The shaft tapers from round at the hosel to square at the grip. The club has a lie angle of 62 degrees with 16 degrees of left-handed loft. The clubhead is a separate piece of metal from the hosel. The hosel is 9вЂі long with a circumference of 3 1/4вЂі and is pinned in two positions, one high and one low. The heel to toe length of the clubhead is 4 1/2вЂі and the width of the blade is 3/16вЂі. The club itself is 35 1/2вЂі long and weighs 24 ounces. This particular club with its slightly more crude design than the surviving examples of golf clubs of Scottish manufacture from the 1700s is a very historically significant golf club being perhaps the earliest known example of an American-made golf club in existence! Shipping records from the Scottish port of Leith show that a shipment of balls and clubs reached Charleston, South Carolina in the 1740s and there are British military journals and ads from New York newspapers that document play on Long Island, New York later in the 1700s. Golf was played in the Americas in the 1700s in both South Carolina and New York. This would generally be a very good indication of the clubвЂ™s approximate date of manufacture because wood is dried for only a short period of time (about a year) before the moisture content is lowered enough to be useful as a handle or shaft (if wood is dried too long, the moisture content becomes too low and the wood becomes brittle a protective coating over the wood at the finish of manufacture seals the woodвЂ™s moisture content at the ideal level). Rafter Radiocarbon Laboratories in New Zealand carbon dated the wood in the shaft to 1760 with an error factor of +/- 40 years. Yet this club is quite different with a rounded toe and extra long and thick hosel supporting a heavy and sturdy shaft. Nearly all of these clubs are of Scottish manufacture with the irons having a very squared-off toe. Knowledgable collectors often estimate the number of pre-1800 clubs in the world at fewer than 25! Most of these clubs are in museums or private collections and they very rarely become available for purchase. Few clubs of this vintage have survived the ravages of time.

Take a look at this very rare, wood shafted iron from circa 1760.

Dunlop golf clubs for sale