GOLF

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 10 November 1928, Page 13

GOLF

i THE SUMMER- SEASON. The ordinary season having closed, those members of the golf club, who indulge in summer play will continue and ' will shortly begin competitions for the Summer Oup, one of the most interestin in 'the club and one that generally ; provides keen competition. At present the ferass is somewhat longer than on© would desire, and with the mild weather, is likely to increase, but the heavy stocking will probably be enough to keep it in check until normally the growth is lessened. Woolbuyers resident in Christchurch played a match at Shirley for a cup presented for this match as an annual event. The conditions were 36 holes medal play. The leading cards were returned by P. H. Brown 1, J. S. Wilson 2, F. A vent 3. John Ball, one of the greatest amateurs England ever bad, achieved a wonderful record in victories. He finished sixth in the Open Championship of 1878 —eight strokes behind 'the winner Jamie Anderson—when he was fifteen years of age. The na'mes of all the other players who took part in . that event are historic associations with a venerable past—Tom Morris, Willie Park, Ben Sayers, and others who, to the modern golfer, seem to he as remote as Alfred the Great. How many scratch medals he has won altogether, probably nobody could say. and how at Hoylake last year Mr Ball reigned triumphantly over three generations of first-class amateurs. “YOU MUST PUTT.” The importance of putting was probably never before so strikingly exempuned as in this year’s open championship, in Australia (says tne “Referee”), many potentially good cards were 1 eitner marred or ruined by failures on tiie greens. There was some excuse for j unis on the first day, when a- high wind blew for the greater part of the afternoon. But, putting failures were nearly as common in the second round, when conditions were all that could be desired. Numbers of players saved strokes by really superb long games—only to throw them away on - the greens. Some people think that putting, like poetry, is a gift. To some extent, it is. But even a gift has to be cultivated anu trained thoroughly. One of the secrets of the outstanding success of the Americans is unquestionably their thoroughness in practising for their short game. Any person with aptitude for tiie game can play long shots with very Jittle practice. No one is sufficient- of a genius to put reasonably well without practice. Yet the vast majority of the players of this country give- little or no time to the practice of putting—probably because it is not so interesting as other departments of the game. Was it not the famous Andrew Kirk- • aldy who said : “The man whq can putt need fear no one.” It was another Scot who- urged that golf was “taught the wrong way round ; instruction should begin with the six-inch putt.”. “If you can’t putt you can’t play golf,” said another wise man of the links. But there is nothing spectacular about putting, and it is regarded by many as something like a poor relation, something that aennot be got rid of. MAN BEHIND THE CLUB. Remembering the latest craze of golfers for a “set of irons” numbered 1 from one to six, according to angle of loft, it is amusing, as well as illuminating, to read w'hat Mr T. A. Crombie, an Aberdeen golfer, who recently made a trip through South Africa, says- about the Bloemfontein caddies. “They are natural born golfers,” lie writes: “their equipment consists of one club 13foz in weight and 3Tin long, with the shaft made of 3-16 in fencing-wire, looped at one end to make a handle which i-s covered with sacking for a grip. Two and a half inches of the business end ol (he shaft is- then bent at a slightly obtuse angle, and this is inserted -into t lie head, a round steel tube ifin in dia nine ter and 32-in long, with a carpenter’s nail driven in between the wire and the tube as a wedge. As can be imagined the shaft i.s decidedly whippy. In the New Year caddies’ competition one kinky-haired youth, by name of Joseph,armed only with this weird club (which they all use), made the remarkable score of 44 over the Bloemfontein 9-boles course of 2,958 yards—-Bogey 1 38!” As a matter of fact Dr P. Sydney Jones, who has just won the Oadogan cup at Kensington (Sydney), the ; links of the Australian chib, a few years ago, used to employ a somewhat 1 similar weapon as a putter—and very 1 good green w-ork he did with it, too, 1