"Swells and Mounds and Uncertainty": Inside the history of hickory at 8 Golf Place

For those who, like me, are nonplussed about golf, the street ‘Golf Place’ is just another walkway to West Sands. For thousands of tourists, locals, and students who pass through each year, it is the last stretch of a sacred pilgrimage to the Home of Golf.

This summer, a new establishment opened on the strip: 8 Golf Place, a vintage golf shop selling restored hickory clubs and paraphernalia, which replaced The Golf Shop of St Andrews. New owners Loren and Morgan French spoke to The Saint about their journey all the way from Chicago to this sought-after street in St Andrews.

Opening just a few weeks before the Alfred Dunhill, a golf tournament that brings visitors from all over the UK and beyond, the Frenches have had an auspicious business start. From numbers alone, golf shops in St Andrews are already promised success. According to one study, for every pound golfers spend on the course, four more are spent in other St Andrews businesses. 

Despite the town’s position as ‘the home of Golf,’ it wasn’t here that the Frenches’ dream was born. On a trip to Tokyo in 2024, they met a “Scottish lad who distributed hickory clubs from the previous owners” of 8 Golf Place, opening up a little-known part of golf’s history to Japanese markets and, coincidentally, to this couple from Chicago. 

When the distributor from Tokyo got in touch to let them know that 8 Golf Place’s previous owner was retiring and the property would hit the commercial market, the answer was not an immediate yes. Loren said that, although he “loved history, architecture,” and, crucially, golf, he “ultimately never knew anything about hickory” or “Scottish clubmaking.” 

Hickory clubs were first used during the boom of golf’s initial popularity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Unlike modern clubs, they were made of wood and iron, meaning they’re less suitable for today’s golfing techniques.

When Loren and his father visited St Andrews in November 2024, ideas began to germinate. Loren thought that “it could be something really cool,” after seeing the shop and its manufacturing facilities.  

Once Loren became interested, he didn’t stop until he understood everything he needed to know. Morgan explained Loren’s encyclopaedic research technique: he “went down the full rabbit hole, [...] reading every book that there is about club-making and hickory.” 

Loren uncovered a “unique space within the golf ethos,” and he found hickory-making’s laborious nature fascinating. 

He told The Saint about how much he has learnt from clubmakers and restorers in and around Fife: “there’s this foundation of authenticity and appreciation for golf.”

As outsiders to both the nation and trade, Morgan admitted that they had taken a “gamble” by starting a business in Scotland. Thankfully, the clubmakers Loren had encountered “want to share what they know,” and “the Scottish people have been so welcoming.”

Negotiating, planning, and ultimately dreaming about the shop from Chicago meant that timing had to be perfect for the couple to even get the deeds, let alone make it a success. Luck was on their side. “A lot of unintended dynamics [...] lent themselves” to their vision and everything “kept coming back to St Andrews.”

“It didn’t make sense trying to put something that wasn’t authentic to the location in another spot.” It was St Andrews or nothing.

“Before the deal was even really done,” however, they had started to collect “all these original clubs from collectors all over the world and all corners of the internet.”

For the co-owners, “there is a story to tell” through the craft of hickory clubs. Hickory clubs get their name from the American hickory tree, whose wood is used to make the shafts (the bit you hold onto, for non-golfers). The pair recognised that by uprooting their lives, they have followed the club’s path from the United States to Scotland. 

Tapping into the hundreds of golf-bugged students, 8 Golf Place offers rental bags at a daily discounted rate of £30. Loren and Morgan remain “mindful” of “the reception of the students,” which “has been incredibly positive so far.” 

“We didn't want to come over here and make a shop just for American tourists.” For commercial reasons, however, several aspects of the shop are geared toward those flying in from across the pond. North American tourists make up 70% of total golf tourism in St Andrews per year, according to the Sheffield Hallam University study. 

The hefty weight of the “forged iron” club heads equals the prestige of St Andrews in the eyes of the American consumer, Loren said. “People wait their whole lives” to play at the Home of Golf, and he thinks that hickory clubs from 8 Golf Place can help to “commemorate” that special occasion. 

Before steel production rose in the 1930s, hickory club heads were shipped overseas in “tiny boxes,” separate from the shaft and installed using local wood from the owner’s surroundings, making each club unique. Loren called hickory-making a craft “contrarian to the modern manufacturing of golf.”

In the Tom Stewart Factory, which was on Argyle Street until 1932, “3,000-5,000 heads a month” were hammered out of hot iron by “24 guys.” These numbers, considering the back-breaking effort, were not lackluster. “Most of the heads were stamped” with the crest or name of the “local pro or the place they were being sent to,” meaning tourists and locals can now buy restored hickory clubs with links to their home Clubs from over 150 years ago. 

Loren plays mostly with hickories now. He appreciates “hitting a low shot that runs and has these swells and mounds and uncertainty.”

Loren quoted golf historian Peter Thompson, who thought that “golf is the best with the balls on the ground,” when “the outcome of the shot is in doubt for the longest.” Hickory clubs’ lack of distance-hitting, in contrast with modern drivers, is a strength on St Andrews’ seven Links courses, designed at a similar time as original hickory clubs.  

The shop is unique in St Andrews, and even in Scotland, representing one of only a few. Looking forward to the 155th Open next summer in St Andrews, and the arrival of fleets of carbon fiber clubs in the hands of the world’s best golfers, how will the shop’s backwards step in time fare? 

Photo by Matt Harris