FIRST BIG GOLF WINNER

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 2715, 24 June 1925, Page 5

FIRST BIG GOLF WINNER

Impressions Of Charles Johns (By Harry Vardon, Six Times Open (Champion). A golfer well worthy of distinction greater than any that has fallen to him during sixteen years of promise is the winner of the first big professional tournament of 1925. He is Charles Johns, of Parley Downs, and I am more than ordinarily interested in his rise because I happened to be bis partner in the first professional competition in which he ever took ■part. That was on my homo course South Herts at Totteridge—about eighteen years ago. His age then was 20. and although ho was obviously lacking in polish and experience, he showed most of the attributes that go to the making of a first-class player. Indeed to those who knew him, it came as no surprise when, two seasons later he stood second to J. H. Taylor at the end of the first half of the open championship at Deal. He had'rounds of 72 and 7G —148; Ta.ylor Tvais -a stroke in front of him with 73 and 74—147. Johns fell behind in the third round with a 79, but finished with a 75, so that in the end he gained fourth place. Taylor won that year with an aggreagate of 295 strokes for the four rounds—the lowest ever recorded in the championship up to then, and since equalled only by Edward Ray, at Muirfleld and Arthur Havers at Troon.

So excellent a beginning on the part of Johns at the age of 22 suggested that new golf star had been established in the firmanent of professional golf. For some reason, however, the star did not shine quite as might have been expected. Johns always played soundly but without ascending to the first flight, until suddenly he went -to Nottingham ihc other day and won in a field consisting of 100 men who had qualified from all parts of the British Isles. Plainly lie deserved it. An average of 73i strokes per round for four rounds at Hollinwell was a very fine performance. It may have been some advantage to him that he was among the early starters —in point of fact, in the second couple—on the final daj-. for it is easier, some people think, to set the pace than to fight against a score which some body else has established as the standard.

This is perhaps, one of the little defects of score play as a test of golf. However, the luck of the draw is always In the game, whether it he in competition with ■ match-play or score-play and no doubt it levels Itself in the end.

Temperate Drivers.

When I won the open championship at Sandwich in 1911, I finished early, and about eight men who came in afterwards had chances of beating me. One of them, Arnaud Massy, equalled my aggregate but the others failed, hud I managed to beat the Frenchman fairly comfortably in the re-play.

On the other hand, some championships that have ended happily have vcd long struggles on the last to keep within a schedule. It is . *;e point as to whether the stimulus thus .provided is a help. _ It depends upon how things go in the Opening stages of the effort to play within the schedule that an earlier starter has established. On,the whole, it is probably easier to make the running. It at least averts distraction and saves one from undue anxiety when a shot comes to grief.

At least eight players had chances of equalling' the total accomplished by Johns on the Nottinghamshire Club's course, but not one of them succeeded. And so after many years full of possibilities for him, Johns came into some of his kingdom.

His is another triumph for the school that does not believe in trying to drive the ball enormous distances. Johns is a player who obtains good average length from the tee, but who prefers to concentrate on direction rather than on great smiting. I may have grown wearisome by now in the prosecution of the theory that the very groat hitters —for all the encomiums they gain from the gallery and the newspaper critics —ar 0 not the highly successful golfers, but result after result supports the faith so fully that there surely must be something in it.

In the two big open amateur competitions held recently, the honours have not gone to men famous for their long driving. Sir Ernest Holderness and Mr. J. B. Beck tied for first place at Moor Park. Mr. Douglas Grant won at Sandwich. All those

arc drivers of the good, average .ength type; by no means short, but certainly not startingly long. What they do is to drive far enough for practical purposes and, at the sam e time, to keep the ball on the fairway. Nothing will ever convince me that the other method of hitting like mad for death or glory is the way to excel at golf. Importance of the Neck.

It can be said of Johns that he observes the entire orthodoxy of golf science. For one thing, he keeps his head perfectly still througout the swing , although how he does it I do not know, for his shoulders seem to be tugging at it in the back swing as though they must inevitably cause it to move.

He must have a very wonderful neck; a neck like india-rubber for it appears to give to the tug of .the shoulders without the head shifting out of position and so.allowing the whole body to be thrown off its balance.

I used to say to pupils:- “You -want to imagine that you have a neck of india-rubber, so that you can screw tho body round from there to the knees without moving the head”. Johns must have the nearest , approach to an india-ruber neck that mortal ever possessed, for he Is apparently able even to let his body go lightly to one side in the up swing without displacing his head.

