PUTTING DID THE JOB

Manawatu Times, Volume 64, Issue 153, 1 July 1939, Page 13

PUTTING DID THE JOB

BRITISH AMATEUR GOLF

e In the ultimate reckoning it was the . putting that did it. After a gruelling final day’s play, in which the lead had been held by both players at different times, Duncan missed a little putt ■- on the 34th green to become one e down. When he played a second out o of bounds at the next all was over. 3 So comments S. L. McKinlay when it describing the final of the British a amateur golf championship in the r . June issue of the English magazine r Golfing. The final in which A. T. Kyle beat A. A. Duncan 2 and 1 was perhaps not the best match of the week. Dune can became two down when he missed f the short eleventh green. Then, howt ever, he had much the better of the o remaining holes, and won the thira teenth, fourteenth, sixteenth, and s eighteenth holes to go into lunch with f two holes in hand and the knowledge t that only very rarely has the championship been won by the man who was down at the half-way stage. And perhaps Duncan would have won but for a sad lapse at the first hole of the second round. He played a bad tee shot and then went out of bounds, not once but twice. Thai must have given Kyle a new conception of his chances —although he is the last person to take a gloomy view of any golfing situation—and when Duncan again went out of bounds at the third it looked as though Kyle might canter home to an early victory. Sure enough, lie again won the seventh hole, not with a 3 this time, but because Duncan missed a holeable putt. Then Kyle faltered a little with a hooked second to the long eighth and the match was square yet again, but Duncan made very heavy weather of the ninth hole for the second time that day and Kyle had his nose in front once more. Not for long, however, for the Scot took a rare three putts on the tenth green and with Duncan this time holing a horrid one all was to play for. And all was still to play for after four more holes, one of which Kyle won (the thirteenth, with a 2), only to lose the next where he hit a bad iron shot. So it came to the sixteenth, where poor Duncan, bravest and most decisive of puttters, missed from quite near and at last the end was in sight. It is impossible, in view of the out-of-bounds adventures of the players, to give their precise figures, but Duncan was 71 for seventeen holes in the morning against a stroke more byKyle, while in the afternoon Kyle was 70 for seventeen holes against 66 for the fifteen holes at which one could give Duncan a figure. So ended a championship that began ; in the most placid fashion and gradually produced through the six days a succession of exciting incidents as : rich in thrust and parry as was the : weather in gracious sunshine and soft 1 airs that are not usually encountered i on the windy Wirrall peninsula. 1 The opening day, on account of the small entry and the large number of scratchings, was a very leisurely affair. Nothing very much happened exeept that the defending champion. t Charles R. Yates, gave a hint of his ( future uncertainties in his opening '* match with Bruce Thompson, a local J player. Yates, in common with many 1 competitors, had found the course too long for him from the tees that were * used in t..e practice rounds, and the 1 effort ot reach some of the fairways * from the remote tees pushed back into 1 the heart of the bents rather disor- 1 ganised his swing. The third of the favourites—James * Bruen —made his first appearance on ( the following day to beat L. G. Craw- J ley, 3 and 2. Bruen had been making * Hoylake look very innocuous in prac- ,J lice, doing 69’s where most people i were not ill-content with 75’s, even H when, as happened one day, he began 1 with a 7. s Wednesday introduced a new per- 1 sonality, Ellsworth Vines, the Ameri- I can lawn tennis player, and he very 1 soon proved that the two games can c be mixed by the right person. He t swung the club beautifully to beat E. » N. Ratcliffe by 4 and 3, but in the cool s of the same day he was not quite 1" good enough for John Baillieu, of t Royal Melbourne, who played for P Oxford three years ago. v a e English Champion Beaten. v Wednesday produced the first of the f surprises, for Arnold Bentley, the Eng- c lish champion, was beaten 2 and 1 by a lan Lyle, and only a little while later a the defending champion fell to his 0 fellow-countryman, R. D. Chapman. Chapman we have seen a good Many times in this country. He played first at St. Anne’s in 1935, and he was back f again at St. Andrew's in 1936 and at a Sandwich in 1937, when he reached d the last eight. He is not a bonny t player, for he hits uncommonly hard, “ so hard indeed that he grunts very p audibly as he plays a full shot. But y he is a'bold and accurate putter, and t< it was his putter that heat Yates. The c champion himself putted badly, miss- b

