IDEAL CONDITIONS FOR GOLF LAST WEEK-END : LAING SHIELD SYSTEM

Southland Times, Issue 24109, 24 April 1940, Page 11

IDEAL CONDITIONS FOR GOLF LAST WEEK-END : LAING SHIELD SYSTEM

By

PAR

Golfers enjoyed another fine weekend, the warm sunshine enticing many players out to the links, which are much drier now than they were at the beginning of the month. On Saturday the Invercargill and Queen’s Park clubs will meet in their annual contest for the Hewat Shield, the seniors playing at Otatara and the juniors at Queen's Park. It is probable that a match for the Laing Shield, which is held by the Invercargill Club, will be played in conjunction with it. A suggestion was made last year that the Laing Shield should be competed for on a different basis —that instead of the present system of clubs challenging the holder, an inter-club competition on file knock-out principle should be arranged. The idea was that the competitors would play two rounds at Otatara on a day to be fixed and for the teams remaining in to arrange their own games. Nothing further seems to have been done. With petrol now dearer and less plentiful than it was last year, it would probably be better _to hold over making the change, as it would involve more travelling. The competition could be continued in the old way for the duration of the war. CLUB FIXTURES Good form was displayed by W. Buchan in winning the patriotic fund bogey handicap at Otatara on Saturday. He played seven under his handicap of 10 to return a card of 4 up—an outstanding performance. He was out in 39 and back in 38, his round of 77 equalling the best of the day. Buchan’s handicap is now eight; some say it should be six. C. C. Anderson, who was second with 2 up—a card that would often win—was right on his game. His handicap has been cut a stroke to nine. Starting with 3,4, 4, A. H. Broad was 3 up in as many holes. He kept hitting some very long wood shots, but dropped strokes here and there round the greens and finished 1 up. His score of 77 might easily have been three strokes better. H. W. Rogers, who had a great 72 the previous Saturday, dropped to 78 last week and was 2 down. In the B grade A. G. Stubbs, who showed greatly improved form, finished well ahead of fire field with a card of 3 up. His handicap has come down to 14, which brings him into A grade. R. C. Cook had a steady round and was square with bogey. A big field took part in the April stroke handicap at Queen's Park on Saturday. J. C. R. Fleming, who has been close to the winners in recent matches, managed to win by a single stroke in the A grade. He had a splendid round of 77, his handicap of eight giving him 69 net. Net 70’s were returned by E. Jenkins and FI. McCulloch. D. W. Cochrane's 76 was the best gross score, A. Des Forges being only a ] stroke worse. Several long-handicap j players were prominent in the B grade, I A. G. Trim winning with 90-23-67. H. j Giller, who was on the limit of 24 j earned his first reduction by doing 92. A. Hodge, 94-24-70, and E. H. Bray, 90-20-70, also displayed improved form and should soon be doing much better. THREE TIMES RUNNER-UP After reaching the final of the Otago women’s golf championship for the third year in succession Miss Claire j Smith again failed to produce her best ! golf when it was most needed. She ; qualified at the top with four strokes ; to spare and won her first match by a i big margin. Her opponent in the | semi-final, Mrs H. Dodgshun, had to I default through contracting a chill, and j Miss Smith was once more a finalist. , She began well in the final against i Miss Zoe Hudson, of Christchurch, but I with six holes played was one down ; and could not get on level terms again, I Her good form of the qualifying rounds ■ had gone; instead she was struggling ; for figures that another day she would get without much trouble. However, it was all good experience and will count when she makes her fourth attempt — as it is hoped she will. Lady Heathcoat-Amory, famous in golf as Joyce Wethered, the best woman player of her day, has turned her Devonshire home, Knightshayes Court, I into a war hospital. OUT-OF-BOUNDS PENALTY I Walter Hagen would like to see one j Rule of Golf changed; he definitely op- i poses the penalty of loss of stroke and distance for an out-of-bounds shot. He considers “distance” should be enough. The Rules of Golf permit clubs to vary the general rule by a local rule and many of them, a very large proportion, have made the out-of-bounds penalty loss of distance only. Whether they should have done so is, of course, a highly contentious question. Take this position. At Eastward Ho, the thirteenth at Otatara, a player pulls his drive into the heavy flaxes on the left of the fairway. His opponent follows with a really wild hook and his ball flies far out of bounds. No. 1 either loses his ball or finds it unplayable among the flaxes. He must return to the tee and play his third stroke. No. 2, out of bounds, plays only his second shot from the tee. Thus No. 1, whose |

first stroke deserved a lesser penalty than that of No. 2, finds himself a stroke to the bad. Where’s the justice in that? , Golf has one uncommon characteristic—in those who play it hope never dies. Despite age and infirmity they go out full of hope that they will hit the ball as far as they used to, lay the little chips up against the pin, and hole the five and six-yard putts as in the days when they could run round the course after a game without any sign of shortage of breath. At Home just now the story is being told of H. M. Cairnes, the grand old man of Irish golf, that the other day he declared, “I have at last found the secret of hitting the golt ball.” Cairnes is 72, and has played a distinguished part in Irish golf- Ue won the championship of the Emerald Isle as long ago as 1907. At the American open championship of 1939 the gate money was 12,681 dollars, at the amateur 1822 dollars and at the women’s 1760 dollars. The attraction of amateur golf in the States shows a great decline from the days when Bobby Jones used to attract the multitudes. . The rubber-core v. guttie match that was to have been played towards the end of March between James Braid and J. H. Taylor, using the modern ball, and Henry Cotton and Archie Compston, playing the guttie of bygone days had to be postponed when frost and snow fastened a firm grip on Britain and golf was suspended. It was hoped

