The Professional Hickory Golf Championship

The New York Times has an article on this year’s Professional Hickory Golf Championship. I’ve long wanted to don plus-fours or a linen suit and play with hickory clubs and a gutta percha.

In a salute to those stars of the 1920s and the history of golf, two dozen players showed up Monday for the second annual United States Professional Hickory Golf Championship. They walked the venerable 1922 Tom Bendelow course, carrying small bags of wooden-shafted clubs.

Men in ties, caps and argyle socks and women in skirts and stylish hats played low bump-and-run shots into the greens. They used clubs with names like mashie, brassie, niblick and jigger stamped into the tiny club heads, some irons looking more like straight razors than golf clubs. They played with replica rubber golf balls from the 1920s that usually landed at least 10 yards short of typical targets.

“It’s like we stepped into a time machine,” said Kevin Weickel, the 2011 North Florida Golf P.G.A. pro of the year and the tournament director of the P.G.A. Tour’s Children’s Miracle Network Hospital Classic in Orlando. “You almost see the ghosts of those old pros scattered around the first tee.”

He added: “Some of these old trees were here back in 1925, and they were a part of that tournament. Looking around today, it makes me wonder if this is my field of dreams.”