TALL BUT TRUE GOLF YARNS

Northern Advocate, 22 April 1933, Page 12

TALL BUT TRUE GOLF YARNS

There arc*’no new stories about golf; they are all venerable (writes P. J. 0. Pignon in the “Sunday Express”). But the man who invented the phrase, “Golf is a funny game” was right, though I think he meant peculiar rather than comical. During a match in which two famous British professionals were playing in America, one of the players saw his ball drop half in the hole from his putt and then come out again, A frog had jumped out of the hole at that moment and knocked the ball back. A player on a Yorkshire course drove his ball to where a man with a scythe was working, and the ball was cut in two.

In Ireland a ball struck a caddie on the head with such force that it rebounded 43 yards. It appeared to do no very serious damage, and several witnesses measured the distance.

i There have been several instances of birds in flight having been killed by driven golf balls, but I did not see the "officially recorded piscatorial feat of ,a Xewark golfer who killed a 21b trout when he drove his ball into a river. A ball at an important tournament disappeared when driven among the spectators, afterwards being discovered in a,pocket of a member of the “gallery.”

Aubrey Boomer, playing from a bunker in the British championship a feu years ago, skied the ball into his own pocket.

A party of undergraduates once moved a whole toolshod to lot a player £ot at a ball beneath it. This was during a /varsity match at"" Sandwich. Recently at his club a player with a “complimentary” handicap nf 01 ought in a card to the secretary showing him to be IS up on Bogey. “No, old man/' retorted the seerot:u\vx “that's the number of the holes \ you have been - looking at; not the Bogey! ” . Once when Oscar Asche was playing at St. Andrews—and playing well, for him he remarked, “I .suppose you get worse golfers than I playing hero sometimes?” His caddie made'no response. A tine shot a few holes later prompted the player to repeat the query. “Aye, I lieerd ye first time. I was jus’ thiukin’,” replied the caddie.