GOLF.

Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 165, 31 March 1923, Page 17

GOLF.

(By

“Niblick.")

AMERICAN SUPREMACY

Twelve months ago (writes Mr. REndorsby Howard m reviewing British golf in tho “ ‘Daily Mail Year Book”) the United States had thrown down a definite challenge to Britain for the position of supremacy as. a golf-playing nation, and accompanied it by some notable deeds. During 1922 the situation developed so rapialy that in tho end the predonunence of America was beyond all question. This evolution on the part of a country which 20 years ago did not possess a solitary player who could bo called first class deserves, perhaps, to rank as the most remarkable unfolding in a remarkable game. It was in the British open championship at banuwich, in June, that Walter Hagen, of Detroit, began th© consolidation or tho ground which had previously been gained. In a field comprising the leading British, French.. and Australian professionals, as well as the best amateurs, he won with rounds of 16, 73 79, and 72; total, 300. Towards the end of th© season Britain sent a representative team of amateurs to the United States—ths first such expedition in the history of the game. Its main object was to contest an 8-a-side match with the United States at Long Island, New York, fora new international trophy, the Walker Cup. Everyone qualified to judge agrees that the British golfers played at tho very top of their form, and mado a gallant fight of it. But they simply were not tho equals of the United States amateurs, who won the foursomes by 3 to 1, and tLs singles by sto 3. It is doubtful whether there have ever been as contemporaries five amateurs equal to the Americans, Jessie Guilford, Chick Evans, Bobbie Jones, Francis Ouimet, and Robert Gardner, who secured th© five leading singles. A little later ten of the best British players took part in the U.S. amateur championship. at Brookline, Boston, Massachusetts. Five of them survived the qualifying stroke rounds, but. when theJield had been reduced to eight men.v). J. H. Tolley was the only ’ British representative left in the running. He made a great uphill fight against R. E. Knapper, and took the match to the last‘ green after being four down with nine to play. Jesse Sweetser, of New York, who is only 20, won the championship, as a good many people thought from the start ho would do. George Duncan and Abe Mitchell, the foremost British professionals of the last three years, competed in the U.S. open championship at Chicago, but neither, ever looked like carrying off tho title. Here, again, youth triumphed. Gene Sarazen, tho 21-year-old American-born son of Italian 'parents, was the victor. Many theories, th© writer states,, have been advanced to explain th© rise of United States golf to its present position. Two points stand out clearly. The .Americans certainly practise a great deal more than British golfers—they practise to steer a straight course down the middle of th© fairway, and they practise putting assiduously. The second point is that in the United States, far more than in any other country, golf is regarded as a young man’s gamo. «

OFF THE LADIES’TEES j: Miss Wothered, the English cham. pion, is now “plus” in the L.G.U.—■ the first lady to achieve tho coveted distinction. She kept her best rounds of the season for the last. A scora of 78 in the Surrey ladies’ open meeting at Walton Heath equals the men’s official “scratch score” of the course, ■ and it included a rather unfortunate 7 at tlie fourth.. Then at Guildford in tho competition for the Surrey Ladies’ Challenge Cun she had a 75, which equalled the par of the green and enabled her, on an average of scores returned over three courses, to bring her L.G.U. handicap of “plus 1.” “It is of interest to medical men,” says a reviewer of “Golf. fronwTwo Sides” writing in the “British Medical Journal,” “to notice that'Miss Wcthered suggests that the difficulty which! ! women find in iron play may arise from the ‘absence’ of some necessary muscles. Possibly this is the stora of Adam’s rib in another form, bjit Miss Wethered may bo comforted to know that her sox is under no handicap in this connection ; ‘want of development’ would be a more correct description.” In a “sex test match” at St. Andrews between a team of ten Scottish ladies got together by the Scottish ladv champion, Mrs. J. B. Watson, and a team of gentlemen headed by Mr. W. B. Torrance, the usual odds of a half were conceded, and over singles and foursomes th© men won by 8 matches to 5, with 2 halved.. The match was a huge success, and there is talk of making it an annual affair. ( Miss Glenna Collett, the nineleen-year-old American lady champion;- is ' the youngest of the three new stars that have thisfyear dimmed the glory •of old-established constellations-- in American championship skies. - -Sha hails from Providence, Rhode Island, and is on© of those wonderful dispensations of Providence you so often hear referred to. Like Miss Withered,- sha first startled the world by an -'unexpected but well deserved victory- over Miss Cecil Leitch. She hits good-and hard, and is perhaps sounder with wood than with iron, but doesn’t' usually allow any theoretical weakness! ini the ironmongery department to mako itself visible in her score card.

ENOUGH TO UPSET ANY ; MAN 'K The £3OO putting competition was'W, be repeated this year at Walton Heath on Aprjl 25. The conditions were easier ; than last year, for competitors werefj asked to hole eighteen putts from six feet and eighteen from three yards—; the latter distance being substituted,' for the six yards of last year’s compctition. f . I The prize money totals £3OO, but, there is a prize of £5OO for any man, who succeeds in holing all thirty-six; putts. But this matters very (states “Golfing”), for the golfer does; not live who could hole the last few, with “five hundred of the brightest and, best” almost within his grasp. >«