HICKORY GOLF

Hickory golf is golf played with clubs that have shafts made of hickory wood. Often combined with the need to keep alive a supposed 'tradition'. As an example, the Society of Hickory Golfers (SoHG) has as its motto Preserving the traditions of the Game but these traditions are not described or defined on their website.
In their Brief history of the SoHG we find:

"They are golfers who love the distinctive feel of golf with hickory-shafted clubs. Moreover, they all share an enthusiasm for the rich history and traditions of golf and bring those values to the golf course."

Precisely what these traditions and values are is left as an exercise for the reader.

What transpires from the available evidence is a great interest in the history of golf and a longing for fair play and sportmanship. This expresses itself, among other things, in the fact that in hickory events, participating is considered more important than winning. The events are generally open to all kind of players, from the well-meaning amateur to the ambitious professional, as long as they play with hickory clubs.
Arguments about which clubs will be allowed or not can then of course give rise to quite ungentlemanly or unladylike debates and the SoHG for example sees it as an important task to provide rulings in this area.

Another aspect that emphasizes more the nostalgic side of hickory golf, is the tendency of its practitioners, to dress up in a style reminding of the interbellum or even earlier times. However quaint, this often results in very nice pictures (as the pictures of the IDHO bear out) and a very nice atmosphere and it is not mandatory but fun.

Hickory golf more or less originated out of the collecting of historical golf material. During meetings where the exchange and trade of golf paraphernalia took place, the need to try to use these artefacts for what they were made for arose more or less organically. This subsequently went out of control in a civilized way: the SoHG conservatively estimates the number of hickory golfers at 3000 worldwide.

In Europe, hickory golf is played in the UK but also Sweden, Germany, Switzerland and France have an active core of practitioners. In the Netherlands there was till recently the Stichting Early Golf (that organized in 2014 the beautiful exposition Nederland golft" in the Haags Historisch Museum) which, as described above, combined the collection and study of golfartefacts and golfhistory with (more or less actively) practicing playing with historical material.
At the end of 2014, the stichting merged into the "commissie erfgoed" of the Nederlandse Golf Federatie (NGF) and its members can now concentrate on playing the game.

For more information we refer to the above links and the excellent site of Iain Forrester.