Jim Montgomery has a reputation around Meadow Lakes Golf Club for being an ace around the greens.

For a 3 handicap like Montgomery, that probably should not be much of a surprise.

But there is one difference. In the Prineville resident’s hands for those chip shots is the kind of wedge a collector might find in a thrift-store treasure hunt.

Montgomery’s worn-down Ping Eye sand wedge is the only such club that the 65-year-old lifelong golfer has ever really played.

“I wouldn’t trade that (wedge) for anything,” says Montgomery, who was given the now nearly 50-year-old club by his father. “That’s the money club.”

Ever seen a golfer suddenly pull out a relic for a shot, take the antique and knock the shot stiff to the amazement of his or her playing partners?

Montgomery is that golfer. And there are plenty of others who forsake state-of-the-art golf club technology by playing equipment long relegated to used-club bins in pro shops around the world.

The evolution of golf equipment has generally moved toward being more forgiving and has allowed recreational golfers to hit the ball farther than ever before. So I wanted to know what drives these guys to stick with the old stuff.

“It’s a matter of what feels good, especially when you get to the putting and wedge game,” says Grant Patterson, a Prineville resident and longtime high school golf coach who says he owns some 500 golf clubs, many of which are not much younger than the 62-year-old Patterson himself.

In November, Patterson strolled up to the elevated fifth tee at Prineville Golf and Country Club while gripping a TaylorMade 19-degree hybrid, pioneering equipment that would eventually lead to a hybrid in nearly every golfer’s bag. Playing into a strong head wind, he put a perfect stroke on the ball.

The ball soared into the sky, landed solidly on the green, narrowly avoiding his playing partner’s resting ball, and rolled in for the second hole-in-one of Patterson’s golf life.

“It was just one of those deals that everybody saw it, so it was fun,” says Patterson, who calls the club a “strong Ginty,” as an homage to an even older 1970s-era club that served as a forefather to today’s hybrids.

Patterson plays with a modern set of TaylorMade irons, but with a garage teeming with hundreds of golf clubs to choose from, he likes to tinker.

He plays a long-past-its-prime 60-degree MacGregor wedge. And his Burrows MAC driver, an unusually designed club with a hollowed-out bottom, was made by a manufacturer no longer in business.

“I’ve tried all these new clubs,” says Patterson, an 11 handicap. “I don’t hit it as far as I used to, but I hit this driver as good as any I’ve tried.”

Like Patterson, Nate Willhite, a 75-year-old from Redmond, owns a vast collection of golf clubs — including some 100 putters.

Willhite generally prefers to play with his up-to-date set of Callaways, but not always.

Every so often, though, a persimmon wood or Bullseye putter will find its way into his bag, even if he does not believe older clubs provide him with any kind of advantage.

Why not just keep playing those Callaways every time out?

“That’s kind of boring, isn’t it?” asks Willhite, an 11 handicap and a regular at Eagle Crest Resort.

“In the last five or six years I have been playing five, six times a week, so I have to have a little variety,” he adds. “It’s just a little more fun to have this club in or that club in, or see what this one can do. I experiment, especially this time of year.”

Montgomery finally replaced his old set of irons two years ago with a set of Mizuno MP-52s.

He did it reluctantly. The set of Ping Eye irons he replaced had been with him since 1975.

“It was just time for me to get into the 21st century,” Montgomery says with a laugh. “If I am going to compete against those 25-year-olds and 30-year-olds, I had to get something I could get a little more distance out of. And they seem to help quite a bit.”

Montgomery still swears that older clubs have a softer feel, which he claims helps his short game. And that, he says, is why “they will have to pry that sand wedge from my body.”

It doesn’t matter that he is teased around the Meadow Lakes men’s club.

“He is such a great chipper with the sand wedge that he ends up getting the last laugh,” says Zach Lambert, head professional at Meadow Lakes and about half the age of Montgomery’s sand wedge. “He has always said that if he finds a wedge that he is better with, he will switch. So far, he hasn’t found anything.”

No need, says Montgomery.

With the waves of new golf equipment that promise golfers that they will hit the ball longer and with more accuracy, golf still comes down to the player holding the club.

And with a game like Jim Montgomery’s, who is going to argue?

Maybe technology can’t provide all the answers after all.