The Day That The King Played Himself

[Jim_Kennedy]

https://books.google.com/books?id=RuMDAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA81&dq=%22Arnold%20Palmer%22&pg=PA80#v=twopage&q&f=false

[Jason Topp]

Cool article!

[Peter Pallotta]

Thank you, Jim - what a great article, a real keeper.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Palmer concludes (probably rightly) that the then-modern equipment was better than the older equipment.  But to me, what an eye-opener: playing with the hickories for the first time, and from the same set of tees as with his own tournament clubs, and yet the difference after 9 holes is only 3 strokes! That, and the fact that again, after just a very little time to get used to them, he could hit the hickory driver so far and the irons probably just as far (I'm assuming the lofts were at least once club less) as his own equipment was a genuine surprise. Yes, he wraps up by saying that amateurs and pros alike should be happy that the equipment has changed....but it seems almost certain to me that if you gave the King in his prime a week with the old hickories to practice, and say a month to tweak all the woods and irons to his specs, he'd be shooting under par with them about as often as he did with the steel.  Thanks again
Peter 

[Thomas Dai]

Worth reading for hickory fans. Thanks for highlighting.
Atb

[Charlie_Bell]

Where do you find these articles?!


Perfect Friday night reading.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Where do you find these articles?!


Perfect Friday night reading.

Many, many evenings spent searching them out. 


PP,
Clearly, Palmer's 'modern' swing could never be adapted to hickories.   

[Peter Pallotta]

Jim - two things: 1) I forgot to mention that AP didn't have a sand wedge in his hickory set...making the few shots difference in his rounds even more striking. 2) I'm starting to believe that even the most rabid anti-technology/modern equipment luddite is underestimating how much we've all been duped by the conventional wisdom re modern equipment. I am more and more convinced that if a golf ball was engineered today to be soft and spin enough (or if we could get 'brand new' old balls), and if a decent player practiced for a month with a set of persimmon and blades instead of with his titanium and cavity backs, there would not be one iota of difference in his score between one set and another. I know it sounds like nonsense coming from an average golfer like me, especially one who rarely practices and seldom plays -- but precisely because of that I can say with some confidence that 'when I'm on my game' and swinging with good rhythm and balance and tempo, the old set scores even better than the new one. (Btw: I use a soft/low compression modern ball -- but I was reading an old article with Tiger Woods that suggests he still practices occasionally with persimmon, and he noted that there's not a modern ball out there that takes proper advantage of the persimmon clubs' gear effect .)     

[Jim_Kennedy]

TW also wrote that he once carried the 18th at St. Andrews with a Tour Accuracy ball, then he hit a gutta that just carried the two bunkers off the tee. He needed a 4 iron for the approach.     


I think you can find some reasonably high spin balls today that would react to the bulge, and you'd probably have a lot of fun with old equipment, even scoring well, but I don't think we've been duped.  [size=78%] [/size]

[Ronald Montesano]

Inconceivable.


Iota is the 9th and smallest of the 20-character, Greek alphabet. That's what wikis tell me.


There will always be a massive distinction between old and new equipment. There is at the highest levels of golfin skill, as well as the middle and bottom shelves. The Romantic poets among us (and I fall headlong into that klatch from time to time) will persevere in their efforts to recycle the old as equal to the new. Emotion, passion, intellect...these can be compared across the generations, but technology cannot be so easily correlated.


I have a new, Mizuno driver. I hit it on the trajectory that I want. I don't hit it farther than my previous one, but I do hit it better. It's the shaft, really, that attracted me and won me over. Could another driver head work on that shaft? Probably.


I imagine that, back in the day, golfers griped about not having "the best hickory" for their club shafts. There would have been technological differences in the best hickory, the best persimmon, the best iron heads. Back to the future, Dr. Brown.