Evening star., 1934-10-21

shafts. he plays them himself, and he
thinks that wood has certain advan-
tages over steel And also it comes
about because Chevy Chase has in its
golf shop one of the few remaining
golf club craftsmen in these days of
factory-made steel golf clubs. This
man is Bill Hardy, jewel OF club
maker, a man who in the old days
could have commanded almost any
price for his artistic fabrications in
golf clubs, and one to whom fine
shaft and well-made club SurpaSSes
any gem of the Orient.
~ ILL stands out today in the golf
II shops of the Washington clubs
as a clubmaker There are others,
many of them: Tony Sylvester of
Bannockburn, who learned the club
making trade with Gil Nichols two
decades and more ago; Peter Jackson
and Monro Hunter, clubmakerS Of the
first water; Freddie Mcleod Of Co.
lumbia and Dave Thomson of Wash
ington. But of them all, Bill Hardy
makes more wooden-shafted golf clubs
than all the rest put together. Club
making is Bills fetish. He loves it
and he lives with it, and when he
turns out a finished wooden-shafted
golf club it is a product of which any
man might be proud. He is the sole
surviving big time wooden shaft maker
around washington, throwback to
the days when golf clubs we're fash
ioned by hand, honestly and skillfully,
by a man working at bench, and
when production methods had
not yet invaded the golf industry.
Watch Bill make a wooden-shafted
driver, for instance, for friend of his
who wants a special club. He goes
back into a lot of a hundred or more
hickory shafts, testing, weighing, feel
ing them for spring and whip, for
grain of wood and dozen other little
matters which Bill alone knows. The
shaft picked out, he goes back into a
little cubbyhole where he keeps hun
dreds of wooden heads. He goes
through the same routine with the
head, testing it thoroughly, examining
1t for grain. Then he goes to work. In
few hours out comes the club, gleam-
ing bright, balanced perfectly, thing
of joy forever, even if it does top a
ball occasionally. You could search
the land long way and only in the
shops Of few manufacturers, such
as Macdonald Smith down at Nash
vile, could you find craftsman like
Bill Hardy.
THAT is the reason why the steel
Golf shaft hos ,,ooda HALL H..
preston at Chevy Chase; why
so many of the members of the big
club play with wooden shafts. That
and Bob Barnett Bob can find many
reasons why wooden shafts still re-
main as the ultimate in golf equip
ment. Each reason is better than the
other, and I don't think any man can
outsmart Bob when it comes to golf
equipment He knows golf as few men
know it and he knows golf clubs.
Down at Columbia Freddie Mcleod
Is another who sticks to wooden shafts
in his own golf tools But you will
Ind more steel shafts being played at
Columbia than at Chevy Chase.
1t is strange too, in way, for Chevy
Chase is the home club of the man
"AAO Pu' OuI bAlI III oU oUCcl y. 1UdL
man is Allan Lard, an old-time golfer
now gray and virtually retired from
competition, former North and South
champion. About IL years ago Allan
came out with steel shaft, built up
In sections like modern battleship
mast. Out of that first crude shaft
came the smooth-swinging and svelte
steel shaft of today, the shaft that has
virtually replaced in all but a few in
stances the wooden shaft in the bags
OF the leading golfers of the land.
But out there at Chevy Chase todoay
the wooden shaft reignS supreme. Bill
Hardy claims there is no shortage of
first-grade hickory for golf shafts;
that wooden shafts still provide the
cleanest hit and the finest feel of any
golf implement. Not every one is for
tunate enough to own set of Hardy
built clubs, but the man who does is
O lucky individual.
The battle will go on forever, prob
ably. But men like Bill Hardy will
stay in the game, making fine golf
clubs as fine watchmakers build fine
watch. There are few of them left, but
OF them all Bill Hardy stands near
the top.