GOLFERS WHO SMOKE

Southland Times, Issue 18973, 21 June 1923, Page 8

GOLFERS WHO SMOKE

CIGARS AND CIGARETTES. The benefit or disadvantage of smoking during a trying golf match is again under discussion in England. One golfer says that one feature of professional play is that they seldom smoke while they are playing; in fact, some of them never smoke at all. Contrast with this the case of Mr Travis, the American amateur. Mr Travis smoked a chain of long black cigars during all his matches without any apparent inconvenience to his play. But appearances seemed to show that the long black cigar between the lips was a foil to the nervous tension of the players. When he was beating all golfing records, the late Mr F. G. Tait had the habit of smoking a pipe all the way round many of his important matches. It was never taken out of his mouth while he was playing long and difficult tee shots. On the other hand Mr Hilton used to smoke a chain of cigarettes. As the bleached bones of Napoleon's soldiers marked long afterwards the disastrous retreat from Moscow, so the charred ends of Mr Hilton’s cigarettes, scattered at intervals between the tee and the putting green, indicated the fervour not only with which he enjoyed his smoke, but they served as a rough index to his general line of play. A vigorous old golfer—he is eighty-four, and can yet do two or three rounds a day—says that when playing his two rounds a day he never eats anything between breakfast in the morning and dinner at night. His sight is as clear and his hands as steady as when he was only half as old as he is now. He says that anybody who adopts his habit may easily live as long and play the golf he does. A well-known lady golfer who plays almost every day on Middlesex course, smokes rgarettes all the time she is playing. Without her beloved cigarette she would “foozle ’ the ball every .time.