GOLF

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 142, 16 June 1923, Page 16

GOLF

•■■..' [BY "BAFFVI ■ OTAKI LINKS CAN MISS WETHERED BE CONCEDED STROKES? NATIONAL HANDICAP SYSTEM ADOPTED

COMING EVENTS. June H~British Open Championships of Old TrooD, June 10—Heretaunga A team at Milkman Miramar B at Heretaunga. June 23—Hutt against Wutwetu, at Waiwetu. June 23—Bogey Competition at Herefcaunga. July 7—Miramar A. team at Hutt; Eutt B team at Miramar. July 21—Hutt A team at Heretaunga; Here- i taunga B team at Hutt. Ifc is claimed in connection with the Otaki golf links that the golf club hag the makings of the championship of New Zealand, and players who were up there last week-end certainly thought that the club h^d remarkable advantages over other clubs. There is plenty o? ground, and the earth is of a sandy nature, through which any club could be played with ease. At the moment the course is not in ''good order. Several of the fairways were ploughed last season, and 'have not had time to get a proper bedding of grass, so that teeing in the fairway.is allowwd in matches at a few holes. An' alteration, became necessary some time ago, and the club obtained the advice of Arthur Brooks as to the lay-out of soino new holes. The fairways at the3e holes are exceedingly rough, but as time goes on the little club is improving them. It would mean a very heavy expenditure if they were to be all done at once. The charm of the Otaki links lies in th» variety' of holes. No }.wo holes on the course bear any semJdance to each other, and each hole appears to break into new ground. There . is here none of the monotony of moving along one fairway parallel to another. At many holes the tees are well above the fiiirway, and a clear view of a wide fairway is conducive to hard hitting; but woe to the hard hitter who foozles. His penalty is a. hard one in most cases The light on the links is very bright—the light that Otaki is noted for—and distances are most deceptive and appear to be greater than they are. This applies perhaps more than anywhere to the seventh, which would be reached' with two wooden shots by the average player. Ihe tee'is very, high, and the line of play is across a valley, over a hill only slightly lower than .the tee (and affectionately termed the "mountain"), across another piece of flat ground, and then over a bank to a green not visible until it js reached. The "mountain" can in reality be carried easily with a brassy, but from the tee it presents insurmountaole difficulties. Of the most interesting holes on the course I might mention a few. The second is a short hole. The tee and the green are on a level, but the green is in a nook on the farther side of a hill which has to be carried with a high-pitched mashie, and the surroundings are such that to be on the green with the tee. shot is advisable. The fifth green is situated in a small valley at right angles t Q the recognised fairway, and it would be a fairly desperate player who would attempt to be on in one, though a good drive would go far enough to do it; The green slopes sharply dosvn from the top of the valley to the hole at the bottom. This hole and number two have high banfcs on each side, and the local players have learned : to take, advantage of them, so that borrowing on the green is a feature of their play. The long hole of the course is the eighth, -where bogey is six. Prom the tee one gradually goes uphill, and two long drives might' enable a player to risk putting his third on the green. The rise is steeper near th© hole, andl then ends at the top of the bank, and the "donkey drop" green is some 20ft below, with a rough and a creek behind it. One has to drop on the green and stay. To draw a distinction: Fives are .unusual, sixes are not usual, and sevens are frequent. The thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth are in the •" new • ground. The latter two are apart from their fellows. At the fourteenth a good drive and a high mashie approach are required, the green being about 10ft by 6ft. This green is to be enlarged with scoops, as Brooks's Scheme is completed. The fifteenth has fears all of its own. The green cannot be.seen from the tee, and a ridge as high as that on which the tee is situated has to bs carried with the drive. As far 'as one can see on one's line of play is. an indescribable rough which has caused many a player to press, with the natural consequences. After clearing this the "going" is fairly good right home. The greens are on the whole too small, and require some attention before they will be as good as they can be made. There is only about one fiat green on the course, and they are the more interesting in that they vary in speed. As a general rule, the climatic conditions are splendid and all signs of rain rapidly disappear in the sandy soil. There can be uo doubt that the future pf Otaki links is bright. "The long-anticipated meeting in single combat between Miss Joyce Wethered, the British lady champion, and Mr. Cyril Tolley took place a few weeks ago at Stoke Poges in the ladies' v. men's match I was not by any means alone in the whole-hearted belief that no male golftT could concede Miss Wethered nine strokes in the round and hope to win. And the only man who had the remotest chance of being successful was Mr. Tolley, and I don t suppose for a moment that he quite rehshed the job," states G W Greenwood, -who witnessed the match, bo the match between these two protagonists was invested with more than ordinary interest, and none watched it with greater keenness than Mis s Cecil Leitch, whom Miss Wethered has supplanted as the world s greatest lady golfer. Unfortunately, the result was inconclusive; it was a halved match. It must be said that the.guns_that Mr. Tolley produced for the occasion were of the most destructive and devastating character ■Unquestionably the feature of the game was Mr,Jo!ley s downright outrageously lon* driving. It wa s all tho same, whether" against the strong easterly wind or down wind; Ins leigth was terrific. Once or twice he outdrove Miss Wethered who .s no mean driver, by as much as a hundred yards, but the disparity between them from the tee measured in length wohM be on an average f.eventv yards. And that makes all the difference in getting up m two shots, and having a, third of sorts in the hope of getting dead, llcgard it a s you" w'iJl, to be continually outdriven ly tho length of a gt'-eet has