He is a very fin e mashie-niblick player CO yards from tho hole, and a confident putter. His appearance in tho championship at Prestwick next month will bo watched with interest. G, li. S. In Retreat,

Mr. Bernard Shaw, who is getting over an attack of influenza in his London quarters at Adelphi Terrace, has a quiet retreat in Ayot St. Lawrence —from which so many fulminations have come, notably .the Preface to St. Joan. Mr. Archibald Henderson, his biographer, relates how one evening about el cven o’clock he asked Mr. Shaw how ho happened to take this place in Hertfordshire. "Come will me and I will show you" he said; and they wandered across the common in the moonlight over to the old English church, redolent of mystery and sanctity-. Shaw pointed to the inscription on a tomb near by “Jane Eversley. Born 1815. Died 1595. Her time was short”. Said Shaw: “I thought that it could I.»e truthfully said of a woman who lived to be

eighty years old, that her time was short, .then this was just exactly the climate for me”.

Why the Dion’s Tail Is Down.

Mr. Herrick, the artist who designed the much-debated Wembley lion, is a modest gentleman in the thirties, a itll e inaccessible but a physical giant. He fought in the Scots Guards during the war, and wore the sergeant’s chevrons, which are not easy to secure in the Guards’ Brigade but he refused an offer of a commission. He is not at all perturbed by' the art criticism directed upon his Wembley lion, and tolls me that there was deliberate design in keeping that noble beast’s tail >vell down. It is meant to syunbolise the artist’s conviction that Britain, anyway, is not asking for more .trouble in those post-vrar days. It is a "conshic” lion. Mr. Herrick’s work includes a variety of commercial posters—it appears on most hoardings nowadays—and all of it Is characteristic. Lie has a profound contempt for what he calls "fluffy" art.

Royal Spurs in Pawn,

A young officer .stationed at Aidershot tells me there has boon great excitement at the discovery in an Aidershot shop of a pair of spurs bearing the insignia of the Prince of Wales. The spurs were once the property of King Edward and were, it is thought, pawned by an erring Royal groom. It is Only a couple of years since Court circles were horrified at the discovery that a pair of Queen Victoria’s silk stockings were being offered for sale in Great Portland Street. Apropos Rider Haggard. I think the obituarists rank the late Sir Rider Haggard below his merits. Literary high-brows will curl lips of scorn over any comparison between Rider Haggard and Josef Conrad. Yet though the former’s work was of far less even craftsmanship, and included many deplorable pot-boilers, his literary stylo at its best might fairly challenge even Conrad’s. It was founded, like Ruskin’s, on Bible English; the majestic music of Deuteronomy sounded through it. And Is it possible to name any Conrad character to match one or two into whom Rider Haggard breathed the breath of living fiction ? It may bo like contrasting the psychology of the nursery with that, of the seaman's boarding house but I think of no Conrad creation fit to link arms with either Allan Quartermain or old Umelopogaas. Tlic Acid Test. Surely the acid test for a romancist is whether ho has called out of the vasty deep any character whoso human personality entitles admision to the select circle of the Immortals. And respectfully I suggest that Allan Quartermain, though our post-war youth may be more interested in living magnetos than dead lions, will live with D’Artagnan, Allan Breck, Ulysses, Locksley. and Crusoe, not completely on terms of social equality with all of them perhaps, but as at least a poor relation. Rider Haggard was one of the few authors capable of of giving vraisemblance to a "bonnie fcchter”. He was an epic hand at describing a minor scrap. But he failed when it came to the holocaust of a main action. The legend is that Selous the hunter, formed the basis Of Allan Quartermain. Sir John Curtis was Sir Rider Haggard himself. “Jacob’s Ladder. Mr. Norman MacOwan’s new play at the Royalty almost persuades one to be a Spiritualist. To Mr. Dennis Eadie, ip the depressing role of a dying journalist worried about his family, appears the shade of a sporting Tommy who served under him in the War. The warrior ghost gives him a dead cert, tip for the 2.35! Mr. Eadie was lucky so far. But that is nothing to his luck in getting £I,OOO “on” with a strange bookie at 22 to 1! One may accept the spook, but that bookie

is a bit too steep for credence! Having thus won £22,000 wherewith to leave his otherwise destitute family in reasonable straits, Mr. Eadie fulfils the medical tip. and expres in the odour of financial ability. Why his wife, a most unsuspectable dame, should deliberately queer the dear gentleman’s last moments by making a gratuitous confession of marital infidelity, is a real poser. That’s the worst of these conscientious egoists! Mme, Edvina, the operatic star, made her stage debut in the comparatively small part of the wife.