THE GOLF CHAMPIONSHIP.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVI, Issue 14167, 15 September 1906, Page 7

THE GOLF CHAMPIONSHIP.

GOLLAN v. HARMAN. A LAY VIEW-POINT. The science of golf has been poetically described by an apostle of the muse who has yet to win a niche in the Temple of Fame as limnin' aboofc wi' a bog; o’ sticks After a wee bit ba’. But the devotees of the game proper accept it in a. much more complex spirit. To them it is as intricate and mysterious a pastime as the language which describes it. The language of golf, indeed, must bo close akin, sc far as the bewildered layman is concerned, to that which is popularly supposed to have been conferred upon mankind for the purposes, of thought -concealment., The ordinary man whose billiard education has not been neglected knows what is to bo “snookered,” but he is calmly oblivious of the fact that this is synonymous in golf to . “ lying stymie.” But once he is properly “ foozled ” and gets among a maze of “ topping ” and “ putting,” when he gets “ bunkered ” or “lies dormy ” and has to pray for assistance to such gods as “ creeks ” and “brassies,” or invoke the idols of “mashies” and “ niblicks,” he is impelled to sit down and think as bawl as did the builders of the Tower of Babel. Golf to the layman, in fact, is a disappointing experience. It has its poetic appreciators outside Mr Andrew Lang, for even Sir Conan Doyle, in a burst of enthusiasm, has rhapsodised:

It's up and away from bur work to-day. For the breeze sweeps over the down; And it’s hey for a game where the gorse blossoms flame, And the bracken is bronzing: to brown.

This, of course, is the purely poetic ospeot, but those who met yesterday’s nonchalant and imperturbable cliamEiou were more fain to cry before lie ad finished with them : ’Tis very far from tee to’tee, And weary work to flog the sand; When all my longest drives are stopped In hopeless rabbit-sorape or cup, When each approach is duly .topped, And never nearly takes me " up.”

As a matter of fact yesterday’s winner filled the public eye probably more than he realises, and certainly a good deal more thaii he caress. The news that he was sis up with eighteen holes to play at half-time did not deter a: large number of visitors from streaming ■ out to the links in the afternoon to see what it was a foregone conclusion would be an unsensational finish. The inevitable' .man on. the tram platform knew aIR about it. “ What can you expect?” he asked aggressively. “ The man’s a machine without any nerves.”' Anybody who can ride over steeplechase fences or take his life in his band and sit out a dance in a conservatory must be a man without nerves. And, he added, with a reflective shake of his head, that suggested that he was a person of infinite’experience, “golf’s no good without nerves.” The contradiction missed his mind, but then oven a golf critic, like-the others of his craft, is' not called upon to be logical. The initiated crowd upon the links were’ of course, sternly critical of the play. The degenerate, whoso golf ABC did not even amount to a knowledge when to cry “ fore,” wa*si equally interested. The enthusiasm to him seemed to be damped by parochialism, whilst the involutions of the game and the necessity for the employment of more clubs than there are charters for in New Zealand were a trifle bewildering. So was the course. The links are apparently only baby links, and the holes dodged around the points of the compass like the squares in “ Through the Looking Glass.” Indeed a map of the strokes, if committed to paper, must have been reminiscent of a railway map of Great Britain or of a newspaper illustrtaion of the strokes with which Hayward made his last hundred. There could not,* indeed, be much “closer settlement” so far as the holes are concerned, and as a result of this the diagonal is the necessary arrangement for approach. The natural obstacles are few, the artificial ones distinctly primitive, and the most romantic feature of the links is the nomenclature of the holes. Safely across “The Rubicon/’ “the nest” naturally precedes “The Double,” and then, after several sops to Scotland “ The Upshot” is reached before taking to “ The Lupins.” The appeal tones® of “ Muggeridges ” is vague in conjunction with “Land’s End,” hut after South African references “The Chasm ” is easily discernible, and an interview with “ Old Nick” iei quite a legitimate prelude to “Homo.” The weather for the final was desirable. It was a thin grey dear, tearless, sunless and .practically windless day, and the play was fast and formal. It possessed, both these characteristics almost to the verge of artificiality. The players were alert, absorbed and automatic, and they had, apparently, as, much cognisance of the onlookers as those celebrated golfers who recently .formed the central theme in an animated picture. They reeled the holes off with arithmetical precision, and whilst the runner up stuck to his forlorn hope with perhaps leas optimism ithan some of hie friends, the ultimate champion persevered with unrelaxing brilliancy, until the verdict of 8 up and 7 to go closed an uninteresting finish. The winner, smileless as Henry the First, shot a sardonic hand-olaep to his rival, tossed his clubs to his caddie, and ignoring the crisp twitter of ecstatic femininity, which sought to inveigle him, slipped away through a convenient break, and set off with seven-league strides for the pavilion. There , was. a round of kid-gloved applause, a warm storm of approval for a plucky runner-up, a rush for afternoon tea, and a pointed discussion upon Dr Allbutt’s theory of the “ golf age.”