GOLF.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 16 August 1924, Page 12

GOLF.

The course, with the exception of the last hole, has been in excellent order, ■and the turf on the fairways will take a lot of beating. In view of the sodden state of part of the eighteenth fairway the committee has arranged a temporary green about half-way up the "Westward Ho fairway, near the gate and opposite the site of the old hole in that locality. After playing Soko the players will go back a short distance for the next tee. It is a great wrench to give up the splendid eighteenth green, which is looking and playing exceptionally well, but that fairway is in parts almost unplayable. The course from a playing point of view will be improved. The championships are now fairly under way, and qualifying rounds are being played this week. As soon as these are completed the drawing will be made, and as the season is drawing on to its conclusion, the earlier a start is made with playing off the draws the better. September will be an interesting month, for arrangements are being made to send teams to Pate a _ and Wanganui. The former visit will be on September 13, and for the latter two matches will be played on Dominion Day, against Springvale and Wanganui Club s. Ladies can have almost a solid month of tournament play about championship time, beginning with the open meeting at Palmerston North on September 3 and ending with Wellington Ladies’ Provincial Championship Meeting at Heretaunga on October 9 to l'l. The programme of the Wapganui Ladies’ Open Championship Tournament is just to hand. The dates are September 10 to 12, and the programme is full of interest. This meeting is followed by the Rotorua Ladies’ Open Meeting on September 16. This meeting will be concluded in ample time for the Championship Meeting at Hamilton on September 19 to 25. After the big event the Auckland Ladies’ Open Provincial,Meeting, , September 29 to October 2; Miramar Ladies’ Open, on October 6 and 7; and the Wellington Provincial Championship, October 9to 11. The ladies can have as much or as little of the game this year as they like. A remarkable feature of Walter Hagen’s recent winning of the British open championship which has been overlooked was that his first qualifying round was so bad that it was generally feared he would not qualify. He started his second round with “a millstone round his neck” in the shape of an 83 at Hoylake. He had gone out like a dub in even s’s. But the next day at Hoylake he played a brilliant 73, which gave him his chance to win the British championship for the second time.

Dr. O. F. Willing, the Portland dentist wdio won the Pacific North-West amateur championship at Vancouver a few weeks ago, was acclaimed in England last year the best putter the Britishers had ever seen. Willing has revealed at least one secret of his successful putting with the apt epigram, “A watched putt never sinks.” He keeps his head down till his ear, and not his eye, tells him that the ball is in the hole.

Those depressed duffers of golf, tennis, or cricket should consider the case of Cyril Walker, American open champion, professional of the Englewood Golf , Club, in New Jersey. Walker weighs _ Bet 81b, yet he can crack out a. drive that, not even the more powerfully built, Hagens and Sarazens can beat. His secret is the right snap of the wrist at the proper time, just before the club head crashes into the ball. , One of the secrets of acquiring the Walker trick of proper timing is correct thinking, for if you have worked out the proper method of making the shot in your mind, the physical, reaction to that correct thought is almost automatic. Another name has been added to the Hole-in-one list at Shirley. L. A. Dougall did the “Crossways,'’ the 13th hole, 125 yards, in one, whije playing in the President v. Captain’s match during the week-end. The royal and ancient customs were duly observed. Miss Wethered aiid Mis Leitch have now met five times in championships, and the record of the result reads: 1920 — English Championship, final: Miss Wethered won by 2 and 1. over 36 holes. 1921 British Championship, final: Miss Leitch won by 4 and 3 over 36 holes. 1921 French Open Championship, final: Miss Leitch won by 6 and 5, over 36 holes. 1922 British Championship, final: Miss Wethered won by 9 and 7 over 36 holes. > 1924 British Championship, fifth round: Miss Wethered won by 6 and 4, over 18 holes. THE KNAVE OF CLUBS. HIS PROGRESS THROUGH THE AGES. (By Robert H. K. Browning.) “The times are changed, and we are changed with them.” Links, clubs,

