BAD LIES EDUCATE

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 24, 28 July 1934, Page 20

BAD LIES EDUCATE

By "Chipshot."

Placing the ball is allowed by.many clubs at this time :of year. It certainly makes play pleasaater and easier, but it is doubtful whether it improves the play, of, golfers as a general thing, certainly not in the long run. Where balls can be played, they should be. On minor courses, where'players are not as careful to replace divots as they would be if paying the higher subscriptions attached to the senior clubs, it is certainly sometimes difficult to pick a shot up out of a crater hedged in stiff porridge. There should,, of course, be no unfilled .sclaffs, but golfers are essentially human. The main reason for the popularity of teeing up with club authorities is that there is no possibility/of divots not being replaced, and it is-true that a shot taken a trifle heavily in winter does leave a mild sort of shell hole. The result of the placing of all second shots, however, has the tendency of giving the payer an enhanced opinion of; his skill and when, later on, he finds himself in an important event where, whatever the season, placing is not as a rule indulged , in, he finds that he has not learned to play out of a' bad lie. Theoretically no golfer should get into the rough, but some ;of them practically live in it, and even the best world's players are frequently called upon to make good recoveries from lies they would not encounter on championship fairways, but find often enough in the rough. Many a match has hung on the ability to make a good recovery ±rom a hook or slice, or even an error in judging distance, and the player who cannot make the shot falls down

S. BEEWS A FIGHTEE