An Amateur Looks at Golf

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23381, 24 June 1939, Page 6 (Supplement)

An Amateur Looks at Golf

By WHETURANGI

IDUNCH usually has some joke about it —a sketch of- a very fat man in baggy plus fours with a very long, thin man in equally long and thin plus fours, both making some essentially golfing witticisms, while a couple of caddies giggle delightedly in the background. . . Or else it is a foursome with the same two gentlemen, plus .two equally typical ladies —one, cosily plump, one dour and angular, reminiscent of Kipling's libellous line on women, "a rag and a bone and a hank of hair." But the wit of these sketches is too subtle for the average reader, and it is not until you really play golf yourself that you are received into that intimate circle that sees tho joke in Punch cartoons. Once upon the. links you realise with a shock of dismay just how true those sketches were, and wonder with some alarm into what category the cartoonist would place .you. There, striding down the fairway,- are the same two men whose figures you know so well from the cartoons; the squat, plump man in very -wide plus fours—you envy the amount of material in those overwide breeches. It would make a couple of very smart skirts!—and with'him the long, ' thin man, stooping a . little as he talks to his companion. Beyond is a women's; foursome, identical with a dozen jests. But' the .whole . round of th » course is" a journey from one familiar figure to the next: It is as strange as suddenly meeting all the queer and well-beloved characters from Alice* in Wonderland. You imagine that such people do not exist, when suddenly there they are all before you. On the'course you find twosomes as ?erfect as any in a Wodehouse novel. here is a boy stammering and stuttering. his mind anywhere but on his game, a girl cool and pretty and selfpossessed, a little annoyed, at haying to with someone who certainly cannot concentrate. In this respect golf is a good game to try out anyone with whom you may .be considering spending the rest of your life. It brings out the best—and the worst —in any man. Then there are four girls dressed most correctly in smart felt hats, bright jumpers and skirts, golf socks and neat brogues, who giggle together between shots, while more mature golfers wonder irritatedly how they can possibly be so slow. There is a handsome, tall young man with a reserved expression who always goes round on his own, and not even the most cajoling of the local beauties can secure an invitation to partner him. There is a mixed foursome of two fat men and two thin women, regular Saturday players, whose voices, raised in continual argument, float across the fairways. . . Metamorphosis on the Links In golf more than any other game it is -essential that one should keep a sense of humour. The game can become ridiculously engrossing, so all-satisfy-ing. The man who lets it absorb him completely waits from week-end to week-end, dreaming only of the strokes he will play, the hazards he wjll conquer. His work is but a sideline too dull to notice; he lives to be out again on the links. And if you have ever worked with a golfer during the week and then played with him' on a holiday, you will be astonished, at the. change in your morose employer. He blossoms out like a monarch butterfly as the cool wind fills his lungs. He becomes a different creature, enthusiastic, energetic, even chivalrous, as he scrambles through the gorse and blackberry in search of your ball ... he who from Monday to Friday has not even the graciousness to allow you first through the door! It is a game. too. that offers plenty of opportunity for cheating, but, as in the fisherman's tale of his catch,'you really deceive only yourself. "Bogies," "birdies" and "eagles" are queer terms to the uninitiated, but amateurs are apt to become a little too fond of them. Even while you are still an amateur who can laugh at the real golf fiends, however, the links have a bewildering; bewitching air." This, you vow, is the game of games, for winter or summer, the sport of kings—to feel the perfect swing of the body as the club strikes, to hear the ball sing on its way down the green, t feel the thrill as with one swift, expert stroke you conquer a bunker, to'watch the perfect timing of a putter as the little ball rolls gently into' its hole.'Even if it is one of those all-to-frequent days when your golf is "off,.".there is a joy in scrambling down the after that tiny, truant ball, •n fishing it out of little ditches, or struggling.-with mashie shot after mashie shot to get the ball up and away ''from the tussockv grass. Alas, how well you begin to know thfe hazards' You get disgusted with your play, return to the club-house depressed and miserable, •Nyondering how on earth you could ever have decided to play the terrible game, yon think what hard work it all is,-and decide never to play again. But irresistibly* you are drawn back again and through grim perseverance you can at. length play-tolerably good golf. A Royal and Ancient Game It is an ancient. game this—older than football, which has its roots in most primitive times, and was even played in Elizabethan days; older even than cricket, or bowls, or tennis. Born

Watching the Cartoons Come to Life

in Scotland, named from the Dutch for club, "kolf," it is now surely tho most cosmopolitan of games, and links are found in every corner of the world. It is a game strong as a magnet, and once you nave succumbed to its lure, you "are powerless to ignore it—it has a faseination greater than bridge or horseracing. Indeed, as far back as the early 1500's, so strong was the feeling for it that even the Puritan Scots forgot themselves, and Edinburgh magistrates | had to pass an edict forbidding Sunday play; which brings us again to the Punch sketch of a great cathedral and j on "lonely man sitting half-,ray down the aisle. The clergyman enters for the service, but stops in ' astonishment at seeing any congregation at all. Puzzled

at the strange phenomenon, he asks, "Don t you play go''- , . c And as you watch the bright figures on the green, young and old, middleaged and mere boys, all concentrating on one small ball, all- gathering « from the wind and the sun and the freshness some of the lustre they have lost during t..e week of in the city you. too. learn something of tie freedom and magic of the R^nc.- And as the shadows round the putting gre en grow longer upon the grass and the skv turns to scarlet behind tilt str. gg row of hawthorn trees, you .ft the pm.ee thai.always comoa M eremn*. and know the dignity and J^ tl . belongs to this royal and most of games.