Steve Nagy loves golf. He started playing with a half-sized 3-iron that his dad made for him when he was a kid (shattering a neighbor’s window with one of his first shots).

Now you can find the Admiral’s Landing resident hitting the links at Old Oakland Golf Club at least three times a week, often with his son, Kyle, who plays for Lawrence Central and, incidentally, also shattered a window with a golf ball when he was younger!

“I love golf, and I love the history of it,” said Nagy, who usually scores in the low 80s. It’s little wonder that Nagy started collecting antique golf equipment about 10 years ago and has amassed an impressive collection of vintage golf balls, tees, clubs and practice aids. His basement display features more than 100 antique golf balls, including a never-been-hit 1906 Star ball with a bramble pattern, worth about $1,000.

“I think anybody who really loves the game of golf falls in love with the history of golf, as well,” Nagy said. “It basically has been the same for hundreds of years.”

The first recorded game of golf was played in Edinburgh, Scotland, in A.D. 1456. Although the game has changed little, golf equipment has undergone some interesting transformations since shepherds first started hitting rocks with sticks!

Nagy’s collection includes gutta-percha rubber balls from the mid-1800s and a replica “featherie” ball which looks like a tiny baseball and was stuffed with wet feathers. (View a video of Steve Nagy explaining the history of golf balls online at www.atGeist.com).

“You find one thing, and it leads to something else,” Nagy says of his obsession with all-things-golf. “You discover there’s a whole world of things you never knew anything about.”

At one point, Nagy became interested in vintage practice aids — an eclectic assortment of putting cups and other devices for improving your golf shot. His basement office — which features three bookshelves of golf books — is a virtual museum of golf balls and tees through the ages.

His collection includes metal tee molds from the late 1800s (worth about $850) which allowed golfers to shape damp sand into a mound to create a natural tee. He has tees made of rubber, wood, wire and even paper mache.

One of Nagy’s favorite items is a small, leather scorebook which appears to have been used a couple of times by a golfer of another generation.

If you know of a Geist resident with a Curious Collection, email Laura Gates at Laura@atGeist.com. To see more of Nagy’s amazing antique golf collection, visit www.atGeist.com.

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