More Sportscaster Cards, Just In Time for The Masters

A view of the green at hole #12, Augusta National.

Masters week starts tomorrow. 

Whether you enjoy playing golf, collecting golf cards or memorabilia, or just watching the pros on television, it's a fun time. 

The Masters tournament is the first major of the year, so it's the first chance you'll have to watch your favorite players contending for a big prize. And as always, they'll do it at Augusta National, one of the most beautiful, iconic, and perfectly manicured golf courses on the planet. The sights and sounds might even motivate you to hit some golf balls yourself.

With that little push to get you out there and swinging a golf club complete, I will remind myself that this is a trading card blog, and that I should feature the cards I set out to feature.

 

 

1977-79 Sportscaster #35-10 Ben Hogan and #45-16 Gary Player

 

You're looking at two absolute legends of the game, captured on cardboard by the popular Sportscaster brand of the 1970s.

Both men were Masters champions—Hogan in 1951 and 1953, and Player in 1961, 1974, and 1978.

Mr. Hogan's swing, in particular, was rock-solid. The instructional book he published in 1957, Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf, contains a wealth of information that's still applicable today. (I keep a copy in my golf library.)

These two cards add some serious clout to my Sportscaster golf card collection. They'll join Tom Watson, Lee Trevino, Arnold Palmer, and Jack Nicklaus. Quite the sextet.

And cards like these prove to be a great reminder of how much the game has changed, especially when it comes to equipment. Golf clubs back in Mr. Hogan and Mr. Player's time were so much less forgiving than today's clubs. The drivers were small, and made of wood. Their sweet spots were tiny—maybe just a nickel-sized circle, right in the middle of the clubface. The irons were even smaller and thinner, and boy, oh boy, did you ever have to catch the middle of the face. Otherwise, clang! Those nasty vibrations would rattle your hands. 

Ultimately, you just had to nail it every time. And the pros back then managed to do it just fine. 

 

It's reminded me that when I was much younger, I had a few old irons and a wooden driver that I'd try to hit every once in a while. And from what I remember, as unforgiving as they were, when you did hit the sweet spot . . .  man, what a sensation.

The whole thing made me want to see how I'd fare with a wooden driver now that I've gotten back into golf. So that's what I did. Just check this beauty out: 

 

It's a Sam Snead "Blue Ridge" driver, made by the Wilson company in the early 1960s. Today's price? Less than that of a blaster box. Can't beat it.

I had so much fun hitting some balls with it that I took things a step further: How exactly would it compare to my modern driver?

There it is, on the right: The Callaway Paradym Ai Smoke Mini (2024). You're looking at 60 years of technology, research, and development in that photo!

 

The size difference is more noticeable when viewed from the top.

 

 

Yep. Those are both drivers. And this might be hard to believe, but the one on the left is what's known as a mini driver. Yeah, that's right. Normal-sized drivers these days are even bigger than that.

Anyhow, there's a golf retail store about 30 minutes away from my home that has a few simulators in the back. These simulators allow you to hit golf balls into a screen, and then they churn out a bunch of data points for your benefit and analysis. You can book an hour in these simulators in advance, which comes in handy when the weather is poor, or when you're trying to chart some yardages with each of your clubs. Or in this case, if you want to compare two clubs: The Sam Snead Blue Ridge and the Callaway Paradym AI Smoke Mini.

For my purposes, I didn't really feel the need to go too far into the data. I only focused on carry distance, total distance, and a couple of other numbers.

I hit 10 balls with each driver, and averaged out the results. Here they are:

Driver Model	Ball Speed (mph)	Launch Angle (°)	Carry Distance (yds)	Total Distance (yds)
Wilson Sam Snead Blue Ridge	132.0	11.2	203.1	229.2
Callaway Paradym Ai Smoke Mini	141.1	10.3	225.9	251.5

Interesting. After 60 years of golf club design, plus all I've read and heard about modern golf technology, I really thought there would be more of a statistical difference between the two clubs. And don't get me wrong, I'll take that 22-yard average increase in distance that the modern driver provides all day, every day. But the wooden driver isn't really so archaic, is it?

Now, I did make some bad swings with each club during the test, and I removed those from the data. That does add to the story. The results of the bad swings with the wooden driver were worse than the results of the bad swings with the modern driver. (Total distance suffered more.) So that's important to note.

But overall, I enjoyed swinging the Blue Ridge driver. The steel shaft and solid wooden head made for a noticeably heavier feel, and changed the balance quite a bit. All of this suits my swing type, which has more of a smooth and classic tempo, as opposed to the super-torqued, "explosive" swings you see some players making these days.

But let's be honest. I'm not about to put the wooden driver in my bag. Just look at my best drive with each club:

Driver Model	Ball Speed (mph)	Launch Angle (°)	Carry Distance (yds)	Total Distance (yds)
Wilson Sam Snead Blue Ridge	133	11.7	211	239
Callaway Paradym Ai Smoke Mini	145	8.3	230	255

I would have loved to see the difference in clubhead speed between the two drivers as well, but unfortunately that feature wasn’t working on the simulator I was using. Neither was spin rate, which would have been another informative data point.

Ultimately, this was a great little exercise. And it's intrigued me enough to go back to the simulator with my modern driver, because the numbers indicate that I can coax more distance out of it. (My launch angle is a little on the low side, for example.)

For now, I'm going to enjoy all the golf action from Augusta National.

How about you readers and collectors? Any golf fans out there? Are you going to watch The Masters at all? Going to hit some golf balls this year?

Share in the comment section, and thanks for reading!