a destructive effect morally, even though you may have determined beforehand that it must and will not influence you* game. Let us examine some of Mr. Tol- ■ ley's improper achievements, for they certainly looked improper to the ordinary mortal. Take , the fourth, hoie—44s yards. His measured drive, down wind, was 325 yards—almost unbelievable—'rerequiring for his second shot just a flick with a mashie-niblick. .At the sixth— 470 yards—against the wind, he was on the green with a drive and a full mashie shot. He drove plumb on to the tenth' green—3o2 "yards—and at the fifteenfti —• 472 yards—his second was a half-mashia shot. Then at the seventeenth—443 yards; —where you cross a brook in the dip' below the green, he was on with a drive and a 'squeeze 1 with a mashie-niblick. All this represented colossal hitting,, and to show "that it was not mere wild slogging it should be jecorded that Mr. Tolley was only once off the fairway. This was at the thirteenth, where, in company with Miss Wethered, he sliced his drive into the rough. But he wan pin-high with a spoon shot, while the lady contented herself with merely reaching_ the course again with a heavy mashie. In this instance strength certainly had aa enormous advantage. It is not riecesBary to go into the details of the match in its earlier stages, except to say that Miss Wethered had strokes at the threo really short holes and jvon them all. This . was a distinct advantage, and compelled ?V. Tolley to make up for it at the long holes, which he certainly did. Mies Wetheced undoubtedly missed a glorious opportunity of becoming one up at the fourteenth—a non-stroke hole—where Mr. Tolley put his second shot, into 1 a 'bunker at the right-hand corner of the green and took two to get out., . That was a bad half in six. Miss Wethered, ! under the extreme pressure, had begun ,to miss-hit her tea shots, and at tlie fifteenth she again pulled her drive into the rough, and. on the way to the green fortunately skipped a couple of bunkers. In the end she was robbed of the hole by Mr. Tolley laying her a dead stymie. It -was now Mr. Tolley's turn to commit the error, but for which he should have put his nose in front and kept it .there, At the sixteenth, a long' one-shot hole of 210 yards,'in: the teeth of tha wind, he put his brassfe shot in the hollow below the hole, but on the green. His approach putt was woefully weak, and so he gave Miss Wethered tha opportunity, which she Beized, of snatching a half in four." Something unusual brightened the first qualifying round' of the Waiohiki (Napier) championships, in which the scorer | ranged from 84 in the seniors to 132 in j the juniors. P. C. Fryer was the only one bo get below 90, and his round was the remarkable,one of 84. Arriving at the links without clubs or gear of any kind he borrowed sticks from several members, a pair of boots from another and started off at about' 3 o'clock. He and his partner were to be seen runnins? between the holes, hurrying as much as possible to get home before dark They managed it, and the score of 84 was done m about two hours. H. E. Cross is not .competing, and Fryer's chances are bright tor the championship event. ' The New Zealand Golf Council has taken two commendable steps, one to initiate a national handicap in New Zealand and the other with the object of increasing the supply of first-class professionals. ■■ The latter was recommended ia these columns a couple of weeks ago on somewhat different lines, but the suggestion that a' couple of men should' work.under engagement to the council is a step towards the object I had in view, and ib one which the council ha* been considering for some time. The Golf Council is obviously alive to the position of golf in this country, and all golfepi will appreciate their energy. To bo suddenly brine out two of the most •vital matters concerning the came.is a sure sign that they are ready to' make any improvement possible', "in setting out to introduce national handicaps ■ the council has taken upon its shoulders a. task that will be difficult, as ifc will be continuous, for the low handicap golf? er will have not only his club handicap to attack, but will be anxious to send down his name as amongst the lowest handicap players on the national list. The initial work will be of a very .heavy character. It will be comparatively easy to settle £h« handicaps of several players who will comprise the section lowest on th» list., but a heap of information o?j recent ■performances, bogies and pars, etc.. will have to be' considered whet its comes to allocating the handicaps of men who are likely to be placed within the handicap of, say. seven. In select-' ing Mr. Arthur Duncan as' the standard the council will have no difficulty in allocating the handicaps so that they are on a basis with tKe British handicaps, the idea being that a player visiting England will be on the same handicap there as he is' here. This will be an aspect that will have to be closely watched, aad a handicap that is too low to, commence with might quite easily soon become one which would' not compare approximately with that of a player of , the same 1 standard on tho other side of the world. Not only will be council have to lower handicaps occasionally, but sometimes it will have to insrease them—in other words the recommendation of the championship committee of the Royal and Ancient Club will have to be followed, and no sympathetic handicapping should be allowed. >By sympathetic handicapping ia meant the custom of leaving a player at his old handicap/ although bis play has censed to justify it, rather than hurt his feelings. There. is more than one case in'the local clubs now where players are on sympathetic, handicaps. In preparing the national handicaps, the council will probably have to adopt further recommendations of the Royal and Ancient Club, and declare a scratch score for all courses, and arrive at the handicaps from these scratch scores. The Championship Committee considers that a scratch score of a course is the only sound basis of handicapping; that this scratch score should be founded an the par score of the course, and that in order to obtain uniformity the par and scratch scores should be fixed so each case by a member or rcpreseniative of the handicapping committee.