Says Graham Budd, a 25-year veteran sports memorabilia expert who organizes U.K. George's maker Ramsay Hunter ($150- $200) to rarities such as a mid-18th-century Andrew Dickson putter, the first known club to have a maker's identity ($200,000-$300,000).
There's something in the sale for every purse, from an 1896 offset-blade putter from Royal St. In New York on September 27 and 28, it will be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for both discriminating club collectors and interested newcomers alike. "I tried to get one of every great antique club design," Ellis explains. It's universally acknowledged as the bible of golf club connoisseurship.Īlong the way, Ellis built his own spectacular cache of nearly 800 ball-striking implements, focusing on the game's oldest, most unusual and best-preserved examples. The result? The Clubmaker's Art: Antique Golf Clubs and Their History (Zephyr), his exhaustive two-volume, 15-pound labor of love. And excitedly ferreted out every club patent ever submitted in the U.K. Sussed out subtle nuances of material and construction, like club weight, blade shape, head texture, hosel thickness, grip material and shaft length. Patiently he analyzed and dissected every maker's mark. So for more than a decade, he threw himself into researching classic clubs of the wood-shaft era (c. When Ellis-himself a champion amateur player-began collecting in the 1970s, the territory was uncharted, with no books to read and no comprehensive collections to model. "A painted lady golfer on a ceramic vase is nice, but let's face it: No golf ball was ever hit with a ceramic vase."
What explains that kind of crazy club love? "I look at my clubs as the most important artifacts of golf history," declares Jeffery Ellis, arguably the world's foremost collector of-and authority on-the weaponry of the game. And an unidentified collector allegedly paid a whopping $900,000 in 1994 for an almost-as-elusive early square-toe iron. Privately, Ortiz-Patiño is rumored to have purchased a super-rare 17th-century spur-toe iron (only six are known) for $260,000 after it failed to sell at a Bonhams and Doyle golf sale in December 1998. "I finally let him have it at $174,000." It set the world auction record for a club.īut that's just the public record. "All of a sudden we were bidding in increments of a thousand, then five thousand, then ten thousand," recalls Estey. In the auction room, Estey found himself pitted against tin-mining billionaire and Valderrama Golf Club owner Jaime Ortiz-Patiño. In July 1998, just such a prized club appeared at a Christie's golf sale in Glasgow: a rare, late-18th-century metal-headed blade putter (estimate: $50,000-$65,000) bearing the gloriously crusty provenance of Scotland's Royal Perth Golfing Society. Mary, Queen of Scots? Reputedly the first female golfer. They may not be the prettiest things to look at, but eyes happily glaze over as collectors describe them being dragged around the verdant Scottish lowlands, swung by 16th-century royal duffers. But it's the earliest, brutish examples-of which only a smattering survive-that inspire the heaviest breathing among club aficionados. Some marvel at the quirkiness and ingenuity of late-19th- and early-20th-century mechanical clubs.
Many club collectors are drawn to the sensuousness and sculptural grace of the 19th-century long-nosed woods. He became so impassioned with the pursuit that he ultimately purchased an adjacent apartment in his downtown Portland high-rise to house his world-class collection of historic books, paintings, balls-and more than 400 antique clubs. He figured that if he couldn't play golf, then he would stay connected to the game by collecting artifacts of its storied history. When he found himself lying on the floor for two months with a debilitating back problem, jonesing for the sun on his neck and the sweet swoosh of his favorite driver, Estey made a decision. But there's something about the game of golf that reaches deep into the corpuscles, stirring up some pretty crazy club dreams.Īsk Dick Estey of Portland, Oregon, once ranked the No. Or a few too many nips while the doctor, the lawyer and the rabbi line up their putts. Call it an overload of freshly-cut-grass fumes.