They are not made to play golf with them. If you take a cursory look at the Sunday sticks, which, thanks to Robin Bargmann, have recently been displayed in the Nederlands Golf Museum, you get the impression that they are antique golf clubs. Until you discover that the grip is missing and there is a solid copper tip in that place.
They are therefore not golf clubs but walking sticks.
As if he had a photographic memory, Bargmann knows how to tell many stories about the history of golf, peppered with details. This is also the case with these Sunday sticks. “In Mennonite Scotland, until The Second World War, it was forbidden to play golf on Sundays, the Sabbath,” he says. “That was obviously not easy in a country where golf is a popular sport.
Even then there were already a lot of golf courses, beautifully interwoven with the city landscape and surrounded by many hiking trails. Instead of playing a round of golf, people walked on the course on Sundays, supported by these so-called Sunday sticks. Perhaps to poke fun at this ban, as a form of silent protest. But at the same time also an expression of love for the game of golf. These walking sticks have become a popular and therefore also precious collector’s item.”
Also read the article in De Nederlandse Golfkrant on the subject in question:
Golfkrant 18. Oktober 2018 Robin Bargmann (Sundaysticks)