SNATCHED FROM THE ROUGH

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 111, 13 May 1933, Page 6

SNATCHED FROM THE ROUGH

WAGG SAVES , HIS MATCH ,

Considering that ■most of the bunkers at. Heretaunga had /water in them, and that the course was heavy, the golf in the Wellington-Hutft A team, contest on Saturday was of ; very good quality. Those who kept /straight, of course, had- by no weans bad conditions, as the weather was ideal, and the rain / had. had time, to soak off tho fjairways. The greens putted well, and) quite a number of the players broke B'b. The feature of the match between Xonguet and Wagg was the brilliant nianner in which the amateur chanrpdon played recovery shots. The idiaal go|f, of course, consists of precisicin, straightness, and jnore or loss an imtpeccable mechanical., infallibility. It ( is, however, monotonous to watch. Th'are is even the possibility that a golfejj with perfect direction, playing« on fitst-rate courses, may get so little pract/ice on bad lies that when he is faced w'&ii a recovery shot he fails. There was nothing monotonous Wagg's golf on Saturday. Everyone is subject to days when the woods will :(iot behave, and it would be unkind to ?/elatc the causes of some of the lies Wngg found, but seldom have more brillipnt\ recoveries been crowded into one ljound. From the face of a bunker at/the third green, playing out of stubboi»n rough; he laid tho ball dead thirty yards, and. took a half in 3. A pushed oipt cut spoon shot at the sixth put him an the rough again, but again he chipp up well, and got a half. Following (nisadventures at the seventh, he put rj> fine brassie third to the green, but failed to halve. Though he had played iiearly double the number of the shots off his opponent, his long chip to the pii» from the rough at the eighth deserves though it came too late. From i-the eleventh bunkers he played a thoiightful baby niblick shot from an almost impossible lie to the green, and followed that up with a very fine .Tiiblijfek shot-out of eight inches of water to t?fce green at tho twelfth. That thenceforward he mastered all. his chilis and won his match on the last green by a fine iron'shot and a twentyfoot putt, .shows a fine temperament. Loftguet did a 77, and would undoubtedly /have won his match had it not been for the outstanding recovery shots pjfeyed by Wagg. Though most titles are won by theiconventional play, there Cfbmes a time in all golfers' careers inhere the recovery shot is the important one. Sloan Morpeth was an example, and Walter Hagen owes much rto recoveries '