HOWEY-IN-THE-HILLS, Fla. — To be honest, I’ve never felt so out of place at a golf tournament as I did walking through the parking lot at Mission Inn Resort & Club on Tuesday morning. I was underdressed, under-equipped and unprepared.
It all rolled into a sense of apprehension as I approached my 8 a.m. first-round tee time in the 2022 U.S. Hickory Open. I had never played a round of hickory golf. I didn’t own hickory clubs. I wasn’t decked out in knickers or other golf attire that might have felt at home in the 1910s but looked entirely novel in the early-morning Florida humidity.
You might think it’s a stretch for a complete hickory novice to take up the game using replicas of ancient golf clubs in a national championship. I certainly did. I’ve performed in very mediocre fashion in plenty of golf tournaments over the decades, but this was a whole ’nother ball game and I tried to focus on my hopes that I – a relatively low-handicapper when using modern equipment – could get the ball in the air. I decided that anything beyond dribblers, shanks, cold tops and even whiffs would be a blessing.
And I was entirely wrong about the whole scene.
The Society of Hickory Golfers, which operates the national championship, couldn’t have been more welcoming. The clubs were relatively easy to hit, even if they don’t go as far. The game is the same, even if it is very different in select ways – just try to get the ball into the hole as quickly as possible.
And it was an absolute blast – two days and 36 holes of tinkering, swinging, chasing foul balls and frequently laughing at my own moderate ineptitude. I even managed to not embarrass myself, shooting 86-85 to finish in a tie for sixth in the open division. I haven’t had so much fun shooting in the 80s since I was about 12 years old.
I had only one day to mentally prepare after Peter Flory – a Golfweek’s Best course-rating ambassador and the mastermind behind a digital replica of the famed Lido course in New York that led to Sand Valley building an actual replica in Wisconsin – told me there was a spot available in the national championship he has tried to win for several years.
After an opening stretch of bogeys – a series of results of which I am just as capable with modern clubs – I eased into hickory golf and took mental notes of why I was falling in love with this centuries-old version of the game. Following are five things I learned: