PEACEFUL GOLF.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 19332, 9 June 1928, Page 13

PEACEFUL GOLF.

PROBLEM OF CROWDED COURSES.

HOW LORD DERBY SOLVED IT.

(By Harry Vardon, six times Open • Champion.)

Of late, a good deal hns been heard about "Millionaires' clubs" at golf, and some caustic tilings have been said on the subject of those organisation! which limit their memberships to comparatively small numbers; seek neither visitors nor publicity, and succeed generally in keeping themselves very much to themselves.

Really I do not blame anybody for belonging to such a club if he has the opportunity. Golf on tho average popular course during a fine week-end is becoming something of a burden to tho Hesli. Waits of an hour or more for startiug tunes nre common, and tho slow progress of the less efficient players spoils tho game for thoso who aro tolerably proficient at it. Often they are reduced to hitting half-shots rather than delay tho field by waiting for the people in front to ,movo forward out of range. Lord Derby wont a long way towards solving tho difficulty when he started the Swinloy Forest Club, near Ascot, with its membership limit of 200, and its rigid restrictions as to the introduction of visitors. He also had a big hand in the inauguration of a club on similar lines at Cannes. Such institutions as these hardly merit the appellation of "millionaires' clubs." I. behove that the annual subscriptions aro something like fifteen guineas—a sum which is charged at » number of courses where the congestion at certain periods of the year is acute. Tho idea is to create a golfing sanctuary whither tho member may go with some assurance of being able to play his round in comfort; and presumably the committees find that this dispensation can bo supplied at a reasonable cost. * In America it is no uncommon tiling for about twenty wealthy inhabitants of a town to provide themselves with the best course and club-house that money can buy, and share the expense —whatever it may be—each year. This is the surest guarantee of freedom from overcrowding. , Even does it rival the enterprise, of the two munition workers who, during the war, purchased o public-house, and told the indignant customers, who on the following day found it closed at the customary hour of opening, that they, had bought it for themselves. It would be difficult nowadays to discover twenty people in any distriot of Britain whom the tax-collector had left with a surplus sufficient to enable them to own a golf club; but Lord Derby and his friends have shown that) something can be done to aj er t_i° n * waits for starting times, and further delays on tho teeing-grounds nearly, all tho way round.

Two-Course Clubs. It is one of the difficulties wmf 11011 *: ing the administrators of golf olubsl everywhere that the main amies ot members want to play on the same days, and at almost the same hours. This, no doubt, is a natural resultt of the appointed order of the average person's life. Saturdays and Sunday* afford him his chief opportunities for recreation. Still, the fact that congestion occurs on golf courses inspasnwi is rendered none the less harassing by the fact that it is unavoidable. ' It is the reason that such clubs a* Sunningdale, Walton Heath, and Addirigton have had, to provide themselves with two full-length courses, and N that Moor Park (Rickmansworth) and , Wentworth have each'felt it necesenryj to have three. During the London season these places would be killed by., their own' popularity, if they each had only one course; half the members would have to wait hours for a start-ing-time on a fine Saturday or Sunday, and would resign rather than suffer« such repression. ■ , If only the play could be spread evenly over the week- and. therefore over the year—no club would need more than one course. That, presumably, is impossible so long as > it ifl. part of the scheme of business life for. everybody to take his recreation at the same time. , . A great many clubs offer wry advahtageous terms to people who ore- prepared to take up five-day memberships; but it does not often happen that they obtain all the five-day members they want, and in most cases the numbers of such-recruits are small. Yet those same clubs have waiting lists for full membership. . , ■ The - person who could devise a! means, whereby players might be at'tracted to the courses in inid'-week—-and not on Saturdays and 'Sundayswould deserve well ; of golf-club committees. Tho problem of making two courses contribute towards their up* keep in the periods between week-end* —when both are full,to overflowing—is a difficulty which nobody has ye* solved. Man's Mistake. Lady members- might provide the solution. At many of the more famous clubs ladies are not eligible for membership, although they are allowed to play on the courses under certain conditions and on certain days. It is a rather curious fact, however, that while the average committee-man thinks that Monday till Friday gives the feminine golfer plenty of time in which to pursue the game, since—as he supposes—she has nothing ©ls» very urgent to do all day and every; day, the ladies themselves take an entirely different view of the matter. , Thus far they have not shown any violent enthusiasm for five-day memberships ; they prefer to be able to play on Saturdays and Sundays as well, it they wisli to do so. Not long ago I happened to be journeying from the links to the railway station in a motor-car which contained four ladies who engaged in debate on this question. They all declared stoutly that they could play as efficiently as a lot of the men who muddled round on Saturdays ana Sundays; that they wanted to play on those days; thac they were willing to pay the necessary subscriptions; and that it was nothing short of oppression by men in power that compelled them to abstain from week-end golf. . Ladies now have generous starting rights at any time on tho Moor Park courses, and I believe that they havo equal privileges with men on any day of tho week on the old course at Addington. Here, unquestionably, is al means of developing the > mid-week clientele, but it does not help to solvn the problem of tho crowded course ab week-ends. Only a strictly limited membership can do that.