Hickory golf

 

I watched my husband transition from jeans to plus fours. Adding in a bow tie and cap, he now looked ready to appear in a Hercule Poirot mystery along with David Suchet.

He was off to play golf with hickory golf clubs. Always a passionate golfer, he knew about the clubs in theory. Only when we were in Scotland and he went to play at Musselburgh Golf Club, the world's oldest golf club in continuous existence (1567 - http://www.musselburgholdlinks.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3&Itemid=9), did hickory clubs enter his consciousness as an alternative to modern clubs. Because he was renting clubs at Musselburgh, he was offered the hickory.

He came home converted. Research revealed he was not alone. There are some three thousand or more hickory golfers throughout the world.

For a Christmas present, I told him I would buy him a set of clubs. He decided he wanted to support Joe Lauber, https://www.jblgolf.com/english/ because he was Swiss. We went to St. Gallen, where Lauber has his shop.

We learned that there were small groups of hickory golfers around the world. When they play, they stay true to the time period by dressing as if they were on the links in the 1920s.

My husband then started looking for, finding, and playing in hickory tournaments. He was elected to the board as European representative of the international Society of Hickory Golfers (https://www.hickorygolfers.com/) and is now secretary of the group.

In September at the Montreux Golf Club, Canton of Vaud, he will host the Swiss Hickory Golf Match Play championship. We are also planning, pandemic rules allowing, to play other tournaments or events in Scotland and other countries.

There are differences between the old-fashioned and modern clubs, including the care of the wood vs. metal. Some hickory players want to use only the original clubs, while others are happy with the newly-produced replica clubs. It doesn't matter really, and my husband now has both, having acquired a ‘playset’ of originals from Sweden, Netherlands and the States.

It is all in fun as he shoulders his clubs, kisses me good-bye and is off to play in his 1920s costume, looking more like he is on his way to a movie set.

I have noticed that whenever there's a golfing scene in a Hercule Poirot program, the golf clubs are made of hickory