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Wood Woods Golf clubs

When was the last time you saw any one playing with a wood tennis racket or a wood driver? It sort of amazes me we are still using wood pool cues. Yes there is graphite but they are not very popular.

Once upon a time Persimmon and Balata ruled the land. Then, it was no more, gone with the wind.
Those who collect Antique Golf Clubs, are for the most part, content to admire them in display cases. This is true also of some Classic Club collections. The driving force for most Classics collectors, however, is the superb playability of these clubs. For some, today's factory-made, assembly line, metal woods cannot not match the feel and play of these handmade beauties.

Tommy Armour 693 & 695. 1949-52 Value : $500 was the going value, today is 60 to 100 on later models.

MacGregor's deep face "Oil Hardened" persimmon driver.This is the club that set the standard for design, materials and playability. Played by hundreds of the top touring pros over the years, this is MacGregor's most famous club.The 693 driver was designed for the better player and made with a standard loft of 8.5 to 9.5 degrees. (ca. 1949-52)


As shown by these MacGregor woods, the club head size grew and grew over the years to meet demand. The 693 had even a jumbo head size available. The Mo9 was a jumbo head.
What makes a Classic? Quality is the most significant criteria. The original classic woods were made in the 40s, 50s and 60s from the finest oil-hardened persimmon, and then finished by the greatest woodworkers in the country. Irons, wedges and putters of this era were forged from the best soft steel and hand-ground and shaped. Some say the "feel" of these clubs cannot be duplicated today.

Top players hung on to them because they could work a shot, draw or fade at will. The new metal heads you could only hit straight and curving the ball was hard. They took over because of their greater length and today's models allow you to work the ball. The new giant light weight heads is not even the same club as the old 693's.

These were sought for their rarity by collectors, but also sought by avid golfers because they were the best ever made "to do the job." Such clubs are in great demand even if not in the pristine condition demanded by the die hard collector. Small nicks or scratches, as long as they don't effect play, are of little importance. One of these classics can be had at great savings over a "showcase" model, while sacrificing none of the superb playability of the design.
They range from "mint condition," suitable for display, and those that have given their owners many hours of fine play and still look nice if not well worn, to those who are virtually trashed out.

I have about 50 wood clubs sitting on the wall. Most of them I played with at one time or another. Now they are all just fond memories of another time and place, from the 50’s and 60’s. Just looking at an 845 driver, gets my Willie hard. Every time I put it in my hands and grip it, I get a thrill. I do that several times a day and its sits beside my desk. Its like the pool player looking at a balabushka, you know, that is the one, the big kahuna.

I have 4 sets of Wilson red dot staff irons, 2 sets of black dot Hagen’s, All 60's. 2 sets of late 60’s VIPs. Putters, you don’t even want to know what I have. I have all of them. I have putters you would kill for.

I have full sets of MacGregor Tommy Armours with most of the popular styles back then like MT’s, M-85’s Faldo, Couples and Crenshaw used, M-43 Norman won with. MacGregor sets with the names on the top saying Byron Nelson, Ben Hogan, Tony Penna, and Tommy Armour.
A set was 1-2-3-4 they did not make 5 woods in the 50’s for these sets. Tommy Armours were plentiful, but Hogan signatures on MacGregor, not on his own clubs, and Nelsons and Penna's were rare and more valuable.

Mt's were easy to find, but some used the 259's which were similar to the 693's, and others the M-65, M-85, M-43's which were similar and looked like the 945's. 693's could be found for a premium price, but 945's were really hard to get and if you found a good one the price was out of sight.

You could always tell the clubs that a hacker used, they were original. Cord or leather grip, soft R shaft. This was good, at least you know some pro had not beaten the life out of the wood. When I got a hold of one, a new pro grip went on. The old leather grips were too thin and small and they got real slick and hard to hold on to once they wore or got a little moist. Then on goes a pro steel stiff shaft, then I had it refinished and it now looked like brand new. Putting $50 back into the club was not a problem to get it to play for the better stronger player.

Top tour players only played with the antique classic woods and shunned the newer models being made. This became a serious problem as by 1985 most were now 25 years old and the woods they grew up with they had worn out and been trashed. When Bobby Jones and Sam Sneed had their original drivers fall apart they both wept. It deeply affected both of them, like the loss of a child almost.

