I loved the retro day that we hosted with our friends from Cookie Jar Golf last autumn. It was so much fun to see how much effort people made to assemble their bag for the day. And chatting to everyone afterwards it was really satisfying to hear how well people had scored, and how much they enjoyed playing with old gear.
Several people said they would like to keep playing their older kit – maybe not all the time, but certainly for the odd round or when visiting a specific course. It’s fascinating to me that this is such a niche interest among the golfing community.
We’re all influenced by a tidal wave of information from the pro game that creates a collective golfing consciousness. Tour pros are held up as the golf standard, despite their obvious conflict of interest in being paid by the big equipment companies. So the narrative of constant progress and technical innovation takes hold, especially for those of us who are less than confident in our golfing ability (which is, let’s be honest, all of us).
I believe that playing with older gear can help to set us free from this modern game’s obsession with bigger, better and longer. What if we replaced the word retro with vintage? In cars, watches, fashion and many other markets, vintage is a word that speaks to quality – great products with timeless qualities that are a joy to experience.
Look at the history of great equipment and it comes from the collaboration between great club makers and great players – people who genuinely loved the game, rather than the fake engineers in white lab coats that we see in the equipment ads.
Over the years, the focus of ‘big golf’ has been to remove all the nuance and individuality in the game. It’s ironic that the world of custom-fitting results in everyone using the same equipment, based on the same assumptions – that distance is the most important thing, and that forgiveness supersedes the pleasure we get from hitting the middle of the clubface. I don’t think it’s over-stating things to see that modern kit reduces the amount of pleasure that we receive from playing the game.
That’s not to say that good equipment won’t be made in the future. There are people out there making great forged irons, and I’m optimistic that more and more people will start to question the idea that professional golf should dictate the way that the rest of us enjoy the game. If someone out there were to produce a forged titanium head driver at 430cc, with 10 degrees of loft, a fixed hosel and two degree open face, I’d be ecstatic. And I wouldn’t feel I was missing anything in terms of ‘performance’.
One of the best things about our retro day was the fun of building a bag in the run up to the event – swapping messages on WhatsApp and sharing incredible bargains on eBay. While most of the golfing world follows an inexorable path towards progress, those of us who are happy to be left behind can enjoy unfettered access to a world of great vintage clubs.
Re-live the fun of our retro day at West Byfleet Golf Club...
