DISTANCE JUDGING AT GOLF

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 3280, 25 February 1926, Page 7

DISTANCE JUDGING AT GOLF

RESTRICTIONS OF THE LOCAL FLAYER.

(By Harry Vardon, Six Times Open Champion).

It is a common experience of the golfer—especially on a strange course —to hit an iron shot exactly as he had intended, and then see the ball finish either short of the green or beyond it. His judgment of distance is at fault, nothing else. Many theories have been advanced in explanation of the fact —as disclosed by the open championship returns—that the leading professionals are better players than th eleading are better players than the leading amateurs. The most popular finding is that the professionals are the more deadly with their iron clubs, and they are so, perhaps, hot because they hit the ball better than the amateurs. but because they are better judges of distance. They are more consistent in the accuracy of their judgment. From the moment that J. H. Taylor came into the field to set a higher standard of skill than anybody 'had shown previously, the feature of their day which created a deeper .mpression than any other on students of the game was the facility with which they could estimate all the distances on a strange course.

The latter-day professionals have developed just the same qualities in this connection, with the result that it is now beyond question, I think, that their superiority over the leading amateurs is due to the circumstance that they are the better judges of distance—that is of the shots that are needed. In isolated rounds here and there, t might easily happen that Mr. Robert Harris, Sir Ernest Holderness, Mr. Roger Wethered or Mr. Cyril Tolley m an inspired, mood, would beat all he leading professionals in a scoring -ompetition. But, extend the test to our rounds, and the professionals, .vith the unvarying precision of their estimates as to the shots required, 'ould safely be backed to overwhelm he amateurs, even though Mr. Weth;red did make one nearly triumphant ffort in the. championship at St. Andrews five years ago. ■■ i Limitations. Is this accurate gauging of distances i quality than can be acquired? , It is probably' much more of a culivated art than a giff bestowed by 'Jature. Nothing succeeds like success, and the professional who pejorms prominently in championships is helped to acquire it by the fact hat he is invited to play on many ourses in exhibition matches and ournaments.

There is not the slightest doubt hat the amateur, who pursues nearly /ill his golf on one course limits his possibilities of Improvement. He may be far and away the best player on that course—even a local "hero with a handicap of plus 3, but directly he goes elsewhere and the old familiar distances are no longer presented to him, he is often as a traveller lost in the countryside. He does not know what to do next. How often this profound predicament has been .visited upon players in the championships! It is a fair deduction that the rapid advance which Oxford and Cambridge teams often make in one short term is due largely to the fact that they are playing on different courses every week.

To the same circumstances may be attributed no small measure of the success of University men in the big events; and three Oxonians —Mr. Wethered. Mr. Tolley and Sir Ernest Holderness —have won the amateur •hampionship in the past six years. To the person who is keen to improve at golf, and, who is indeed improving at it, the importance of playug on as large a variety of courses is possible is probably the only point vhich is regularly overlooked. Everybody who has deevloped some measure of proficiency at the game will tell you that he knows the instant he hits the bail whether he has played the shot as he intended to play it. or otherwise.

If he is a one-course golfer, it almost invariably produces the result which he expects. Here even the judging of the wind in its varying moods becomes a kind of second nature to him. . The Supreme Test. But put him somewhere else, and frequently the shot which he thought was exactly right proves to be entirely wrong. This is frustration in its most refined form—frustration that leads to exasperation. It.is enough to justify Dr. Harold Dearden, the consulting physician of nervous diseases, in his declaration: —"Of all games for the tired brainworker, I believe golf to be the worst” —a theory which he puts forward on the ground that golf “causes a dam-ming-up of emotion due to unsuccessful striving.”

To the person who plays and sees much golf, it is palpable that one of the most frequent causes of the misjudgment of the length of shots is failure to take heed of changes in the wind.

George Duncan might have compiled by now a very great record in championships—his one victory does poor justice to his genius—if he 'had seized a golden opportunity at St. Andrews in 1911, when he was a young man of twenty-seven. With eighteen holes to play, he led handsomely as the result of a third round of 71. Before he went out for his last round in the afternoon the wind changed entirely and strange though it may seem, his shots showed that he had not noticed the change At any rate, it took him nearly half the round to adapt himself to the new r conditions, and his score worked out at 83.

After that, there is surely justification for Mr. Carl Bretherton and others who flutter a handkerchief periodically the better to gauge how hard to hit when a wind is blowing,