When you tried to find replacements what was out there was getting pretty bad off as well. Most had been broken, inserts cracked and replaced, little chunks of wood missing and filled in with epoxy, cracks on the neck and head. A top player will practice and hit his driver 100 times a day and in 20 to 25 years, he just wears it out. Nicklaus was hitting his driver so hard he cracked and broke 6 in one year, until the reinforced 845 solved the problem. Everybody was trying to snag a backup for the day when theirs bit the dust.

I saw this coming in the early 70’s and I began collecting and hording every decent wood I could get my hands on. I would never buy a black wood, because they are usually trying to cover up and hide problems. You want to see the grain of the wood. Some have great grains, some lousy and those they paint black. I would only buy it in black if they stripped the black coat off so I could see what was under that coat. I only have clear coat so I can see the wood.

Wood is a funny thing; some drivers look great and play poorly. Now and then you get that lucky perfect piece of wood and the driver is outstanding. Nobody understands why? The only way to know is to play with it. I picked up this set of R2TW’s, never a popular style, but a real pretty insert, and I guess there was one of those magic pieces of lucky wood.

I have an old rambo with a perfect shaft that is 50 years old and nobody can duplicate that wood or what it does. Schuler tied and gave up. He called it magic wood. You just luck into them now and then.

That driver smoked. It was as pure and new fallen Kansas snow. I was at my country club, Horseshoe Bend in Atlanta and a pro tournament was coming in. I was on the range hitting balls and a pro that arrived early and set up next to me. I was scratch and hit it long and he stopped to watch me. He admired and commented on how well I was driving the ball and asked to see my driver. Then he asked to hit it. Big mistake, I let him. He hit it 3 times, nutted all 3, and handed it back.

Then he gets real friendly and chummy and tries to buy it from me. I had 1=3=4 and they were mint, I bought them off of an older guy who bought them brand new and he had used them lightly. I turned the pro down and he keeps raising the price. When he got up to $600 I decided I needed to get the hell out of there fast, so I loaded up and headed for the car with him right behind me. He is still pitching but is now begging for them He is now up to a grand. He is saying, you are an amateur, you can buy something almost as good and it does not matter to you, but I am a pro and I can win a tournament with these and make a lot of money with them.

They deserve to be on tour and in my trunk and not in your trunk. Just tell me what you want; I will pay you anything for them. I said, not for sale and he is now trying to get inside my car with me, I locked the door and took off.

This was a time when I could have flown to Japan and sold my primo 693 driver for $5,000 there, and God knows what the entire set would have gone for, or what Ioko would have paid for RT’s if I got them in his hands and he hit them. They totally out hit my 693 and 945's.

That was the problem back then. The stuff that was really good, nobody would turn loose off. I did not play with the RT's too much, they were being held back for when my other stuff wore out and that day never came, as metal woods came in around 1985 and all the wood woods became wall hangers over night. I had 50 of them, a lifetime supply, that I would never use. There were like Hula Hoops, one day you can't keep them in stock, the next day, nobody wants one any more.

Most of the drivers were trashed with play by 75 to 1980, the 2 woods were perfect since no one hit them and the 3 & 4 woods would be OK. What good was the set without the Driver? This is why my complete sets even today would still be worth at least $600 and up, because all 4 woods are primo which is rare and hard to find. I found and put these up to preserve them in the early 70’s when they were still easy to acquire and they had not been totally worn out. Several of those sets I only played with for a year or two and then went into a newer set and retired them. Most have not been hit in 40 years. Yo Sarah thinks I am nuts for hanging on to these for a half century. She is probably right.

Every one is pure and they all were used by me in competition. Go buying them today and go out and try to play them and they will fall apart on you. They are talking trashed clubs, gluing them back together, and putting a finish on them and they look good. If you are just buying show wall hangers then you are OK>

I was playing with a perfect set, 1-2-3-4 of 693’s silver Scots, then I upgraded into a perfect set of Tommy Armour 693t’s in the 60’s, Arnold Plamer was using them also.

In the 70’s I was using a primo set of 925’s which had perfect magic wood and 945’s which Nicklaus won all his majors with. The 925’s had a little larger more forgiving head than the 945’s which were tough to hit. Both sets were 1-2-3-4. All of them were primo. If I had not played a lot I would use the 925’s, when my AA game was on, I would use the 945’s.

