Aging Clubs Come To Grips With Technology Fewer Businesses Offer Restoration Services

If you’re like most golfers, you’ve already gone over the high-tech edge.

The clubs you play on a regular basis are oversized and constructed with pricey, space-age materials. Your “woods” are metal and may cost a small fortune. And perhaps you’re carrying three different wedges, a $150 putter and brand-name irons boasting the “largest sweet spot” of any on the market.

Still, you probably have a set or two of old clubs - like the beginner’s set you first learned to play with or a battered hand-me-down collection from your mother or father - currently gathering dust in your attic or garage.

And if you’re like most golfers, you sometimes wonder whether it would be worth the time and money to have those old clubs reconditioned, either to sell, pass down to a son or daughter or play once again, yourself, for nostalgia’s sake.

If that’s the case, you might be surprised to learn that the cost of making old clubs play like they did when they were new is relatively low. But you might have to dig deep to make them look like they did when they were still on the display rack.

At least that’s the gist of the comments made by Dave Clarke, president of Clarke Stephens Golf at E. 116 Nora, which specializes in golf club sales and repair.

A big part of Clarke Stephens’ business used to center around reconditioning old clubs - particularly woods, Clarke explained. But as steel, graphite and titanium began to replace persimmon as the material of choice for drivers and fairway woods, fewer golfers needed woods refinished.

As a result, Clarke Stephens eased out of the business several years ago.

“We phased it out because it became such a small part of our total package,” Clarke explained. “We’re seeing less and less of it all the time - even with the old classics like the McGregor woods that were worth a lot of money.”

Craig Schuh, the head professional at Deer Park Golf Course, is one of the few people around who still refinishes woods. But he does it on a time-available basis.

“During the winter I work on it some,” Schuh said, “but during the summer I don’t make any guarantees on when I’ll get the clubs finished.”

According to Clarke, the cost of reconditioning a wood can run $40 or higher.

“It’s getting really expensive,” he said. “It’s reached the point where it’s ridiculous to do it, unless it’s an old classic or something like that.

“We’re still reshafting and regripping and bending loft and lie. But as far as any finish work on wooden woods, we’ve taken the spray booths down and gotten rid of all our spray equipment. It was dirty and dangerous work, and we had to charge so much to make it worth our while that everybody just said, ‘Hey, we’ll go to K mart and buy a whole new set for that (price).”’

According to Clarke, the main expense of a club tuneup will come from having them fitted with new grips, which cost between $3 and $4 per club.

“The (original) grips are going to harden and slicken from not being used over the years,” Clarke explained, “so re-gripping would be the most logical thing for someone to do to get their old clubs in shape.”

Clarke also suggested having the heads of wooden clubs checked to make sure they have not loosened from the shaft.

But he added that the original steel shafts, unless they have been damaged or bent, should perform as well as they did when the clubs were new. Metal fatigue, he said, is not a factor.

“That’s an old myth,” Clarke said. “(Club manufacturers) have put shafts on a machine, flexed them 40,000 times and then rechecked the flexibility. And they’ve found they literally don’t change.

“Unless you swing and hit a root or something and actually bend or stretch the shaft, it should last 50 years or more.”

Steel shafts can be replaced with decent graphite shafts for $25 to $40, Clark said.

“Some can be done even cheaper,” he added, “but that (price range) would get you into a better graphite shaft than the most expensive you could have bought 10 years ago.

“Other than that, though, there isn’t too much more you can do to those older clubs.”

, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: OLD HANDS If you can stand the sight of scuffed-up wooden heads with peeling lacquer, your old clubs can be tuned up at minimal cost.