Iron (golf club)

“ Now in both these cases, when the greens are very slow and when they are extremely fast, the best putter for them is one with very considerable loft on the face, and it will often be found that there is nothing better than a fairly straight-faced iron, or an ordinary cleek, if it is big enough in the face to suit the player. With this club and its great dragging power, the effect seems to be practically to reduce the distance between the ball and the hole. ”

“ The great players have an extraordinary power of getting out of a difficulty: the very sight of one seems to put new vigour into their whole system; and if any definition of a golfing hero be possible, it would seem to be that to them, and to them only, is given the power of getting out of difficulties and the power to do the something extra, the few yards' extra carry, and the laying a ball nearly dead with the iron club. ”

“ They also go remarkably well off the iron clubs, and thus make the game easier by placing the player within an iron shot of the hole at a distance at which he would have to use a wooden club if he were playing with a solid gutta-percha ball. They also tend to make the game more easy by the fact that if they are at all mis-hit they go much better than a gutta-percha ball similarly inaccurately struck. As a slight set-off against these qualities, the ball, because of the greater liveliness, is not quite so good for the short game as the solid ball ”

“ If, indeed, we can send the ball flying like an arrow from the bow, we may make for the little narrow neck, where safety lies; but it is far more probable that our ball will trickle gently down hill to the left, where a stream and a surrounding marsh await it. Save, therefore, when with a strong wind behind we may hope to get over all our troubles with one vast blow, we must play prudently from the tee with an iron club, and we shall still be able to reach the green very comfortably in our second. ”

“ I gave for it, in exchange, an old and much mended spoon, and it was that iron putter which I have used for forty years since, which has been copied countless times, of which the replicas are in many hands and many lands, and one copy of which, adorned and glorified, used to lie, and may so lie still, for all I know, on the table on the occasion of the dinners of the Match Dining Club. At that first date of its [Pg 39] resurrection (Mr. Lamont could give no account of how it came to his possession) it was greeted with unhallowed laughter, and so too whenever I brought it out to putt with it. ”

“ When I mention that useful iron-headed club that goes by the simple name of iron, I am conscious that I bring forward a subject that is dear to the hearts of many golfers who have not yet come to play with certainty with all their instruments. For the iron is often the golfer's favourite club, and it has won this place of affection in his mind because it has been found in the course of long experience that it plays him fewer tricks than any of the others—that it is more dependable. ”

“ Obviously, when either of these faults is committed, the club head is twisted, and nothing is more impossible than to get in a perfect iron shot when these things are done. I am making much ado about what may seem after all to be an elementary fault, but a long experience of the wayward golfer has made it clear to me that it is not only a common fault, which is accountable for much defective play with the iron, but that it is often unsuspected, and lurks undiscovered and doing its daily damage for weeks or even months. The sole of the iron must pass over the turf exactly parallel with it. ”

“ It is high time we came to consider the iron clubs that are in our bag. His play with the irons is a fine test of the golfer. It calls for extreme skill and delicacy, and the man who is surest with these implements is generally surest of his match. The fathers of golf had no clubs with metal heads, and for a long time after they came into use there was a lingering prejudice against them; but in these days there is no man so bold as to say that any long hole can always be played so well with wood all through as with a mixture of wood and iron in the proper proportions. ”

“ There was also a weapon known as the driving putter, which was just like the ordinary putter save that its shaft was longer and more supple. It became, in fact, very nearly a short shafted driver, and its special purpose was to drive a low ball against the wind when there was no bunker to carry. Of iron clubs there were the cleek, the iron and the niblick. It was even then possible to go into the niceties of driving-iron and lofting-iron, but many a golfer thought his set perfect and complete with a single iron, for all purposes. ”

“ There are many varieties of every class of iron clubs, and their gradations of weight, of shape, of loft, and of all their other features, are delicate almost to the point of invisibility; but the old golfer who has an affection for a favourite club knows when another which he handles differs from it to the extent of a single point in these gradations. Some golfers have spent a lifetime in the search for a complete set of irons, each one of which was exactly its owner's ideal, and have died with their task still unaccomplished. ”

“ It was not because you drive so much further off the tee with the rubber-cored balls than with the gutties—if both are hit dead true there is not a mighty difference in this. But it is because you can drive the rubber-cored balls so very much further with the iron clubs than you could the gutties. That is the great difference. Ironing range means a considerably longer distance with the rubber-cores than with the solid balls, and the distance gained by taking a brassey instead of a driving mashie or a cleek is as nothing compared with what it used to be. ”

“ Never was there a greater necessity to resist the temptation to pull than there is at the second; instinct keeps calling in our ears for a glorious, long hook, and there is nothing so likely to prove fatal. It is one of those puzzling shots where we drive at a wide angle on to a narrow fairway, whence, if all goes well, a good iron shot will land the ball on to a very well-guarded green, fast in pace and billowy in conformation. It is a capital four-hole, and so is the third, which is really a splendid example of how good a hole of no particular length can be. ”

“ But when there are none of these difficulties besetting him, it may be said that generally the stance most suited to a stroke with the niblick is similar to that which would be taken for a long shot with an iron, except perhaps that the player should stand a little nearer to the ball, so that he may be well over it while making his swing. The most important respect in which the swing differs from that of the iron is that the club is brought up much straighter. ”

