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The History of the Golf Club As a result of people finding my other Web pages on antique golf clubs, I've had several requests for information on the history of the golf club. There are a number of books on golf history, (see below), but many of these are hard to find. Some of the good sources are out of print. So I felt there would be some interest in a short piece on golf clubs and their history. This isn't a definitive history, and certainly not an academic treatise. It provides an outline of the subject, some thoughts of my own, and a list of books that you can try to track down.

When I wrote this piece in February 1998, there was practically nothing on the Web about golf history. Searching on the phrases "golf history" or "golf antiques" in the major search engines will now turn up a number of useful Web links: many more than it did a year or so ago. DN, June 1999] History of the Game Golf's origins are lost in history, but in its present form it is generally agreed to have been played in Scotland near St Andrews in the late 1400s. A lot has been said about fanciful links to a game played on frozen ponds in Holland earlier, but I think the connection with Golf is too tenuous to be credible. Golf as we know it was first recorded in Scotland in the region around Edinburgh in the 15th Century.

It became quite notorious then, and was even Golf Tickets banned for a while by the King of Scotland, as golfers had become so obsessed with the game that they neglected their archery practice. (Not much has changed.) In the subsequent 500 years, the game has advanced from one played with simple hand made clubs and leather balls stuffed with feathers to the game we know today, based on clubs designed by computer using advanced materials such as titanium and zirconia. The biggest changes to the game have been in systematisation of the rules and playing field, and the technology employed in the PGA Tour clubs and the balls. Actually hitting the golf ball towards the hole remains a dark art. It is as much a mystery now as it was in Fifeshire in the 1400s! Factors influencing the design of clubs There are a number of factors that have influenced club design, particularly irons.

These are the nature of the terrain in which they were used, the technology available to make them, the rules set up to govern what could or could not be used, and in recent years, US Open Golf physics and computer aided design. A major influence has been the golf ball itself. New club styles have tended to follow innovations in ball design. Firstly, terrain. The early irons were used somewhat sparingly because they could easily destroy the "feathery" golf balls of the day (to about 1850). Most shots were accomplished by a range of PGA Golf wooden clubs. The "rutting iron" was used to extract balls that had landed in cart wheel ruts. Wooden clubs in a variety of shaft lengths and face lofts were used for most shots. Second, technology. Iron clubs were made by blacksmiths until perhaps the 1870s. As a result they were rather crude, heavy implements with massive hosels (shanks).

They were hard to use and when drop forging became widely available, the mass of the clubs decreased considerably. The words "hand forged" on the back of hickory shaft clubs in the 1900s was in fact a misnomer, as the only thing done by hand by that time was the PGA Championship impressing of the makers name and cleek mark. The advent of drop forging in the late 1800s meant better iron clubs could be mass produced in factories. Wooden headed clubs were usually hand made by the local golf professionals until perhaps 1910, when factories started to make them due to the huge demand, as a result of golf's enormous growth in popularity.

The period from 1900 to 1930 was marked by many innovations in club design, such as the hollow faced irons (which didn't work), Walter Hagen's sand iron with the extended flange (still universal in one form or another, though without the concave face), a club that could be adjusted to give different lofts, the drilled hosels of the "Maxwell" irons intended to lighten the club head, and experimentation with a variety of alloys. PGA Championship Tickets There were many bizarre clubs made in this period, such as the "giant niblicks" whose faces measured over 6 inches (15cm) across! Probably the most important change was the move from smooth faces on the irons to the grooves we use today.

This started around 1908. The designers realised that you could get more backspin on a ball with a grooved club, and that this led to more distance. The coming of the modern golf ball in 1905, which displaced the solid "gutty", went hand in hand with this. Golf Steel shafts were introduced in the US in around 1925, and became standard everywhere from the mid 1930s, as they did not break like hickory shafts and could be produced reliably with uniform feel in matched sets. Since the 1980s, computers have been used increasingly to PGA design clubs and balls. Materials such as graphite shafts and titanium "metal woods" have come into widespread use in the last 20 years. Just how much help they give the average golfer is a matter for debate!

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