GOLF

Taranaki Daily News, 26 February 1931, Page 10

GOLF

ALTERED GOLF. EVERYTHING DIFFERENT. "(By Harry Vardon.—Special to News.) I once felt impelled to remark to a member with whom I was playing on his home course that the bunker guarding the greep which we were approaching had been much improved in appearance and effect. ‘‘Yes,” he said, “it’s better than the original bunker we had there. A good many of the members thought that unfair, because the ball was rather drawn into it by the fall of the land. I believe this one cost about £3OO to make, as the ground had. to. be built up for a long distance, and the shape of the green altered. Still, it’s reckoned a success.” It is an interesting commentary on the tendency of the times - that £3OO is not considered too much to spend on the reconstruction of one bunker in the course of making it what people regard as a fair bunker. I remember a letter written some sixty years ago by Tom Morris, of St. Andrews, who had been asked by a committee to give an estimate as to the cost of preparing a new course. Having explained natural sites would have to be found for eighteen teeing grounds and eighteen putting greens, so that the features of the land might be utilized as hazards, he said that the total outlay would be about £lOO. Truly has a change come over the, game. I read in recent times of a club that had decided ,to dress its regularly employed caddies in “smart grey uniforms and blue peaked caps.” The matter may be trifling in its way, but it must have presented itself to the mind of many an old-timer as an indication of the beginning of yet another phase of the game of golf. Your true veteran of the game has been regretting for years the steady extinction of that personality of the links, the old-fashioned caddy, who was the guide, philosopher, friend, and, in all but name, master of his employer. With his disappearance something has gone out of golf; something that gave the sport a distinctiveness born of

weird incongruity. For it was wonder- ; ful how that type of caddie, grizzled, gruff, rugged, and occasionally, I fear,, reeking of whisky, could dominate onJ the -course the man of great intellect — and even more wonderful was the satis-; faction- with which the latter would, al- , low himself to be thus dominated. LONDON’S INFLUENCE. ■ That kind of caddie has almost ceased to exist, and there are people who think that his successor, the present-day bearer of burdens in the shape of blubs, willi degenerate as an agent in the match if we start to dress him in uniform, with' brass buttons and peaked cap. He will be of no more use to the player than would be a park-keeper or a railway: porter. And yet the transformation of the caddie is only one of many changes that have come over golf in twenty or thirty years.. The tendency of the game has been steadily in the direction of luxuriousness, and the supreme influence in the production of that trend has been the influence of England in general and London in particular. We may yet see every professional as resplendent as any Beefeater in full array for service. The courses of thirty years ago, except those which were made by nature for golf, were such as would have arous-; ed indignation in the mind of the aver- ■ age Southern player of to-day. The very few, like St. Andrews, Prestwick, and Sandwich, needed little attention; they had endowments of perfect turf and fine hazards and would have satisfied the most sensitive of twentieth century dilettanti. The other courses, the great majority of which often sadly needed attention, received hardly any. The golf of those days was eminently unsophisticated. If the fairway was rough—and it generally was very rough —you did the best you could on it without complaining. Nobody thought of grumbling, because everybody expected to find it rough. • SPARTAN SCOTS.

Years have not altogether quenched that spirit of noble philosophy North of the Tweed. Many of the courses in Scotland are still what the Southern player would call crude and unpolished, but they are the pride and the joy of the locals, who ask for nothing more than to be allowed to play over the ground as they have known it since boyhood. There are, we know, particular golfers in Scotland, just as there are in England; and of really great links there are as many North of the Tweed as South of it. But if we leave out of. consideration the greens by the seaside, and those whose chief raison d’etre is the attraction of visitors, the standard of the courses, one would say, is not nearly so high as in England. That, however, is simply because the. game is. a national necessity in Scotland, while in England it is regarded largely in the light of a luxury. Forty years agd London golf was devoid of embellishment. There were no, palatial club-Jiouses. The only spots: at which the game could be practised were Tooting Common, Chingford, Blackheath, Clapham Common, and Wimbledon Common —all public places. It was as recently as 1892 that the Tooting Bee Club opened the first private course in the Metropolitan district. So golf begaii its. rise in the Sduth, and it has never ceased to progress in an atmosphere of privacy aud luxuriousness. Thirty years ago Sunday golf was virtually unknown in England, and except for a few places where the influence of the visitor predominates, Scotland remains true to the observation of the Sabbath.