to get the match off some time this month. There was another famous match in which the two balls were tested against each other and Braid and Taylor were in it. too. That was away back in 1914, before the last war, and even then Braid and Taylor were no chickens. Their opponents were Vardon and Duncan. In the morning Vardon and Duncan, playing the rub-ber-cores, finished five up on Braid and I Taylor, who had the gutties. In the afternoon, when Braid and Taylor had ! the rubber-cores, and their opponents ' the gutties, the former couple finished I four up. Over the double round, therefore, Vardon and Duncan beat Braid and Taylor by one hole, and the ' rubber-cores beat the gutties by nine holes. COTTON’S SUGGESTION As the British open and amateur championships will not be played this year Henry Cotton has made a suggestion that one major golf competition of 72 holes medal play be held this year, the leader to be declared champion golfer of the year and the leading amateur to be recognized as the 1940 amateur golf champion. The magazine Golf Monthly in commenting on the proposal says that between now and June or July titanic struggles are sure to have been fought and decided, but that the idea should be kept in view, although such a competition could not be otherwise than fifty per cent, short of representative. Circumstances permitting. the holding of such an event might be practical and an excellent thing, but we must wait and see. In the recent terrific heat wave in Australia some interesting incidents were reported from the golf courses. On a Brisbane course a player found it necessary to break off his game and go for a drink to lubricate his parched mouth and throat. He put his bag down on the tee and dropped his ball on the ground beside it. When he returned he found his ball swollen and cracked, with liquid from the core oozing from it. The blazing sun had destroyed the “pill.” In Golf in Australia Jack Dillon tells the following story of the distress caused to animals by thirst: “On the day that the temperature soared to 109 one of the groundsmen at Royal Melbourne was raking a bunker near the ninth green on the West Course. Out of the trees came an opossum (a mother' one) with two babies on her back. Patently affected by the heat, she struggled across the green to the cup —wherein apparently she had discovered there was usually water. On this occasion she was mistaken and, discovering that there was not the much-needed liquid she collapsed, and the little ones, falling off her back, were as ‘done’ as herself. Fortunately the groundsman saw them, was a very human fellow, and promptly dashed off to find his billycan. This he filled with water, hurried it to the distressed opossums, permitted them to take their fill, and, as full of gratitude as they were of water, they got into ‘formation’ again and mother took her

family off to the shade of the trees. That ninth hole meant more to the trio than any nineteenth ever meant to human patrons of that course.” At a special meeting held in Melbourne last month the Australian Golf Union decided by seven votes to four that for the duration of the war the open and amateur national championships of Australia will not be played. AMAZING SERIES OF WINS Jimmy Demaret, a 30-year-old professional, is the latest to set the American golfing world alight. He has had an amazing run of scoring to win five out of six of the richly-endowed tournaments in the famous “winter circut” (writes Jim Ferrier in The Sydney Morning Herald). The golf writers call him “Smiling Jimmy,” but he could be equally well called “Singing Jimmy,” for during play he sings on his way round the course, treating the game casually. Demaret has an unusual singing voice, untrained, but pleasant. Hollywood has beckoned to him, and soon he will be going to the capital of filmdom to make a series of “shorts” on golf. They will be of an unusual kind, as he will combine singing with the demonstration of his shots.

Demaret began his association with golf at the age of seven years, when he became a caddie, and soon learned to use clubs. He was still only a youth when he became prominent in golf in Houston and then in Texas. Now he has made his mark in the national field. This is the first year in which Demaret has “played the tournaments,” as Americans call the task of competing in the many rich tournaments, beginning in the winter in the warm southern states, and working up north as the hotter weather comes. Starting in California, he won at Oakland, and followed it by a victory in the unofficial match play championship of the United States, open to amateurs and professionals, at San Francisco.

In his home town, Houston, Demaret won the Western open championship, and went to New Orleans to take first prize in the 10,000 dollars open tournanament there. At St. Petersburg (Florida), he won his fifth event, defeating Byron Nelson, last year’s open champion, by a stroke. His winnings from January 1 to the end of February amounted to more than £2OOO. This phenomenal run in competition against the best professionals in the country is regarded as one of the outstanding efforts ever made in American golf. So close are the top-ranking golfers today that the turn of a putt means the difference between defeat and victory, and yet Remaret has completely taken temporary charge of the field. He is returning home to have a much-needed spell before going to Augusta for the Masters’ tournament (since this was written Demaret won the Masters’ tournament with the fine score of 280). HOLE IN ONE TWICE Like the old stories of the Indian rope trick, many golfers know someone whose cousin’s best friend has a clubmate who had holed out in one on several occasions. Today I have a genuine two-ace player (says a writer in The Herald, Melbourne). He is Mr H. V. Prior, well-known Melbourne business man, whose first hole-in-one was at Leura, in the Blue Mountains, about a year ago, and who did his second on the course at Summerleigh Lodge, Healesville, this week. I wonder if Mr Prior knows that an American golf writer once estimated that the hole-in-one is a 20,000 to one chance against, except for a player deliberately hitting ball after ball in quest of an ace, when the odds “shorten” to about 8000 to one! Often told, but worth repeating, is the story of the hole-in-one that helped Jock Hutchinson to win the 1921 British open. At St. Andrews, he holed his tee shot at the eighth, and tied with Wethered, but won the subsequent play-off. Another famous hole-in-one in the British open was Jamie Anderson’s in 1878. Jamie won the coveted event by a stroke, and his card carried an ace at Prestwick’s seventeenth! Mr Prior has a few records to beat yet, for the late Tom Washington, professional on a short nine-hole course at New Jersey, scored 24 aces. The veteran Scottish professional, Sandy Herd, was credited with 20.

It has been said that Vardon, Hagen and Jones each collected only three aces during long and distinguished golf careers.