CHOICE OF GOLF CLUBS

Evening Star, Issue 18333, 21 July 1923, Page 14

CHOICE OF GOLF CLUBS

SOME PERSONAL EXPERIENCES.

[Written by Harm VARnoj*. for the ‘Evening Star.’]

41 ways a matter of interest —and certainly of very great importance—to golfers is the choice of dubs. Somebody remarked to me the other day that I must have had some interesting experiences with new clubs and old favorites, and that I ought to set down a few observations on the subject. So let us see what can be done in this direction.

Take, for instance, drivers. My present driver is, I think, tho lightest I ever used, and that is saying a good deal, because 1 have always had _ a fancy for clubs that a lot of people liken to toys. In ray early days I had decidedly thick grips, but experience soon proved them to he cumbersome. Naturally I think that the overlapping way of holding tho chib is best, since it has served me faithfully throughout my golfing career, and thin grips'dielp to make it as comfortable as it ought to be. Nowadays I prefer fairly stiff shafts. A .whipping shaft for a wooden club was all right in the days of the gutta-percha ball, when one had to get all tho whippiness that was possible jfito tho swing. It is apt to bo a disadvantage nowadays, when the resiliency of the hall is such that it will fly like'a thing possessed as tho result of a stiff forearm blow at it, and wherdan important matter is lo control its direction so that it shall not enter any of the uumernn.s wing hunkers which have been created during the past fifteen years. Before I went to Scotland for the Open Championship of 1914. everybody who tried my wooden clubs said that the shafts were too stiff. I began to believe it myself, but somehow they seemed to work loose in just the right degree, and I am certain 1 never drove farther or better than in that championship at Prestwick which I was so fortunate as to win. MONGRELS AND IMAGINATION. Olio has some curious adventures with iron clubs. Now and again a real treasure asserts itself. Such was the club that I used to call my mongrel—an implement with a head shaped like a masliie, but without the loft. In fact, its second and more polite name was “the straightfaced mashio,” which may seem a contradiction in terms, but which certainly descriWnl the article.

It went through all my best golfing years without oneo letting me down; I used it for low shots up to the pin against the wind; for getting out of long grass, and for a variety of other shots for which I felt no other club would have done. Nobody ever managed to make a successful copy of it, although I tried myself many times to do so, and it has long since taken its place amongst- the relies—worn out, but still wonderful to behold —of a past era. I wish 1 had a forge. I would be always putting iron heads into tho _ furnace, and twisting and bending them into some new shape, so as to _ produce a mongrel that seized tho imagination—for it does not follow that the hard-and-fast shapes of the deck, mid-iron, masliie, and kindred clubs are- always suited to every individual.

Not long ago my favorite driving iron turned against me. I pulled shot with it. I took a little bit off the shaft, and that somehow seemed to make just tho difference that was required. THE MASHIE THAT CAME RACK. Mashies arc strange things. _ The best one I ever had was a club which one of my assistants bad sold to a member, who returned it to mo witli tho explanation that he could do nothing with it, and that there seemed to bo something wrong witli the way in which the head was fitted to the shaft. When it came back—l do not think I had over set eyes on it up till then — 1 tried it and said: “This is just tho mashio I want"—which only shows how differently certain dubs appeal to different people. My cleek is the one which I have had since I gave up a similar club of nearly twenty years’ acquaintance, at the end of which time tiro veteran naturally had very little viriiitv. Its successor was not at first altogether a success, but it became transformed into a most tractable and loyal ally when I took a bit off its toe, and made it almost square-toed. No doubt there was just a trifle too much weight at tho toe-end—a condition that often exists in irons, and which every golf ex does well to consider.

Often you can find a good friend amongst the discarded. For years I have had no better niblick than one which, not happening to like it in the first flush of its youth, I consigned to the humble duty of lifting rand out of the tce-box when teaching pupils at Totteridge. Suddenly I conceived the idea of trying it in tournaments, and it proved to bo just the niblick I wanted.