CARNOUSTIE GOLF COURSE

Taranaki Daily News, 9 June 1931, Page 5

CARNOUSTIE GOLF COURSE

SCENE OF THE BRITISH OPEN. MANY ANCIENT TRADITIONS. The Carnoustie links, on which the British open golf championship has just been played for the first time, are famous. Carnoustie has two 18-hole courses, one an auxiliary course of comparatively recent construction, where children and long-handicap golfers play, or, at any rate, are expected to play; the other, the medal course, with a long and honoured history, • a course where famous matches were played in the old days of gutta balls and big money stakes, a course that has bred more golfers to the square yard than any golf course in the world, some of them men who have had a big influence on the game. Golf was played thereabouts in the 1500 s, at least it is said of Sir Robert Maule in 1527: “He was ane man of comlie behaviour, of hie stature, sanguine in collure both of hyd and haire, eolarique of nature and subject to suddane anger. ... He had gryt Welyght in haukine and hountine. . . . Eykewakes he exercisit the gowf, and o£t times past to Barry Lynks, quliau tMt wadsie was for drink.” In 1842 th? ground belonged to the Earls of Dalhousie, but golfers were granted the use of it freely. Subsequently a large stretch of ground was acquired for the modest sum of £135(1 on condition that it should be maintained as a golf course for all time. Later another 40 acres were acquired from the Carnoustie House estate. Many great golfens have come from C'arI noustie, and even Bobby Jones inodcl- | led his game on that of Stewart Maiden, a Carnoustie professional, of whom he says: “Tilth best luck that ever 1 had in golf was when Stewart Maiden came f-om Carnoustie, Scotland, to be professional at the East Lake Club. Stewart never gave me a lesson in golf, though he has spent many hours coaching me when I was in a slump with one club or another. I picked up my game watching.him play unconsciously as a monkey and as imitatively. ’ Of Carnoustie course an enthusiast says: “It is a great tract of golfing country with fine turf on a sandy subsoil, high menacing sandhills, a burn meandering in and out which has to be crossed seven times, and a smaller one that you also cross many times, a stretch of links promising high adventure and never disappointing, with one long three-shotter, several line sporting two-shotters, and two short holes, bunkered throughout by James Braid, with fairways of turf s,o soft and velvety as to flatter your wooden club play, and greens so firm and true that their like ‘is hardly to be found anywhere. Carnoustie has variety. It would be but the bare truth to say that there • arc no two holes bearing tho slightest j r emblance to each other. And it has variety in this way, too. It is not a slog out and a slog home, like, for example, sonic of the championship ( courses. You are hardly ever playing s more than two holes in one direction, I and so if there is a wind you are pre-

sented with an ever-changing problem. The holes run to all quarters—north, east, south and west.” It is a 6701-yard course, 3328 out, with 36 par, and 3373 home, par 36. The holes and pars are as follow: 401 (4), 418 (4), 321 (4), 365 (4), 363 (4), 5” (5), 376 (4), 146 (3), 417 (4), 406 (4), 352 (4), 407 ,(4), -135 (3), 473 (5), 424 (4), 235 (3), 428 (4), 453 (5).