Plus fours and big scores

I really got hold of that spoon. Now shall I lean on a mashie niblick or hit an easy jigger?” Conversations like that, which would earn you nothing but strange looks on most golf courses, quickly become commonplace when you’re immersed in the world of hickory golf. In fact, when you’re dressed head-to-toe in cashmere and tweed, tucked away in a bucolic part of Angus, Scotland, strolling down fairways that have been there over 150 years, only the occasional commuter train thundering past the 14th hole breaks the illusion that you have been transported back to the 19th century.

Hickory golf, which sees players use the kind of equipment you normally only see mounted on clubhouse walls, has undergone a surge in popularity of late. In the face of modern golf, where new technology promises to turn us everyday hackers into Tour stars on an almost weekly basis, it’s easy to understand the appeal of going back – way back – to basics. While “normal” golf is looking at a worrying set of statistics that shows fewer people are playing golf, sales of hickory clubs are on the up.

More and more people are deciding to play golf the way it used to be played, so we decided to join them and give it a bash. But, rather than the obvious route of getting hold of a set, taking them to the range to get used to them before venturing out on a course we know well, we entered ourselves into the biggest hickory competition going – the World Hickory Open Championship. The “world” in the title isn’t one of those misnomers used to make the contest sound more grandiose than it really is – we’re looking at you, Baseball World Series – hickory golfers from all over the world really do come to participate in this annual event.

“We’ve got more than a dozen countries represented,” says Lionel Freedman, the tournament’s founder and chairman. “When I started this tournament in 2005, the only other country with a hickory tournament was Sweden. Nowadays, I don’t think there’s a European country that doesn’t have a hickory open tournament. It’s gone from strength to strength; Sweden now has a hickory tour of about 20 tournaments.”

It seemed like a good idea months ago, when we entered, but now, arriving at Panmure Golf Club on the first of a two-day competition, we realise we’re as out of our depth as a garden gnome in the middle of the Atlantic. We have never hit a hickory club before, and tend to need all the help modern technology can offer just to keep the ball moving in roughly the right direction. All is not lost, however. A last-minute dropout left us a man short for the three-man event, so we enlisted the help of Keir McNicoll. Keir used to play off +4. Then he turned pro. He grew up minutes from the course. He’s had a membership at Panmure since he was in short trousers. And now we’ve got him back in them, as our plus-four-wearing secret weapon.

“I’d never tried hickory before,” he tells us, “but when I found out I’d be playing in this, I got hold of a set and have been practising with them quite a lot over the last week or so.” Our hearts swell with pride and we begin to visualise bringing home the World Hickory Open trophy, holding Keir aloft in return for him carrying us to victory. Then we collect the clubs that we’re going to be using for the event and those visions disappear in an instant. I think they must have run out of irons, because my bag seems to be full of rusty butter knives. Suffice to say, the heads don’t exactly look forgiving. The sweetspot, if there is one, looks harder to find than the Lost City of Atlantis. The good news is that hickory handicaps reflect the added difficulty. My 10 handicap becomes 15, while TG staff writer Joe Downes goes from 16 to 22. Keir, unfortunately, is stuck on scratch.

Even with the extra shots, we know we’re up against it in a field of mad-keen, regular hickory golfers. Some of them don’t even play golf in any other form anymore, so enchanted are they with the magic of hickory. With just half-an-hour to our tee-time, we rush to the range. Against all odds, we seem to be able to hit these ancient wonders reasonably well.

Instead of the anticipated series of shanks, duffs and fats, we produce shots not dissimilar to those we’d expect with our normal sets. It’s fun, too. It might be the novelty, but each decent shot with these clubs feels extremely rewarding. If you’ve ever “got away with one” with a modern driver, you’ll know that there’s little satisfaction to be found in hitting one out of the heel and seeing it squirt its way up the fairway. There’s no danger of that happening with a driver made of wood that’s distinctly lacking in speed pockets, compression channels, turbulators and cavity back ghost slots. The closest thing to adjustability on offer is keeping your wooden shafts warm, which an experienced hickory golfer tells us makes them less likely to snap. If you hit a decent shot with these, you know you’ve done all the hard work yourself.

