Vintage Golf

Ser Shankalot

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The ones on the lower right (Mentor) catch my eye - classically blond ice queen to my taste.
But a dumb question here - are these playable for the non-expert hacker or more eye and arm candy?
 

Crow

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The ones on the lower right (Mentor) catch my eye - classically blond ice queen to my taste.
But a dumb question here - are these playable for the non-expert hacker or more eye and arm candy?

They're playable, maybe score a few shots higher if you don't adapt your style and expectations.
They need to be hit closer to the sweet spot than most modern clubs so you can't swing all out with them but by concentrating on quality of strike a good score is well within range for most.

I'm a 16.4 index so no great shakes, it's all about what you want from golf.
I used to be score obsessed but now I enjoy golf's heritage and a nice looking set of irons, the score will be what it will be.
 

OnTour

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Mentors look a lot like my PB9 ORKA's in style, I wonder if you had a new graphite shaft fitted to some if they perform better? 30 years on shafts must be ahead of the game.

My MacLeonard irons are old style lofts over super de-lofted stuff that's made today :) I reckon I'd be OK with old stuff and new shafts.
 

Crow

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With James Bond going to the 19th hole in the sky this year, will we ever know what clubs he played against Goldfinger?

Good question!

Just watched the scene on YouTube.

I'm pretty sure Goldfinger has Ben Hogan clubs, the irons are maybe the IPT model and the woods look to have the Hogan Speedslot.

As for Bond, this is the clearest shot of his irons and I don't recognise the head at all, it looks like it may say Penfold but none of the Penfold models I've recorded look remotely close.
His woods have a butterfly sole plate and are plain black, maybe MacGregor?

1607273926666.png
 

Crow

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There’s nothing like that feeling of excitement when a parcel of clubs arrives!

Except when it’s tempered with anxiety as the clubs have obviously been “packaged” by a non-golfer…. Fingers crossed that they’ve survived the journey.

image.png.63314c9aa16de2cbe9ba0e8258ac8876.png


So far, so good....


image.png.d3055aceb936f3042a1754db248fc529.png


And they're out and appear to have survived unscathed! 2 to 8 iron plus number 9 putter from that scandalously overlooked period in golf, the 1930s. .

These are an early set of coated steel shaft clubs by St Andrew Golf Co and appear to be a variation of the Oggmented club patented by Willie Ogg and produced in numbers by Wilson in America. The design has been called the forerunner of the game-improvement iron as it was one of the first to redistribute weight to assist strike, although as the primary weight movement is to the toe rather than perimeter weighting I wouldn't call them GI by any stretch of the imagination.

Wilson and St Andrew Golf Co had a relationship for around 30 years and the Wilson influence can be seen in several STAG clubs from the 1930s up to around 1960.

image.png.12316595fdbf34f8116567bd24b0dc0b.png

image.png.aebe723dbc1f09aac029d0ae6647f20d.png

image.png.3844a56c72c18307c69d89867b99dc32.png

image.png.af191f7b0358da91465dfcc9fa112360.png

image.png.5ed6789ddc2a3c658fccdbd877cbfc4b.png


Condition is pretty good for such an old set, shafts appear solid and the "Reminder" grips look to be original, right down to the stamped end plugs.

The shafts are unusual in two ways;
  • Firstly there's no separate piece between the hosel taper and the shaft proper as is usually the case.
  • Secondly the shafts are circular in cross section for the first 14 inches but then change to hexagonal, hopefully this can be seen in the picture below.
image.png.8f7f966b69d93f19c218c0b8a9272e5b.png



The only "fault" I've found so far is that the black band at the top of the hosel is missing on the 2 iron, but this does show how the coating thickens up as it tapers to the hosel. This should be an easy repair in any event.

image.png.85c242ce915d94fb3e6210ed54d48393.png



I'll not be hitting these until well into the new year when the weather has improved dramatically, but in the meantime will enjoy their beauty. :D
 

Liverbirdie

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There’s nothing like that feeling of excitement when a parcel of clubs arrives!

Except when it’s tempered with anxiety as the clubs have obviously been “packaged” by a non-golfer…. Fingers crossed that they’ve survived the journey.

image.png.63314c9aa16de2cbe9ba0e8258ac8876.png


So far, so good....


image.png.d3055aceb936f3042a1754db248fc529.png


And they're out and appear to have survived unscathed! 2 to 8 iron plus number 9 putter from that scandalously overlooked period in golf, the 1930s. .

