AMERICA'S GOLF SUPREMACY

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXI, 27 October 1928, Page 4

AMERICA'S GOLF SUPREMACY

A COMPOUND OF NATIONAL TEMPERAMENTS

(By Harry Vardon, Six: Tinvcs Open Champion)

(Specially written for “The! Mail”) Why is it that the UnVted States keeps on beating us—and 1 jeating us more and more easily—at golf ? A correspondent suggests, to me that it is because the American legions arc cosmopolitan, whereas ours arc almost entirely restricted by instinct, insularity, and pride of race to countless generations of native-bred families. This United States force is recruited from all the nations under the sun—millions of each nation, each with its own distinctive qualities that rr tay help to produce a champion, and everybody presented with exceptional facilities for pursuing the game in a land where golf is a democratic pastime, such as it has never been anvwlie.ve else save in the small confines of Scotland.

It is- hardly matter for surprise, says my correspondent, that the United States, drawing upon the whole world for those temperamental and physical attributes that go forward towards the making of tho perfect ball-striker, is evolving more first-class players than arty other country. j-jornc of tho paces have never had the incentive in their aboriginal fastnesses to exploit their• qualities in this connection. Take, for instance, tho Italians. Very few Italians who live in their homeland are, golfers, and certainly none has shown the slightest sign of becoming an accomplished player. But when Geno Sarazen, the American-born son of Italian emigrants, rose in one bound from the ranks of tho caddies to the position of United States open champion in 1922, vast numbers of the boys of Italian parentage living in America flocked to the links to offer their services as caddies in the hope of emulating Him. Turnesa, the young player who took ITagen to the last green in tho final of a big tournament in Texas last winer, may well be one of tho products of this wave of racial influence. For it is a i-easonable assumption that, although ho and thousands of other golfers of foreign extraction are .technically American, they find inspiration in tho deeds of people of thenown lineage.

CONSOLATION Among tho leading United States players of to-day are many of presumably British ancestry. Could an individual hearing so homely a name as Bobby Jones be other than of British descent? Those of us who know him may claim, too, that he is pronouncedly British in his outlook on life, his attitude towards games, and even his manner of speaking, although his family is American for about as many generations as any family could be. STr Charles Evans comes in the same category. Here, indeed, are two names, Jones and Evans, that impel the thought that the best progenitors of WeKTi golfing stock may have settled in America in the distant past and bequeathed renown to that country instead of to their own little principality. Names that suggest Scottish or Irish origin abound in American golf. Indeed, among the professionals, the Macs and the Sandys, the Pats and the Mikes, are more numerous than in most tournaments held in Britain Mr Erancis Ouimet, who shares with Mr Jones, Mr Evans, and Mr Jerome Travers the distinction of having won both the amateur and open championships of the United States, is CanadianFrench hv extraction. Mr George von Elm, Mr Jesse Sweetser, William Mehlhorn, Leo Diegel, and others probably represent a line of early Teutonic settlers in America. A nation possessed of such cosmopolitan resources would bo singularly disappointing if it failed to excel at a game on which it had set its heart, and which had brought people of so many different descents and dispositions into one lino of thought, and, in a large degree, into one system of seeking success.

EFFICIENCY For it is a curious fact that, although the golfers of the United States stand for a mixture of the world’s races, they have cultivated qualities of temperament and similarity of method in a degree not equalled by others who, being of ope stock, might be expected to possess traits of homogeneity in these respects. Perhaps the explanation is to be found in the well-worn but none the less sound contention that there is a something in the American hearing towards sport which causes all games to be taken a little more momentously than they are, for instance, in this country. Not that there is any lack of earnestness in the British attitude, hut there is certainly a disposition to give free rein to individual instincts, on the ground that pastimes are pursued primarily for recreation. The American attitude is that mere amusement ought to be sacrificed —for example, in practising a method which does not come so easily as the natural one—if the sacrifice may he regarded as a possible aid to efficiency. Most interesting of all is the success with which the Americans, in spite of their compound of nationalities, have developed a distinctiveness of temperament where the frequently vexatious art of putting is concerned. It is not that tlioy are so unemotional as to be proof against a loss of equanimity when they miss putts which they thought they were going to hole—they are as provoked as anybody. Their strong point is that they have disciplined themselves so rigorously to the requirements of the game, and to a certain method of putting, that they recover their mental equilibrium very quickly, and, what is equally important, do not seek relief from their troubles in a change of style.

Possibly it is that they are so utterly diverse by origin that they feel they must have some principle of knitting themselves together, and that we, being knit together by clan, insist on being diverse.

A battleship which; will run without a singlo man on board, obeying every order sent .to it bv wireless from a, small accompanying ship, has been tried out hv the. German Navy in the North Sea. Hie shin is an old man-of-war, .1200 tons, built 27 years ago. One and a half years were spent on installing the new machinery. Directed by wireless, it cruised about, made artificial fog, shot rockets into the air, stooped and extinguished oil burners as if it were manned by a crow. It will be used for target purposes. Flying typewriters are the latest in Wall street (New York). In order to test claims of air transport lines that “regular business” could be conducted during an airplane flight, officials of Billings, Ward, and Co. conducted a test flight to Washington. Two stenographers, neither of whom had heen in the air before, took dictation and typed letters durum almost the entire 21,-hour journey. The work, according to officials of the company, proceeded ns efficiently as if the dictation had taken ulace ic an office.