GOLFING FREAKS

Hokitika Guardian, 2 November 1932, Page 7

GOLFING FREAKS

'SOME STRANGE SHOTS AND LIES.

PLAYING IN FULL ARMOUR,

MELBOURNE, October 29.

An .unusual incident on th e Garfield links yesterday, when the local champion, George Reed, put his second shot at the second hole in a tree and glimbed the tree to play it to the green, recalls other strange golfing occurrences.

Balls have been accidentally driven into compartments of trains and into passing vehicles. In Scotland such happenings are not uncommon, for on many courses railway lines and roads run alongside, and even through the links. ■

Many instances -are recorded-of id ball played in a match dropping into a pocket of one 'of the players or a spectator.

At Virtish Hill Golf Course, Hawick. Great Britain, in July, 1930, J. D. Bryden, a local player, drove his ball into the headlamp of a passing motor-car.

ON SHEEPS BACK

At Duddmgston, on April 22, 1924, a 'ball became embedded in the wool of a sheep, and it was only after the sheep had been chased some distance that the ball wae dislodged. On August 26, 1923, Mrs Blackford, playing at Crawfordsville, Indiana, put an approach shot in a bird’s nest high in a troe, She climbed the tree, -took her stance among the branches, ant played a pitch shot to the green, from -where she holed out in o-xie putt a half.

While ploying the eighth hole at St. Anne’s, England, on May 2, 1923, Aubrey Boomer nit his third shot high into the air. It disappeared, and was subsequently found in the right-hand pocket of his jacket. Boomer had overtone a cut shot and skied the ball almost perpendicularly.

He penalised himself a stroke on the ground that he had touched the ball, and this was afterwards confirmed by the club’s committee.

BALL CLUNG TO CLUB

In a round on the Geelong course during Easter, 1923, Captain Charteris topped his tee shot to the short second *io e which lies over a creek, with deep and steep clay banks. Tile, ball came to rest on the near slope of the creek’ bank. He elected to play the ball as it lay with a niblick.’ After the shot, the ball was nowhere to b e seen. It was afterwards found .embedded in b mass |Of gluey clay, ■stuck fast to the face of the club. Tut decision of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club on this point was that Charteris adopted the correct procedure In clean,ip,g tl ;bk tell and dtogpiftg i| :J -behind; without penalty. A player who has a ball carried along towards the hole by an outside agency does not gain any benefit, The ball, if recovered, must be placed as near, as possible to the place where the object was when the ball lodged in it, without penalty. If the balk is not recovered it is covered by the ordinary lost ball rule.

If a ball in motion be stopped or deflected by any agency outside the match, it shall be played from the spoe where it lies.

STEPPED INTO QU'CKSAND. An extraordinary incident occurred at the Royal Sydney Golf Club on July 11 last year. D. J. B. MacArthur, who weighed fourteen stone, on stepping into a bunker, began to sink. He shouted for help, and was rescued when up co the armpits. He had stepped on a patch of quicksand. At Esher, on November 23, last year, George Ashdown, the club professional, in a match, played his tee shot for each of the eighteen holes from a rubber tee strapped to the forehead of an associate of the club, Mbs Ena Shaw, who lay prone on each tee. ■ln 1912, Mr Harry Dearth, attired in a complete suit of .armour, played a match at Bushey *Hill. He was beaten by two and one. An American player won a bet that he would go around a well-known course in 200 throws.