The rare Eighteenth Century club, with a thornwood head, hickory shaft and a wool and silk grip, fetched $132,000.
Program from Augusta National Golf Club’s first Masters, $10,000.
MIAMI, FLA. – Sloan’s Sporting Art and Golf Memorabilia Sale on Sunday, March 18, was held at Sloan’s Miami Doral Gallery in association with the International Golf Auctions. The sale, consisting of 499 lots and the first sale of its kind to be held at Sloan’s, brought a total of $370,645.
An extremely rare mid Eighteenth Century wood playclub was the top lot of the sale, realizing $132,000 against its pre-sale estimate of $100/120,000. The club, originally from England’s Cowdray Park Golf Club – with a thornwood head, hickory shaft and a wool and silk grip – is one of the only three mid Eighteenth Century clubs extant. The twin of this and the third remain in a private collection and there seems no likelihood in the foreseeable future of either becoming available on the market for many years to come.
A March 22 to 25, 1934 program marking memorable moments in golf history from the Augusta National Golf Club’s first annual Invitational Tournament, now known as the Masters, fetched $10,000. Another top selling lot was a USGA Thirty-Fourth National Amateur Golf Championship Program. The Championship took place from September 22 to September 27, 1930 at the Merion Cricket Club. The program, illustrated card covers and is finely boned in green hide with a slipcase, sold for $5,000.
A collection of Nineteenth Century mezzotints provided “Valentine Green” after L.P. Abbot, a Nineteenth Century mezzotint inscribed “To the Society of Golfers at Blackheath,” which reached its pre-sale estimate and fetched $10,000.
Other notable highlights included an A.T. Morris playclub with a black stained beech head, which commanded $6,000; a Mills Alloy Longnose L Model Putter along with a framed provenance from Lionel Calloway confirming the putter was used by James Bra, which sold for $5,500, surpassing its pre-sale estimate of $3,5/4,50: and a Nineteenth Century feather ball, which sold for $5,000. A Leckie Ewing signed watercolor entitled “St Andrews, the Sixth Green” met its estimate of $6,000.
A limited edition of Hilton HH & Smith GG, The Royal and Ancient Game of Golf (London, 1912), bound in a crimson hide, yielded $5,500. Wethered HN & Simpson T’s The Architectural Side of Golf (London, 1959) with its original dust wrapper and bound in white cloth, glided past its pre-sale estimate of $2,5/3,500, eventually realizing $5,000.