These are an early set of coated steel shaft clubs by St Andrew Golf Co and appear to be a variation of the Oggmented club patented by Willie Ogg and produced in numbers by Wilson in America. The design has been called the forerunner of the game-improvement iron as it was one of the first to redistribute weight to assist strike, although as the primary weight movement is to the toe rather than perimeter weighting I wouldn't call them GI by any stretch of the imagination.

Wilson and St Andrew Golf Co had a relationship for around 30 years and the Wilson influence can be seen in several STAG clubs from the 1930s up to around 1960.

image.png.12316595fdbf34f8116567bd24b0dc0b.png

image.png.aebe723dbc1f09aac029d0ae6647f20d.png

image.png.3844a56c72c18307c69d89867b99dc32.png

image.png.af191f7b0358da91465dfcc9fa112360.png

image.png.5ed6789ddc2a3c658fccdbd877cbfc4b.png


Condition is pretty good for such an old set, shafts appear solid and the "Reminder" grips look to be original, right down to the stamped end plugs.

The shafts are unusual in two ways;
  • Firstly there's no separate piece between the hosel taper and the shaft proper as is usually the case.
  • Secondly the shafts are circular in cross section for the first 14 inches but then change to hexagonal, hopefully this can be seen in the picture below.
image.png.8f7f966b69d93f19c218c0b8a9272e5b.png



The only "fault" I've found so far is that the black band at the top of the hosel is missing on the 2 iron, but this does show how the coating thickens up as it tapers to the hosel. This should be an easy repair in any event.

image.png.85c242ce915d94fb3e6210ed54d48393.png



I'll not be hitting these until well into the new year when the weather has improved dramatically, but in the meantime will enjoy their beauty. :D

Is this rustless warranty transferable, Nick? :)
 

Crow

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I'd not heard of this club before but the idea made me laugh.
:ROFLMAO: (That's an image of me laughing)

A synopsis for anybody who can't be bothered to read the whole thing below:
With manufacturers chasing market share by cranking lofts to give longer hitting irons, Wishon Golf had the idea of using interchangeable numbers on the sole of the club so that the clubmaker could match the club number to the expectations of the buyer by putting the required number onto whatever loft, eg a 32 degree lofted club could be a 5, 6, 7, or 8 and so on.


WISHON GOLF 752 O/S IRONS

Prior to the 1980s there actually was an informally agreed standard in the golf industry for loft in the design of irons. No matter the company, the 1-iron had a loft of 17*, the 2-iron was 20* and then each iron through the SW increased in loft in increments of 4*. Starting in the 1980s various companies began to break ranks and begin to lower the lofts of their irons, chiefly as a means to sell more sets on the basis of promising more distance in a very competitive industry that was beginning to become crowded with golf equipment companies.

Tom has always been highly critical of this trend because it is rooted in a desperation by companies to simply sell more product by preying on the lack of technical awareness of golfers who when hitting a new model iron longer than the same number iron in a previous model are easily fooled into believing the reason for the distance increase is from a technical breakthrough by the company. While some companies attempted to defend their move into lower lofts on their irons as needed to offset the effect of a lower CG, the explanation was exposed as false when it became apparent that when each club in the bag from driver to sand wedge is hit square and on-center the height of all shots is the same.

Tom’s main area of protest against the industry’s trend to lower iron lofts was the fact that when the first company deviated to lower the lofts of each iron in a set, every company had to do the same or risk losing sales when golfers would hit the lower loft sets and think they were superior to other models with higher lofts per head number. Clubmakers had begun to tell Tom that they had lost sales of Wishon model irons when their customer hit shots longer with a lower loft model from another company for the only reason that the lofts were lower.

Tom admits that the primary reason he designed the 752 O/S irons with the ability to allow the Clubmaker to install the choice of head number on the sole of each iron was as a protest to the golf industry’s trend to continually lower the lofts of irons as a means to sell more sets. If the consumer golfer told the Clubmaker he hit the XYZ iron longer than a Wishon iron, the Clubmaker could offer the 752 O/S model and simply switch the sole number higher to allow the golfer to hit the same number iron in the 752 O/S as far or farther than the other company low loft iron.
 

Crow

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Time for another old magazine advert, waterproof golf shoes (or lack of) are a recurring theme on the forum pages, seems like they had the solution back in 1984.
Why didn't these ever catch on? :unsure:
And look at the colour combination in the last line! :love:

1610713280544.png
 
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