GOLF AND GOLFERS OVERSEAS

Southland Times, Issue 22969, 15 August 1936, Page 20

GOLF AND GOLFERS OVERSEAS

Notes and Comments

(By

“Cleek.”)

New Zealand’s lady golfers will probably reach Adelaide to-day. The Australian ladies’ championship meeting begins on Monday week and the contest for Hie Tasman Cup follows. The New Zealand side is a good one.

Files of Home newspapers to hand this week contain full reports of the British open championship. The unanimous opinion appears to have been that when A. H. Padgham won, the prize went to the best golfer in Britain. Padgham did not play at all well in the last two rounds but he turned in two 71’s and won. That is the sure mark of the real champion—he can get the figures when things are not going well.

The weather was favourable throughout. The mighty winds of Hoylake did not blow to try out the players. Day followed day pleasantly and a light breeze that held constant assisted the players at some of the most difficult holes. Gene Sarazen touched on this aspect of the championship when he arrived at Auckland the other day. “I would have bet all the tea in China that 290 would not have been broken and I will still make the same wager that they do not experience the same wonderful conditions in June again,” he said.

Questioned at Auckland on the subject of the length which the modern ball gives and the problem of lengthening the courses to combat it, Sarazen said that the situation did not arise in America. There the larger ball was in use and it did not permit of the same length of shot. American manufacturers were not concerned with developing the smaller ball in use in England and elsewhere, which gave phenomenal length. America stuck to the ball of 1.68 inches diameter and 1.62 ounces of weight, while the English ball was 1.62 inches in diameter and 1.62 ounces in weight.

A close second to A. H. Padgham in the British open championship was James Adams, of Romford, a young Scot who is now in the very front rank of British professionals. Padgham’s score was 287, and Adams's was 288. Adams and Padgham have met three times in match play and Adams has won every time. He is a magnificent player and is looked upon as a certain winner of the championship within the next few years.

Gene Sarazen, now in New Zealand, played very well at Hoylake and with a score of 291 tied for fourth place four strokes behind the winner. When reference to his own performance was made on his arrival at Auckland Gene gave it scant attention. “We go out to win; a place means nothing to us,” was his comment on that subject.

Time takes its toll of champions as of lesser mortals. Among those who failed to qualify for the British open championship at Hoylake were Sandy Herd, competing in his fiftieth open championship, James Braid, Ted Ray, and George Duncan, all ex-champions, and Abe Mitchell who should have won the championship long ago and will now never win it.

Brown: My wife thinks of nothing but motoring and golf. I’m getting tired of it. Jones: Well, at least she’s in the fashion. Brown: Yes, but she’s such a failure at it. In golf she hits nothing, and when motoring she hits everything.

“It was the finest championship I have seen. It worked true to form.” So said Gene Sarazen, one of the personalities of world golf, when referring on his arrival in Auckland last week to the last British open championship. After competing in the “open,” Sarazen sailed at once for America and had come on to tour New Zealand and Australia and to give exhibitions. The genial little American said that if conditions were normal it was the best players who usually won. Outsiders might crash when the conditions were not equally favourable to all, but normally the best players came to the top. That had been the position in the last British “open.” The conditions had been good and had remained the same day after day, giving every competitor an equal opportunity. Padgham, the outstanding professional in England this season, had deservedly won.

Never on the fairway, never in the rough, never on the green—and a bogey 4! This golfing feat is recorded by the Livei’pool Echo as having been achieved by Mr C. Steen, a Liverpool schoolmaster, while playing in a fourball match at Bootle a few days ago. His drive was bunkered; his second shot also found a bunker on the left of the green; an explosion shot went over the green into a third, and the shot out dropped clean into a hole.

The first golf course in Turkey is being laid out for the Ottoman Government, at Ankara, the new capital, by P. Mackenzie Ross, the well-known English golf architect, who has designed a considerable number of Continental courses.