REVIEW OF THE CHAMPIONSHIP

e ing five putts that he of all people can g usually be relied upon to hole. Otherd wise he might have had a lead that > would have enabled him to withstand x the terrific onslaught let loose by e Chapman after the turn in which he it holed four putts of 20 feet and over in six holes. n Yates had, however, at least one h cause for satisfaction. There never e was a more popular loser, and when e he walked off the fifteenth green where the game ended, he was ap.l plauded by each little group of spectas tors in a manner that he will not - readily forget. d Thursday's play saw the emergence - of (1) the American menace in a new e light, and (2) two young English play. - ers of whom a great deal more will d be heard. While we had been fearing i Yates and, perhaps, Chapman, we had : rather overlooked one William E. - Holt, junr., of Syracuse, U.S.A. A big 3 man who at a distance resembles Olin Dutra, Holt beat a very good player ? in J. W. Jones, of Birkdale, to enter t the fifth round, and then w'on a glori--1 ous contest of the giant with E. f Nugent Head to enter the quarterl finals. Both players were round in - fours or less, so clearly Holt would 3 have to be watched on the morrow, • especially as he was playing one of i the two young men 1 have already l mentioned. These were T. Hiley and - K. G. Thom, who had done well in the • English championship and were now j confirming the excellent impressions , they made. Thom is, I think, the bet- > ter golfer, but Hiley showed excellent l form in beating Harry Bentley by 6 i and 4 and pushed A. T. Kyle a very , long way before succumbing. There was one match on Thursday afternoon in which I took a special, and as events turned out, a melancholy interest. G. B. Peters, the l Walker Cup player, had qualified to meet Chapman in the fifth round, and although he had not played very well hitherto he started off against the volatile American as though he were back at Pine Valley, where his play in 1936 gratified even the most exacting American critics. Chapman, as ever, played doughty slashing golf, but Peters seemed always a little better and W'hen he became 2 up with four to play the Scot looked like entering the last eight for the third time in four years. Then Peters lost a grip of his game, Chapman seized on the least opportunity, and with the run of the ball to aid him the American quickly squared with two excellent fours. He played the better recovery after two indifferent ’seconds at the seventeenth, and holed a missablo putt, and Peters, having now loci three holes in a row and the lead, may be forgiven for having driven into a bunker at the last with Chapman a mile down the fairway and in sight of an unlooked-for victory. And that was that. Favourite Beaten. Of one of Friday’s games, that between Bruen and Kyle for the right to enter the semi-final, one could write a goodly volume, for this was a match packed with incident. But perhaps I may refer to only three of the many holes at which the contest blazed into brilliance. Both played quite well to be out in 38, with Bruen one up, and two halves in par figures at the first two holes coming back seemed like the prelude to yet another victory by the favourite. At the twelfth hole, however, Kyle played a masterly recovery shot after a wretched second and squared the game, and all was still to play for three holes later. Then came the second of Kyle’s great recoveries when he pitched from a greenside bunker at the sixteenth and holed the putt to become one up at a very critical stage In the game. This lead he still held after an excellent half in 4 at the Royal, but it seemed to be vanishing when he was bunkered in the great sand trap in front of the eighteenth with Bruen Bft. away in the like. Again Kyle produced the shot of the moment, and not only did he lay the ball within sft. but he had the great good fortune to place it plumb in poor Bruen’s line. There was no hope of the Irishman’s holing, and Kyle popped in the tricky putt to earn a medal of at least some kind. While this was happening Duncan was treating Chapman in cavalier fashion. The American for once missed more than his share of the putts, and against so relentless a holer-out as the Welsh champion there could be only one end. And that came at the fifteenth green. The semi-final games were bravely fought by all four players, with Kyle again chipping and putting most deftly to beat Holt, who played one or two crooked long shots when his “hooker’s grip” failed to function properly. Still, he had done famously to \vin a bronze medal at his first attempt, while Stowe, in losing to Duncan by 3 to 2, had w r on his second bronze medal in three years.