And Now for Something Completely Different

With no leading manufacturers being put up for sale by their parent company, no billionaire internet entrepreneurs building clubs and signing a dozen touring pros to play them, no young golfer/physicists bursting on to the scene with unconventional-length irons, and no big-news equipment launches, it’s been a relatively slow news week for golf gear.

Which gives us the opportunity to introduce to you an item you won’t find in any store, won’t make you a better golfer (don’t worry, it won’t make you worse), and which won’t necessarily increase your enjoyment of the game, but which is exquisitely-made and delightfully different.

Tim Alpaugh’s pitch/ball mark repairers are crafted individually from dense and rather obscure hardwoods, and give your golf gear a touch of class it’s very unlikely any of your playing partners will be able to match.

Alpaugh is unequivocally old school. He plays golf with hickory-shafted clubs and, in 2010, wrote a short but wonderfully romantic novel entitled ‘Claret Dreams’ which told the story of a man who used his family’s heirloom hickories to qualify for the 1962 Open Championship (Alpaugh is 30,000 words into the sequel). Like most children of his generation, the prestige and nobility of a white collar job was paramount to his parents, he says. So he went to college to become a doctor.

“But I grew disenchanted with the cutthroat process of getting into medical school,” Alpaugh adds. “So I switched to accounting, thus entering the world of suits and ties.”

Alpaugh spent eight years at Coopers and Lybrand, one of the 1980s’ big eight accounting firms, rising to Vice President of SEC reporting. He passed the law and auditing portions of the CPA exam…but resigned soon afterwards. He’d had enough of the corporate world, wanting instead to work for himself.

“I bought a van and some tools, and hung up my shingle the very next day,” he says. “I was going to be a carpenter, and I learned the trade very quickly.” Alpaugh spent 22 years making his own hours and leaving plenty of spare time for golf.

Today, he still does carpentry work, but for a list of clients he has whittled down (get it?) to a select few. He restores hickory clubs, and he makes trestle sticks for golf carry bags and the aforementioned pitch/ball mark repairers from bubinga, peltogyne (purpleheart), cocobolo and occasionally maple and hickory. In the last 20 years, Alpaugh estimates he has made 15,000 tools, one of which he gave to Arnold Palmer after acting as a spotter for ESPN, and walking with The King, during a Champions Tour event (he subsequently made a set for the 1996 US Presidents Cup team which Palmer captained).

Alpaugh kindly gave me a selection of ball mark repairers shortly before Christmas last year, and while they haven’t helped me shave any strokes off my score, they have been the topic of numerous conversations.

“I’ve always enjoyed making things by hand, and seeing the pleasure it gives people who receive them,” says Alpaugh. If you have a golfer in the family who owns every piece of equipment he/she could possibly ever need and who has a birthday coming up, an Alpaugh original might be just the thing.

$25-$45 for the ball mark repairers depending on design and material, $35 for the trestle sticks.

More info: https://www.instagram.com/claretdreamer/ 

Alpaugh can send them direct; email him at [email protected].

Visit our Gear section for more reviews on golf clubs, balls, equipment, and accessories.

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Colorado AvidGolfer is the state’s leading resource for golf and the lifestyle that surrounds it, publishing eight issues annually and proudly delivering daily content via coloradoavidgolfer.com. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.