GOLF.

Press, Volume LXVII, Issue 20428, 24 December 1931, Page 6

GOLF.

NOTES OF THE DAY. |By Flagstic*.] Although for various reasons there is some i'alling-off in the number of entries received for the annual Christmas tournament at Sliirley, the competition in the chief event, the Christclmrch amateur championship, will lack nothing in keenness, and in the present condition of the course it is probable that the title—and the McDougall Cup which goes with it —will be won with an unusually low score. Among those competing will be M. Macbeth and L. if. Campbell, who have not been seen in competition golf for some time. The tournament has always taken the form of a golfing picnic, and among the competitors will be several ladiesT who will play from their own tees, but will, take strokes in bogey events from the men's card. This year post entries will be received. The present holder of the title is C. A. Seymour, who also won in 1926; he has been playing very sound golf of late, and with the conditions all in his favour will be hard to beat. Besides having the opportunity of competing in the Christmas tournament at Shirley, visiting golfers will find much to interest them in a visit to the more recently established links at Avondale, Russley, and Harewood. At ali three courses tliey can rely on finding greens in splendid condition, and a sufficiently exacting test of golfing ability. At all three courses the visitor can also, if his stay permits, be enrolled as a summer visitor at a moderate fee. Fairways are naturally suffering from the dry conditions recently prevailing,, but Avondale has used its abundant water supply to give each fairway a good soaking about once a fortnight, vhile at Harewood the native Danthonia, which is its natural covering, is especially resistant to drought, and owing to the crumbling nature of tlie surface any club can be safely used if the ball lies on a bare patch. Members of the Christchurch Ladies' Club played the last of a series of six summer matches on Friday last. These competitions have been played weekly since the closing of the regular season, and judging by the number of entries received hate been much appreciated. The winners have been Mrs S. Foster, (2), Miss V. Fleming, Mrs K. Gresson, Miss B. Webb, and Miss B. Holmes. Parties of golfers who vvish to add to the pleasure of their visits to the links might do worse than organise a series of golfing days on the same principles as are followed by the famous '•Lambs" at Hagley. The chief ot these are that short stroke rounds, say of seven, eight, or nine holes each, are played on handicap for a _small stake, and that handicaps are adjusted after each round. If a scratch player wins all the others have their handicaps increased by one if a handicap player wins he plays his next round with one stroke less at handicap; if two handicap players tie for first place, each is reduced a stroke; if a scratch player and a handicap player tie, each remains on the same mark as before, and all the others receive one stroke more. The scheme seems to bear rather hardly on the scratch man; but this is compensated for by providing ,$n '-aggregate prize, to which all contribute. The wipning of' this by any 'aoefc - not -ftf e«tr the handicaps. At the' end ofv&tOh day the handicaps are recorded as they stand at the conclusion of the j play, so that if any member of the I party is absent lie can begin, at his j next visit, on his handicap as it when he last participated. Additional | interest is provided by limiting the j value of the first prize and providing ! a, second and even a third prize lrora the balance of the stakes. Some' decided benefits accrue from this lorm j of play; the fun of the game is greatly enhanced: there is always something to T)lay for; a semi-serious air is imparted to what is essentially "holiday golf"—since obviously no one can m the long run be either a winner or a loser to any important extent —lastly, if one player wishes to match himself against one or more of tlie others, th© reckoning is greatly simplified, for there is always th© "book" to refer to. The chief objection to the plan is that it renders those concerned liable to the accusation that they have formed a "clique," but the charge cannot be maintained if the Association, as in holiday seasons, is merely a temporary one. For the golfer on or near the scratch mark there is no need to stress the importance of putting; too often he has had the bitter experience if playing a long game, of par standard only to see his card ruined by inferior work on the greens. The long-handicap player, however, is not generally sufficiently alive to his deficiency in tins respect, or to the possibility of, cuttmg down • his average stroke round by several strokes merely by taking more pains with his putting, yet of all golt strokes the putt is the easiest to make and the easiest to practice. In the ''Game of Golf'' (Lonsdale Library) Bernard Darwin, in his chapter on Practice, describes how he has spent countless ' hours in putting on carpets and hearth-rugs with cliait-legs as holes, and even such practice is enough to convince anyone that for him individually there is a correct way—and many wrong ways—of making the clubliead "do its work, and if be is a player of some experience he may be able to note that some of his faults are the same as those which mar his longer strokes. Thus if he "hits from the top"—in other words, hurries the stroke—he will probably find his ball diverging to the off side, iust as it so often does when he uses the driver, and he may catch himself "dipping" to the stroke, swinging "outside to in" and so on. Most often, in the writer's experience, he will fail through not keeping his mind intent on the completion of -the stroke right to the end of the- follow through. When one has squared the face of the putter to the line, maintained that line on the back-swing, and "kept his head down," it is surprising how often the three-yard and four-yard putts will fall. It is said that Walter Hagen, that prince of putters, has formed the habit of maintaining unchanged the set of the body at address, only the eyes being allowed to turn to follow the course of the ball. To revert to the long-handicap player's score, if he can make up his mind to take pains with his putting and will practise consistently, he will cut some six or seven strokes at least off his average round. Owing to his physical disabilities the par at Shirley, for example, may be for him 81, and his average of duffed shots four or five in a round, but provided he plays up to the par standard on the greens—and here he has no handicap of any sort — he should do a round of 86 or 87. Actually his rounds will run on the average 95 or over, the difference is nearly all due to bad putting. The open scratch mixed foursomes a.t Worplesdon this year saw another triumph for Miss Joyce Wethered (in partnership with the Hon. Michael Scott), this being either the fifth or the sixth time she has been successful. A feature of the final against a Scottish pair, Miss Doris Park and R. Forsyth, was'the way holes were exchanged, the latter pair winning in the afternoon round the 4th, 6th, Bth, 11th, and 12th,

and losing the Ist, sth, 7th, 9th, 10th, 13th, and 15th. Miss Wethered and Scott had a lead of two holes from the morning round, and won 4 up and 3. Miss Wethered had shown great golf throughout: in the semi-final against Miss Fishwick and E. R. Tipple, for example, her side were one down at the 16th, and Miss' Fish wick's ball just short of the green. Miss Wethered rose to the occasion with a perfect shot that made a 2 possible and 3 almost certain. Then Tipple failed to get near the hole with his approach, and the match was square. The latter then had the misfortune to lose a ball through striking a spectator on the fairway, and another mistake, a topped shot this time, left his side two down. Tipple had earned his fair share, of the honours up to the 15th, as Miss Fishwick acknowledges, and the pair had the distinction of being the only side to take the lead from the winners.