When you refinish a wood club, they look beautiful, but if you go out and begin hitting balls the face gets scratched up real fast. Range balls really ate them up. All of my woods have been refinished and they are never hit any more.

Yo Sarah can’t understand why I am keeping all of these and she calls me a pack rat. I call myself, a collector. I could have sold them in the early 80’s for a fortune. Alas, I hung on to them too long. Top golfers paid a premium for them because a solid pure 845 would hit the ball 20 or 30 yards longer than a brand new top wood driver right off the shelf. You were buying a huge advantage. That made some of these drivers worth 5 to 600. A set might be worth 2,000.

The 693 driver that would have gone for $600, is today going for 50 to 60. When everyone stopped playing with wood woods and went to metal, the price plummeted on them.

You would have thought the price on them would have just kept going up but the ones that were buying them and paying premium prices were playing with them and not collecting them. They could then buy a metal head driver for $150 that blew it past their old 693 and that doomed persimmon. I got a 7 degree Mizumo metal head and I cried the day when I hung up my wood, but I could not pass up the extra distance. I was getting 30 or 40 more yards. So there is now more supply than demand and that takes prices down. Many of the older golfers who would collect these are now in their 70's or dying off. When their grand kids get a hold of them, they sell them off fast and cheap and that further drives the prices down.

I was like Ted Turner sitting on times Warner stock, one day I am rich, the next day, all my value is gone. It did not matter, I was never going to sell them any way, no matter what the price was. But I still think about that brand new Caddy I could have had if I had unloaded all of them back then.

Nobody was buying, everyone was selling them off. So with their value today so low, my attitude is why sell mine, I just enjoy picking them up, waggling them, and remember the day, when I busted that bad boy right down the chute 300. I tell Yo Sarah, Palmer is just like me, he has an entire garage of every club he ever used. He never sold one either.

He never got rid of one of them and neither have I. I guess, you have to be, a real golfer to understand this. She says, It figures Palmer is just like you. You are both weird. AP blew her off once when she tried to get his autograph and she has hated him since then. Nicklaus was real sweet and talked to her and she worships him like a God. She has framed pics of Fat Jack at the Masters, he has his arm around her. She cannot understand why I worship AP like a God. I try to explain to her, he is the God of Golf. She will never get it. Fat Jack, never had Arnie's Army, never close to it.

click the pics to enlarge them, the first one you can see on the face where two chunks have came out and been filled in, I would never buy that driver. Next is one that has a solid face. People who practiced on rubber mats trashed the sold plates. I only practiced off grass and I would hose off the balls or put them in a bucket of water to be sure the dirt was off of them so they would not scratch up and grind down my insert. You had to be so careful back then with them if you wanted to keep them looking fine.

When I moved in with Yo Sarah 25 years ago, she said, what do you want for Xmas and I said:
1954-1955 MacGregor 945TW
1949-1952 MacGregor 693
1953-1955 MacGregor M85TW
1953-1955 MacGregor M09 LFF
1950-1951 MacGregor M43
1941 MacGregor Tommy Armour HSW 4393
1954 MacGregor Toney Penna WWT
1954-1955 MacGregor Toney Penna TPT
1953-1955 MacGregor M75TW
1953 MacGregor 945TW

Fat Jack in his prime.

The next to the last 2 pics is the classic 693, 2 pics of it in black finish.
The last pic is a MO9 which a pro used on tour from 68 to 74 and you can see he hit it so many times he wore the MacGregor almost off the face plate.

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M-43's like Norman won with, 1951 models. This is typical of what is for sale, driver gone, 2 wood fine, 3 wood a little rough with some minor damage in 2 places on the face, probably prior repair, and 4 wood fine.

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When you would play somebody new, they would always look in your bag to see what you have. When they saw my late 60's vip irons and my set of 845 woods, they knew they have a serious player on their hands.

In the movie, Tin cup, they let you look in Roys bag, and that was what he was carrying, or was breaking the shafts on. Plays in with a 7 iron and pars, give me a break????????????????????

These are the irons fat jack won most of his majors with.

The reason I have as many holes in one as Tiger is because I hunted the pin more than he does. Pros tend to play it safe in the middle of the green where I was trying to knock down every pin. I would put a slight draw on it and if it came in about 5 yards right of the stick and skipped about 5 yards past, it would pull back left and go in the cup soft. That was my shot, I had that one down pat. Always over clubbed a half, to a full club, never up, never in was my motto, never be short. Then if I hit it less than perfect, or a little fat, I was still close.

