I live in Connecticut, where there are clear lines between the golf season and its offseason.
I've learned the trickiest part of playing golf in the offseason isn't the weather. There are usually a decent number of ~50 degree days which count as passable golf weather in my eyes. Rather, it's the courses. Everything gets heavily punched and sanded, so the winter greens come out.
For those unfamiliar, winter greens are often just a fancy way of saying 'they cut a hole in the middle of what used to be a fairway,' which can make putting awkward, and transform golf holes into odd lengths and layouts. I found it hard to glean much about my game from playing winter golf. Until last season, when I adopted a new offseason habit.
Hickory golf.
That's right, and stay with me. On the advice of my friend, last season I invested in half a set of newly-made hickory clubs from Louisville Golf. Now, whenever the winter greens come out, the hickories come out. I've never loved winter golf more, and I'm convinced it's good for my game when peak golf season rolls back around.
I realize you probably don't care about trying hickory golf—"I have no interest in making this game harder than it already is," says Golf Digest's Sam Weinman—but here are a few things I've learned that may help you.
1. Use gear effect to find the center
Hickory drivers are *very* unforgiving. Modern drivers are super forgiving, so they've gotten good at masking the gear effect, but there's no way around it with the old stuff.
The way the gear effect works: When you hit the ball on the heel of your driver, the clubhead and ball twist in a way that sends the ball to the right. When you hit it on the toe, the opposite happens, so the ball goes left. Modern drivers are super forgiving, so they've gotten good at masking this effect, but it's still very much there—and impossible to ignore with hickory drivers.
Knowing that it's there is useful, but the next time on the range, try using it. *Try* hitting one off the heel, then on your next shot, *try* hitting one off the toe, then aim for the sweet spot. Coaches tell students to do this as a form of sweet spot training, and it helps because our brain does best when it knows the guardrails.
2. Wait an extra beat at the top
Hickory clubs are heavy and stiff. Unless you're extraordinarily strong, it's really hard work to force the club around. Whenever I play hickory golf, the heavy clubs remind me that I need to wait for it a little longer at the top between backswing and downswing. If I don't, my body goes and the club gets left behind. It feels like medicine for my tempo.
3. Wedge only in case of emergency
Have you ever looked at a hickory sand wedge? They're terrifying. They're built like shovels, whose only goal is to dig into the ground. They're very hard to hit, and as a result, you learn to only hit them when you absolutely need to. The rest of the time, you're either putting or hitting bump-and-runs. It makes life much easier. Why should it be any different with modern equipment?
4. Learn to look for the runways
Hickory clubs are hard to get into the air. The ball flies close to the ground and rolls out for longer. And because so many golf courses were designed in the hickory era, architects responded by creating lots of little channels designed for golfers to run their ball up towards and into the green.
Modern equipment is (much) easier to get airborne, so it's easy to overlook these design elements nowadays. Playing hickory brings them back to the fore, though. It forces you to find all the run-ups to greens, and the more you look for them, the more you'll see them everywhere. Instead of looking at the pin—or even the green itself—try looking for the runways. Think of them as little safety nets for your approach shot, with more margin for error baked in.