NEW AMERICAN GOLF STA

Evening Star, Issue 19550, 7 May 1927, Page 18

NEW AMERICAN GOLF STA

" IT IS ALWAYS THE PUTTifSS

[Written by Habey Vardon, for th ‘Evening Star.’]

There was reported recently the ris of a new star in the American go. firmament, one William Burke, wb secured the open championship o Central Florida at Sanford, Florida with a score of 290 strokes for seventy two holes. A 1 Espinosa, who has bee. for several years among the leadin' players in the United States, wa second with 291, and our old friem and opponent, Walter Hagen, thin with 292. The cables state that Burke, who twelve months ago, acted as caddie ti Hagen, putted phenomenally. Tin golfer who was with me when this announcement came through said immediately: “It is always the putting Why is it that we are constantly hearing the same thing about the Americans? Why are they so deadly a< putting? ” Archie Compson was full of the subject when he toured in the Unite: States last winter season. He declare:, solemnly in print that “ those Americans seem to bo able to give us a stroke a hole on the green. Judgin', by their standard, we have no man in England who can putt. We can hole; our own up to the green, and arc generally inside them, hut then wc have finished.”

The consistent accuracy of the United States golfers as putters is fast becoming a byword. No doubt thoii excellence in this department is sometimes over-stated, but it is unquestionable that the standard of their putting —taking the whole year through am; the tournaments held under the wide diversity of conditions that prevail in a vast country—is extraordinarily high. . It is certainly higher than Unstandard of putting amongst the loading British players, and we may reasonably ask ourselves why this is so. favorite explanation is temperament. It is often remarked that the Americans must possess some peculiar gift of disposition—born, let us say, oi climate—which enables them to regard putting as a simple operation. But the Americans themselves have a different view of the matter. They say that_ if they really are as good at putting as we declare them to be, the reason is that they practise it constantly. _ That is a much more feasible erplanation than all the theorising about temperament. AN EXEMPLAR. It is no exaggeration to say that Mr W. J. Travis, of New York, who won the British amateur' championship in 1904—a result which frankly astonished the golfers of this country -—has been very largely responsible for the present excellence or American putting. At the time of his triumph the world rang with stories of how he practised putting for an hour every day, and of the ncart-breaking way in which he got down from all sorts of distances on the green—as, indeed, he did—to beat men who were better ailround golfers than himself. I once heard or a club which was started in a remote part of Australia by two enthusiasts, both of whom happened to ho left-handed. They induced about fifty people in the district to take up the game, and they all played lefthanded because they thought it was the proper way. Similarly, Mr Travis sot an example at the time when Americans were just beginning to enter heart and soul into golf. They came to the conclusion that the constant practice of putting was a prime essential—indeed, part of the game itself. They all engaged in it. They made a custom of it, until now, in the United States, it has become a tradition—almost the only tradition that America has contributed to the game. Putting practice is' a kind of ritual in America before the day’s matches begin, and even after they finish. I saw Walter Hagen provide an interesting side-light on this subject during one of the open championships which he won here. Everybody knows, or ought to know, that the player in a competition oy strokes is not allowed on the day of the event to putt on any green before starting, Hagen practised in another manner. After holing out on each green, he went to another part of the green and putted from there. The Rules Committee of St. Andrews decided a long while ago that this is no infringement. Hagen’s procedure was a novel and concrete example of the American faith in learning everything possible about putting, THE THOROUGHGOING WAY. Every good putter produced in this country has been assiduous in practice. His doadliness on the green has come not of inspiration, but of application. The late William Park, who was probably the best putter ever seen in the ranks of British golfers, practised day after day. He even went on with the task by the aid of candle light at night. To make it as rigorous as nossible he putted at a hole of less than the legal diameter of 4iin, so that when he came to take partm a contest the hole looked magnificently large. Tom Ball, another wonderful putter, was just as constant in the same pursuit. For an hour or more a day he would practise putting from eight or nine different points round the edge of the green, and he schooled himself to hole out carefully every time, even though it meant playing a putt of no more than a few inches. George Duncan, even with a .style that looks had for putting—a manner of jerking the ball off the heel of the club—made himself a deadly-holor-out from any distance under two yards by devoting hours a day to practice for two years during his occupation of the post of professional at Timperley. During recent years this industrious endeavor to master putting has gone largely out of vogue in Britain, and more so amongst amateurs than where professionals are concerned. It looks as though we shall have to return to it if we are to beat America.