Virtual OHC II 2021 — A Celebration of Spring!

Spring is in the air! It’s Masters week, Azaleas are blooming across the south, and even those of us in the north are enjoying pretty good spring weather this year. A fresh golf season is upon us!

While the COVID-19 pandemic persists, we’re cautiously eyeing plans for a face-to-face meetup later this year. We hope to finally host our next in-person Oil Hardened Classic event at the Donald Ross Course at the French Lick Resort in French Lick, Indiana. We have a great agenda in the works and—fingers crossed—we think in a few months it will be safe to hold the event (and, for reference, you can read HERE about our inaugural OHC held in person at Sweetens Cove in the fall of 2019).

For now, we’ll kick off the 2021 season with another virtual event like the one we held last June. Entrants will play and post a round anytime during the month of April at a course of your choosing. Play with at least one other partner/competitor to keep the competitive juices flowing. Submit your scores along with handicaps, course handicap info, and what tee boxes you played from. We’ll determine winners and award prizes.

As we did last year, we ask that participants use social media to share pics from the day, using the tags #EternalSummerGolfSociety, #PlayPersimmon, #BringBackTheThwack and #OilHardenedClassic. Let’s join together in this virtual way and continue to spread the word about our group and about the fun of classic-era golf. We can’t all be together in one place right now, but we can all find a local course and partner, play our best, and share the fun virtually. We’ll also award prizes again for the best social media contributions.

The entry fee for the event is $125 per player plus standard flat fee shipping for the merchandise (and, of course, you pay your own green fees wherever you play). The merch for this event includes the following:

White Imperial Sports dad cap sporting our new ESGS two flags logo on an embroidered patch.
Custom design set of BB&FCo ferrules with green body and yellow rings (if you have a set of classic Mac blades you’re thinking of re-styling, these are what you’re looking for!).
Green and yellow Oil Hardened Classic knit headcover by Foreewe that might just look great in your bag if you’re playing a certain magical course in Georgia.
ESGS tees with two flags logo in the cup

Prizes are yet to be determined but we’re working on equally cool stuff for those.

Equipment Guidelines are the same as last year:

Real wood woods—persimmon, laminate or other, no metal woods. Classic MacGregors are obviously great. Newly made woods from Louisville Golf, NCW/Tad Moore or Bob Burns are great too. Laminate Pings work for us. Just no metal woods.
Blade irons—of any era, no multi-metal construction, one cavity back per bag is acceptable if of a simple design appropriate to the1980s (e.g. if you swing Wilson Staff Blades and have a Ping Eye2 1-iron in the bag a-la Bernhard Langer in the 1994 Masters, that’s excellent). If you’re really, really dedicated to your MacGregor JNP forged cavity backs we wouldn’t really have an issue with that, but no full bag of extra game improvement irons e.g. Ping Eye 2s or Tommy Armour 845s.
Simple putters such as 8802-style heel-shafted blades, Bullseyes, or similar are preferred. If you rock a classic bronze Ping Anser we’ll accept it … they were introduced in 1966, but none of the really modern variants, please.
Steel shafts preferred.
Ball is your choice. Play balata if you want but you don’t have to. Any ball is fine.

In general, our intent with equipment is to play in the spirit of the classic era, roughly 1940-1990. We prefer to be inclusive though, so don’t not play if you think you don’t have the “right bag.” That is not our vibe. We’re an inclusive group, so if you’re just learning about classic clubs and just want to try, great. Please join us! Play what you got. Whatever cool clubs you have in your setup, show ‘em off! That’s the fun part.

We hope you’ll participate! Play persimmon, and long live the Eternal Summer!