THE LORE OF HICKORY, MASHIES & NIBLICKS; POLICE CHIEF RICK HETZEL IS BUILDING A COLLECTION OF ANTIQUE GOLF CLUBS

Left: This Robert Forgan smooth-face brass putter is engraved with the maker's name and plume mark of the Prince of Wales. The club was probably made about 1901 but might even be older.

Police Chief Rick Hetzel admires some of his vintage golf clubs.

The golf clubs Cape Girardeau Police Chief Rick Hetzel collects bear names strange to the ears of most modern-day golfers accustomed to identifying clubs by their numbers. On a wall in Hetzel's garage workshop hang mashies, niblicks, a mashie niblick, spoons and a jigger.

These are names that distinguished the golf clubs of yore. A mashie compared to today's 5 iron, the niblick became today's 9 iron, and the mashie niblick was halfway between, a 7 iron. The origin of the term niblick is unknown. The term mashie may have come from the French word masse, which in billiards still denotes a shot with extreme backspin.

The brassie that became the 2 wood was so named for the brass plate that protected the sole against the rocks often found in the fairways of old. The more lofted spoon became the 3 wood.

The jigger was a club used to loft the ball, a rare enough occasion when the game primarily was built on hitting low shots that ran up to the hard greens.

Hetzel is a ardent golfer who plays clubs made by Zevo and Taylor Made. But he specializes in collecting clubs fashioned 100 years ago by a Scotsman named Robert Forgan.

Forgan's roots run to St. Andrews, the course considered the birthplace of golf. His workshop was next to the 18th green, and as the 19th century turned into the 20th he was clubmaker to the Prince of Wales and then to King Edward.

Forgan's name is engraved on his clubheads along with an insignia known as a "cleek mark." Horgan's logos were the plume of the Prince of Wales and the crown designating King Edward.

The clubs Hetzel collects resemble modern-day sticks but they are made from much different materials. While steel and graphite shafts and titanium clubheads are common in today's woods, vintage woods were constructed almost entirely of hickory. Hickory also was used for the shafts of irons.

But clubmakers punched holes in the faces of irons so that golfers could impart spin and they had various means of distributing weight in the clubhead.

"They were experimenting with the same things clubmakers are experimenting with now," Hetzel says.

These clubs were made for courses that were much rougher than today's manicured wonders. Some olden-day golfers carried a club called a rut iron, which was designed specifically to extricate a ball from wagon ruts.

A group who call themselves Hickory Hackers sponsor tournaments where only vintage golf clubs are used and knickers are worn.

Hetzel has hit golf balls with some of these clubs. He much prefers modern technology. "If you don't hit it right it stings just like hitting a baseball can sometimes," he says.

Hetzel is a collector by nature. He has collections of Olympic pins from the days he lived in Atlanta along with police badges and arrowheads among other things. He also is a woodworker who makes display boards for the clubs he sells.

"I only sell clubs for the purpose of being able to buy more clubs for my private collection," the chief says.

He just completed a two-club display Michele Litzelfelner is giving her husband Rob, one of the owners of Bent Creek Golf Course in Jackson. A printed history of each club is attached.

Hetzel started playing golf at age 12 on a Lawrence, Kansas, municipal course that had sand greens. Later he caddied at Hough Park in Jefferson City.

His love of the game comes from the constant challenges it offers and "the lessons it teaches," he says.

"Find a guy who cheats at golf and you've found a guy who cheats at life."

The ability to share the sport with his 25-year-old son, Richard, is another bonus. The two play together almost every weekend.

Hetzel dove into collecting antique clubs about six years ago as a way of taking his affection for the sport "to another spectrum," he said.

As a member of the Golf Collectors Society, he has immersed himself in the lore of clubmaking, from the names of the greats to the evolution of club construction.

One of his prized clubs is a transitional brassie. The club was built after golfers switched in the 1860s from playing balls stuffed with boiled goose feathers to harder balls made of a substance called gutta percha. Leather was inserted into the face of the brassie to protect the wooden face from the hard ball.

Antique golf clubs can sell from $40 to $10,000. Most are worth less than $1,500, but there is much to know to appreciate their value. As a reminder, Hetzel keeps a club in his office he calls a "stupid club."

That's the one he paid way too much for.