GOLFING ROUND THE WORLD

Northern Advocate, 26 November 1928, Page 8

GOLFING ROUND THE WORLD

WALTER HAGEN VS PERSONALITY. (By Harry Yardon, Six Times Open Champion.) (All Rights Reserved.) It is announced that Walter Hagen is going to engage in a golfing tour of the world during the coming winter. His pro-gramme is to start from San Francisco, play his way through Australia and South Africa, reach the French Riviera early in the spring in time for the season there, and then visit Britain so ns to defend his title of open champion and lead the American professionals in the team, match for the Ryder Cup. It is a crusade that grips the imagination. I was once on the verge of accepting an invitation to embark on a similar enterprise. Indeed, it was to have been a most thorough piece of globe-trotting, for I was to have dashed about India as well as the other countries. The plans had been well conceived, but having responsibilities as professional to a club and not relishing the idea of more or less lonely travelling, I decided to stay at home.

Still, Hagen is to be envied, and, being a free lance, he can enter into such a tour without any qualms of conscience. -He is sure to be a success, for ho has qualities of personality and temperament that command attention wherever he goes and Avliatevcr he does.

He lias won three British open championships by coming up full of light in the last round when people thought him beaten. His friends claim that he is the best uphill straggler in the whole golfing world, and in Britain we accord the distinction to him gladly. Still, I do not think he ever showed this quality in quite such a degree as when he secured the American match-play championship (one of his several consecutive vsuccesses in that event) at Olympia Fields, Chicago.

IRREPRESSIBLE. First Hagen had to go to tlie thirtyninth, hole to beat A 1 Watrous, who had won the medal competition on the opening day. In a critical situation Hagen only saved himself by getting down a long putt for a half in two, and he holed a curly putt of three yards to iinish the match at ..the third extra hole.

Then came a remarkable performance against Leo Hiegel. Liegel, round in 72, stood five up at the end of 18 holes. Hagen went out in 34 in the afternoon, and yet had recovered only two of his losses when the turn was reached. With two to play, be stood two down. He got down a putt of six yards over two undulations to win the next hole, squared at the last; halved the first three extra holes (one with the aid of a three-yard putt), and secured the match at the fortieth.

In the final, Hagen accomplished the morning round in 67 —the lowest score over made on the course —went out in the afternoon in 33, and beat W. Mclhorn easily. The most engaging circumstance about Hagen is that he is forever doing these things. He did much the same when he beat Abe Mitchell in a match of seventy-two holes in the United .States, for Mitchell was winning all the way- until they turned for home in the last of the four rounds. And again he pulled the game out of the fire when he opposed Mitchell for £SOO a side in this country,

Hagen struggled out of difficulty after difficulty iu the last ten holes ■fwhon securing the British open championship of I9iM, At 'almost every hole, it seemed that he hud made a fatal mistake, but from the time that he got down .a long putt on the ninth green for a six—a miserable six that had looked like being a crushingseven! —he went on slipping and recovering until at length he holed a putt of three yards on the 'home groen for the championship. A BRITISH EXAMPLE.

There are some men —very few, per haps not more than one in a genera

tion among famous players—who possess this capacity in a degree that seems infinite.

Mr P, G. Tait had 1 , it as markedly as Hagen. He had not the same opportunity as a present-day professional for displaying the virtue,' because first-class tournaments in which an amateur could take part were rare in his era; but nobody ever did more wonderful things than Mr Tait in converting the seemingly impossible into the accomplished fact. There was the second amateur championship which he won two years before he was killed in the Boer War. By all the laws of logic he ought to have lost in tlie semi-final to Mr John L. Low, but he kept on coming up with a shot or to the green from the, depths of some cavernous bunker or the entanglements of the rough, and then holing a long putt for a half, until at length he won the match at, 1 think, the twenty-first hole.

There was the St, George’s Cup competition which he secured at Sandwich'by holing a chip shot from hard up against the fence beyond the last green when his partner, Mr S. Mure Fergusson, was leading by a stroke sitting comfortably on the green, and apparently had the cup as good as in his possession. These arc only two examples of Mr Tail’s power to turn adversity into victory.

It is customary to say that golfers who succeed in this way are not such ■good players as those who soar to victory by steering the ball always down the middle of the course, and obtaining the correct figures in an eminently proper manner. But it needs a set-back to goad some players to produce their best form. counting Hagen's slips and recoveries, has • described him as the worst golfer who ever wtm the British open championship. That ■shows a lack of understanding. Hagen has as true a swing as ever I have seen. It slips out of gear more often than most good swings, but it is better than ever for the next shot.