Louisville Golf has carved out a niche for themselves in the golf industry by specializing in traditional persimmon and maple laminate woods. They have done this for two reasons. First of all, many veteran golfers still prefer the feel of wooden woods; secondly, many of the older styles of persimmon and maple woods are extremely effective. Some say that they still can’t be beat.
Those who have used older style, brass-soled, trouble woods such as the old Gintys and Bafflers will need little convincing as to the effectiveness of this style of fairway wood. Out of heavy turf and deep rough they are indeed hard to beat. They can rip down and through high grasses with the ease of an axe and when they meet the ball the heaviness of the sole pops it up and outwards.
This established design concept of getting the weight under the perimeter of the ball is what motivated Orlimar to come up with their innovative TriMetal fairway woods. The success of the TriMetals is what motivated Louisville Golf to recently come up with an updated version of their veteran Niblick Trouble woods.
The older style Niblick was an effective trouble club. Out of the thick stuff it was extremely useful thanks to the heavy ‘V’ shaped, brass sole that gave the club a weapon-like feel. Unfortunately, the down side of the club was also provided by the same heavy sole. Off of smooth fairway lies and hard pan the big ‘V’ sole could provide some pretty unpleasant mishits on thin shots. Those uncomfortable with taking deep, gashing divots had the tendency to often back off a shot a bit resulting in those unfortunate, thin hits.
The revised version of the Niblick solved that problem by widening the head and flattening the sole into a modified ‘V’ shape. This allows the new Niblick to be a better, all-purpose fairway wood with only a slight deterioration of effectiveness when hitting through deep, thick rough. The wider head also has the extra benefit of providing a little more confidence and reassurance to golfers accustomed to the added size of modern metalwoods.
Response from our testers to the Louisville Niblick has been uniformly positive. They like the attractive, traditional, good looks, the performance and the feel. Unfortunately, they, like most all golfers, admire traditional woods and end up playing metalwoods for no easily explained reason.
Once a golfer’s mind switches over to the sound and feel of metal it is difficult to get them to think seriously about wooden woods again. That is a shame because clubs such as the Louisville Niblicks offer a legitimately fine alternative to current trends in metalwood design.
The persimmon Niblicks are available in all standard, fairway lofts and come assembled from Louisville Golf or in component form, pre-whipped for use with steel or graphite shafts.
