GOLF NOTES

Evening Post, Volume CII, Issue 32, 6 August 1921, Page 11

GOLF NOTES

(By "Niblick.")

In the Civil Service Tournament, held about a fortnight ago, there was a card returned of 170 gross, which would appear, on tho face of it, to bo almost the limit, but it was not, as there is a record that at Plymouth, England, in 1905, a monthly medal card showed a total for a round of 18 holes of 257 gross, less 24, 233 net. An average of 5 over 14's is good steady going, and proves a patience and perseverance that does not fall far short of heroic.: A good second and third are provided in a competition at Biarritz, France, in 1898, when two > of the cards showed totals of 224 and 221. In the old books of the Cambridge Club there are records of a ronnd of 170, and a still more brilliant round which ran by steady 10's and 12's into a total of 201.

Bogey competitions, of coarse, offer particular opportunities for the duffer to come a cropper, but occasionally it is not only the duffer who meets with this fate. It is asserted that . a player once won a bogey competition with his return of 18 down, the explanation being that all the other competitors had torn up their cards. Anent the taking of a lot of strokes to a holo, Harry Verdon once took 15 for a shor,t hole at. Bury. Lancashire. It was through trying to play out, of a bad place with a mashie. The ball kept on rebounding off a mound on to a road and other undesirable places, and by.the time he had reached the green he had played 13 strokes. It is a curiosity of golf life that the crack player, who seldom finds his way intp bunkers, does practise a method of recovering from them, whereas the indifferent player, who ia often bunkered, will not take the trouble to learn the proper shot for the occasion. There are even persons who are bo .optimistic or independent that they will not carry niblicks, but |they invariably Booner or later pay the penalty of their boldness or rashness.