WAR AND SPORTS

Greymouth Evening Star, 9 December 1939, Page 8

WAR AND SPORTS

GOLF HARDEST HIT It would be interesting to assess the contribution of each of the branches of national sport to the present national effort . . . worked out on a proportional basis, of course, states John Mac Adam in the “Daily Express” of October 13. I have no way of getting hold of figures, but I am prepared to make a guess that despite the, number of footballers in uniform, golf would top thepoll. Apart altogether from the game’s yield to the services in manpower, you have to consider the experience and the prizes that have beeln withdrwan from the grasp of the players, probably the hardest-hit athletes in the country. You have only to look at the records to see what happened to British golf in the last wrfr. Harry Vardon won the 1914 open and the competition wasn’t renewed till 1920, when George Duncan Avon it.

Six years without a major competition to give our golfers the experience for big-time golf . . . while in America, a youngster was banging away at practice. Hagen’s the name. Walter Hagen. That Duncan open was his first.

For thirteen championships after that —until 1934 —Arthur Havers was the only home player to win the open. The others worn with war, simply weren’t up to it.

The. only time known Hagen to drop his bluff good, nature was when he told me once of the warscarred fellows who turned out. in that 1920 championship. “It -was a sad. experience to go out and try to lick them,” he said. "Some of them had been wounded. None of them was really fit for golf.” Weil you may guess when the first four to finish in that 1920 show were Duncan, aged 39; Herd, aged 52; Ray, aged 43; and Mitchell, aged 33. It took years for the new young school, hdaded by Henry Cotton, to push its way through. And now it seems' we have to go through it all over again. Cotton and Burton are thrity-two. Most of the other members of the Ryder Cup team we should have sent to America this year are in their twenties . . . all will be liable for service sooner or later. Cotton and his colleagues are doing magnificent work with their exhibition matches for charity, but I am afraid the magnificent team they make will not be replaced for a long time to come. j