GOLF DISCOURSE.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19114, 24 September 1927, Page 13

GOLF DISCOURSE.

THE GAME THAT PROMOTES OTHER POINTS OF VIEW. (IFICULIT WirTTIl FOB THI rRBS».) (By Harry Vnrdon, Six Times Open Champion.) Golf may be a game to play with a thinking head and a still tongue, but its capacity for stimulating debate in the intervals between the rounds is inexhaustible.

During crowded week-ends every table in the club-house luncheon-room, and every cosy corner of the smoking lounge, is alive at the appropriate hour with groups of players discussing various aspects of the game. Jones, who has been off his mashie the whole morning, is told by the other three participants in the four-ball match exactly why he fails.

The next little party is arguing about the merits of certain courses. Nearby,

a man with an obvious grievance is stating his carefully considered opinion that* the small bunker in front of the green at tho fourteenth hole is grossly unfair. Three times lately his ball has just trickled into it and stopped to close to the near edge as to compel him to stand with one foot out of the hazard in order to play an almost impossible recovery shot. Thus the whirligig of golf talk maintains its vigour.

But of all the matters of discussion that arise in ■ the dub-house, none is so certain of spreading rapidly and arousing a lively contentiousness as a problem concerning the rules. Here i» the strong wine of debate. It is astonishing how quickly a whole roomful of players will become embroiled in friendly argument. The game is pursued under almost every possible variety of conditions that Mature can provide, instead of, like other pastimes, in an area of prescribed measurements and characteristics. The mopt wonderful thing of all is that there seems to be a satisfactory solution to all, the problems that can arise under the rules. Certainly this is the conviction with which one finishes an examination of tho communiques published from time to time by the Royal and Ancient Club giving the answers to questions that have been submitted to its Rules Committee. Handicaps in Finals. I heard an interes'ting discussion the other day. It eoncornod handicaps in the' finals of match-play tournaments. Nearly every club holds such tournaments, and it is a rule commonly governing these events that the final shall be over thirty-six holos, although the earlier rounds are decided over eighteen holes. In a competition under handicap, it is customary for the finalists, who play thirty-six holes, to give and take the same number of strokes, and at the same holes, in the morning as in the afternoon; to treat each round of the final aa a separate entity so far as concerns the handicap allowances. I have never heard of any club adopting a different procedure But it is sometimes wrong. , Take the case I heard discussed, of a 36 holes final in which the players had respective handicaps of Rye and seven. On the usual basis of giviUc and receiving three-quarters of the difference, the shorter handicap competitor would be called upon to concede two strokes in each round. To be sure, three-quar-ters of the difference, two, works out at 14, blit golfet- knotfs, half a stroke is counted as a full one for fch-3 benefit of the recipient. The Rules Committee lias decided, however, that when a match is over 36 holes, each player must reckon his total handicap for the two rounds before the business of fixing upon threequarters of the difference comes under consideration. Thus, in this case, five handicap counts as 10, and seven handicap as 14. I Three-quarters of the difference is three, and the giver of odds has to concede only this number instead of four. •It is further stated that, in such circumstances, the club must draw up a special table showing at which holes the strokes nre to be taken in a match of 36 holes Facts and Figures. It is a perfectly logical arrangement, but it is not the common practice. 1 have never heard of it being put into ci»eration, for example, in connexion with the Parliamentary Tournament final, which is invariably over two rounds. It. might have an important bearing on the result of any matchplay handicap final, and it can work ! out rather curiously. For instance, in a contest between a scratch man and a three man, the former would have to give two strokes in each 18 holes. But efttend the match to 36 holes, and he has to give five strokes, this being three-fourths of six, which is the receiver's singleround handicap doubled. s Why the back-marker should have to concede an extra stroke is not quite clear —especially as, in the case previously stated, he gives a stroke leas by the arrangement. Presumably he has to find satisfaction in the reflection tliat figures are elusive things—so clear and indisputable, and yet so puzzling. One _ condition not generally understood is the spirit of that rule which begins: "When a ball lies in or touchet a hazard nothing shall be done which can in any way improve its lie; the club shall not touch the ground, nor shall anything be touched or moved before the player strikes at the ball." The majority of golfers are still obsessed with the belief that it is a penal offence to do more than touch the hazard bv walking into it before striking at the ball. Picking up anything in a bunker prior to the shot is usually viewed as a mortal sin.

As a matter of fact, it is improving the ]ie of the ball, or testing the character of the soil in the hazard—nothing else—that involves punishment There is tho case of a golfer who takes a mashie and a niblick into a bunker, throws the mashie into the sand on deciding to play the shot with his niblick, and then, changing his mind, picks up the mashie and usee that club. As. admittedly, he has not improved his lie, nor gained any knowledge of the bunker, his act does not involve the loss of the hole.