Yes hickory is fun! As soon as you say you do it someone will ask questions about the ball and if you use 100 year old clubs! Fyi Bobby Jones never used clubs that were 100 years old! 100 year old clubs are 100 years old and should be on a wall.

Looking down on these clubs can be intimidating. When people talk about how difficult blade irons are to play, I’d say these hickories make my Titleist 620 MB’s look like oversized, high MOI game improvement clubs. And teeing up a hand carved persimmon wood with the intent to get a ball in play seems like a Herculean task compared to my 460cc TSR3 driver.

I have two full sets of restored hickories now (in case one of my friends is courageous enough to have a go). I especially enjoy the challenge of playing them at older golf courses circa 1920s-1930s or earlier, to see how my scores stack up on those classic designs. I have come to fully appreciate the skills Bobby Jones and his era of golfers possessed when I play those courses. I am yet to try playing them with a gutta percha ball, but I have used the older wound ball versions.

As you found Andy, because the irons don’t really have any real grooves to speak of, each shot is a flyer carrying farther than modern clubs of the same loft, and the balls just roll out without any spin. Thus, approach shots into greens require a different strategy than playing with modern grooved irons. I haven’t quite yet reached the same handicap with these clubs that I hold with my most evolved current era clubs, but I have played rounds at even par, which feels incredible — but I should mention those rounds were with a Pro V1 ball — I’m not quite there with the wound balls…yet.

Thanks for the great article Andy. I enjoyed reading about your experiences and do hope I can get more of my buddies to get beyond their egos to play more than one round with me with the hickories. They usually go one round and that’s it, done. They all mention that golf is hard enough with their modern clubs and ball. They forget that golf is about having fun, and I can’t help but smile when I’m playing vintage clubs. And as you also mentioned Andy, it does make you much more aware of swing mechanics that can be directly applied to the modern game. Smooth transitions, solid and precise contact, and squaring up the club is much more critical with the older clubs with much much lower MOI values.

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Glad to hear you want to give it a shot. I’m sure you’ll love the experience of playing them!

Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoy trying that feeling out!

I did not, most hickory players use a modern, low compression ball. It would be interesting to try it with the same ball!

Thanks! Yes, most hickory players use a modern ball, I like a Callaway Supersoft. I haven’t tried a vintage ball yet, but there are people who do. There’s a company called Mcintyre Golf that makes vintage balls.

I use a modern day ball, something with low compression like a Callaway Supersoft or Chrome Soft.