About Me

My name is Steve Schrader, and I love repairing and restoring hickory golf clubs. It is a joy that I did not discover until the fall of 2026.

Early years

My relationship with golf starts when I was young. My dad was a golfer. He played not nearly as much or as often as he would have liked to but having young kids and a job will do that to you. I remember going to the driving range with him and occasionally accompanying him on the course before I was 10 years old. I would hit off the tee box, pick up my ball, and then drop it near the green to chip and putt.

Young me liked the idea of golf but also had a short attention span, especially when boredom stuck. I was much more into video games, Legos, and riding bikes. I enjoyed short golf outings like driving range trips where I could dress casually and could leave when the bucket of balls was gone.

Even though my attention at the time was short I still remember those years and the time my dad and I had together on the course and at the range.

Teenage Years

My next best memory of golf in my life happened in my teenage years. I was growing, a lot, and quite awkwardly too. On one trip to visit my grandparents in New Mexico my grandpa took me into his workshop and measured me. He then spent part of that trip working in the shop and built me a set of clubs that were my size.

It was the first time I had seen anything like it. I knew that sporting goods stores sold clubs, including junior ones, but learning that you could get the parts and build them yourself was new. I played with that set of clubs well into my 30s. I still have them and hope to give them to one of my kids someday when they get taller. This wasn’t the first time that my grandpa would teach me to build something.

My Twenties

Both my dad and my grandpa were very handy guys. My dad was an electrical engineer and also knew a decent bit of computer science. He got me into computer coding and also encouraged designing and building out your ideas. This often happened in the form of Legos in my youth but eventually turned into creative solutions to many things in life.

My grandpa was a dabbler. Anything new or cool he could get his hands on. Cars, shop equipment, electronics, he loved it all. Once of his favorite things to do was build with wood. He purchased a Shop Smith Mk.V long before I came into this world and in my 20s he taught me to use it. We built a couple pieces of furniture together. I learned a lot of shop techniques from him and inherited his tools when he passed.

Along comes the next person in my life who would influence my golf story. It was a girl I met in Culinary School who would become my wife. Not only had I met a woman who can throw down baked goods like it is no big deal, but it turns out she was a golfer in high school, and a really good one too. She swings a club like it is just a natural part of being alive and can still out hit me to this day with at least one club less. Now I had another amazing person in my life that showed me yet another side of golf.

My Thirties

The next decade brought me three amazing kids but not a lot of time. Most of the tools I owned where boxed up across several moves and came out only when something needed to be fixed or hung. Golf and building got put aside for kid activities and events and whatever else life threw at us.

It was in my late 20s that I read an article about hickory golf. It was in a golf magazine that was in a doctor or dentist’s office, but it awoke this kind of romantic, timeless, adventure feeling in me. I had seen hickory clubs in museums in Scottland but didn’t realize that they were still around and seeing play. An internet search later I had stumbled across the Louisville Golf website where shiny new versions of hickory clubs were just a mere click away. But I couldn’t justify the purchase. They were expensive and I rarely swung a golf club. I played maybe once a year, and we would take the kids to TopGolf occasionally. My old, slightly short teenage clubs worked fine for that.

But over the years I would always fund myself looking at the listings on the Louisville Golf or Tad Moore’s website and find myself wondering what if…

Fall 2026

I blame what happened next on LLM based AI searches. They made it far too easy for me to justify getting some clubs. However, I did not get a brand-new set. One evening when chatting with the Google AI about ways to make my own hickory clubs it mentioned restoring old ones instead. The practical part of me like the cost of it. The builder/engineer side of me knew I had the tools and know how to do most of the steps. The kid in my wanted to see what it was like to swing a hickory club.

So, a few late nights of scrolling through eBay later my first lot of clubs was on the way. The rest is history. I enjoyed the process of restoring them so much that I has become a large part of who I am.

Today

Today when I am not writing journal entries or posting new clubs on the site you can find spending my free time in the shop in my garage. I keep an eye out for good deals on clubs and like to have a couple around to work on. I am not some old master with super-secret techniques. I am not some prodigy who can magically repair clubs with little effort. This is not my job. But it is a hobby and a love.

My hope is that these clubs find new life in a new home, and that you too find a little magic when you are out on a course with a hickory club in your hand.

Take a look through my hickory collection or my restoration journal. If there is an any clubs that you are interested in reach out to me via my contact form.