons#start=8&
Are these already vintage?
sunshine
Well-known member
Footnote, TM are selling the P7TW irons with a custom option to get the same lofts as Tiger, ie 49 degree PW. Totally pointless, but great bit of marketing!
Crow
Crow Person
Vintage doesn't really have a set definition but does imply age, another word often used by club collectors for the period 1950 to 1985-ish is "classic", again this doesn't have an actual definition but gets us away from the age thing.
I'd say that clubs such as Mizuno's forged blades like the MP-4 are classic style clubs in that they're a single piece of metal with no cavity, hollow body or multi-material construction.
If you turned up with a set of MP-4s for a friendly competition with a few other vintage collectors you'd get a load of ribbing and probably be excluded from winning the huge prize that such high profile competitions award but you could still play.
But why would you want to t5urn up with the MP-4s?
A quick check on ebay and a set of MP-4 irons (if you can call 7 clubs, 4 to PW a set?) appear to sell for £200 to £300 whereas you could have a set of Spalding Pro-Flite currently on for £25 or a set of Harold Bird & Son Max Faulkner Avenger (which funnily enough are the first vintage set I bought!) for £32 and both of these are 3 to SW, 9 clubs.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/spalding...294263?hash=item23d98604b7:g:bk8AAOSw21Fe6HNP
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Vintage-...688381?hash=item2aeaaacc3d:g:1EYAAOSwANle24hT
D
Deleted member 23344
Guest
I’ve often wondered about picking up an old set of blades to give them a go but, as a high handicapper, I am sure I would struggle as my ball striking is a bit variable. Would I be right in thinking that (say) those Spalding irons on eBay would be pretty unforgiving?
D
Deleted member 3432
Guest
There will be a lot us on this forum that will have played plenty of golf with clubs similar to those in the past.
Certainly concentrates the mind as it can be quite painful on a cold day when you catch it a little clean
Brammall Mac
Newbie
After playing with Nick at Cavendish last year I took the plunge and bought some Browning 440 irons (3-SW) on eBay. Newly re-gripped and delivered for £40. Throw in a couple of old woods (Browning & Aldridge) & putter (Ben Sayers) and a retro carry bag and I got a whole new set for just over £80.
I’m not a good golfer but probably use them 1 round in 3 and it’s great fun.
I’m not a good golfer but probably use them 1 round in 3 and it’s great fun.
Crow
Crow Person
As saving_par says, at one time blades were all that were available so everyone played them.
They're not as forgiving as modern clubs but they do improve your striking as you focus more on hitting the ball with the middle of the club rather than swinging wildly and relying on the club's forgiveness to save you.
The pictures of the Spalding set aren't the best to tell what design they are but the soles are reasonably thick so I'd guess that they have quite a bit of sole weighting to aid in getting the ball airborne. Spalding were once a highly respected maker, these would be a great set to try, the heads look in good condition but the grips look as though they'll need replacing.
If you do get them make sure that you adjust your distance expectations, the 5 iron from this set will have the loft and length of a modern 7 or 8 iron so you'll need to factor that in.
The clubs don't hit the ball shorter, they're just numbered differently.
Crow
Crow Person
I'm guessing that was in the MacKenzie match?
What a shame that's had to be cancelled this year.
Glad you're enjoying your old clubs!
Brammall Mac
Newbie
It was indeed that match - it’s one of my favourite courses and a lovely event. Those clubs certainly get peoples attention when I use them and they’re nice to hit.
Crow
Crow Person
The 440s were revolutionary and spawned a short lived craze for low profile irons, just about every other manufacturer produced a set, the big American makers like MacGregor and Wilson plus most of the larger UK makers, some examples of which below.
Bigfoot
Tour Rookie
My first clubs, that were given to me by a friend, included Max Faulkner Avenger irons !! And I still have them and used them at Whittington.
Crow
Crow Person
Found this classic on the Letters page of Golf World October 1988.
I've covered the name of the writer as for all I know they might be a member of the forum....
I've covered the name of the writer as for all I know they might be a member of the forum....
Crow
Crow Person
Many thanks to 2blue who collected these for me a few months back, nice set of Slazenger Gary Player clubs, 2 to SW in the irons and 1, 2 and 3 woods.
D
Deleted member 23344
Guest
What a selfish arrogant ***! Hopefully, now he is 32 years older, his handicap is much higher than it was then and he is now excluded from events that he wishes to enter.
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