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(theme music)
(jaunty music)
(golf club striking golf ball)
KEVIN CAWLEY: Oh yes!
NARRATOR: Dashing in their plus fours and newsboy caps,
the big hitters are on the links today.
It's Happy Hollow versus Champion's Run
in a highly anticipated club match.
There's Dave Brown,
the dapper doctor skippered the winning
Hickory International Cup team for the U.S. of A.
Brown and friends hope their Spoons, Mashies,
and Niblicks carry them to victory.
The whip of the gutty down the fairway and off they go!
In motorized golf carts in suburban Omaha?
Past meets present in the world of hickory golf.
DAVE BROWN: Well, hickory golf kinda brings us back to our roots
of the way golf was back in the 1800s, early 1900s.
NARRATOR: Brown's an orthopedic surgeon and avid golfer
who discovered this different way
of playing the sport a few years ago and was quickly hooked.
BROWN: Part of the fascination is just the idea of golf history
and what the previous great players were,
Bob Jones, Walter Hagen, Harry Vardon.
So many of us started out as golf collectors.
We'd collect clubs or we'd collect old golf balls,
and then one thing led to another
and pretty soon we're trying to play these sticks.
BRIAN FREVERT: My favorite club, the one I will not give up,
I have a Benny.
And it's really light. HAP POCRAS: Oh yeah.
But the Benny has like a little different notch
out of the head.
Those are neat.
NARRATOR: Some of the clubs they talk about
are a century old, with names like Mashie and Niblick.
Today they're being used
in a small low-key hickory golf competition
between teams from two Omaha courses.
Most dressed for the event
in the style of hickory era golfers.
KEVIN CAWLEY: They're fun to wear.
You know, it's funny, sometimes when you dress up
you play better.
NARRATOR: The eight players also share similar stories
of passionate golfers looking to the past
for a new challenge.
Hap Pocras once wore a college golf uniform.
HAP POCRAS: Golf just kinda got a little stale
for me here the last few years,
and I was discouraged because I wasn't able
to compete like I wanted to.
I was introduced to hickory golf,
and at first I turned my nose to it like most
until I finally tried it,
and I was hooked pretty much immediately.
BRIAN FREVERT: Probably just the history of the game,
how good it feels to hit a hickory shot,
playing with your buddies,
sharing clubs, trading clubs, finding the clubs.
NARRATOR: Hickory players are a small fraction
of the 25,000,000 who play the sport in the United States,
but while the overall number is said to be declining,
those around hickory golf say interest
in their version is growing.
BROWN: 10 years ago nobody was playing hickory
and now we'll have 10 or 12 guys,
and that's pretty common in many of the private clubs
around town where typically more mature guys like myself
that'll play these old sticks
just for a different method of golf play.
JOE MANLEY: 41.8 or thereabouts. (machine whirs)
NARRATOR: And that interest has helped spur
a little growth industry in Omaha.
MANLEY: Well, I am heating up the gutta-percha material.
NARRATOR: Joe Manley retired from teaching music.
Now he makes balls for McIntyre Golf.
Dave Brown started this small company
which makes golf balls like those
that were played in the hickory era,
in this case the pre-1905 gutty.
The recipe starts with cooking the tree base
from raw material in 180 degree water.
(bright music)
MANLEY: So there are people who collect them,
there's people who play with them,
and there are people who play with modern clubs
that just think it's cool to have a mesh pattern ball
rather than just a boring old modern ball.
(hammer strikes)
(blows)
NARRATOR: And for another basically
one person operation,
Ray Schueneman sold his 20 year business,
learned blacksmithing, and started making putters by hand.
RAY SCHUENEMAN: No one has done this, as far as I'm aware,
for probably 85 years.
And I read a couple of books on it and I thought,
you know what?
I'm gonna try this.
I'm gonna see if I can do it.
NARRATOR: It starts with a chunk of steel
in a 2,300 degree forge,
then a couple thousand whacks with a heavy hammer.
(hammer strikes)
(music)
(hammer strikes)
(music)
SCHUENEMAN: Where I go from basher to a craftsman. (laughs)
It's really rewarding work.
I mean, it's physical work, but it's mentally rewarding,
and (exhales) voila, you have something at the end.
You take a bar of steel
and you turn it into something like this.
This is just the beginning of a golf club.
(club swings)
BROWN: Oops.
NARRATOR: Playing with the old equipment
can be challenging.
FREVERT: You don't make a good swing,
and the bad shots are a lot worse.
CAWLEY: Magnified 100 times.
FREVERT: Yep.
CAWLEY: You just have to accept it
and move on and forget about it.
NARRATOR: These players also use modern clubs at times.
The difference, they say, is just a few strokes
and some distance, especially off the tee.
BROWN: But if you get your shafts right, the wind shafts right,
you can swing 'em just like a regular swing.
I do, anyway.
NARRATOR: In a modern era plentiful
with swing experts and high-tech analysis,
Pocras says hickory golf is more
about keeping things simple.
POCRAS: With the hickory golf and the style of play
that you partake with hickory golf,
the shafts are built in a way
that it's really very much feel.
And what I mean by that is closing your eyes
and swinging a club and just getting a sense
of where the club is at all times,
and that feel there is what's most important.
NARRATOR: It's also about how they feel
when using century-old equipment and clothing.
POCRAS: To be able to bring these old clubs
and this old equipment into play,
it absolutely draws that connection
to where the game began
and why we're here enjoying it today.
SCHUENEMAN:I think it's because it connects people to the history,
to the long history.
There's not many sports, you know,
archery and horse riding and so forth,
that have a 500, 600 year history,
so to be able to connect to that as a participant
of any activity or sport, I think, is pretty special.
BROWN: It feels a lot different.
It's great to actually,
I come out here, and a bad hickory day is still
a really, really good golf day
and you can always blame this old golf club
for the bad shot.
NARRATOR: And a good walk unspoiled
by taking a few steps back in time.