Give My Niblick A Try

Filed in archive Golf Equipment on February 23, 2007

Courtesy: Antiqueathlete.com

When I was in high school, in grade 9, we were forced to study English history.

Actually, it probably wouldn't have mattered whose history we studied. Force was applied, nonetheless.

I vaguely remember the War of the Roses, Oliver Cromwell, the Hundred Years War and so forth. But it really didn't impact me at all. Just a lot of dust.

I believe I was simply too young to really appreciate the value of history.

Now that I'm so much older and wiser, the significance of history begins to make some sense. There's a linear-ness that forms in my mind where I can begin to see how everything connects down through the centuries.

And nowhere does that show up more readily than in the golf club (admit it...you had to be wondering where this one was going, didn't you?).

I never realized how far back golf clubs go. In point of fact, all the way back to 16th century Scotland where King James the Fourth commissioned a bow-maker in Perth to make him a set.

Back then, every club was hand-crafted from wood, of course and came with its own uniquely Scottish name.

For example, a set of clubs in the time of King James would have consisted of "play clubs" or "longnoses" used for driving the golf ball, "grassed drivers" or fairway clubs which are self-explanatory, spoons for short range distances, niblicks or what we would call wedges today and a putting cleek.

I can remember when my Dad pulled his old set of clubs out of our garage one day when I was a kid way back in the early 60s. Yes, way back then. Before the Beatles, even, but only by a few years.

He pulled a hickory shafted putter out of the bag, followed by a steel shafted club that said "Niblick" on the sole.

So the term "niblick" stuck around for more than 350 years.

But some things about golf clubs in the 16th century were exactly the same as they are today. They were expensive.

I like the fact that I play a game that has almost as much history attached to it as the Royal Family in Great Britain.

Even the golf balls have a history. In 1618 the Featherie was introduced, replacing the wooden ball (I've hit a few of those. Have you? It happens after you fish an old plug out of the pond on the 6th hole where your brand new Nike just disappeared).

The Featherie hung about for over 200 years before technology brushed it aside in favor of the guttie.

History moved slowly in golf at one time.

These days, history is measured in nanoseconds.

That's why I hope a round will always take me four hours to play.

For a superb summation of the history of club making, see this site.