A wood by any other name - Brief Article

A minor movement is under way in the golf world. The movement is confined, for the moment, to television broadcast booths, but it may spread some day to the general population. The aim of the movement is to rename fairway woods.

Woods, as you have surely noticed, are no longer made of wood. My first driver--which was partly responsible for my decision, at the age of 13, to give up golf for 25 years-- was a second-generation hand-me-down with a head that could have spent its winters as the foot of a Queen Anne chair. Now, even 7-year-olds demand titanium. I know three or four players who still carry persimmon, but they are all over 70, and each of them is stubborn, cheap, ignorant, or a combination of the three. You seldom see wooden woods anymore even in the bags of estranged wives, who probably occupy the lowest rung on the club-recycling ladder.

The question, though, is whether this change in technology necessitates a change in terminology. Various prominent TV commentators have decided that it does. They refer to woods now as "metals," saying, for example, that a certain player has elected to go for the green with a "fairway metal" of some kind-- perhaps a "3-metal." On CBS recently, Jim Nantz referred to a fairway wood generically as "a metal-headed club."

There are three things wrong with this trend. The first is that it creates more confusion than it eliminates, since all modern golf clubs, including irons and putters, are "metal-headed." The second is that "wood" is no more anachronistic than "iron." (Irons haven't been made of iron since Britain was ruled by Romans. Should we start calling those clubs "alloys"?) The third is that avoiding "wood" is excessively fastidious, like objecting to the use of the (useful) word "hopefully." The TV commentators are proposing a solution for a problem that doesn't exist.

Besides, retaining this archaic expression may lead to some creative revisionism later on.

"Why are woods called 'woods'?" your great-great-granddaughter may ask you some day.

"Well, Little One," you can explain, "there was an awfully good player back around the turn of the century. He hit the ball farther than anybody else, and he won every prize there was to win. In fact, I taught him everything he knew. Woods were named after him."

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