If you come up short in front and try and bounce in too many times you hit the stick and bounce off, sometimes off the bloomin green into a trap. The problem was with these old irons, the grooves were not deep enough, and with wear they would be less than when brand new, so you would want to re groove them.
I had my grooves enlarged into box grooves, they were deeper and wider than what was legal, and that gave me all that pro suck back. Hell one time on a really fine green, I sucked back a 5 iron 10' stiff.
Damn near wet me pants on that one. It was hanging on the lip. I stood there and smoked an entire cig waiting for it to fall. Cheating, I was playing by my self, who's looking at a watch. But it would not budge, so I kicked it in with my toe, took me bird and went on. Golfers don't cheat, they just take liberty with the rules a bit now and then.

Don't give me that she-yit about cheating, Watson did the same thing with his grooves for a decade until they busted him and half the fookin tour doing the same thing. After every shot, I wipe the iron off with a wet towel, dry and put it in the bag. I don't want any dirt in those grooves.

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My M-85-w.

My pretty 693 dated inside the sole plate 1957




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The 67-68 vip macgregor irons, were always the one.
I used them, and the staff red dots at that time.



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What clubs looked like back in 1937

They had names, like brassie and spoon.



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What clubs looked like back in 1941



The war began and millions of boys would not hit another ball until 1946. In 58 Arnies army is formed and golf takes off.

In 1941, the fairways were hard, they did not have watering systems like they have now. The courses were short, usually about 6,000 yards, 5500 was not uncommon. You did not have to hit your driver a long way because of that. Most pros were driving 245-255 then. On a par 5, maybe a little down hill, with a little wind at your back, you could tee up the MacGregor oil hardened persimmon Tommy Armour M-75 and hit it with all of your beef. Some were big and strong and could let that big dawg hunt. A little hook that runs on that hard fairway and now and then, you might get one out there 300. Few in that era, ever really hit one 300. And walked it off to prove it.

I was a caddy and I could walk off a shot to a single yard of accuracy. I don't know how many times I was playing with someone and they said, I smoked that one 300 and I walked it off to be 265 and told them that and they called me a liar and I did not know what I was doing.

When Gene Sarazen hit the double eagle on 15, 485 yrds at Augusta National he drove 245 and hit a 240 3 wood to reach the green in two. In the late 60's Jack Nicklaus hit that same green from that same distance with an 8 iron and they moved it back to 520 and Tiger Woods then hit the green when he came on with a wedge, causing a total re design of the hole and the landing area.

The day of the balata ball coming off the red-white facing of my 945 driver and forming a frozen rope down the fairway, is a feel and an experience, now, gone with the wind. Another era, another time now sadly gone, but not forgotten by a few.

Now and then when I plan to go up to my club and play in the afternoon at a time I know I can go off by my self during the week, I'll leave all my high tech stuff at home and play with my 68 vip irons and my set of 945's which I have 1-2-3-4-5.

The 5 was special made and 5 woods were rare in that era. Most were trying to hit a 1 iron, which few could do with any success. And trying to hit a 2 wood off of a hard fairway in a tight lie, forget it, you ended up beheading a dozen gofers down range. If that sucker was not setting up, you had no chance with it, which is why most of them are in such good shape today, because nobody hit them and they just rode in the bag. The 1 & 2 iron and 2 wood where the 3 clubs the average Joe had no chance on.

I could hit a really fine 1 iron and spent years wacking a zillion of them to lose the fear of that club. The 2 wood, I never understood, to me it was a giant Edsel. I learned how to hit a driver off the fairway and I had about the same rate of success with it as the 2 wood. And again, it it was not sitting up, you had to go with the 3 wood.

In that era there was no club limit, you could carry 1 iron through 2 wedges, and 5 woods, which would be and a putter which would be 17 clubs. When 14 became the limit, the 2 and 5 wood went, and some dropped the 1 iron.
Long irons today are a thing of the past in a pro's bag with all this new distance they are getting.

The one 1 Iron, it won so many majors because so few could play it well and stay under the wind, such as Hogan and Palmer.

Here is a picture of my 67 vip one iron.

I was a scratch golfer in that era, and that is what separated the men from the boys, the best players mastered the long irons and could get a 1 iron up and carry it 230.

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