GOLF AND GOLFERS OVERSEAS

Southland Times, Issue 22993, 12 September 1936, Page 20

GOLF AND GOLFERS OVERSEAS

Notes and Comments

By

“Cleek”

The recent revolver incident on Constitution Hill left his Majesty the King so unconcerned that a couple of hours later he was playing a round of golf at Coombe Hill—and playing particularly well. f Sandy Herd has now added his name to the list of golfers who have succeeded in going round in their own age. He is sixty-eight and in two consecutive rounds recently he went round his home course at Moor Park in that figure, playing from the back tees. Lawson Little, who last season won the British and American Amateur Championships for the second year in succession, has been awarded the James Sullivan Memorial Trophy for 1935. The trophy is awarded each year to the outstanding figure of the year in American sport. Miss Molly Gourlay, former International and English Close Champion, and a well-known writer on golf, has become a member of the board of directors of Simpson and Co., Golf Architects Ltd. The challenge match at Selsdon Park between Padgham and Joe Ezar (the Texan pro. who kept the gallery amused at the Melbourne Centenary tournaments) for £4O a-side, resulted in an easy win for the open champion by 10 and 8. He also won the bye, on which a further £25 a-side was staked, by one hole. Ezar has challenged Padgham to a return match on the same course for £5O a-side. Sir John Simon, the well-known statesman and lawyer, is captain-elect of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews and will play himself .into office this month. The caddies at Walton Heath are to benefit by £lOO as a result of a decision in the Chancery Division. Lord Riddell bequeathed £lOO to each employee of the Walton Heath Golf Club, and the judges held that so long as a caddie was on the guaranteed list, he was an employee of the club, and. therefore, was entitled to benefit by the bequest. Scene: Little Slocum on the day of its annual open meeting. Duffer who had just done the first hole in a worse than indifferent 7, passes his friend Buffer, who is on his way to the seventeenth. Duffer: Hullo, Bill! How are you breezing along? Buffer: Top of my form; I need two 4’s for a 76. How are you getting on? Duffer: A.I at Lloyds. I need seventeen 4’s for a 75. On his way to the Olympic Games Bobby Jones visited Britain and went to St. Andrews for “a quiet game.” But word got round and in less than no time 4000 people were surging round him. Not so many years ago nothing stirred the golfing crowd in Britain or the United States so much as the announcement: ’‘Mr R. T. Jones junior on the tee,” and the crowd in both countries would dearly like to see him in the lists again. Another Walker Cup Rout The cables gave us only the baldest statement of the result of the Walker Cup match at Pine Valley last week. We can’t tell yet whether we should be thankful or indignant. The news in its most concise form was painful enough—of the twelve matches Britain did not win a single one—and if it was a case of sheer slaughter perhaps the best thing to do is to draw a veil over the whole proceedings. On the other hand, if the matches were closely contested and the British team made a respectable showing a word or two in mitigation of the severity of the defeat would have been welcome. We shall have to await the arrival of newspaper files for further particulars. Meantime we have to make what we can of this further proof that our best amateurs are simply not in the same class as the best American amateurs. Pottering away with a preposterous “bogey” Britain boasts scores of : amateurs rated at plus this and plus that, to say nothing of scratch. Striving everlastingly against a merciless “par” America has out of millions of amateurs not more than one or two on scratch and none at all on plus. But the American on four or five will lick the British scratch man ninety-nine times out of a hundred. The moral of this comment is that the American, measuring himself by the standard of an unattainable par, is never satisfied with himself and is always working to improve his game. The Briton rated at scratch can hardly be blamed if he considers himself a first-class player, while the plus man is, of course, in the “super” class. Tbe introduction of the American par into Britain would find the club-houses full of members speechless with indignation because their handicaps had been raised from a quite respectable 6 to a quite intolerable 14; as for the “scratch” player who suddenly found j himself on B—the body of the murdered secretary would probably be found on the premises. The noise of bursting shams and pretensions would be loud in the land, but it would be easier to bear than this humiliation that comes every two years with the Walker Cup match. The matches have been so onesided that they have lost interest in the States. Some Americans think that they should be discontinued; others think that some sort of second-grade team should be pitted against the British; and others, Gene Sarazen among them, think that the match would be more interesting if a team of “seniors,” I in other words golfers past their best, | represented America. All this is very galling to our national pride but no | one can contend that it is altogether unwarranted. We can only hope that this year, though they did not win a match, the British side played well enough to earn the respect of their opponents, and well enough also to encourage the hope that they will have some prospect of success in the next match, which will be played on a British course two years hence. Most of the British players, if not all of them, will go through the fire again in the American amateur championship which begins at Garden City on Monday. Some of the laurels lost at Pine Valley may be retrieved. Walter Hagen In Court. Walter Hagen is contesting an action by Mrs Hagen who is seeking to compel him to pay £5O a month for maintenance. The famous professional contends that the Florida Courts have no i jurisdiction, as both he and Mrs Hagen I are resident in New Jersey. The case,' however, is to proceed in Florida. Mrs j Hagen seeks to compel fulfilment of an j agreement which, she claims, was made when they separated in 1927, after being married four years. This agreement, according to her complaint, provided that he would pay her £5O a month for life, or until she remarried. Mrs Hagen said in evidence that her husband’s income was £lO,OOO a year from golf playing and royalties. Mrs Hagen went to Britain in 1922-23-24. Hagen won his first open championship at Sandwich in 1922, he finished second in 1923, and he won again in 1924 at

