GOLF IN BRITAIN

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19126, 22 September 1936, Page 7

GOLF IN BRITAIN

AUSTRALIAN’S VIEWS HILLOCKS AND HAZARDS SHAFTS NOW MOPE RIGID Tlie impressions of a well-known golfer. W. H. Ifould, of the Killara Golf Cl mb, Sydney, and a member of the New South Wales Greens Research Committee, who has just completed a tour of the United States and is now in England, are given in the following “In the British open the English professionals and amateurs hit their drive very low, nothing like so high, for instance, as Toni McKay. Every player wo saw drove well. We never saw a mishit, drive during the whole five days, and they were remarkably straight, 'the difference between men like Cotton and Padgham lay in the second shots. These top-notehers hit remarkably straight irons and were rarely bunkered.

“We saw no particularly brilliant putting, but a lot that was very bad. My friend and I both .putted better on the Wallasey course than 75 per cent of the champions. The chipping from under banks, out of moderately heavy grass around the greens, and so on was invariably good, hut. the putting all round was bad to ordinary. It is possible that in this lies the whole difference between English and American champions. "Tlie whippy limber shafts of two years ago nave almost entirely disappeared and most of the big and! strong fellows use much stiifer shafts. Nearly all the great professionals, are big men —some of them very big. They seem to get distance with a beautiful through action, with no sign ot excessive exertion. vvhich characterises some, of the swings of players you know. “Their iron" shot swings are not long, ■but are played close to the body wit h a beautiful crisp action. “Abe Mitchell, now too old. played his irons beautifully, in fact as well as any of the great players of to-day.

“James Braid hit brassie shots as sweetly and as true- for the pin as any of them,, though he is over 60 years. “Mitchell displays none of the hip movement shown in his book. Ted Ray, who still plays with his pipe in his mouth when he hits his shots, tells me that Matchell never did swing in the fashion he describes in his book. One other professional told me that Mitchell’s bo6k : ruined more amateurs than it helped. GREENS MUCH FASTER “The greens at both Wallasey and Hoylake are very weedy, but the grass is soft and cut so close that the ball is never defleeted,_though, of course, they are much faster than tlie greens we know in Sydney. “English players, as did Sawizen, would! regard our greens as slow and

raggy, as indeed they are. We must learn to cut them closer. Our greens, from a yard or two away, look better than the English, green, but they tire not so t rue.

•\Ve had two days at (lieneagles. an inland course. file t,airway grass is fairlv heavy, and. the greens are much slower, at,' least, when wet, than the seaside courses. The terrain is hilly and humpy. Doles are well constructed, and difficult, in the wind. Oleneagles Hotel, by the wav, cost Co 11s each day for two.

“A drive of 50 miles took us to St. Andrews. We arrived on a Sunday, and there is no play on that day at. St. Andrews. It. lias never been done, and probably never will he. I found the time sheet, for the next day in the hotel we put. up at. One has to apply for a time the day before, and times are balloted for. So when we arrived, we had no time at all. However. I called on the secretary of the Koval and 'Ancient. Club, and ill view of the fact that, wo had come such, a: Jong way for a. game, vve wore fixed up for one on the Monday. “St. Andrews, like many others in England and Scotland, is a public course, though I think, without justification perhaps, that the ballot sometimes favours R. and A. members. “This is an extraordinary old course. There are, I think, .15 double greens, serving out-coming and incoming holes. We played on the old course. It- is fixed on a narrow strip of land behind sandhills —about nine holes out. and nine in. Although fiat country, it is full of hillocks. There are many blind shots from the tee. and most of the hunkers, of which there are many, arc hidden.

“The rough is heather or gorse, the gorse being called the Whins. Thereare also patches of bent, a rush-like grey-green grass like the marram grass of Australia Tor binding shifting sandhills. Hence the two terms you find in the R. and A. golf rules, whins and bent. ,

“I had a- very Scotch caddy, whose language I could not understand. T played the wrong greens, and got into many bunkers I did not, know existed. APPROACHES TRICKY

“The double greens are about, 15,C00 square feet, nearly three times the size of the average Australian greens. They are fairly well waved ami have, nasty litllo hollows immediately in front ot them, with hillocks to make the pitching or running-up very tricky. The-run-up approach shot over these hillocks is much the safer shot.

“The hazards are numerous—hillocks, burns, roads, paths, bunkers, patches ot gorse and heather, and the bent ; altogether a strangely tricky and uninteresting looking- terrain. “None of the tee boxes is marked in any way and there are no numbers of the holes or distances, as you find on the boxes on all other English and American courses. It is simply not done at St. Andrews.

“There is a public putting course nearby, where people of all. kinds and conditions can putt for twopence. It is very woolly and rough and the holes arc about LCOft"apart. 1 saw also another putting course marked for members only, and it was simply one hillock after another. There were no flat holes.

“With about 1500 others we watched Hie great Bobby .Tones play tlie old course with Norman Lockhart, and Jones is certainly a beautiful player. He did a 72 after" several three-putt greens. Bobby is a real hero at St. Andrews ; he has excellent golf manners, looks very pleasant, always wears a smile, and is mil worried by tlie crowd. “I was interested to see a number of the old members of the R. and A. playing in coats on a warm day, using wooden-shafted clubs and scorning the new-fangled tees, hut simply using sand. Tlie old course is sacred ground lo them, and criticism would he more sacrilegious than taking the Lord’s name in vain. I have almost caught the spirit of it. myself.

“Even my caddie, when T said. ‘That’s absurd to have- a bidden bunker in the middle of the fairway 230yds from the tee,’ said, ‘Mon, ye should ha’ played fee the left.’ I said, ‘Why don’t, they fill it up and put one oil the left, out, of tlie direct line for the pin?' ‘Mon,’ lie said, pityingly, ‘this is St. Andrews, ye ken.' That ended it. HIDDEN BUNKERS

“I should think that there are about 80 to 100 bunkers on the course and at least two-thirds of them are hidden. They are, however, not severe, though from some of their names, such ns ‘Hell’s Hole,’ you would expert them to lie fearsome.

“We. also played at Minefield and fitillane and they are excellent dunes-country courses. What makes the sea courses so tricky is the absence of flat fairways. They are full of hillocks and a new player gets a terrible shock when he finds a good straight drive ending in a most, awkward lie. Then the hillocky approaches to (he greens are most disconcerting. “We could use hillocks far more lor our uninteresting long straight holes in Australia, especially to tighten the fairways and trap crooked shots. Hillocks and grassy hollows are at least half of the difficulties of terrain on these wonderful seaside courses in Scotland.'