As we near the end of our warm-up, our confidence grows and expectations rise. Then something bad starts to happen. Joe nearly whiffs a shot, sending it at right angles, scuttling between the legs of an unsuspecting Keir. We all have a chuckle. Until Joe hits his next shot, which doesn’t leave the ground on its 13-yard journey. This is followed by an increasingly worrying series of smothers, thins and near misses. The laughter has turned to genuine concern. We’re minutes away from our tee-time, with Sky Sports’ cameras waiting to immortalise whatever horrors we produce on the first, and our man has lost the ability to connect face with ball. With one range ball left, there’s a final chance for Joe to hit a good one and regain a small degree of confidence before the moment of destiny… Sadly, moments later that ball is bouncing across the car park that sits next to the range. Out of balls and out of time, there’s nothing for it but to face the music and hope for a reversal in fortunes.

If there’s one thing you don’t want to see when you’re walking to the first tee, holding unfamiliar clubs, preparing to hit a shot in front of a sizable crowd and potentially millions of television viewers, having just hit 15 of the worst shots of your life, it’s a two-time Major champion.

Unfortunately, Sandy Lyle is quite a keen hickory golfer, and decided to stay on after taking part in the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship and play in the World Hickory. His presence does little to calm our nerves, and I can see Joe shaking like a hypothermic leaf as he tentatively pulls his spoon from the bag. “On the tee from Peterborough, England, representing Today’s Golfer, Jon Downes,” bellows the announcer. Joe might be tempted to correct him, but in his state has probably forgotten his own name.

After a nervy scuff that barely passes the ladies – thankfully they didn’t have that rule back in those days – we’re off and running.

The next 18 holes sees a mixture of sublime and frankly awful shots, and is probably the most enjoyable round of golf I’ve had all year. There’s something about the ridiculousness of it all – trying to use a wedge with grooves that have collapsed in on each other, rendering them little more than a distant memory; pulling your putter from the bag and strolling onto the green, only to realise it’s actually an iron, not that it would make much difference; anxiously waiting to see whether your shaft survives a swipe through thick rough – that keeps the laughs coming and spirits high. And when you do hit a perfect shot, the feeling of satisfaction is immense. I’d liken it to seeing your favourite musician play an intimate, acoustic gig, away from the world of auto-tune and stadium special effects. You feel closer to the action.

“I’m not a big hitter at the best of times,” says Joe. “I actually really like this, because it’s not all about how far you can bomb your drives. I also think it’s great for your short game, because it teaches you that it’s often best to keep your ball low, rather than throwing it up in the air and expecting it to stop dead. That’s something I’ll take forward, even when I’ve got my normal clubs back.”

For Keir, his competitive nature leaves him hungry for improvement: “It’s quite frustrating, because I know I can play well with these clubs, but it is much harder than with modern equipment. With my usual clubs, I know exactly what they’re going to do, but these are a whole different story.”

The second day sees us split up and paired with individuals closest to us on the leaderboard, which sadly is no one near the top. I play with two Americans, both of whom divide their golf roughly 50-50 between hickory and modern equipment. They both have full sets of replica clubs, which makes my six genuine artefacts look as antiquated as they are.

“I like to take away the word ‘replica’,” says Lionel, when I ask him about the disparity in gear. “They’re made today as they were back then. When I started the tournament, I was keen on having only genuine pre-1935 clubs, but after a couple of years I decided that we should try to support the few people still making hickory clubs today. The great thing about the ‘modern hickory’ clubs is that you can get a set and start playing straight away, rather than spending a lot of time trying to get your clubs together from different sources and into a playable condition.”

It’s easy to see why hickory golf is becoming increasingly popular. “It’s getting bigger every year,” says Lionel. “I think the real beauty of it is that some of the really nice, old golf courses that have become out of date for modern golf can be enjoyed again, the way they were meant to be played. There are so many fantastic courses in the UK that are around 6,200-6,400 yards. They get destroyed by modern equipment, but hickory clubs mean the holes are the perfect length, with all the hazards in the right places.”

We wholeheartedly recommend giving hickory golf a try. It’s great fun, guaranteed to generate some laughs, and if nothing else, will make you appreciate your own clubs all the more. Next year’s tournament (worldhickoryopen.com) will be held at Carnoustie, and we’ll definitely be back to have another go.

Hickory club 

Driver …………………

Spoon …………………

Cleek ………………….

Driving iron …………

Sammy ……………….

Mongrel Mashie …..

Jigger ………………….

Mashie ………………..

Spade Mashie ………

Mashie Niblick …….

Niblick ………………..

Modern equivalent 

Driver

3-5 wood

2-iron

3-iron

4-iron

5-iron

6-iron

7-iron

8-iron

9-iron

Pitching wedge