You don’t see many of these around so a nice present for a left-hander. A fine piece of banded beech forms the head with a reddish-purplish tinge beneath the brown stain. This is from the application of 'keel' to colour the wood, a large jar of rusting bits of iron the old clubmakers kept in their workshop as a dye.

The head incorporates a piece of leather secured by cobbler’s nails. Originally these were repairs to beech heads but once clubmakers saw the damage wrought by the hard gutty ball they often included the leather at the time the club was first made, There is a clear stamp of 'Wm Park' on the crown of the club.

The head is protected by a ramshorn slip beneath a curved brass sole plate. The lead weight is unusual with a central circular weight flanked by two smaller ones.

At 5" the scare (joining the head to the shaft) is long, more akin to the longnose clubs of the previous decade and before. Perhaps it is not the original shaft: it has no Park stamp and there is a kink in it, laterally, rather than a bow to the player which is how a clubmaker sets the shaft with the grain, though all sorts of unplanned things can happen to a thin piece of hickory over the course of around 130 years. At worst, the shaft is contemporaneous with the head and the leather grip and underlisting original to it. To my mind a little too whippy but that could well have been a request from an older customer to Willie Park himself as increasing age diminished his ability to get the ball high in the air.

Whatever the exact story, this is a lovely club, redolent of the age and with the most famous of names attached.

Price $1450.00 Reference: B398