Toney Penna: A Name And A Man Worth Remembering

Stranded at home the past couple of months with no trips for tournaments or travel features, I have reluctantly taken on a few projects, one of which has entailed cleaning out the garage. In doing so, I uncovered some long-forgotten gems: a box of clips from my first newspaper job, which I started at the Burlington Free Press the night in 1981 when Bernie Sanders was elected mayor of that Vermont city, a stack of Grateful Dead albums, and perhaps best of all, my last set of persimmon woods, which bore the signature of the man who designed them, Toney Penna.

The heads of those clubs are tiny, 190cc for my old driver versus 460cc for the titanium bomber in my bag today. And the tops are a luscious light brown, with thin, dark streaks of grain. As for the sweet spots, they feature a plastic called cycolac that is red in color and attached to the face with four screws. I admired the sheer artistry of the sticks and recalled the euphonious sounds they produced on those rare occasions when I made good contact.

As I considered the craf...