Club Me – Please!
Comparing the actions and abilities of professional golfers with that of a brigade of Geezer Golfers is an exercise in futility. What we see on the TV coverage of the PGA bears no resemblance to those of us lodged in Dufferdom.
For example, there are the caddies, offering expert advice on the right club to use on each shot. The man they are advising knows the precise distance he can hit each club. Does he need a sixty-yard shot? Well then, take the sand wedge and hit it one inch in front of your right foot. Oh, and only use a sixty-percent swing. The caddy knows, the pro knows, the only problem is that we duffers have no idea how to make that shot. Worse, we have no one who could tell us which club to use.
We of the caddyless contingent must struggle on and seek out the right club. Of course, as I have previously opined, we Geezers have too many clubs in the bag to begin with. We are the willing victims of the barrage of advertisements that appear from TV sponsors of the game.
We are told that the only way we can improve our game is to buy their brand of clubs. If only we had the driver that Bryson or Jon, or Rory uses we would be golden. No matter that Geezers have a swing speed that matches a VW bus trying to climb Pike’s Peak. Those three-hundred-yard bombs that we see on the tube will never be achieved by your average septuagenarian. As for the wedges and super foam-infused irons, well good luck. At least with them sticking out of your bag you look like you know what you are doing.
Personally, I try to hit something that I think will go straight. Distance, well that is subject to the prevailing wind and a good downhill roll. Still, I got to thinking about how we came to this place where a commentator can say, this will be just a short 9-iron to get on the green.
Think of what it might be for our forebears, you know the Geezers of old. Would a commentator back in the days of radio and print reporting say something like, it looks like a good whack of his niblick will get him on the green?
Niblick? What the hell is a niblick? I suspect today’s TV audience would be baffled. Of course, using a spade mashie or a jigger would leave them clueless. Yet not so many years ago, the woods and irons that today we know by number had names rather than numbers. I am pretty sure that today’s TV golf audience would find themselves lost in a world of cleeks, baffies, spoons, brassies, bulgers, Sunday clubs, or spade-mashie. Still, in pre-WW2 days these were common enough. Just read a some of P.G. Wodehouse’s golf stories and you will be regaled with such names.
Of course, back then irons were indeed made of iron. Heavy forged metal attached to long ash or yew shafts that weighed a ton. None of that synthetic, hollow-faced stuff back then. When you hit a ball with an iron you knew it was hit. You might judge your distance by the amount of reverberation that coursed back up your arms. Woods, of course, were made of wood. Persimmon heads grooved and sometimes with a quadrant of screws set into the face to define the sweet spot. Where the heads of irons were swedged onto the wooden shafts, the heads of drivers were drilled. The shaft was then glued into the head and thread was wound around the fitting and then shellacked in place. Despite the best craftsmanship, clubs broke with some frequency and not just because of frustration.
I don’t see any of today’s caddies offering advice on whether a mashie or mid-mashie is called for on a shot. As for me I am still in the dark on whether I should carry the clubs I never hit. Speaking of which, have you ever seen the golf bags that were used prior to the Second World War. They were narrow canvas and leather affairs that could at most hold six clubs.
I am sensing a conspiracy here. If the golf bags we now carry are larger, they must be so for a reason. I suggest that the reason has nothing to do with having more space for rain gear, more tees, balls, or the requisite rangefinder. No, it must be so we can carry more clubs. Clubs for which most Geezers have no use.
So, we have come full circle to me standing on the twelfth hole about two hundred yards from the pin. There is a large and deep ditch running across the fairway about thirty yards ahead. I need to get over this and up onto the fairway.
“Caddy,” I ask myself, since there is no one else within earshot. “Caddy, what should I use here?”
What’s that? I ask myself. Would the thirty-degree Hybrid-Six be better than using the Fairway-Five? What do you think?
“Just so you don’t top it and it drops into the drink,” my inner caddy replies.
Of course, I am just helpless here. Whatever I hit, the object is to stay dry. Then, if possible, to stay in play. Perhaps that is too much to ask. If only I had a spade mashie in my bag.
