NEW LINKS

NZ Truth, Issue 1305, 18 December 1930, Page 16

NEW LINKS

OPENED

Taranaki Capital In

The Boom

(From "N.Z. Truth's" Special Golf Writer). pOLFERS will be catered for during the A-* holiday season with tournaments at Miramar and Shirley. The Miramar event is to be played on match play without any qualifying round, the thirty-two lowest handicapped entrants competing for the championships. With all the talent m and around Wellington and a few outsiders, this should prove a very popular fixture. It is to be hoped that the wearer of the amateur crown, Harold Black, will be there to tackle all comers on his home links. It will take a pretty tough customer to deal with Bwan MacFarlane at Shirley. You could get all he doesn't know about the links into a page of one of those little waistcoat pocket diaries that are being given out at present. In New South Wales and Victoria, practically all the good players come from the big' metropolitan clubs, but m New Zealand things are different. A team of a dozen picked from Wairarapa, Manawatu, Wanganui arid Taranaki would probbly be quite capable of accounting for twelve of the rest. . . The newly reconstructed links of the New Plymouth Club were unofficially opened last week, and* general comment appears favorable. It is announced from "the Land of the Dollar that Bobby Jones is really. retiring from competitive golf. However, he is still comparatively young, and may stage a return before long. The Golf Council has decided to cut out the" present autumn tournament for the professionals and increase the prize money at the Open. _. In many ways, this is a good thing, as the pros, never took this event very seriously and as it was all medal and bogie play, it never attracted much public interest. It is the match play that' appeals to the New Zealander, that man to man, hole by hole event, where we have- the personal touch, the ardent supporters of both sides and the creation of an atmosphere. Arrangements have been concluded for the visit of two- crack American professionals m Bobby Cruickshank and "Wild Bill" Melhorn, to Australia m February, and if the. powers that be m New Zealand wake up quickly there might be a chance that they could be persuaded to play a few games here. Melhorn is a spectacular kind of p'ay,er who can always draw a gallery, and Cruickshank is a real stylist and a player with a great record m the big American events. He once tied with. Bobby Jones m the Open, and only lost the play-off by one stroke. Pitted against Andy Shaw and Fred .Rutter. these two would provide an attraction that would rival a S^rronDonovan fistic encounter.