SPORTS COSTUMES

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 48, 25 August 1923, Page 22

SPORTS COSTUMES

CREATING AN ATMOSPHERE ON PLAYING FIELDS.

Can it be (asks a correspondent of the "Manchester Guardian") that the costume affected at Troon' by Walter Hagen, Ihe great American golfer, will have a permanent effect on our games? It seems that Hagen played in a peacock blue knitted jacket, a light heliotrope sweater, a black bow, \ery light giey tweed knickerbockers and giev stockings, and white buckskin slioei with black facings. It is added that he looked the least excited man on the coarse, and one can quite believe it; excitement and perhaps envy would be the attitude for his beholder. There are still some surly old purist; in tha matter of golf costume, and a plus player from the North was heard to say lately that he would like to make a bonfire of all the linen jackets much affected by city players who make time tor an evening round after their day's work; but it feems obvious that it would be much easier £or all clubs arranging competitions to exact a "gate," if golfers entered into a competition to out-Hag'en Hagen. There might be special prizes also attached to these competitions with feminine judges; and a player who had torn up his card at the thirteenth hole might still carry off some substantial token of his prowess by receiving the prize for the most dazzling costume. I see (continues the correspondent) great possibilities for those county cricket clubs which are being plagued by writers in tha Press to give us "brighter cricket." There would be much larger attendances if players were given a free hand in • the matter of costume. Imagine what competition there might be between ■ bowlers and batsmen with Parkin devising costumes to dazzle the eye even of a Hobbs, and Hobbs retaliating with a colour scheme which would put Cook off his length for an afternoon. Even ordinary fieldsmen would have their chance, and Hitch at very silly leg in a crimson shirt and sky-blue trousers might be even more-irritating to'nervous batsmen than he used to be to P. F. Warner. And think of. the terrifying effect of a. maroon Gregory hurtling to the bowline crease'!