The Machrie Hickory Challenge
I would like to give you a bit of background so you might possibly understand why two fully grown men would fly to a craggy island off the west coast of Scotland to recreate how golf was at the turn of the century. One simple story swayed the decision. Way back in June 1901, the richest tournament in golf was settled by a piece of sheep dung! Just a few days after The Open at Muirfield won by James Braid, the same man had a putt for a half on the final hole against JH Taylor in The Machrie Open on the island of Islay. He was putting to save the winner's cheque of £100 (worth a handy £6,650 today) winging its way into Taylor's baggy, tweeded pockets. Unfortunately, for the newly crowned champion golfer, his putt was deflected past the hole by a crisp dropping. It was chronicled by The Scotsman newspaper as the ball was seemingly destined for the hole: 'Braid got the line nicely, the ball striking the back of the disc and bounding out.' The rest, as they say, is history. Very much a case of baa-d luck. Oh the foibles of a traditonal links. But there you have it, what more perfect place to turn the clock back and find out how today's technology compares to the hickories and gutties of yesteryear? After all what's good enough for Braid, Taylor and Harry Vardon - the Great Triumvirate - is certainly good enough for The Modest Duet.
Me and my partner in crime, a golfing partner of some style and appreciative of the game's past, had a brief to explore and explain how golfers were able to perform with the clatter of wood and iron in their canvas pencil bags. We also had to contrast the performance with today's clubs and balls that are to take us into the next Millennium. The ultra-traditional and wonderfully evocative links at The Machrie added spice to the investigation.
First it meant delving into the dressing up box, rummaging around and plucking from the depths, a couple of corking tweed suits. Next we has to find the weapons and ammunition. Neither was hard to come by - The Machrie Hotel has hickories to hire and a couple of phone calls secured some replica balls made in the traditional way. The only problem left was how to hit the darn things. Feeling initially like we had been starpped into a straightjacket, albeit a handsome one, our practice swings revealed a note of trepidation in our actions. How the heck were we meant to smack these hollow sounding balls down these elephant graveyard fairways while wearing such ill-suited-to-athletic-excellence clothing? We were so pleasantly surprised. The sound and feel of the bramble guttie on the shaped lump of wood was a reassuringly soft clunk. I would hardly describe the shape of shot as searing but it certainly keeps under the wind and trundles somewhere out there. Within a few holes of controlled swipes, I gradually felt myself regressing. What modern swing fundamentals I had ingrained over the years seemed to take a back seat and I took on a more 'historic' stance-wider and more solid. I began to make shorter backswing realising that it was easier to feel where the clubhead was and that my jacket was less restrictive that way. I worked my wrists harder and the ball started to fly.
But however well-struck the drive there was an inertia that kept it from screaming away. Chipping with the mashie niblick was fine, well actually in my case amazingly enjoyable, as was the putting, when the softness would actually be quite a bonus on hard, fast greens. The two of us loved it. We were like a couple of teenagers excitedly waiting for their first dates. But, after a good start, we proved at the 7th - The Machrie's signature hole called Scot's Maiden - that the guttie balls we were playing with made it difficult to get a high, soaring flight. It's a totally blind drive, you have to clear a huge woolly dune right in front of you, a carry of about 170 yards and the ball has to rise over 40 feet to be safe from the clutches of the tangled mound. With our brambles we had little chance. Instead they found a decnt burial in the hillside. But once we changed ammo to a modern ball, the carry was a doddle. Those golfers a century ago must have has arms and hands of steel and honed a technique for getting the ball up, because we could have stood there all day and I doubt if ever we could have fired a guttie over the top. After fiddling it round the chosen ten, with their same number of blind shots, while swearing a little, laughing a lot and generally surprising ourselves, we totted up our scores. The match had ended in a half just as Taylor's and Braid's morning round had 98 years ago and to our delight our totals matched up to theirs quite well, although we did have the advantage of playing a mixture of the modern and the ancient balls. But to play like Vardon did in one of the rounds of 1901 and shoot 76 around the 18 is quite an astonishing feat, given that the bogey for the course was 85. It would certainly be the equivalent of a low 60 score today. No question, the best of their day were very good indeed. They must have had the strength of a drayman, the touch of Casanova but, most of all, an indefatigable spirit that could cope with all that Mother Nature could throw at them. We had tasted history, but the investigation was not over. With barely time for a snifter of the local malt, our 'Bertie Woosters' and 'ecky thump' hats were shed and we returned to our usual dress for golf. It was time to take up arms with modern weaponry, to see if we could make a comparison.