“ So, with so many of the clubs made of wood, and not always like the butter used by the Mad Hatter for watch greasing, the best wood, and the balls so hard and stony of impact, it is no wonder that golf was rather an expensive game for a boy whose shillings were not many. Though the ball only cost a shilling, while the modern ball costs half a crown, the club-smashing abilities of the shilling's worth made it a much dearer ball, to say nothing of the longer life of the half-crowner. ”

“ A small tomahawk, styled a Cleek, is employed when you don't know what else to play with. The same remark applies to an Iron, which is very good for missing the ball with, also for hitting to square leg when you meant to go straight. A "Mashy" is a smaller "iron." The skilful use these when the ball lies in sand, in gorse, or when they wish to make the ball soar for a short distance and then fall dead. A Putter is a short thickish club used for jogging the ball into the hole with. There are plenty of other kinds of clubs, also spoons, but these are enough to break the heart of any Duffer. ”

“ The fault I have to find with the iron play of most golfers is that it comes at the wrong time. I find them lunging out with all their power at full shots with their irons when they might be far better employed in effecting one of those pretty low shots made with the cleek at the half swing. It is not in the nature of things that the full iron should be as true as the half cleek, where there is such a reserve of strength, and the body, being less in a state of strain, the mind can be more concentrated on straightness and the accurate determination of length. ”

“ Meanwhile the chiefs for the last hole contend,
The last great hole, which should their labours end;
For this the chiefs exert their skill and might,
To drive the balls, and to direct their flight.
Thus two fleet coursers for the Royal plate
(The others distanc'd) run the final heat;
With all his might each gen'rous racer flies,
And all his art each panting rider tries,
While show'rs of gold and praises warm his breast,
And gen'rous emulation fires the beast.
His trusty club Pygmalion dauntless plies:
The ball ambitious climbs the lofty skies ”

“ But some golfers like taking the fullest mashie stroke that they can, and, when hesitating between the use of an iron or the lofting club, they usually decide in favour of the latter. "I think I can reach it with my mashie," they always say, and so they whirl away and commit the most frightful abuse on a splendid club, which was never intended to have its capabilities strained in order to reach anything. Instead of saying that "they think they can reach it with their mashie," these golfers should try to decide that "a half iron will not carry them too far." It is easier and safer. ”

“ If one desires to put any run on one's ball more than is obtained by the method of striking it which I have stated, it is always open to one to play the put a little after the club has reached the lowest point in its swing,—that is to say, as the putter is ascending, but this is practically unnecessary. If one requires a little more run on the ball it is best obtained by making the stroke a little stronger. Any attempt whatever to do anything by altering the angle of the face of the club during impact is utterly beyond the realm of practical golf. ”

“ Another, formed of iron, instead of wood, is used for making a hit at a ball when very unfavourably placed, as in a rut, where the common club would be in danger of breaking. When a ball falls into a hole or rut, from which it is impossible to strike it out, the party is allowed, by a special agreement, in some clubs, to take it out with his hand, and throw it up in a line with the spot, which is accounted as one, and he then strikes from where it chances to rest ”

“ The idea of attempting to deflect one's niblick from the line originally mapped out for it as it enters the sand is too amazing and too utterly unsound to merit any further comment or notice, except to say that it would be impossible to deflect the club head from the line of travel mapped out for it at this moment without materially reducing the force of the blow, and when one is hitting into heavy sand, to get underneath the ball and in many cases to get it out of the bunker without even touching it with the club, every pound of force that can be put into the club is necessary. ”

“ It is easily to be understood that when the ball is lying on the turf behind a tall sand-hill, or in a bunker, a differently-shaped club is required for raising it over such an obstacle from that which is needed when it is placed on the tee to start with; and again, that another club is needed to strike the ball out of a cup or out of heavy grass. It is this variety that gives the game its charm. Each player plays with his own ball, with no interference from his opponent, and the object of each is to hit the ball from the starting-point into each successive hole in the fewest strokes. ”

“ For all ordinary stymies it is without doubt the most delicate and accurate stroke which can possibly be played, and the manner of playing it, after a golfer has once conquered the force of habit which tends to make him raise his club from the earth immediately he leaves his ball, is very simple. The mashie is drawn back from the ball in a perfectly straight line, and with the sole of it practically brushing, or no more than just clearing the green. ”

“ Their superiority over the solid gutta-percha lies in their superior resiliency. The effect is that they go much more lightly off the club. It is not so much in the tee-shots that this superiority is observed, as in the second shots, when the ball is lying badly; balls of the rubber-cored kind, with their greater liveliness, are more easy to raise in the air from a lie of this kind. ”

“ One has no more chance of cutting round a stymie with a club of this nature than one would have with a bar of soap, for the simple reason that on account of the breadth of its sole—for if it be not an aluminium club, it is at least shaped on the same lines—it is impossible to get the face of the club sufficiently underneath the ball for the loft to get to work so as to impart that side roll which is of the essence of cutting round. ”

“ Small proceeded on the usual theory of the beginner, which is to hit the ball as hard as possible and trust to luck. The most I can say for his day's play is that I never expect to see golf balls hit any harder. His wooden club shots hooked and sliced into the woods on either side of the course—he bought a dozen balls to begin with and was borrowing from us at the finish—he dug up great patches of turf on the fair greens, he nearly destroyed three bunkers and after every shot he yelled like a Comanche. ”