Lawyers, clients, and spouses from the Phoenix offices of Jennings Haug Keleher McLeod Waterfall and Polsinelli at the 2024 Pebble Beach Hickory Sticks Invitational. These two firms have supported the Hickory Sticks event for several years, recently donating whiskies that have received high scores from Whisky Advocate.
Each summer, Pebble Beach Resorts on California’s Monterey Peninsula hosts the Hickory Sticks Invitational, a charity event for the Pebble Beach Company Foundation. The one-day, 9-hole tournament is contested on the resort’s short course, The Hay, which benefited from a Tiger Woods-led redesign a few years ago. The 670-yard layout now includes architectural features that either pay homage to the famous holes on the resort’s flagship course, Pebble Beach Golf Links, or take inspiration from Golden Age courses all around the world.
The host course may be diminutive—its longest hole measures only 106 yards—but the event is still plenty challenging. It’s called the Hickory Sticks Invitational because participants play not with modern clubs that boast steel or graphite shafts but with vintage old hickory wood-shafted clubs. Hickories, as these antique tools are affectionately known by golfers, are what the players used throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Although they have a modest resemblance to modern equipment, hickory clubs are foreign to the majority of today’s golfers, especially with club names like Brassie, Mashie, and Niblick. Participants in Pebble Beach’s annual Hickory Sticks Invitational also get the chance to experience the game with antique gutta-percha golf balls. These balls were used during the second half of the 19th century and are so-named for their construction using gutta-percha tree gum.
Like most formal hickory club tournaments—of which there are many—participation in Pebble Beach’s annual event carries a requisite dress code: period-appropriate attire from the late 19th or early 20th century. That means gentlemen typically wear plus-fours, button-downs, and neckties; while women don blouses, long skirts, and hats.
A couple of years ago, the event upped the ante, too, bringing in Jim Nantz for personalized announcements of each participant’s opening tee shot. (This summer, Nantz provided play-by-play for the event’s putting contest.) “Hickory Sticks is one of the most festive, fun-filled days of the year at Pebble Beach,” says Nantz. “It pays homage to the heritage of the game with the old-fashioned equipment and period attire….And it’s all for a good cause.”
The event raises funds for more than 100 grants that benefit youth-focused nonprofits. According to veteran participant Paul Roshka, those initiatives target early learning, literacy, and youth mental wellness. Each year the event includes a silent auction, and for the last two years, Roshka—a lawyer by trade but a whisky enthusiast at heart—has partnered with a whisky-loving friend to put together a 20-bottle collection of Scottish, Irish, and American whiskies (all boasting Whisky Advocate ratings of at least 90 points) for the auction. Collectively, over the past two years, their “Up Your Whisky Game!” packages sold for nearly $3,500.
Although 77 years of age, Roshka is a youthful whisky connoisseur, having developed an interest and an appreciation for the spirit only about four years ago. In fact, it was the pandemic that really sparked his curiosity for the stuff. “Some people brought dogs home, I brought whisky bottles home,” he says. “I started to take a real interest in the history of whisky and how it’s produced.”
As Roshka dove into the research and study of the spirit, Whisky Advocate became—in the lawyer’s own words—his Bible. Although each bottle of whisky in the auction package was highly rated, standout expressions included Arran Sherry Cask ‘The Bodega’ Cask Strength, Redbreast Lustau Edition, Wild Turkey Rare Breed Barrel Proof rye, and Yamazaki 12 year old.
Each package could almost be viewed as a home bar starter pack. In other respects, it was like an extension of Roshka’s personal collection—one that extends to about 200 bottles, though Roshka, himself, doesn’t drink much. Instead, he often plays the role of beverage director when friends come to visit. “The fun part of this for me is the sharing,” he says. “Getting together with friends and having my bar open to them and seeing what they select and what they enjoy is just fun.”
Fun is the name of the game at the Hickory Sticks Invitational, too, which is why Roshka has participated in the annual event since he and his grandson first observed the tournament in action back in 2017. “When you walk to the first tee, at least for me, [I know that] I’m about to play nine holes with clubs I don’t understand—I don’t know how far they’ll go—and a ball that I have no idea how it will fly,” he says of the experience. “It’s great fun.”
Whisky enthusiasts will have plenty of fun at the event, too, as Pebble Beach often brings in vendors for complimentary tastings. Roshka remembers one year when Glenfiddich was on hand, pouring samples of its 25 year old single malt at a stand positioned at the lowest point on the course. “I must’ve made that walk [from the clubhouse] five or six times,” he says with a chuckle.
According to Roshka, the event this year raised about $200,000, and it’s just as valuable for the camaraderie and the sense of fun. As proof, several of Roshka’s friends from Phoenix make the trip up to Pebble Beach each year and subsequently make an entire weekend out of the experience.
“It pays homage to the heritage of the game,” Nantz says of the Hickory Sticks Invitational, “but it also brings a light competition with plenty of laughter that is open to anyone who wants to play golf and have a good time.”
That’s something that golf and whisky enthusiasts can raise a glass to.
