GOLF NOTES

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 124, 21 November 1935, Page 26

GOLF NOTES

OVERSEAS TOUR

TALENT IN PLENTY FINANCE THE OBSTACLE There can be no question that overseas tours are of great benefit to New Zealand golf, and the success of the women's visit to England and the recent overseas- tour of the British women, which was a revelation to our players, has been such as to warrant serious consideration of the proposal to send a men's team to Britain.

All is very much in the air at pre- | sent, and an invitation from England ' is of course necessary before anything at all definite can be arranged or even thought of, but New Zealand could :ield a very promising team just now with A. D. S. Duncan, whose experi:nce of golf in England has been considerable, to captain the team. Horna>rook and Silk are certainly worth a jlace, although the latter has not been up to his usual form recently. The suggestion has been made that Wferd, too, has been playing golf good enough to be included, and J. L. Black reached the semi-finals of the amateur championship tourney at Shirley. The sending of such a team, however, is an expensive business. If a team of Ave were sent the tour would cost well over £IOOO, probably nearly twice that amount. The finances of the N.Z.G.A., however, are now in a fairly satisfactory state, and the council could no doubt afford to help the project substantially from the financial viewpoint. When the New Zealand women's tour of England was being arranged, a large number of the more important clubs held tournaments in- order to help the financing of the tour, and the same thing could surely be done if it is decided to send a men's team abroad. It is emphasised, however, that a men's tour would be much more expensive than one by vromen. It cannot be expected, of course," that our players will be able to carry off the British titles, but from the point of view of giving them experience such a tour would be well worth while, and the team would by no means disgrace itself, arid looking at the matter from this aspect it is desirable above all that young players should be sent. The question of finance is undoubtedly a difficulty; and it would be by no means easy to select a team that could be absent for so long from the country. Nevertheless, the prospect of an overseas tour cannot fail to attract them, and the benefit to the players and to golf generally in this country would be great.

DRIVING INTO OFFICE Custorn has not detracted from the impressive ceremony of the • driving into office of a new captain of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, and this ceremony took place recently at St. Andrews Golf Club, in Scotland, a short time ago. All St. Andrews seemed to have risen early to greet the captainelect, Mr. W. Norman Boase, who is also Provost of the famous golfing city. He walked on to the first tee of the old course in company with the retiring captain, Mr. Bernard Darwin, to undergo an ordeal which princes, dukes, and earls have experienced.

Mr. Darwin indicated that the hour had come. William Auchterlonie, the newly-appointed professional to the premier club, teed the ball and Mr. Boase, after a few practice swings, struck the ball straight and far down the fairway. The historic brass cannon roared a salute to the new captain; a horde of caddies surged across the fairway to scramble for the ball, and from the press, emerged, smiling and triumphant, William Cochrane, to hand the ball to Mr. Boase and receive in exchange a bright golden sovereign.

YEKSATILE ATHLETE

BRINSDEN'S RECORD

H. D. Brinsden, the Titirangi golfer, who has just won the champion of champions contest at the Otahuhu links, has had a particularly successful season. In addition to winning the Titirangi Club's championship, Brinsden annexed the Hawke's Bay title, retained the Bay of Plenty championship, anld won the Te Kauwhata title.

Incidentally, there are few athletes in the Dominion, if any, who have had such a brilliant sporting career as Brinsden, states the "New Zealand Herald." His diversity of interest in sports has been equalled only by his brilliance of performance. To quote a few of. his best achievements: —He represented Auckland at Kugby in 1921; represented the province at hockey in 1918; won the Auckland lawn tennis doubles championship on five occasions, as well as representing the province at the same sport; was runner-up in both the Auckland and New Zealand billiards championships; played senior cricket; was provincial golf champion in 1932; with B. J. Smith won the New Zealand amateur golf foursomes in 1933.

"DINNEE-PLATE" SWING

.ONE PLANE OF ACTION When I find that anything is going wrong with my swing, the first thing I try to do is to make sure that I am not bringing the club down in a plane nearer the ball than the one on which I took it back, for I have found that this one error accounts for nearly every fault in golf, writes Archie Compston in "Golfing." I try to keep the head of the club travelling throughout in one plane of movement. ■ Let me try to explain what I mean by this. If you will hold a dinrierplate with its bottom edge resting on the table in front of you, not quite vertical but tilted so that the upper edge is nearer to you than the lower, the rim of the plate gives you a picture of the golf swing. But you are not to imagine the plate as remaining perfectly stationary; it rolls slightly to the right as the club comes up and rolls to the left into its original position as the club comes down. This rolling movement corresponds to the effect of shifting your weight on to the right foot as you take the club up, and back on to the left again as the club comes down. The plate represents the plane in •which the club is kept moving through•outthe swing. ■ • The trouble with the golfer who is Off his game is that he does not keep .the. Club, moving, in that plane. He .allows the plate to tw4st in his hands, as it were, right in the middle of his •swing.- • ■ -In the effort to put all the force he has got into the blow, he lets the right side of his body come round too soon, and instead of bringing the club down in the same plane as he took it up, he swings down on a plane cutting across the line of the shot from right to left. As we say, he brings the club on to the ball from outside.

When this happens you may get all sorts of results. If you keep the face of the club open the result of coming on to the ball from the outside is to

draw the face of the chib inwards across the ball at the moment of striking. You hit a more or less skidding blow which produces a slice. If you try to correct this and to bring the face of the club square on to the ball you can only do it by shutting the face of the club, that is to say, by bringing the club on to the ball with the face slightly turned down. Then you may get a fairly good one, but out of line to the left, or you may overdo the shutting of the face and knock the ball down.

The big powerful player is always apt to bring the club down in this way. He is so anxious to knock the ball' a mile that he insists on doing the hard work himself instead of leaving it to the club. At the top of the swing, instead of pulling the club down with the left hand he lets the right take charge. Now, when a player .tries to employ the power of his right arm at this stage of the swing, he invariably starts by throwing the clubhead outwards towards the ball, making a loop at the top of the swing and bringing the club down on a line visibly outside of that along which he took it up. The player who is obsessed with the idea of keeping his head still, and who tries to do it by keeping his whole body still with his weight piled on the left leg all through the stroke, is almost sure to bring the club on to the ball from the outside. No other result is possible, because instead of pivoting round his backbone, he is trying, to pivot round his left leg. This type of player, always has difficulty with his second shots, because he is making it so hard for himself to get the ball to rise from the turf. He can really only do so by cutting the ball up, and so when he does get the ball away, it always has a tendency to fade off to the right.

The middle-aged player is also apt to be worried by this difficulty. Footwork does not come so easy to him as it did when he was younger. He has to swing the club more with his arms and less from his feet, so.he too tends to swing with his left foot anchored to the ground and to come round on to the ball. In his case the easiest method by which he can correct this tendency is to adopt a "closed" stance, with his left foot advanced an inch or two nearer to the line of the swing.