One of the great controversies of the 1921 Open Championship at St Andrews (and there were a few!) was the deep grooved irons used by the winner Jock Hutchison. These extreme ridges were used to impart maximum backspin to the ball. The Rules of Golf Committee had banned them in May 1921 with the ban to come into effect on 1 July. The Open was played on 23-25 June so they still had a chance to shine.

They were very much an American thing and MacGregor were the major manufacturers. This club, in their Bakspin range, is stamped "Mashie Niblick" on the flange and on the reverse of the head. The reverse also has "Guaranteed Hand Forged" and an "Accurate Arrow", a bit of a throwback to Scottish clubs of fifteen years earlier but MacGregor were always keen to promote Scottishness in their brands so the two flower cleekmarks are said to have been chosen because they resembled Condie of St Andrew's earlier rose cleekmark. The maker's name "MacGregor Dayton" in an oval with a club "pip" in the middle is also clearly stamped with the model name "R5".

MacGregor always seemed to have high quality hickory shafts and this is no exception with the maker's name stamped there also below the original burgundy leather grip.

The face, well the inside of a George Foreman grill probably comes close to describing it but the technical term is "rib-angled".

A very fine example of one of the scarcer MacGregor deep groove models which comes from the estate of the late Jaime Ortiz-Patino erstwhile owner and developer of Valderrama

Price $260.00 Reference: MN236