WOMEN'S GOLF.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXIII, Issue XVIII, 3 August 1912, Page 10

WOMEN'S GOLF.

HER STATUS RECOGNISED

At the exhibition of the Royal Academy this year (writes the correspondent of an English paper of May 18) there is hung a picture with the title, "On the Links"; it shows a British girl in golfing costume with her bag of clubs slung over her left shoulder. 1 think that this is the first time that ladies' golf has been represented at the Academy; though man's golf has been there for some years. It is only a simple little coincidence, but it is more timely and appropriate than the selectors dreamt of when they gave the painting its place among the chosen.

This is the great "boom" of ladies' golf. Very nearly the same thing was said last year, for the golf that is played by the girls and the matrons has been increasing all the time. Now, it has proceeded from the strength of last season to the dignity and pride that it enjoys at present. Within the last fewweeks there have been happenings that have been in the nature of unofficial celebrations of its new importance. In the first place, a new monthly magazine of a most handsome character, devoted entirely and exclusively to its interests, has been established, and I think that this is the only journal in existence that is devoted to one section of women's sport. Next, there has just been opened at Whitehall a women's social golf club on the lines of a good West End club, and the offices of the ruling authority, the Ladies' Golf Union, have been removed to the same place. It is a most handsomely equipped club, and it started with two hundred members, the number fast increasing. More recently still, a series of open competition meetings has been held on London courses, four of them within a week, at which some two hundred of the best lady golfers from all parts of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales have attended.

THE TRIUMPH OF THE LADIES

GOLF UNION

During the past few days most of these two hundred have been assembled at Turnberry, in Ayrshire^ for the ladies' golf championship, which began on Monday. To this meeting there gathered the best lady golfers from many parts of the earth. There was achampion from Australia, another from Canada, others from different distant: places. There was, in effect, a great though partly unconscious demonstration of power and of enthusiasm being made, and there was a special occasion for it beyond all the others that 1 have already mentioned. This was the twentieth annual championship; it was the twentieth annual celebration of tire Ladies' Golf Union, the governing organisation. So it is that these have no.v passed out from their teens, and aie mature and strong and splendid.

Thirty-seven of the women, or rather more than a fourth of the entire num-

ber of competitors, are married, but only once has a married lady won the

championship, and that was .in 190(5, when Mrs Kennion, home for a holiday from the East, secured the title. On the other hand, two or three years ago a splendid crop of young girl golfers, most of them with their hair hanging down their backs as they took their place upon the teeing ground, came out and scintillated exceedingly. It was the advent of these young girls and the form they displayed that aroused public interest in women's golf as it had never been aroused before, and made the' men players wonder whether their old estimate of the woman's game —which, frankly, they had regarded as a rather stupid thing, and one not to be encouraged at all —was quite correct. A new era had begun. Iv this brilliant little string were Miss Cecil Leitch and her sisters, Edith and May; Miss Lily Moore of the Mid lands, who ran to the final of the championship at eighteen years of age; Miss Violet Healet, Miss Elsie Kyle, who won the. Srottish championship, and was a successful international before she was eighteen years old, and others. But many of these girls showed the faults of golfing youth, in a rather exaggerated form, despite tlieir successes.

They lacked experience and steadiness

in match play, knew not the great importance of pressing home an advantage Ayheu they had the opportunity, were inclined to be careless at times, and occasionally lost their heads. Now that they have played in two or three more championships and have put their hair up, they have got rid of all these faults. They are tenacious, strong in nej-ve, and when they are engaged in match play they fight like—l nearly said cats, but I mean heroines. They, and not they alone, think that their time may come at this championship. There were no fewer than five of the sisters Leitch entered.

100,000 LADY GOLFERS

Now this is really a very wonderful business. Jim the championships are not everything, so look at another feature of woman's golf, it is estimated time there are now about 100,000 lady golfers in this country, and the number is increasing by Hundreds weekiy. Ihere are about 5000 in the metropolitan quarter, and the clubs are overflowing. There are oOU of them in one women's club alone, the Mid-Surrey, ami I am informed that in their clubhouse tnere are served about 15,001) teas ia the year, and SUO dinners in the summer months. Jjut they all play, not •merely talk, and the secretary writes•lhe weather has to be 'very' bad to keep them in!" The Ladies' Golf union, the governing body, has 422 clubs affiliated to it. and represents over 40,000 players. This union has been one of the chief factors in the I great progress of the women's game Under the leadership of Mrs Miller it has been a magnificent triumph of organisation, and not a little of its success has been due to its splendid independence. The women have tackled problems that the men have feared to tackle. Chiefly, they have evolved a system for universal handicapping It may not be perfect, but neither man nor woman has yet been able to suggest a better, and it answers splendid-

Is all this girls' golf a good thing for the girls? What about the women who make England great? What about that hand that rocks the cradle and the power that it has? Well, the girl golfer is good enough; she is in no clanger; she is, in fact, a splendid specimen of the British girl, and she is the proper emblem of Gilbert's song of praise.

There is nothing of the suffragist about the British golfing girl. I have

311 st taken out from a drawer a letter that was written to me two or three years back by the lady who is the greatest controlling and influencing force in women's golf. "You may not think it," she wrote, "but I can stitch and I can sew and I can cook anything from a potato upwards. I think I can do all that a woman should, and I strenuously encourage all the girls to do the same and not to give themselves wholly up to the fascinations of the game, and I think they have got the right spirit among them."