WHY GOLF IS ALLURING

Evening Star, Issue 19764, 14 January 1928, Page 15

WHY GOLF IS ALLURING

MIXING IT WITH OTHER GAMES [Written by Harry Vardon, for the ‘Evening Star.’] There can be no doubt that every year more and more cricketers take to golf. Constantly does one meet players who, in their schooldays, ranked high in the curriculum of games mainly by reason of their proficiency at cricket, but who are now showing a measure of skill at golf which indicates a wholehearted devotion to it.

Being of an inquiring turn of mind and having a cosmopolitan interest in sport of all kinds, 1 asked a man who had represented his university at cricket, rackets, and golf which game he liked best and why. “ 1 think golf,” he said, “ because it’s always making you do something.” To be sure zackets also has that virtue, but it hardly qualifies for consideration among popular pastimes, for the reason that the courts in which it may be pursued are very few and far between. 11 it is true that golf is still winning converts from cricket it is probably because on the links the player is always batting or fielding, according to whether he is hitting the ball or following it, whereas in a cricket match he is condemned to spend a good deal of time in the pavilion while his confreres are batting. I daresay that cricket can look after itself. Some years ago, when there was taking place one of those periodical discussions as to the alleged “decline of cricket” and the falling off in the incomes of the county clubs, officials of the Warwickshire County Cricket Club laid the blame at the door of golf. And a great many people followed suit. Golf was not only luring away the rising generation oi amateurs who might be expected to give their sporting elements, to the county team; it was also attracting the old members, who used to pay tlieir annual subscriptions for the privilege of sitting on the pavilion seats and watching their successors on tho field. Cricket seems to have survived these desertions remarkably well. The truth is that the country lias room for both games, and that if cricket appears to suffer from the latter-day uprising of what is actually a more ancient lorm of recreation it is because a boy trained in cricket usually makes very rapid progress at golf, assuming that he learns it on the proper lines. EXAMPLES. 1 do not know why this is so. Let us consider again the case of the triple blue. Ho was innocent of golf until a year or so alter ho went to the university, and then somebody who was accomplished at the game induced him to try a few iron shots, and toid him at the finish that if he studied golf properly lie would be in the side within a year.

He realised this prediction. Twelve months later lie secured his place in the team. There have been other sucli instances of rapid progress. Mr J. L. Humphreys, who not long ago was appointed Governor of British North Borneo, developed in a year from an 18handicap player into the loader of tho Oxford side.

As to whether it is possible to mix your golf and cricket successfully is a matter for debate. Mr C. D. Gray, who is a plus golfer and who has scored his centuries for Middlesex, says that it is not to bo done. He is thirty-two years of ago, and therefore in something like the heyday of athletic manhood. Taking up golf seven years ago, he has established himself as a plus-one golfer in the Royal Mid-Surrey Club. His experience is that you cannot mix tho two games successfully, so he plays golf in the winter and cricket in the summer.

Ho finds that the downward jab with the loft arm which smothers a particularly dangerous ball at cricket also comes into operation in golf if he tries to play the one game and the other in quick succession. It means the aerostation of the blow; no follow through; and again a smothered shot, which is not useful on the links. TWO 74's.

.Nevertheless, 1 remember a story of the mixture as never before. It was provided by “Major C. K. Hutchison, who played just about the finest golf that ever lost the final of tho amateur championship when he was beaten by Mr Robert Maxwell in the .supremo stage at Muirfiekl. Major Hutchison was the crack bat of the Coldstream Guards, and one of tho cricketing mainstays of the Household Brigade, Ho made 7-1 runs and won the match for them one Saturday morning; the game ended before lunch as the result of his innings. The Woking Golf Club was holding its annual medal competition that day, and having nothing else to do, he went out and played for the medal. He won it with 74. That was evidence of what might bo done by tho adaptable games man.

Mr G. L. Jessop, who became a scratch golfer long before he ceased to be the most magnetic personality in cricket, used to say that golf made him slow-footed for cricket. There are modern votaries of the two games who declare that when they come to exchange golf for the more sprightly sports they are moved to even greater quickness of toot action than their normal, but that it does not last. L’hey fade away rapidly. They could walk fifty miles, but they cannot keep on raising involuntarily quick movements and other forms of sprinting. I suppose the truth is that every game calls into action a certain set of muscles, and that ordinary mortals cannot play upon the lot with success. Concentration on one game in a season is enough.