GOLF.

Taranaki Daily News, 3 July 1925, Page 4

GOLF.

BIG GOLF TEST. BRITAIN’S BEST PROFESSIONAL? WHO IS HE? (By Harry Vardon, Six Times Open Champion.) The first representative test of this season’s golf form will take place on the Nottingham Club’s course at Hollinwell, when the final stages of the £l2OO tournament will be decided. So far as concerns the British professionals, it will be a kind of dress rehearsal for the open championship, in which they hope retrieve some of the' honours that have fallen to America during the past four years. The conditions are the same as in the championship—72 holes of score play—and Hollinwell is certainly a course that brings the best men to the front. The winner of this competition will be regarded as one of the great hopes of Britain "in the supreme tournament of the year at Prestwick, Ayrshire, next month, and he will go forward to it stimulated .by the most valuable tonic that can fall to a level-headed professional —confidence of success. And who will win? Prophecy at golf is usually a futile pastime, but if I had to answer this question at the point of the pistol, I would begin by selecting four men from the field of 100 qualified players, these four being George Duncan, Abe Mitchell, Aubrey Boomer and Archie Compston. Dunean is so perfect an artist with all his clubs that he ought to win anything. It is a thrill, even to a veteran, to see him hit one of his best iron shots. The debonair way in which he does it is sublime; the snap with which he strikes the ball is music, and the manner in which he controls its flight is a joy to watch. Y’et I sometimes think that he can be even better as a wooden club player, especially in making spoon shots do anything that he wishes. His holing-out with a twenty-years-old putting eleek has been the envy of us all. Curiously enough, he does not win a lot of tournaments.. Certainly he wins far fewer than he ought to do. He has secured this event twice and tied for first place on another occasion, but, at the age of 41, he has been open champion only. once. For a player of his gifts—the man whom you would back almost before any other to accomplish a set shot, no matter what its difficulty—there is something wrong about has record. AN EXAMPLE OF MITCHELL. Possibly the explanation is that Duncan has the defects of his own qualities. Mentally and physically, he is constituted to play shots so naturally and brilliantly that when they do not happen to come off —and there are many little kicks of fortune at golf —he attempts things more and more daring, with an increasing nonchalance, until at length he loses the ground that he has gained. And more with it. In considering Duncan, we are taking stock of the whole scale of human emotions. We may leave him for the present by saying that he can play better than anybody else, and yet come to grief as readily as anybody else. It is impossible to lose faith in Mitchell on these occasions. In fact, if £ had to nominate the likely winner of the forthcoming tournament, I would select Mitchell on the ground that his turns of success in big stroke competitions come ail too infrequently and that the next one is overdue. He must have made a splendid recovery from a recent attack of rheumatism, judging by what he did the other day at Sandy Lodge, Northwood. Twice in the day, he reached the first green in two shots, his second shot on each occasion carrying the bunker in front of the green. N’o’oody else has ever done this in consecutive rounds, although nearly all the big hitters have played the hole.

Having personally played it a good many times, I am in a position to appreciate the merit of the feat. It is not so much the length of the hole, 495 yards, that makes the performance noteworthy. The difficulty is that, in order to stand any chance at all of reaching the green with the second shot, the player has to drive far enough to reach ground that slopes gently towards the green, and then the problem is to get the hanging ball up with a brassie so that it will carry far enough to soar over the wide bunker in front of the green. If all golf holes were like this one. Mitchell would surely be invincible. His trouble is that, every now and again, he hits an iron shot with a touch of loose run about it. W’hy this sliould happen I do not know, because the rest of his iron shots are usually splendidly controlled. RISING PLAYERS. Boomer stands so essentially for natural orthodoxy of swing and' has such power in the long game to help him that at the age of 27, he seems to be marked out for the highest honours. When he won at Roehampton last month, it occurred to me that he had introduced a little flexibility into a previously rigid adherence to the principle of the straight left arm, and that his driving was rather the better for it. Compston—fi feet 3 inches in height and weighing 14st—has enormous strength and an unmistakable aptitude for the game. His determination to get on at it is complete: a more ambitious and enthusiastic player never walked the links. He improves every year, and is one of the few young players whose progress is markedly steady, so that he seems certain to win something big one day. There are plenty of others with chances. We must not overlook Arthur Havers, who, if he has not been playing quite so well since his return from America a year ago as he was before he went there, will doubtless sooner or later strike his real form again. Then there are the brothers Charles and Ernest Whiteombe, the former of whom won tins tournament at Dea] a year ago with the remarkably fine total of 289 strokes for four rounds. At this early stage on the season it will be interesting to see where our strength lies in professional golf.

NEWS AND COMMENT. THE OPEN CHAMPION. (By “Stance.”) The final round of the Standish Cup takes place at Waiwakaiho this Saturday. At present R. I. Harrison, a long hitter and one of our most promising

players, holds a handy lead, with McClune, Wilson and Fyfe handy. Wilson ■is playing well just now and” will most probably prove Harrison’s most dangerous opponent, though in golf, perhaps more than in any other game, one never can tell. In a very clever skit Barry Payne tells how the Pilgrim Golfer in his quest of the Celestial City of Par was lured from his straight and narrow course by two charming but foolish maidens called Nopractice and Allplay. There is no doubt of the truth of this statement. How often do we come in and say that we could not do any good with this clu'b or that we were Tight off another. This, in fact, is really the story of our whole golf. But how often do we take this particular club and go off and put in a good hour’s practice with it. X’ery seldom, and this is the reason why very few of us get much closer to the Celestial City. For the fourth time in five years the Americans have captured the British open ehampionship. Jim Barnes, of the Pelham Country Club, New York, this year's winner, annexed the American open in 1921, but had not previously won the big British event. He has the. reputation of being a big hitter and a good putter. Nevertheless, he is not considered the equal of either Hagen or Bobby Jones, and it was probably fortunate for him that these two were unable to make the trip. Hagen twice defeated him in important matches last season, and Bobby Jones has finished ahead of him in the last four American opens. Compston, who finished second, is a very promising English professional, whose play was described by Vardon a few weeks ago when it was related that he smashed three mashie niblicks in one round. “Keep your balance. In order to live up to this don’t come up on to your toes either at the top of your swing or in the act of hitting the ball. Settle well back on your heels and this will give you a chance to get more leverage in the follow through.”—Walter Hagen.