1870s Golf at St Andrews in a 21st-Century Simulator with Homemade Clubs and Balls

Playing the closing holes on the Old Course, St Andrews, with long-nose clubs I made myself. The style of these clubs generally stayed the same from the 1600s to the 1880s.
A full set of clubs in 1870 consisted of a play club, long spoon, middle spoon, short spoon, and baffing spoon for the woods, all with graduated loft. For trouble shots, a golfer would have one or two irons to get out of bunkers and the ruts made from horse cart tracks.
Irons began to be introduced in the 1870s for full-swing shots. By the end of the 1880s, players carried more irons than woods for a set.
The ball is a gutta percha ball with a line pattern.
The course length at in the 1870s was about 6300 yards and the course was much narrower, although starting to widen up with the addition of double greens instead of single greens going in and out. I am playing it at 6000 yards here. The distances are about 5% longer with the drives on the simulator than outside with firm conditions. The sim distances are almost the same with the shorter, more lofted clubs. Many of the bunkers where you can scoot along the side now had to be faced head on, so a shot that was missed created more trouble. Fairways had less roll.
Green conditions were much worse with the roll very unpredictable.
So, the harsher conditions, more wind, much more penal and narrower course, and a longer course explain why the best golfer, Allan Robertson, having shot a 79 in 1858, was a big deal.
For more details on club and ball making, check out @practicalclubmaker on Instagram.
If you are interested in purchasing authentic looking and playable long-nose clubs, check out Kelly Leonard's website. www.klhickory....
If you want to try your hand at making these clubs, my book, Practical Clubmaking, will give you a head start.
practicalclubm...

[@steveperry1344]

it's like the clubs didn't change too much for many years and now they come out with some new innovation each year to make you change and buy new clubs.

[@practicalclubmaker6152]

...and the wheel is often reinvented.

[@steveperry1344]

@@practicalclubmaker6152 i'm all for the new innovation. i still have my first set of macgregor irons and persimmon woods from 1975 and i've thought about pulling them out to see how i would do with them now.

[@steveperry1344]

i have a small collection of antique clubs and one of them is a rut iron for hitting out of wagon wheel ruts and the like. the head of it is round about 2.5 inches across. it's amazing how delicate and fragile some of the clubs seem and i wonder what the balls were like compared to the modern ball. maybe they used a lot of featheries.

[@practicalclubmaker6152]

The iron heads were very robust and very heavy in the feather ball era, which was pre-1848. But the wooden heads were very delicate like they had distilled out of the club all of the unnecessary wood. The gutta percha balls were used from about 1848 to 1900.

[@ClassicGolfClubs]

Interesting stuff! I'm going to have to have a go at making a long nose club soon, do you buy in hickory for the shafts or use something else? I think I'd have to use ash.

[@practicalclubmaker6152]

I haven't had good success with ash. It feels like a wet noodle even when making the shaft thicker. If you are having trouble finding hickory lumber, perhaps you could use the hickory from a discarded hickory golf club.

[@steveperry1344]

hybrids today are a bit like those long nose clubs. i play 3-6 hybrids, they're good for old guys especially.

[@practicalclubmaker6152]

@@steveperry1344 You are exactly correct. Hybrids are the closest thing in design to these long nose clubs except that the old heads tend to be longer. Also, instead of a bulge or roll on the face, the face is concave. The concave face has something to do with the technique of making the club, but also, since the head is so long, perhaps clubmakers believed that the head would torque with the toe lagging behind.