GOLF.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19333, 20 November 1924, Page 4

GOLF.

Bt Divot. “Dunedin, ’with no uncertain voice, claims the first New Zealand golf club, and tha records of the Otago Golf Club go back to the 60's' with a list of club champions dating back to 1872.”—A.Z. Golf Annual. A handsome rose bowl presented to the Wanaka Golf Club bv the late Sir Peter Mackie. of Glenreasdell, chairman of White Horse Distilleries, has arrived in New Zealand. 'Hie bowl will be open for competition by 'the members of clubs in Central Otago. New Year tournaments will be held this year at Miramar and Shirley as well as at Balmacewen. 'Hie Miramar tournament will be a /handicap one, worked on the flight principle, the players being divided according to handicap, and playing off in groups, each winner in a group receiving a trophy. In addition there will be the usual medal and bogey competitions, with probably a foursome and a four-ball. A visitor to New Zealand, who played a few rounds at Balmacewen last week, was enthusiastic in his praise of the links. He had played on northern links where he seems to have had) a severe experience _in the loss of balls in the young grass which has come on this year with a great rush. In Dunedin itself the fierce growth of new grass has added fresh difficulties _ to golf, and the great patches of daisies with which portions of the fairways are lavishly carpeted made the retrieving of balls very speculative, espcciailv at blind holes. The players in a four-ball match at Balmacewen on last Saturday week lost 16 balls between, them! One of them, a short handicap player, whose strokes do not commonly land him in the rough, lost three balls off four successive hits! In a mid-week match, another short-handicap player lost five balls! So that tlie bane of the young grass has, in combination with the wealth of daisies, been exercising tlie tempers of the players at Balmacewen pretty severely. Interest in the £750 tournament at SL George's Hill last month was intensified by the fact that, for die first time since the war, all the veterans of the came, with the exception of Vardon, qualified for the match-play stages. It. would seem that they have taken a new lease of life at a time when most people thought they had commenced the downward path. The correspondent of the Observer writes; “J. IL 'iaylor particularly has demonstrated to tha pack pressing on his heels that there is a good deal ot life left in rhe old dog yet. It is a striking commentary on the barrenness of British golf that ir should remain to a man in his fifty-fourth year to head ths list ir; the qualifying rounds of the two chief events of the year. In the light of recent, events I wonder how Taylor reconciles his pronouncement, made from the steps of the Koyal and Ancient. Club house three years ago, that he hud finished with championship golf, and that rhe younger generation must carry on the fight against all comers.”

'l he first copy of the New Zealand GWf Annual has been received by me. The Annual is published in (lie form in which the weekly papers throughout New Zealand are issued. It will be more convenient, and conform more largely to the accepted idea of a sporting annual, if it is issued in future in a book form ; but the proprietors of (he Annual have entered upon an enterprise for which, so far as golf is concerned, there is no precedent, in this country and they may lie said to be necessarily feeling their way. The publication purports to be an official and permanent record of the (ramo in 1924. One difficulty that presents itself in the execution of this design is that there is not a set season for golf. Some of the club championships have not yet been decided, and for this reason a complete list of the resufts of the club tournaments is not available.' The Annual names, however, the champions of the clubs {both men's and women’s) in which the competitions have been decided, and it. supplies adequate accounts of the dominion championship events, illustrated hv a number of excellent photographs ,-.,nd pictures. There is also a section of the Annual devoted to the gams in other countries. An article is contributed bv the chairman of the New Zealand Golf Council, which has bestowed its benediction on the Annual, and there aro other features of • interest, among which may be specially mentioned the delightful sketch concerning the. three grades of

golfere. Writing in Golf Illustrated (New York), James D. Harnett says: ’‘Waiter Hagen’s victory in the National Professional Championship, at French Lick Springs, was more than anything else a personal triumph for him and a vindication of his standing- as America's greatest competitive golfer. t I might even go so far as to include the world as his kingdom, for his victories in tho British open and in the P.G.A, events have re-established him as (ho golfer of the year in this country. Hagen is now on a par with Jim Barnes and Gene Sarazen in. a number of victories scored in the P.G.A. event. Kach have won it twice, but Barnes for consistency is one point up m that ha has been runner-up on two occasions, while Hagen has reached this stage only once. The passing of Sarazen, coming as it does at the end of a season in which he has shown little of the formen skill that made his efforts so noteworthy, suggests that the 1P22 and 1923 meteor of the golfing world is on the verge of being relegated to the ranks of those who have been described as ‘flashes in the pan.’ While I am not convinced that Sarazen has degenerated to this degree, the fact that he seems to have lost that confidence which was one of his outstanding characteristics of a year ago is not helping his garn o any.”