To arm himself for the 1930 campaign to complete the "Grand
Slam", Bobby Jones turned to the famous cleekmaker, Tom Stewart. From
his St. Andrew's shop, Stewart crafted two sets of clubs for Jones' use. The second
set was ordered only after Jones temporary lost his to a thief in 1929. According
to Jones:
All of my 1930 set had been "handmade." Most of the irons bore the
famous "pipe" trademark of Tom Stewart of St. Andrews. Some had been
picked up as completed clubs in golf shops in this country. Others had been assembled
from heads made especially for me in Stewart's forge. Whenever I had visited St.
Andrew's, I had gone to Stewart's to look over his shop and occasionally would
stand with the finisher to be certain that he completed the head according to
my taste. In those days "club-making" was part of a club professional's
job. Having got my heads from Stewart, I brought them home for shafting by whatever
pro we had at East Lake. This operation would involve selecting a shaft from available
stock, planing and sanding it to proper size and feel, fitting it and securing
it into the hosel, applying lamp black to bring out the grain an shellac to give
it a polish, and finally winding on the grip and listing under it. It was an exacting
operation requiring several days, and if the player happened to be as interested
as I was, he took pains to check on every move.
In the case of the wood clubs, too, the skill of the maker was most important,
for he always started with a block only roughly of the desired shape. Working
from this rasp, file, and sandpaper, he produced the final head, which he finished
himself with stains and shellac. The marvel of these old clubs was certainly not
their perfection, but rather that they were as good as they were. By no conceivable
act of charity could they be compared with the precise instruments produced by
modern methods, which work to close tolerances with quality control fully up to
the highest engineering standards."
An excerpt from Golf Is My Game, pages 182-183.
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