Ah! Nostalgia... first set of clubs?

[onthehunt526]

I haven't been on here in a while... but here's one for the ages... what was your first set of clubs?

Well I'm only 25 if that gives you an idea... I started playing when I was 10 with a set of hand-me-downs

The first set I ever bought with my own money was as follows:

Driver: Nike Forged Steel Stiff Flex 10.5 degrees

3-wood: Adams Tight Lies GT smart 3 15 degree (which I still have laying around)

Irons (2-PW): Titleist 990b DG S300 (still have them)

Cleveland 588 wedges 56 and 60 deg

Carbite Mallet putter

I know that's like 6 years after I started playing but i was proud of paying for them with my own money... 2003 for those of you doing the math... Two second place finishes in States kind of holds memories in those clubs (second from way back both years kinda of like Tiger's 62 last week, but not quite that low)

[GaijinGolfer]

Full set of Knight Virage clubs that I bought at Wal-Mart for $150.  The irons and putter in the set werent bad but the woods were horrible.  In less than a year I managed to crack the face of both the driver and 3-wood.

[buj77]

I started playing at the age of 8 with a hand me down mixed bag as well (2-3 tommy Armour irons, irons/woods from my dads starter set (a brand called McGill which I had/have never heard off)...used to hate the fact that I didn't have a more flash set...but my Dad was very clear...he said, break into single figures, and we'll think about a new set f clubs. When I eventually did break into a single figure h'cap (around the age of 15), didn't  get a new set, but my did did get me a TM metal fairway driver (still in my bag today)...it wasn't before I started working around the age of 25 (post law school), that I bought a set from my old coaching pro (which I still ave and will play if my game settles down again):

1. TM R580 Driver-UST 65, stiff flex

2. Hogan Director Irons 2-Eqaliser

3. Yasuda Putter (this is from my old mixed set, only putter I ave ever owned and unlikely to change it)

I have a 5 wood and fairway driver from my old set In there as well as a sandwdge (the McGill lives!)

Recently returned to practicing/playing regularly after a decade (hardly ever played) and bought a set of Wilson Ci9 irons- will game them till my swing is back in good shape and then go back to the blades!

[misty_mountainhop]

Ahh. Half-set of Petron Impala junior irons and a matching 4-wood. Putter was an Acushnet Bullseye, one of the flanged versions. Would have been late '70s.

[WUTiger]

Back in the 1960s, my younger brother traded the trashman one of our tricycles for a bag of old clubs he had handing on the side of his truck. That's how we became golfers.

The bag contained, as I remember:

• Spalding Topflite 3W and 4W - with curious rubber wrap grips ( a step past leather wrap).
• A very heavy driver with a narrow, very whippy metal shaft. We didn't know it, but the head had been bored out and filled with lead. It was a home-made forerunner of the Medicus weighted clubs. I didn't know better, and practiced with it and used it to hit tee shots my first year - ruined my tempo from the start.
• the head of a blade putter , with about a foot of broken wooden shaft sticking out of it.
• a 5i from early 1950s.
• a 6i mashie, and 8i mashie niblick and a nicklick (wedge) from the 1930s; curious clubs, they were metal shafted with fake wood laminate on the outside.

There's a story behind the putter and the m-n. ...

My dad found a way to salvage the putter. He took a bamboo rake handle, cut crosscross slots in the bottom, and used wire twists to hold the head into place. I used Big Bamboo my first two years of golf, and actually sank a 21-foot putt with it on the first hole of golf I ever played. The old caddies tried it out, and said, "Why not? It works."

One of my little brothers dropped it down the cement basement staircase two summers later, and I needed a new putter.

The mashie niblick had a very large clubface, about a quarter-inch thick with a rather sharp leading edge. I carried it from 1964 to 1975 as a trouble club. A hickory shaft site says this was one use of a M-N, to hit out of fluffy lies. I was able to chop out of some real messes with it:

While in the Marines, I was playing at Camp Pendleton golf club in California. No. 1 is a short par 5, and I put my tee shot in the right rough in a manicured arrangement of ice plant. I asked a nearby greenskeeper if it was a free drop, and he sneered, "Na..., ya gotta play it." So, I pulled out the M-N, and proceeded to blast an 18-inch strip of iceplant out of the rough, and send the ball 100 yards back into the fairway. The greenskeeper shouted, "Hye, you're destroying my plants!"

I replied, "Just following orders, sir!"

Final note: These marvelous clubs ended up missing in action from my parents' basement in the late 1970s.

[Anjew]

The first set of irons that I purchased for myself were a set of Haig Ultra WH385 blades that I played for the last 12 or 13 years. They have been regripped a number of times and reshafted once, so I guess they aren't original anymore, but they were great clubs, very challenging to hit right, but when you did hit them right, they went. The set was 2i-pw, and I was often more confident hitting my 2 iron off the tee than my driver, way better accuracy, and pretty decent distance. I could outdrive some of my friends with the 2 iron.

[dmnoland]

I don't remember much of 1977. I had some second hand, cut down set consisting of 1 & 3 woods, 3, 5, 7, 9 irons and putter. I do remember they were not very good. In fact my second set sucked too, so bad in fact that I can't even give them away.

[bjornarneson]

My first real set of irons were 3-PW Ping Eyes (the version with the cat-eye shaped dot in the cavity). I was thrilled to have them--it was the first time in my life I had even-numbered irons in my bag. I scarcely knew what to do with them. Everything was great until the cops showed up to take them back. Apparently my parents had unwittingly bought them off a local fellow who had recently stolen them from a club in a neighboring town. Ouch.

[lumpuckeroo]

The first clubs I played with were not even a set, it was mismatched JC Higgins clubs.  They had leather wrapped grips and at least one of them still had a wood shaft.  The first set I purchased were a set of Wilson cavity backs and then a Callaway S2H2 driver and 4 wood.

[RPMPIRE]

First set was a Dunlop full driver to PW set I got from Sports Authority. It came with a driver, 3 wood, 3 and 4 hybrid, and 5-PW irons. Pretty good beginner set and it was only $180. Had to buy the bag and a Wilson 55* wedge. Played this for about 3 years then moved up to the first gen Titleist AP2s and upgraded to Vokeys.