GOF ON THE STAGE

Greymouth Evening Star, 4 February 1939, Page 10

GOF ON THE STAGE

COTTON DOES HIS TURN.

When Mr Charles Tucker suggested that a professional golfer should topthe bill as a variety act there were those who averred that he had taken leave of his senses. Golfers, it is true, had performed on the stage before, and not without success; but they had been for the most part trickshot exponents, like Joe Kirkwood, or professional buffoons, like our old friend, Joe Ezar. An exhibition of “straight” golf, said the critics, must surely be tlie biggest flop in the history of the variety stage (writes Henry Longhurst, in the London “Sunday Times”). . That Henry Cotton was so instantaneous a success at the London Coliseum as to be offered a further week’s contract at a fee in excess of his original £5O a night was due partly to the inspired competence of those who designed his “turn” and partly to the ease and confidence with which he put it over. Mr Tucker, delighted at the success of his gamble—the night I attended Cotton’s performance there was not an empty seat in the house, and throughout the whole of his eighteen-minutes period one could have heard a pin drop anywhere in the theatre—assures me that Cotton could tour the provinces and for many months make in each week what many professionals are pleased to earn in a year. Cotton himself, however, attractive though the proposition may appear financially, will probably not accept it. He thinks and perhaps rightly, that it would not be in his interest as a whole.

It was apparent, on the evening on which I watched his performance, that a goodly proportion of the house had never swung a, golf club in their lives.

Only one part of Cotton’s act is " theatrical! When he demonstrates in the darkness with luminous club, gloves and shoes. Here lie performed what must be one of the most difficult feats in golf—the perfect swing in slow motion. There were sufficient golfers present to appreciate its merit, and it was greeted with handsome applause. IDEAL BACKSWING. When recommending the overlapping grip “created” by Harry Vardon I fancy that Cotton was the victim of a popular misconception. I was not born at the time that this grip was invented, but my older friends always insist that Mr Johnnie Laidlaw was the originator of the overlapping grip. | Vardon, however, was undoubtedly the man responsible for making it the accepted grip for nearly all first-class golfers.

A question that puzzles a good many enthusiastic golfers was answered very neatly and succinctly, I thought, by Cotton. How long is the ideal backswing? Are we to wind the club round the back of our shoulders like James-Adams, who, with this method, has twice been runner-up in the open championship, or shall we subscribe to the modern theory of the short, restricted backswing? Cotton’s concise answer was “The length of the backswing depends on the flexibility- of the left wrist.” No more than that. “My own wrist,” he said, “is not so flexible as some people’s. So my own club does not reach the horizontal. Other people can take the club a. good deal farther back without letting go with the left hand.” Adams is one of these. His burly physique is deceptive, for ho is able, if he cares, to st.and. with both feet, flat on the

ground, bend back, and lay the palms of his hands flat on the ground behind him. He can swing the club right back past the horizontal and almost back to the vertical again without losing control with his left hand. When I asked him a couple of years ago why he took so long a swing, he replied: “Because I find that I can keep the club swinging that way. If I try to curtail it I feel that I am swinging in two pieces. But I think the average golfer would be better off with a shorter swing than mine."