Hickory golf is a game in which attention to your dress attire is as important as the shots you fire. It's a variation of the sport in which golfers use antique clubs with shafts made of hickory wood and many dress up in the fashion of the 19th and early 20th century. Hickory clubs were used worldwide in golf from the 1840s until steel shafts surfaced in the 1930s. Huge quantities of the wooden shafted clubs were made in the early 20th century in Great Britain, the United States and Australia. They are still used on golf courses today by about 200 enthusiasts who are members of the Australian Golf Heritage Society. The group's captain, Les Browne, loves the feel of the traditional golf clubs. "About 20 years ago, I was introduced to hickory golf by a long-term golf professional," Mr Browne said. "The clubs we use today are over 100 years old, and they are just as good now as they were 100 years ago." From wood to steel A golf club is made of several components including the head, the shaft and the grip. In a hickory club, the head is either wood or iron and the shaft is made from hickory wood. When it was first used in clubs, hickory replaced other types of wood that weren't as strong. "In the early days they used any wood they could find," Mr Browne said. "But when America started playing golf they used wood from a hickory forest, which is very, very strong. By 1930 steel was cheaper and more flexible, so became the predominant material for golf club shafts. "You can make them [steel shafts] stiff, you can make them flexible," Mr Browne said. "With hickory clubs you get what comes out of the wood, and they vary." Hickory clubs demand a slow, soft swing. "If you follow those simple rules, it's fine," Mr Browne said. "The wooden clubs generally hit long distances. The iron shots are used to play short distances." Keeping tradition alive Hickory golfers recently had a round at Wollongong Golf Club on the New South Wales South Coast, one of Australia's oldest putting greens. Opened in 1897, the club is a links course complete with sandy coastline and natural obstacles like undulating terrain, dunes and bunkers. Aaron Keevers, golf operations manager, looks forward each year to the hickory players and their annual competition. "It shows the traditions of golf … using the old golf clubs and the outfits, it's wonderful to see," Mr Keevers said. Emulating past fashion Suzanne Brown is the current NSW and Australian women's hickory champion. "The idea of hickory is to see what they did in the era, which was the fashion and obviously the hickory clubs," Ms Brown said. Men would wear knickerbockers tucked into their argyle socks and women wore long skirts with petticoats. "Women were very smart as far as fashion was concerned. They needed something practical, easy to move in, but most importantly, just as stylish as what they wore off the course," Ms Brown said. "Golf was a prestigious game, and they wanted to keep the clothing as stylish as the actual game of golf." Golf as a way of life Golf historian Hugh Jolly has been playing the sport for 70 years. "My father was very enthusiastic about the etiquette of golf, which he saw as a blueprint for life," Mr Jolly said. "The basis of the rules of golf is that you abide by the rules but it's self-regulating and you would be expected, if you broke a rule, to tell your opponent. Mr Jolly says businessmen who had more leisure time founded golf in the Australian colonies. "You had to have some money to play golf, but if we go back to Scotland, it was always played in egalitarian terms," he said. "So you might touch your hat to the gaffer if you met on the street, but you were all on equal terms on the golf course."