What Makes A Golf Ball Go?

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 208, 3 September 1938, Page 6 (Supplement)

What Makes A Golf Ball Go?

A! LARGE proportion of the total time off that if enjoyed by the whole of mankind is spent in either hitting, bowling, pushing or kicking • bell; or in looking ■t it being bowled, kit, pushed or kicked. In the more dignified of the various ball games a leisurely stride is engaged in by the bowler or hitter when in pursuit of the ball. There is no unseemly rusting after so insignificant a play-, thing. With other games, of course, there is a mad rush from start to finish. As is rule, girth measurement, not social status, is the deciding factor as to which typa of game should be played. At the moment only golf need concern ua. Be it observed, there is a vast difference between the various balls which are used. A croquet ball will not bounce; a golf or tennis ball will. So will a football—after a fashion. A cricket ball is tough, a polo ball is just wood with no "innards." This is tlie distinguishing feature of a golf ball—it has "innards." It is what is inside that makes it go, far more than any. pressure brought to bear upon it from without. go it is with men. No amount of prtsh will send an inflated rubber bladder in a leather jacket on an invisible flight. There is no" "holing in three" with this elongated ball with all hide and no "innards" but air. Neither will a cricket ball, in flight evade the watchful eyes'of the men on the field. It can be caught. Try catching one of these "pills" with a liquid centre. A golf ball cannot be caught. A cricket ball is "compo" to the core— r solid right through. It has no delicate elasticity t.o, aid it on its way to : the boundary. Its "innards" have not been compounded scientifically, as have the "innards" of a golf ball. The first golf balls were made of leather and stuffed with feathers. They have always had "innards." The modern

productionhas yards and yards and yards of india-rubber threads or strips wound round and round a guttapercha centre at high tension, and over all again la placed an outer coat of rabtjer. A golf ball has yards and yards of—well, why beat about the bush, why not use a word that was coined, in France during the war, and say straight out that a golf

Written for the " Week-end Pictorial"

-by-

The Rev. C. W. Chandler

ball has "guts." la anybody shocked? It's not a very delicate word, but what it implies, when used adjectivally is something fine and manly, instead of weak, cowardly or cringing. This word is well on its way to respectability, for it is included in quite a number of standard dictionaries. It is the sort of word that "Woodbine Willie" would hava used, and ft draws attention to an indispensable part of a Christian's spiritual anatomy. •; A Christian may have the "shield of faith," "the sword of the spirit," the-'! "breastplate of righteousness" and the "helmet of salvation," but, unless he has got what the golf ball has within i it, he is really not of very much account. | In the long and inspiring story of the. progress of the Christian Church, especially during the early centuries of her critical development* it was not

scholarship or theology which helped her through the various persecutions and saved her from oblivion—but "innards." ; There are those who believe that the Church will again have to undergo a new baptism of pain and . persecution, will again have to be driven underground, ere she can rediscover the power which, during the centuries when Christianity was an illegal religion, she displayed so heroically. There are .many nominal Christians Who need, literally, to be teed up and swiped before the good that is in them can be brought out. They have run down. They are not going. All the high tension of their early enthusiasm has slackened off. The good is in them all right. It was planted in them at birth. It was a part of the .decent Christian heritage which their parents, who were godlier or goodlier than they are, had passed on to them. Now they are just nodding acquaintances of God. At Christmas or Easter they may come to the Feast, but the rest of the year they are far too busy hitting, pushing, bowling or kicking a ball even momentarily to ponder over the subsequent fate of their immortal souls. It will bear repetition—they need to be teed up and swiped, brought to their senses by a full blast of misfortune which, like adversity and the toad, still "wears a precious jewel in its head." This suggestion would be as useless as it is impertinent if the persons for whom the remedy is being prescribed were not considered to be people with a fair share of what the golf ball has inside it. It would be fatal to carry our analogy too far, but as far. as we hav* got is, that the reason why a golf ball goes has more to do with what is inside it than it has with the stance of the player, or with the swing of the club. A perfect stance and a perfect swing addressed to a ball that has no "innards" ; are of no avail. When Jesus said "Go ye into all the world" and "Go and do thou likewise," he gave the impetus on each occasion,

but the distance which the sent went depended almost entirely on the possession or non-possession, of "innards" by the sent. "I once teed np a duck's egg," said a friend of ours, "and addressed myself to the egg by lifting my club and swinging for all I was worth. All that happened was that the yolk, unbroken, slithered out of the shell on to the ground." The ."innards" of that egg had not enough liigh tension to travel half an inch, was our reply. I Henry Cotton, the world champion, cannot teach anybody how to swipe a ball that hasn't "innards," any more than God Himself can make a spiritually disembowelled Christian go. All growth is from the inside, out: and not from the outside, in. It is what is within that counts. Of the twenty thousand men whom Gideon had when he went forth to meet the Midianites ten thousand turned back towards home when those who were timid or afraid were advised so to do. Of the remaining ten thousand only three hundred passed the final test for bravery. Only three hundred proved that they had "innards" by going down unto the water, and putting their hands to their mouths and lapping the water therefrom. The other nine thousand seven hundred were too frightened to drink calmly. With these three hundred men Gideon pouted the enemy. When, one by one, we come to the "eighteenth hole," Jiot what we know, but what we are; not what we own, but what we have in the way of courage, alone will avail us. Indeed, at no stage of the game is life really worth the living unless we have sufficient to meet our individual needs of what makes a golf ball go. An epitaph consisting only of four letters could be placed upon the headstones of those who have "arrived" in the history of mankind. That one word, despite its seeming vulgarity, is far more expressive than all the nicer words which might be used, and which could not convey one half so deep a meaning. It is brief and to the point. It cannot be uttered without a certain natural' emphasis upon the G, which is also in go, and in goal, and in greatness, and goodness and God.