Hoylake. There was a dramatic incident at the close of the Hoylake championship. Hagen, as he holed his final and winning putt, threw his putter into the air, and while he gazed up ready to grasp the club and the crowds were cheering the great finish, a woman dashed out and threw her arms ecstatically around the new champion’s neck. She was Mrs Hagen. Irish Open Championship. R. A. Whitcombe gave a remarkable exhibition of golfing brilliance to win the Irish open championship on the course of the Royal Dublin club in July. Conditions were extraordinarily favourable to the .players and the course was not difficult. This is proved by the fact that fourteen competitors returned aggregates of 288 or better, that is even fours or better for the 72 holes. Even so, however, Whitcombe’s golf was very fine, and his aggregate of 281 was well earned. The tragedy of the meeting was J. Adams’s 79 for the first round. This was disastrous to him. He lost no fewer ' than seven strokes to Whitcombe at the start. It will be remembered that Adams was runner-up to Padgham in the British open championship, and just how good a golfer he is is demonstrated by the fact that though Whitcombe played the last three rounds in 72, 68, 69, Adams gained four strokes on him and finished only three behind. The leading scores at Dollymount were:—

It is of interest to note the fine figures of Locke, the South African amateur. Locke easily finished “first amateur” in the British open championship at Hoylake and in the Irish open he again gave the professionals a good run for their money. For every one ahead of him there were half a dozen behind. Locke’s fine scores in the British and Irish, opens establish his quality and make it easy to understand how he won the open championship of South Africa. Bobby Jones at St. Andrews.

On his way to the Olympic Games Bobby Jones turned up at St. Andrews on the 27th July for a “quiet round” on the Old Course, the scene of his triumph in 1930. His partners were Willie Auchterlonie and Gordon Lockhart. Unfortunately for Jones, in a sense, all St. Andrews appeared to have heard that “the Emperor of the links” was on the course again. Bobby has been out of competitive golf for five years, but his name has lost none of its magic. He draws the crowd as no other player does. He was practically mobbed on the first tee,, and throughout the round a crowd of 4000 dashed all over the course without much consideration for the players. Once he was allowed to play, however, Jones soon showed that all the old skill was still there. He holed for a three at the second (401 yds.), carded another three at the sixth (367 yds.), sank his putt for a two at the eighth (150 yds.), and with a four at the ninth was out in 32. On the run in one or two fives were recorded, but he treated the crowd to a real champion’s finish. There was no error about his four at the dreaded 17th, the Road Hole, (467 yds.) and he topped off with a birdie three at the 18th (364 yds.), finishing the round in 72. Jones, after struggling back to the club house through a throng of overenthusiastic admirers, said that he had come to the British Isles in order to play once more at St. Andrews. He had enjoyed the round and the crowd had given him a wonderful reception. He added that he had never seen the Old Course in such fine condition and that the greens were perfect. German Championships.

Henry Cotton’s luck in the minor open championships is certainly out this year. After a tie in the French open championship M. Dallemagne beat him by a stroke in the play-off over 36 holes. In the Belgian open championship another Frenchman, A. Boyer, beat him by a stroke, and files of English newspapers to hand show that in the German open championship at Wannsee, Berlin, Boyer again headed Cotton off by a single stroke. The leaders and their scores were:—

C. Watermeyer 77 73 75 73—298 Henry C. Longhurst, the well-known British amateur and golf writer, won the German amateur championship by beating S. Bostrom, amateur champion of Sweden in 1924 and 1930, ten up and eight to play. Bostrom reached the final by defeating H. G. Bentley, English champion and British Walker Cup player 2 and 1 in the semi-finals. Miss Diana Fishwick followed up Longhurst’s victory by winning the German ladies’ championship for England. Her opponent in the final was Miss Gillian Rudgard, a former Yorkshire player of note, who has been living in Germany for some years. Miss Fishwick also won 10 and 8. The Shorter Ball. Henry Longhurst, the well-known University golfer, is among the English golf writers who believe that restrictions governing the size, weight and make of golf balls with a view to reducing the length that can be attained with them are bound to come. Furthermore he believes not only that the shorter ball will come but that it will be accepted by the general body of golfers. “The golf ball has come back to the news,” he says, “and will return again, I venture to prophesy, many a a time during the next two or three years. The latest development is that, after much unnecessary procrastination, a further meeting has been held between St. Andrews and the all-power-ful manufacturers. The latter, I am given to understand, offered the sop that no further ‘progress’ in golf ball manufacture—i.e., ‘lengthening’ of the ball—was physically possible; an argument that carries singularly little weight when you observe the consistent ‘improvement’ that has gone on despite temporary assurances that no more was feasible. “Even if nothing tangible arose from it, the fact that the meeting was held at all is in itself encouraging, a sign, at any rate, that the R. and A. are not to be deterred by their early rebuffs. Mark my words, within three years we shall have a change in that ball. There will be an outcry at the time, but it will soon die down, and be forgotten as people come to understand the point at issue. “Half the men and nearly all the women would give up the game,” is the view expressed by Archie Compston. ‘Once a golfer, always a golfer,’ is the reply. We shall see which side is right.”

R. Whitcombe 72 72 68 69—281 W. H. Davis 73 70 70 70—283 J. Adams 79 68 67 70—284 J. Fallon 71 73 71 69—284 W. Nolan 70 72 71 72—285 S. Easterbrook 71 71 71 72—285 Bert Gadd 73 71 72 70—286 J. J. Busson 71 74 73 69—287 A. Dailey 74 70 72 71—287 Mr A. Locke 71 72 74 70—287 W. Large 69 75 73 70—287

A. Boyer 73 74 71 73—291 H. Cotton 70 75 72 75—292 M. Dallemagne 75 74 73 71—293 G. Muller 74 72 75 76—297 A. Lacinik 79 72 75 72—298