Antique Golf Clubs from Scotland: Clubmakers

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Clubmakers

Hardy Brothers
Alnwick

Started as a gunsmiths in Alnwick in 1872 by William Hardy, who took his brother John James into partnership, soon branched out into fishing equipment where they became pre-eminent. The split cane they developed for rods, palakona, offered the option of a lightweight, whippy shaft for golf clubs,

It was an early bamboo laminate made in a hexagonal form. They patented this under British patent number 414476. Although they sold these clubs under their own name also, they were associated with Jack White, at Sunningdale, the 1904 Open champion, and produced an autograph series of irons for him.

They had a Scottish presence, in Edinburgh, from the early 1900s in South St David Street. In 1914 they bought the shop at 101 Princes Street from the creditors of Robert and Roderick Anderson.

There is an interesting connection with Anderson in that most people would consider Hardy Bros to have been the first to use fishing rod materials for golf club shafts. The Forgan exhibition tent at the 1937 Open Championship at Carnoustie featured a club made by Anderson, reputedly a hundred years previously, where the shaft was the greenheart butt of a fishing rod. It was reportedly still, ‘as withy as a willow’.

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