WITH PIPE ALIGHT

Southland Times, Issue 19099, 17 November 1923, Page 9 (Supplement)

WITH PIPE ALIGHT

THE DUFFER

(By

"Criticus")

When I pick up my paper and con the latest doings in the world of sport I invariably give myself the exquisite pain of envy by reading of the brave doings of the golfers, who can with dignity assail championship heights. They tread an heroic, a romantic way, mixing with birdies and eagles and laying low every little while the fiery dignity of a Colonel. How the British Army stands this assault on its great institutions is beyond me—but that is another story, as Kipling hath said. These giants of golf move across the printed page, across many printed pages with magnificent ; but no one seems to give a thought for the duffer, the man who can be depended on to leave the century unbroken. And yet these duffers be men who feel and who move. True they abound in the sins against style, they are slaves to error, but “Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow.” They are superficial things these errors and must not blind us to the fact that beneath the cardigan of many a duffer there beats the heart of a true golfer, a man who plays the game in the pure spirit, recking not of trophies and not of scores—for him just the game, the white ball and the broad green fairway (the broader the better). Why do we tune our harps to thej great iconoclasts, to those wonderful golfers who rise and smash records and champions? Not for me those men. I turn to* the duffer remembering and singing as did Calverley of the organ grinder ’Tis not that thy mien is stately, ’Tis not that thy tones are soft; ’Tis not that I care so greatly For the same thing played so oft; But I’ve heard mankind abuse thee; And perhaps it’s rather strange, But I thought that I would choose then For encomium as a change. It is not the champions who keep the game going. Who is it who buys every new’ make of ball that comes on the market, who falls for every new type of trick club, who goeth forth laden with all the impedimenta that the modern golf wizards can devise for his loading? The duffer assuredly. On whom do professional golfers feed? The duffer again. Who is it that loses most golf balls and smashes most clubs, thereby keeping two of the great local industries of any links busy all the year found? It is the duffer. If we take the economic side of the question, the duffer stands firm as-the Atlas of the golf world. But come we more happily to the aesthetic, to the sporting side of the R. and A. game. Here it is that the duffer takes his proper place. He is the true artist of the links. The matter is capable of simple proof. Let us look at the champion, the man who can approach the ball and with unerring accuracy send it flying straight on its mission. The essence of his greatness is the machine-like smoothness, the machinelike consistency of his work. There is here the soul-destroying monotony of repetition, the inescapable dullness of Infallibility. We find this same destructive agency in mass production and Henry Ford knows as well as I do that the precision in a.myriad operations over a long period cannot produce an article of aesthetic beauty. This is the fate of the champion golfer, and so the further we move from this deadly precision the nearer do we approach the true artist of the game—the duffer. Watch the duffer at work! There is no deadly machine-like w’ork here, no rising and falling of welloiled pistons. Henley’s man who was “master of his fate” did not belong to a links. He is not a champion golfer, because we are emphatically informed that this man has been “under the bludgeonings of chance” and chance does not enter into the operations of the machine-like champions. But the duffer is not master of his fate in golf and from this it is clear that Henley had not a links in mind when he penned those lines. The essence of the duffer’s game is surprise, in inestimable quality of your artist. He is the instrument through which Providence works—the artist undoubtedly. Just think, also, of his status as a sportsman ! When champions do not sink two foot putts are they at fault ? Impossible! A blade of grass has suddenly reared its green head too high, some insignificant Scot on the other side of the world has permitted a flaw to spoil the head of a putter, the green-keeper has committed mortal sins, the universe has slipped a cog at that moment! But the duffer who misses a short putt must take all the blame, and he does so with a cheerful heart, and without explanation. A champion sinks a fifteen putt as part of the precise game he must play, but the duffer knows not when the God of Chance will use him and plays his game cheerfully against this handicap. Champions win, but the duffers enter the contest without hope. For them nothing matters but the sweets of the game purified of all taint of greed or thirst to win. Here is the undefiled sportsman, the peak of purity in sport! Scores, cups, championships! They are not for him. For him the game and the game alone. The duffer!