ONE-CLUB WOMAN GOLFER

Evening Star, Issue 22526, 19 December 1936, Page 30

ONE-CLUB WOMAN GOLFER

IS ALSO BRILLIANT CONJURER For three years the most exciting figure at every British women’s golf championship has been Miss Gloria Minoprio, the tall, beautiful, aloof, black-trousered girl who plays with only one club. And plays it with almost uncanny skill. What is this remarkable girl like? Her story is an extraordinary one. It has never been told before, because she has always refused to be interviewed. She refused again at first when approached recently. Then all in a moment she changed her mind. “I am 24 years of age, and I only started to play golf when I was 20,” she said. “ I keep a record of all the full rounds of golf I play, and I have only played 47 rounds in the whole oi my life. These include only 36 rounds of match play. After I 'had played about 20 rounds I returned the necessary three cards to the Ladies’ Golf Union for handicap purposes. I was given a handicap of four, which is my handicap now. People tell me that 1 would do better with a few more clubs. I disagree. I cannot swing a driver. I would not know how to play a spoon shot off the fairway. I could never do anything but bungle with a niblick out of the sand. I would be hopelessly at sea with a putter. It has been said that 1 cannot get out of bunkers with my cleek. Yet once I had a competition with the professional at Valescure. He played with an American ‘ blaster,’ as 1 believe it was called, and I beat him.

“ Further, it has been said that 1 cannot play down wind from a tee arid make a ball stop on the green. This is exactly what I accomplished two days in succession at Hayhng Island at the 150 yards eleventh hole, in my two matches there. What is more, the ball will turn sharply to the left when it lands and bite as deeply into the green as if played with a niblick. I am proud of this shot, and very naturally it is my especial favourite. With my cleek, which is a little straighter in the face than a No. 1 iron, my best round yet is a 76. I went round Turnberry in 78. I aim to reach a standard length of 200 yards or more with the long shots and maintain the same precision and accuracy of direction with the shorter ones. I shall go in for the championship at Turnberry, and, in fact, for every championship, until I win it. 1 think I will be a very different golfer when I settle down, but I will always use just the cleek, because I am sure no other club would have enabled me to do what I have done. STRONG IDEAS. 11 1 have strong ideas about doing anything I like provided it does not give pam to anyone. I don’t mind it it merely offends old-fashioned conventions. So when I entered for my first championship I made up my mind to wear trousers. Troiisers I found were far warmer and drier in the winter than skirts. They are more convenient in a wind than a skirt, which is blown about and distracts the eye. I feel it is a great compliment to me and very sporting of first-class women golfers to play with me at all m the championships, and very broad-minded of the officials, considering that I am offending the proprieties that have been sacrosanct for half a century. I have been called the ‘ Human Refrigerator ’ because 1 show little emo-

tion before a gallery of people or an audience. Naturally, I should be very nervous.-. ' But I have made a study —superficial only, I am afraid—of the Indian philosophy of Yoga, and from that I learned a simple principle which makes me calm and composed under any circumstances, and enables me to concentrate to such an extent that I am quite lost in- my own game. Ido not Irnow in the slightest whether I am winning or losing. My caddie has to tell me on those rare occasions when I have to take the honour from . the tee.” Golf is only a side line in her life. She is more proud of the fact that she is one of the finest magicians in the world. Jasper Maskelyne, the Great Devant, and Graham Adams, the famous card-wizard, have all paid tribute to her astonishing skill as a conjurer. She has just refused an offer 0f.£2,000 a year for a world conjuring tour. As I sat in her suite in a London hotel, she performed for me the most astonishing series of card tricks I have ever seen. She sailed on November 7 for India to give a series of “ Western Magic ” entertainments to leading native princes in aid of a London charity. “ Then,” she added, “I may have to fly back to take one of the principal parts in a drama of the Law Courts, in which I shall ho my own counsel, in a case which 1 am told will be very sen sational. lam -taking with me, to study on board, some of the best books on the ‘ Laws of Evidence.’ lam looking forward to it, as everything legal interests me. I was at one time studying for the Bar” Miss Minoprio, far from being the blase woman of the -world she seems to be when striding aloof round a golf course, is in actual life an extraordinarily beautiful and delightful girl. She drosses exquisitely, and is most attractively shy.