BOOKS ABOUT GOLF.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21266, 21 February 1931, Page 4

BOOKS ABOUT GOLF.

" What’s Wrong With Your Gama f ” By H. B. Martin. Illustrated. London: John Lane, the Bodley Head. (8s 6d net.) “ Golf.” By Ivo Whltton. Illustrated. Melbourne: Herald Feature Service. (2s 6d net.) “ Down the Fairway." By Robert T. Jones, jun., and 0. B. Keeler. Cheap Edition. Illustrated. London: George Allen and Unwin. (7s 6d net.)

In “What’s Wrong With Your Game,” Mr H. B. Martin provides constructive advice to golfers on the faults that they are most likely to make in the “royal and ancient ” game. With the end in view of making his lessons as it were personal, he has gathered together a hundred or more sketches of the world’s greatest golfers—amateur and professional —which speak more plainly than words. The pictures show the players at the top of the swing, the finish, the followthrough, the mashie pitch, and the stance in every. position of value to the intelligent reader who studies them with a view to correcting his faults. Mr Martin also explains new methods and styles which have developed in the last year or two, and hazards a guess at the developments of the future. “What’s Wrong With Your Game? ” is essentially a practical handbook for the golfer, and will be of equal interest to the new player or the plus man.

Mr Ivo Whitton needs no introduction to New Zealand golfers, though Mr Sloan Morpeth makes one when he remarks that those wishing to improve their game could hardly go about it in a safer manner than by “ getting down to studying ‘Whitton’s Golf.’” The publication is small, and the advice’ is always terse and to the point. The feature of the book is the photographs, which were taken with high-speed carteras and slow-motion kinema slips, and show the instruction in 40 different positions. The really earnest student of the game might require a book that is less sketchy, but the busy man will welcome it for its brevity.

There are few men who at the age of 25 could write an interesting biography. Beverley Nichols proved that he could, and Bobby Jones provided 0. B. Keeler with a life story ending in his twentysixth year, which has had a great sale among golfing enthusiasts. At the age of 14 he was already meeting and beating champions, and the years from that time on to the period at which this narrative concludes were full of triumphs. At 25 he had won the United States open championship twice, the British open, and the United States amateur championship twice. Grantland Rice describes hisstory as “strange and more interesting than fiction, a saga of youth that could only be sung in the modern game.” M'G.