THE ROYAL AND ANCIENT GAME.

Evening Star, Issue 23111, 10 November 1938, Page 12

THE ROYAL AND ANCIENT GAME.

It is ten years since the New Zealand golf championships tournament was last played on the Balmaoewen course. It has been played there only twice, up to this time, in the last twenty-five years. There is no question, therefore, but that the contests which began to-day, for which champions and ex-champions and contenders for spurs have mustered from all parts of , New Zealand and beyond it, must be accounted an outstanding, and, in the sphere of games, even an historic occasion. It need not be asked whether ■golf is really a game so much as a discipline which, rn a severe straining for virtue, a proportion of mankind and also of womankind heroically impose upon themselves, like those saints of old who practised various methods of mortification. Though no other sport perhaps can show such capacity for being chastening, pleasure surely must predominate in the sensations of its votaries, or they would not always have called it the royal and ancient “ game,” and, in an age more given to indulgence than self-abasement, their numbers would not have grown as they have done, The pleasure actually is much more than a perverse one, since strokes to keep hope alive, or give cheer, will occur in the worst of rounds; also “ there’s the wind on the heath, brother.” It may be a palliative, or an intensitive of humiliation that the man who does badly in a golf match has no one to blame but himself. Those who have reached the status of competitors in forthcoming championships never can do badly, by the average standard. The game, as it is played in tournaments, may bo for theih.a grim ordeal, but that, in similar circumstances, is .the same with other sports. The best of them will make its art look incredibly easy to those who find comfort in a saying that 70 per cent, of the whole world’s golfers never break the hundred—or is it 120 P—and no doubt there will be large fields to follow them. We hope they will be completely satisfied ‘ with the course, which has been very largely remodelled for the fulfilling of all tournament requirements, and on which much labour has been spent to bring it into the best condition. The elite of New Zealand golf will be well represented. No one knows where golf began, except that 500 years ago it was so popular in Scotland as to interfere with archery, needed then for defence, and a statute had to be passed to prohibit both -golf and football upon certain days reserved for contests with the bow. The first golfer whose name has come down to us was a king of Scotland, one hundred years before the union of the crowns. Scotland gave the game to England, but it only became general there within comparatively recent times, a chief fillip to its English spread being given by the example of Lord Balfour. In 1880, it has been said, golf was .practically unknown outside the borders of its native land. Now it is, next to tennis, the most universal game in the world. In all the dominions it is' widespread; three years ago there were in the United States more than three hundred municipal courses alone. France has over a hundred courses, and Germany over fifty; in most countries of Europe the game is played; there are golf tournaments in Mexico and in Central and South America; a nine-hole course has been laid out on an expanse of fiat ice in Alaska, and tropical Africa has not been behindhand. Scotland’s . gift has conquered the world. Only the weather requires to be right for it to be seen to the best advantage during this and next week in Dunedin. Golf can be played in almost any weather, but some kinds are better for it - than others.