A NOTABLE GOLFER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19731, 2 September 1927, Page 14

A NOTABLE GOLFER.

PRAISE FOR BOSBY JONES. NOT A SPECTACULAR PLAYER. "It was the ambition of my life to win the championship at St. Andrews, and, having won it, I want you to keep the cup in the club," W3re the remarks of Bobby Jones after his great victory ir the recent British open golf championship.

Commenting on Jones' performance, an English critic says:— " It is always to lay oneself open to serious criticism when one speaks of anyone as bejng definitely the best ever, particularly when that anyone is£ a present-day performer, for there is a big and eloquent school which will never have it that the best of the present is, or can be, as good as the best of the past. "But there will be comparatively few to challenge the claim that Bobby Jones is the best golfer the world has known. I suggest that his latest, and almost his greatest, victory at St. Andrews confirms a previous conviction rather than proves this statement. "I do not attach much importance as some may do to fact that he has just had a record aggregate for the open championship and that he has smashed other records. These have just put on the coping-stone. > It is his general record which is so impervious to criticism. "The outstanding feaure of Jones' golf at St. Andrews, as almost elsewhere, was his consistency, his almost mechanical accuracy. Of the thousands who watched him at St. Andrev/s half must have been amazed at that accuracy, the other half at the failure of all other golfers to produce that sarpe accuracy. Jones makes the game look so easy. He is not really a spectacular golfer. "For several years, in his prime, it was said of Harry Vardon that he hardly ever played a really pool shot, Tho same is true of B6bby Jones to-day. It is true of no other player. Jones goes from triumph to triumph more because of that almost unbelievable consistency than on account of what may be broadly described as brilliance. "As he is still in the middle twenties, we may hope he will remain a very great golfer for some years to come. He can hardly improve to an appreciable degree, and in that fact probably lies the greatest dafiger for the future. "When one has scaled the heights, when one has conquered all the worlds

there are to conquer, when the greatest of all incentives, that to rise still higher, * has gone, it is not easy to avoid decline. "America has retained the championship // through the greatest of all her golfing sons, and there will be few to complain, for Bobby .Jones is almost as great an idol in this country as in his own. But on the whole our men have shown a very real improvfemcnt upon recent years. " If our men will only make use of the lesson provided thero by Bobby Jones much good should be done to the game in this country. Too much importance has been attached/ of late to terrific hitting, both among prominent amateurs and professionals. Jones stands for the •value of accuracy and true hitting. "Jones is a far finer model for the young player than Walter Hagen or several very fine golfers in this country who could be named. They stand for amazing recoveries. They make one marvel at their deeds, while engendering a kind of despair in the minds of the ordinary golfer >vho cherishes secret ambitions to follow in their footsteps. "But watching Jones inspires the secret hope that mastery of the game may not be so impossible after all."