GOLF IN ENGLAND

Taranaki Daily News, 26 June 1928, Page 7

GOLF IN ENGLAND

PROBLEM OF PEACEFUL CAME HOW LORD DERBY SOLVED IT. (By Harry Vardon.—Special to News.) Loudon, May 3. Of late, a good deal has been heard about “millionaires’ clubs” at golf, and some caustic things have been said on the subject of those organisations which limit their memberships to comparatively small numbers; seek neither visitors nor publicity, and succeed generally in keeping themselves very much to themselves. Really I do .not blame anybody for belonging to such a club if he lias the opportunity. Golf on the average popular course during a fine week-end is becoming something of a burden to the flesh. Waits of an hour or more for starting-times are common, aud the slow progress of the less efficient players spoils the game for those who are tolerably proficient at it. Often they are reduced to hitting half-shots rather than delay the field by waiting for the people in front to move forward out of range. Lord Derby went a long way towards solving the difficulty when he started the Swinlcy Forest Club, near Ascot, with its membership limit of 200, and its rigid restrictions as to the introduction of visitors. He also had a big hand in the inauguration of a club on similar lines at Cannes.

Such institutions as these hardly merit the appellation of “millionaires’ clubs.” I believe that the annual subscriptions are something like fifteen guineas—a sum which is charged at a number of courses where the congestion at certain periods of the year is acute. The idea is to create a golfing sanctuary whither the member may go with some assurance of being able to play Isis round in comfort; and presumably the committees find that this dispensation can be supplied at a reasonable cost.

In America, it is no uncommon thing for about twenty wealthy inhabitants of a town to provide themselves with the best course and club-house that money can buy, and share the expense—whatever it may be—each year. This is the surest guarantee of freedom from overcrowding. Even does it rival the enterprise of the two munition workers who, during the war, purchased a public-house, and told the indignant customers, who on the ■following day found it closed nt the customary hour of opening, that they had bought it for themselves. It would be difficult nowadays to discover twenty people in any district of Britain whom the tax-collector had left with a surplus sufficient to enable them to own a golf club; but Lord Derby and his friends have shown that something can be done to avert long waits for starting times, and further delays on the teeing-grounds nearly all the way round. TWO COURSE CLUBS. It is one of the difficulties confronting the administrators of golf clubs everywhere that the main armies of members want to piny on the same days, and at almost the same hours. This, no doubt, is a natural result of the appointed order of the average, person’s life. Saturdays and Sundays afford him his chief opportunities for recreation. Still, the fact that congestion occurs on golf courses in spasms is rendered none the less harassing by the fact that it is unavoidable. It is the reason that such clubs as Sunningdale, Walton Heath, and Addington have had to provide themselves with two full-length courses, and that Moor Park (Rickmansworth) and Wentworth, have each felt it necessary to have three. During the London season, these places would be killed by their own popularity if they each had only one course; half the members would have to wait hours for n starting-time on a fine Saturday or Sunday, and would resign rather than suffer such repress!' If only the play could be spread evenly over the week —and therefi over the year —no club would need more than one course. That, presumabl". is impossible so long as it is part of the scheme of business life for everybody to take his recreation at the same time. A great many clubs offer very advantageous terms to people who are nrepared to take up five-day memberships; but it does not often happen that they obtain all the five-day members they want, and in most cases, the numbers of such recruits are small. Yet those same clubs have waiting lists for full membership. MAN’S MISTAKE. ■idy members might provide the solution. At many of the more famous clubs, ladies are not eligible for membership, although they are allowed to play on the courses under certain conditions and on certain days. It is a rather curious fact, however, that while the average committee-man thinks that Monday till Friday ’ves the feminine golfer plenty of time in which to pursue the game, since—as he supposes—she has nothing else very urgent to do aIF day and every day, the ladies themselves take an entirely different view of the matter. Thus far, they have not shown any violent enthusiasm for five-day memberships; they prefer to be able to play on Saturdays and Sundays as well, if they wish to do so. Not long ago, I happened to be journeying from the links to the railway station in a motor-car which contained four ladies who engaged in debate on this question. They all declared stoutly that they could play as efficiently as a lot of the men who muddled round on Saturdays and Sundays; that they wanted to play ' . those days; that they were willing to pay the necessary subscriptions; and that it was nothing short of oonression by men in power that compelled them to abstain from week-end golf. Ladies now have generous starting rights at any time on the Moor Park courses, and I believe that they have equal privileges with men on any day of the week on the old course at Addington. Here, unquestionably, is a means of developing the mid-week clientele, but it does not help to solve the ; roblem of the crowded course at week-ends. Only a strictly limited membership can do that.