LADIES GOLF IN ENGLAND

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVI, Issue 8186, 30 July 1912, Page 11

LADIES GOLF IN ENGLAND

Now this is really a very wonderful business. But the championships are not everything, so look at another feature of women's golf. It is estimated that thero are now about 100,000 lady golfers in England, and the number is increasing by hundreds weekly. There are about 5,000 in the metropolitan quarter, and the clubs are overflowing. There are 500 of them in one women's club alone, the Mid-Surrey, and I am informed that in their clubhouse there are served about 15,000 teas in tho year and 500 dinners in the summer months. But they all play, not merely talk, and the - secretary writes: “The weather has to be very oad to keep them in!" The Ladies’ Golf Union, the governing body, has 422 clubs affiliated to it, and represente over 40,000 players. This union has been one of the chief factors in the great progress of the women's game. Under the leadership of Mrs Miller it has been a magnificent triumph of organisation; and not a little of its success has been due to its splendid independence. The women have tackled problems that the men have feared to tackle'. Chiefly they have evolved a system for universal handicapping. It may not be perfect, but neither man nor woman has yet been able to suggest a better, and it answers splendidly. Is all this girls’ golf a good thing for the girls? What about the women who make England great? Whit about that hand that rocks the cradle and the power that it has? Well, the girl golfer is good enough; sh© is in no danger; she is in fact a splendid specimen of the British girl, and she is the proper emblem of Gilbert’s song of praise. There is nothing of the Suffragette about the British golfing girl. I have just taken out from a drawer a letter that was written to me two or three years back by the lady who is the greatest controlling and influencing force in women's golf. “You may not think, it," she wrote, “but I can stitch and I can sew, and I can cook anything from a potato upwards. 1 think I can do all that a woman should, and I strenuously encourage all the girls to do the same and not to give themselves wholly up to the fascinations of the game, and 1 think they have got the right spirit among them."