{"id":401,"date":"2011-01-14T11:12:16","date_gmt":"2011-01-14T18:12:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tgpnolan.com\/?p=401"},"modified":"2013-05-10T02:45:54","modified_gmt":"2013-05-10T09:45:54","slug":"coming-up-silver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tgpnolan\/golf\/equipment\/401\/coming-up-silver","title":{"rendered":"Coming Up Silver"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Only a bigamist has as much to celebrate in 2011 as do I.<\/p>\n

This year I mark not one, but two, silver anniversaries.\u00a0 My golf clubs and my pickup both hit 25.\u00a0 It\u2019s a time to pause and reflect.<\/p>\n

The pickup is a 1986 Chevrolet C10, the line\u2019s entry model. \u00a0It was cherry red when I bought it, but it\u2019s not anymore.\u00a0 Too much sun.\u00a0 Now it\u2019s about the color of an M&M your kid lost behind a couch cushion years back.\u00a0 That it\u2019s around at all is a marvel.\u00a0 It was built just as American manufacturers figured out that by dint of economies like thinner sheet steel and plenty of plastic, they\u2019d improve margins.\u00a0 Good thinking!<\/p>\n

Never a show truck, the Chevy was put to work.\u00a0 Firewood by the bed-load, overstuffed couches, dump-bound televisions, skylarking children, the truck\u2019s done it all.\u00a0 Sometime in the \u201880s I gave up all pretense of maintaining its looks.\u00a0 When I backed it into a brick wall and bent the diamondplate rear bumper, I took on the bodywork myself, using a splitting maul to get things more or less in order.<\/p>\n

As of this writing, the truck has never been washed by the hand of man, and I better not find anyone trying to break the streak.\u00a0 I have my pride.<\/p>\n

The clubs, 1986 Hogan Apex blades, are, like their namesake, severe-looking and unforgiving of a bad shot. \u00a0They\u2019ve always been a little more than I can handle.\u00a0 But I\u2019d played a few sets of sloppy-feeling clubs, and I wanted to go with blades.\u00a0 That meant the Apex, the Staff, or the beautiful, pretty much forgotten Palmer Peerless.<\/p>\n

The Apex woods were shortlived.\u00a0 The 5-wood cracked, a replacement cracked, and I was told to forget it: persimmon was in short supply, was being harvested too early, and couldn\u2019t stand the gaff.\u00a0 I put the wooden woods away and bought a metal driver.<\/p>\n

The irons are quite another story.\u00a0 Look at a pure blade Apex today and it won\u2019t look much different than one of mine.\u00a0 In some years the head shape is more musclebacked than in others, and the tiny gold disc on the back of the clubhead comes and goes.\u00a0\u00a0 But they\u2019re all true to the look of mine.<\/p>\n

I am a golf Luddite, though I\u2019ve continued to upgrade drivers and fairway woods in self-defense.\u00a0 I won\u2019t own a rescue club.\u00a0 It\u2019s a matter of principle, though I\u2019m not sure which principle.\u00a0 I play the 3-iron, which is hard, and I carry the 2-iron on windy days or whenever I go the UK, because while I can\u2019t get it more than 30 feet off the ground, it will scamper true for a couple of hundred yards.<\/p>\n

Club fitting wasn\u2019t around in 1986, and I\u2019m not sure I suffered too much for the lack of it.\u00a0 Not long ago, though, I succumbed to the loft\/lie thing and brought my clubs in for a look.\u00a0 The club-fitting guy eyed them for a long time and then said, \u201cWhat do you want me to do with them?\u201d\u00a0 Smarty pants.<\/p>\n

In truth, though, over 25 years they have seen some hard duty.\u00a0 Their silver luster is mostly gone, the red ink in the numbers on the soles entirely so.\u00a0 And\u2014here\u2019s the rub\u2014the grooves aren\u2019t very groovy anymore.\u00a0 I priced an overhaul: re-grooved and re-chromed runs about $700.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know.\u00a0 Maybe it\u2019s time for champagne, cake, a gold watch and honored retirement.\u00a0 I know that was the feeling of a pro I met up with during a round last fall.\u00a0 He was, of course, completely plugged into the elegance of the Apexes.\u00a0 Yet as we shook on the 18th<\/sup>, he said \u201cLet it go.\u00a0 Look around some.\u201d\u00a0 And finally, like Welles at the close of Citizen Kane<\/em>, he uttered a single, final word: \u201cMizuno.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Only a bigamist has as much to celebrate in 2011 as do I. This year I mark not one, but… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":409,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3380,3,18],"tags":[4722,894,4716,4717,4718,4719,4720,4721],"class_list":["post-401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-la-carte","category-equipment","category-lifestyle","tag-persimmon-woods","tag-ben-hogan","tag-golf-clubs","tag-hogan-apex-golf-clubs","tag-mizuno","tag-wilson-staff","tag-palmer-peerless","tag-chevrolet-pickups"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tgpnolan\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/22\/2011\/01\/DSCN3912.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tgpnolan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tgpnolan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tgpnolan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tgpnolan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tgpnolan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tgpnolan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":530,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tgpnolan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401\/revisions\/530"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tgpnolan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tgpnolan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tgpnolan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tgpnolan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}