Money for Golf. Golf courses have in many instances proved a lucrative investment for private capital. Public courses made and owned by public bodies are, of course, constructed and operated with the object of giving the public cheap golf—profit is a secondary consideration. Most public bodies who have taken up golf as a public enterprise have, however, done well out of the game. The number of municipal golf courses and putting greens is steadily increasing. According to a recent article of Law-

son Little the expenditure of public moneys on golf on a large scale within the next year or two is contemplated in U.S.A. He writes:—As a proof that golf is on the verge of a large boom period and is creating more and more national and international interest, it is my understanding that the American Government is planning to spend over fifteen million dollars on the construction and betterment of some 900 golf courses. I believe that New York State spent over a million dollars last year on a golfing paradise on Long Island. This consists of a beautiful clubhouse surrounded by seventy-two fine holes, to say nothing of City and County government expenditures on the game. Open Championship’s Cash Value. In the boom days it was undoubtedly worth a great deal of money to a professional to win either the British or the American open championship—particularly to an American professional—but it is doubtful if a British professional who wins the British open to-day can make more than a few hundreds out of it. The prize itself is only £lOO. Some of the more sensational Home papers headed up Padgham’s win with the statement that it was worth £25,000 to him. The Golf Monthly (Edinburgh) ridicules this claim. It says:—That figure is a mountainous exaggeration. How much has it been worth to Perry? (the 1935 champion). Hagen cashed into big sums; Bobby Jones’s unparalleled win of the four national titles sent him into pictures and the business side of golf on the crest of a financial wave which ran into thousands, but, other than Jones, it is ludicrous to speak of winning the open championship bringing the player a fortune in a year.

Perry is a far greater golfer than people give him credit for, but he lacks the sparkle of a Hagen or the intensity of a Cotton. How evenescent is fame in the field of sport, was surely never more typified than by Perry fighting for his championship without a single onlooker! After he had finished his last round and definitely his championship crown had been taken from him, Perry sat in the Royal Liverpool Clubhouse, alone. No one ever seemed to have thought that Perry should be considered for the championship. Perry lacks just that touch of personality which is requisite to call the crowd. Writing in the London Daily Telegraph, George Greenwood said: “Walter Hagen estimated that the British open championship was worth £lO,OOO to him, though the actual sum in cash which goes with the cup is only £lOO. While it is not to be supposed that Padgham will be able to exploit his success to the same extent, a reasonable estimate is in the neighbourhood of £3,000.”

Henry Cotton’s Position. Henry Cotton, who tied for third place two strokes behind Padgham, impressed many competent observers as the player who, in all the field, hit the ball most accurately, and it is probably true that so far as technique is concerned Cotton stands pre-eminent. As a maker of shots, an artist in the use of the implements of the game, he possibly stands alone in Britain. But he is not of the stuff of which champions are made. He may be a greater golfer, in the proper sense of the words, than Padgham, but Padgham will win more of the great prizes of the game. Cotton hasn’t got enough iron in his make-up to see the battle through to the bitter end. He is too easily upset and too easily cast down. In the London Daily Telegraph George Greenwood reports that on completion of his last round which left him two strokes behind Padgham, Cotton, “bitterly disappointed, left the course and was not seen again.” Well, the golfer, champion or rabbit, who cannot accept a defeat with a smile and a handshake for the winner is better out of the game. Cotton is so great a golfer that he can never be very far away from the top, but it is doubtful if he will win again. One imagines that if he could go to the United States and take a long course of tournament play there with a view to gaining mastery of himself his prospects would be greatly improved. Frenchmen Beat Cotton.

In third place in the British open Cotton was tied with Marcel Dallemagne, of St. Germain, France, six feet of strength and grace. Dallemagne brought himself up in the list with a fine fourth round of 69. A few days after the British open championship the pair met again in the French open championship played on the Frenchman’s home course. They tied with the remarkable score of 277 for four rounds. The details of their rounds were:— Cotton 65 69 74 69—277 Dallemagne 73 68 70 66 —277 The course measured only 5800 yds., but even so the scoring was phenomenal and the pair outdistanced the rest of the field by no fewer than nine strokes. When Dallemagne set out on his last round he knew what he had to do and his doing it was one of the finest feats of championship golf. The tie was played off over 36 holes. For the first round the Frenchman’s score was 69 while Cotton’s was 70, and Dallemagne played the first nine holes in 33 to Cotton’s 36. That put him four strokes to the good. Cotton hung on grimly and on the last green had a putt of 10 yds. to tie again with Dallemagne. He missed it and the French championship went to a son of France. A week or two later Cotton had to strike his colours to Auguste Boyer in the open championship of Belgium. Boyer is another great French player who has performed creditably in the British open championship. As Cotton is professional to the Waterloo Club, Brussels, Belgium, he would naturally be keen to win the Belgian open championship but Boyer beat him by a stroke.