balls, style of play—nothing but is sadly altered from the days when our fathers went forth to war. But nothing has altered more than the humble bearer of tbe sticks. The cadets of noble French families who came over the North Sea in attendance upon Mary Queen of Scots and first brought the word cadet to Scotland, and their successors right down to the shrewd, if alcoholic, Nestors of last century would alike be bound to regard their representatives in the present degenerate age with nothing but horror and surprise. The First Caddie. The first caddie whose name has come down to us was one Andrew Dickson, who caddied for the Duke of York, afterwards James 11., in 1681 and 1682, when the Duke was residing in Edinburgh, and was wont to beguile the cares of State with a round on the links of Leith.” I remember in my youth,” says Mr Tytler, of Woodhouselees (Transactions of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, p. 504), “to have conversed with an old man, named Andrew Dickson, a golf club maker, who said that when a boy he used to cary the Duke’s golf clubs, and to run before him and announce where the balls fell.” Mr Robert Clark, with less than his usual penetration, takes this to mean that Dickson acted as a fore caddie; but the fact that he carried the clubs disposes of that idea; no doubt Dickson ran on ahead, as an enthusiastic caddie would, to see what sort of lie his Royal employer had found. If Dickson was the Duke’s regular caddie, it is more than probable that he assisted in the famous first international foursome, when the Duke and John Patersone, the Edinburgh shoemaker, defeated the two English noblemen. At any rate, there seems little reason to doubt that is the same Dickson who is honoured in Mathieson’s poem of “The Goff,’.’ published in 1743: “Of finest ash, Castalio’s shaft was made; Pondrous with lead, and fenced with horn the head. (The work of Dickson, who in Letha dwells, And in the art of making clubs excels).” ‘‘Letha,” it need hardly be explained, is the mock-heroic version of Leith. Sixpence a Round. The earliest references to the caddie’s fees is to be found in the account of “the Great Marquess” of Montrose. I* l 1629 there is an entry of ten shillings “for two golf balls; my Lord going to the golf”—it sounds dear, but the reference is to shillings Scots, and so the balls apparently cost fivepence apiece. And there is a further entry “to the boy who carried my Lords clubbes.” And in the Note Book of Sir John Foulis, of Ravelstoun, an entry dated April 13, 1672, reads: “To the boy who carried my clubs, when my Lord Register and Newbyth was at the links, 4 shillings” itvl’ COUrse J Scots money). . The minutes of the Royal and Ancient Club, under date June 27, 1771, record that “The captain and company agree and appoint that in time coming the caddies who carry the clubs or run before the players, or are otherwise employed by the gentlemen golfers, are to get fourpence sterling for going the length of the hole called The H<Se of Cross and if they go farther than that nole they are to get sixpence and no more. Any of the gentlemen transgressing, this rule are to pay two pint bottles of claret at the first meeting they shall attend.’.’

The Caddie as Captain. Endless are .the stories told of the ancient caddies—their shrewdness, their knowledge of the game, their presumption, their smartness in repartee. The fact is that caddying, which nowadays is a form of unskilled labour, anciently took rank with the humbler of the learned professions. I he 1S stlll the one person privileged by the rules to give advice to the-player Nowadays that means little enough but the old Scottish caddie /was inclined, unless his employer asserted his independence at an early stagq to regard himself as the master of the said employer’s fate and eke the captain of his soul. A game between two indifferent players resolved itself into something very like an intellectual duel between their respective caddies, the players themselves becoming mere machines for the execution of the shots. Mr Hilton some.t6lls a caddie who “took the huff because Mr Hilton preferred to take the club he himself thought best, instead of the one the caddie offered mm and there are many similar tales to the same effect. Nor must we forget the other side of the picture—their appreciation of good play, their loyalty to their employer, their keenness on his behalf. Many a dispute this keenness led to in the days when the caddies added to their multifarious other duties the trying duties of the referee. Witness the famous story of the match between payers and Kirkaldy, when Big Crau*2 bedding a dispute in favour ox the former, for whom he was caddy-

ing, summed up his argument: “Weel, it’s the rule o’ the game, and’’—raising aloft a fist of which Hercules would have been proud—“here’s the referee.”

Big Orauford, Fiery, Jock Camp-, bell and their race is dying out, yea, has already died, and a more polite, if less glorious, generation has* taken their place—has taken their place, but cannot fill their shoes.