Those Were The Good Old Days

     I remember "The Good Old Days".  You had the great golf matches involving the Big Three of golf of Palmer, Player and Nicklaus.  Lee Trevino and ChiChi Rodriguez came along and added a sense of humor to the game. There was also the likes of Tom Watson and Johnny Miller who added to the excitement of the time.  It was also the time of an influx of a huge and talented pool of international golfers such as Sir Nick Faldo, Seve Ballesteros, Greg Norman, Jose Marie Olazabel and Ernie Els. The color barrier was broken as we saw the first African American Lee Elder play in The Master's Tournament.  Who can forget Charles Sifford and Calvin Peete?  Women's golf exploded as well with new stars such as Nancy Lopez and Amy Alcott.  Yes, heady times were these.
     I remember hitting the wound balata rubber covered golf ball.  There was nothing like the feel of a balata ball. Around the green, they were deadly.  They would stop on a dime and give you nine cents change.  What a feel.  Those balls really had a keen sense of humor as well as they had a tendency to laugh at you after you hit them a few times.  The ball would quickly smile back at you.
      If you are old enough to have hit a balata ball you know what I mean but many of you weren't even born yet to have had the pleasure of hitting the balata ball.  The cover of the ball which was made of balata rubber was very soft.  You had to hit the ball perfectly in order not to cut the cover.  If you hit the ball wrong with an iron, the cover would cut and cut very easily I might add.  There went the seventy-five cents you spent on the ball and the only thing you could do is reach into you bag and pull out another ball from the sleeve. The old ball went into your "shag bag" as a practice ball--what's a shag bag you younger folks might ask, ugh.  The ball also had a tendency to get out of round very fast because of the way the ball was made with its rubber bands wound around a core.  Those were the days my friend and in reverence to Maryanne Faithful, we thought they'd never end.
     When you asked someone back then what club they hit and they said "I hit a three wood", they really did hit a club that was made out of wood. Woods--Driver,2 3,and 4 and you didn't have a 5 wood--were actually made of wood and not high tech composite metal.  Imagine that. The average person had woods made out of a wooden laminate and if you were really good you had woods made out of persimmon.  I wasn't good, but my last set of wooden wood were made out of persimmon and in fact I still have them stored away in a safe place.  
      Irons were made out of forged steel and their heads were almost microscopic.  There was no such thing as an iron that had an oversized head.  The sweetspot was the size of a gnat on these clubs and the shafts were made by the True-Temper Steel Company somewhere in the US, Pittsburg I think. The set was  a 2 iron through wedge, and you later added a sand wedge if you were so inclined. There was no such thing as a hybrid and graphite was used in pencils.  That was the way it was "back in the day".
     I learned to putt with an old Otey Chrissman putter.  I still have it, although I don't use it. It's put away with those persimmon woods.  I would be still putting with that putter had I not bowed to the onslaught of technology and go to a Ping Answer.  I loved that Ping and made the big mistake of loaning it to my daughter to try.  Funny thing is, it never got back to me.  I found a Never Compromise that I really liked after trying a lot of other things like the "three ball". I didn't like the three ball and have had my Never Compromise for almost fifteen years now. I think the company has gone out of business.
    I sat down the other day and figured out just how long I have been playing this game called golf.  I am retired so in my life there is not much else to do so I went for it.  It seems I have been playing for fifty years, and in fact this is my fiftieth year.  Wow, that's a long time. In that fifty years I have seen a lot of changes. Those were "The Good Old Days".  

Yep, that's me putting for a birdie.  Yah, right.