SUMMER GOLF

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 148, 19 December 1935, Page 23

SUMMER GOLF

RABBITS' HEY-DAY

This is the time of the year'when the long-handicap player comes into •his own—:more so than ever this summer, when the dry spell has baked "the fairways to the consistency of asphalt. His half-topped drives bump valiantly through the bunkers, and run on along the adamantine fairways as if they never meant' to' stop. The 'course, in consequence,- plays incredibly short, and the "rabbit," with a little luck, can get round in figures which the "tiger" would not.be ashamed of., The "tiger," however, obtains no corresponding advantage from the harder turf. He relies more on carry and less on run for the: length" hie gets with his wooden clubs; his shots are hit higher in the air' than the rabbit's half-hit attempts n and drop on to the turf at a steeper angle. In consequence they are more apt to get what Archie Compston .calls "a- false hop"—to shoot off at an angle that depends chiefly upon the slope a;t the spot on which the ball happens to land. It is true that the "tiger," like everybody else, finds himself hitting the ball further than ever, but the extra length is now more than he can count on being able to control. With his approach shots he is even worse off, because he dare not pitch the ball right up to the pin on the, hard greens, and a dropping ball short of the green is just as likely as :not-, to shoot off a bump into the bunkers on one side or the other. The'rabbit knocking the ball on to the-green along the ground is just as. likely to get the distance right as the . scratch man, and his rolling shots are much less likely to be turned off into the bunkers than the "poached egg": approaches of the better player. The' difference is entirely one of spin. The modern geolfer, if he has any pretensions to class, plays his iron shots: withi backspin, which tends to keep"-the.ball floating in the airland' makes it draw up quickly when-it pitches, Slndei? n.orm^,con.ditioiig jhis

is the ideal plan for getting the exact distance we want. But it seems to be one of the guiding principles of golf that what we gain on the swings we lose on the roundabouts. Back-spin gives us greater control of distance, but. forward-spin, the spin that is obtained! unintentionally by half-topping the ball, or more deliberately by shutting the face of the club at the moment 6f ; striking,'not only tends to produce a-longer "run," but tends to keep the. ball: travelling in the'right direction.' In'other words, a. ball played With over-spin always wants to "roll on,";and will travel forward compare tively across '■ a side-slope that would turn aside a ball that was sliding along under the influence of back-spin. .

Curiously enough, golf, as it has to be played in a summer .like- the present, :When; the turf has become iron[bounrj, owing, as the Irish greenkeeper said, to the drought coming between the dry spells, bears a good deal of resemblance; to what the game must have been like in the days of our great-grandfathers. At the present time golf is a game of distance. With the drives the chief, object is to. hit as far as possible; with the approach shots exact judgment Of distance is the hallmark of the class player. Errors of direction are punished, of course, but direction is more or less taken for granted. A hundred years ago it was exactly the reverse. Errors of. distance I werepunishedby cross-bunkers just as! errors of direction are now punished by wing^bunkers. But the.skill of the champions lay' more in their precise control of direction. Drives'had to be played on ■! the exact line that would .ayoid the bunkers with the next shot, arid the skill; of the good approach player lay in his ability to steer the ball up to the piri past'the corner of the buhkery<ancl not in the ability to pitch it up to the pin over the: bunker. The half-topped shot that kept the ball on the-line was iri those days just as much a mark ;of skilL.as; the .cut-back approach became later on. Even in the drive, Allan Robertson, playing into the teeth of the freeze, would deliberately place his b^iil on a 'hanging lie'— i.e., a falling sloj?e--and 'skim* the ball through' the windiwith a' characteristic half-top.. . ,■.'...'->"; ' ; - ■', . . ■ .'"•

Of course, the ; golfer -of a hundred years ago was"sometimes forced to play a short pitch v^rith'a, bunker dead in line between him'and- the pin. Before iron clubs came" into use, the weapon used "for, this;shot, was the 'baffingspobn,' a name which', still survives in the modern- 'baffle.' 'But the club was named , after the shot.- A 'baffed' shot was onein ;which the sole of a wooden club was made to slap on the ground an; infinitesimal fraction of a second- before :the face struck the ball, so that the clubhead to a slight extent rebounded off the turf on to:-the lower half of the ;ball and tossed it over the bunker without any spin at all: An extraordinarily- delicate sort of stroke it must have been, leaving no margin of error if the 'ban" was not to become an absolute 'fluff.' The two men who changed ,all this were Allah Robertson and 'Young Tom' Morris. Allan-was the first golfer to use.the iron for approach play. Young Tom Morris was the first to play his pitch shots with the right foot forward in what we now call the 'open' stance instead of with the left foot closer to j the ball as had up to then been the rule for that kind' of shot. 'In that way,' says one of the old-chroniclers. 'he put a;different spin upon the ball.'. This, iri: fact, was the coming -of backspin, which has made the pitch over the bunker a"'commonplace.shot for all of us. But in summers like the present many of us would do better if we also possessed something of the older artistry irY steering .our running | shots past the hazards. :