GOLF

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 4307, 16 March 1901, Page 6 (Supplement)

GOLF

BY “ALL SQUARE.” The committee of the Wellington Golf Club has decided to renew and improve some of the greens at Miramar, not dil / the Kaikoura hole, the Haven, Waldrops Fancy, and The Summit. The Ka'kour.i green may bo closed altogether for a time, and temporary greens laid drwn in the paddocks on the south side of the Summit. In the event of the Club '.j?,ihg its present home holes these temporary greens will probably be utilise! to furnish permanent holes on a new course.

The Wellington Club is to be congratulated on haying obtained the services of Mr Malcolm Ross as secretary. Mr Boss, is a golfer with ideas, and a (ja ck, observant eye for, details, and nas a'So the faculty of throwing his whole.u eight into any enterprise with which ho Incomes associated.

. Th« opening match of the season at Miramar will bo played on pSat'mlay, 23rd inst. It.will take the form tf a mixed handicap foursome. . The first of the Men’s Monthly < kek Competitions will he hold on Satnrdiy, 30th March, and on each third; Saturday thereafter.

It is hoped that if any members have any appropriate framed engravings or paintings in their possession which i nay can spare they will place* them at the disposal of the committee to bo hang at the new golf-house at Miramar. A. groat advantage to gollists in < ammo n with the general public will bo the running of a ferry service to Miramar on Saturday afternoons throughout the coming winter. Mr \V; D, Howells, in lamenting the eruption of stories of mediaeval crime, labelled “historical romance,’’ with which American fiction is just now being flooded, regrets that while in the past the American woman has been the mainstay of good literature, in the present she spends her leisure at golf, and reads the “historical romance” type of book as a, relief when she gets home, and neglects the higher literature to which she was formerly devoted. An American editor has consequently been holding a “symposium” on why the playing of golf should tend to the reading of '‘criminal 1 ' romances of the feudal age, and the Arcnbishop of Canterbury has .frankly written, ‘‘l have not the slightest idea.” It might he interesting to gc. further, and discover how a course of reading about these lawless barons and princes reacts upon the American ladies’ golf, and her strict observance of its spirit. Mr Robert Forgan, the head of the world-known club-making firm, died just before the end of the year. The present King was elected captain of the Royal and Ancient in 1863. It was purely a tribute to Royalty, and not to gelt, as the'Prince did not then play, but Forgan was made “dull maker to the Prince.’’ that year. Of late years, when the King had seriously taken up golf, the honour has hfisn accorded to the firm of being actual club-makers to Royalty. Mr Forgan was shortly predeceased by bis wife. Two of his sons have done well in America, whefre at Chicago one is president and the other vice-president of the National Bank. Other sons carry on the large club-making business. Mr Fcrgau learnt his club-making from Philp, the classic St. Andrews maker, whose wooden putters are now Hieing copied in aluminium.

This is from an account of golf at Singapore : —Thoire are two good golf links—one cat the racecourse, where the hazards aro mainly fences, ditches and ponds ; the other—the fashionable course —in a neighbourhood of gloomy and gruesome associations; for the Sepoy Lines Golf Course, as it is called, begins at the back of the General Hospital, and proceeds via the cholera quarters, the mortuary, the Lunatic-'Asylum, a Chines© burial-ground, the small-pox hospital, the gaol, the gallows, and the gunpowder magazine, to a glorious termination at a point where the chief features in the landscape are the General Hospital, the mortuary, and the Lunatic Asylum. Tins is the course which the Singapore lady golfers prefer, and it odds point to the French criticism that the English take their pleasures sadly.