TWO GAMES COMPARED

Taranaki Daily News, 23 July 1931, Page 3

TWO GAMES COMPARED

GOLF AND LAWN TENNIS. QUESTION OF SOCIABILITIL The following interesting article, making a comparison between the games of golf and lawn tennis, was penned by an American tennis writer: — Amateur baseball having definitely fallen off in popularity, golf and lawn tennis are the two games which attract the millions. In the last decade or two golf has made greater progress than lawn tennis. Much more money is invested in the club-and-ball game than in that which has a racquet for its symbol; and the total number of golfers, who near the beginning of the century certainly did not equal the tennis players, is now considerably the larger—probably by as much as one-half.

This is true of private and public links and courts combined, although public parks tennis players are considerably more numerous than'public parks golfers. In another respect there has been a change. The number of young golfers has increased enormously and, to a considerable extent, at the expense of the ra'cquet game, and especially among the well-to-do classes. • This summarisation of the matter refers to the United States, although the same tendencies are noticeable in many other countries. Yet tennis, has not gone backward nor even stood still. There are sections where the game is in the doldrums, just as there are others where it is live and vigorous and steadily going ahead.

The good, bad and indifferent sports may be found in the same state. There, are cities and towns where the game, popular a few years ago, is moribund; just as there are other areas where there' is much more tennis played than there was a decade ago. When a balance is struck it will usually be found that people of means and leisure are more active in golf, automobiling and kindred sports than they are in tennis; yet there are exceptions to this, and fashionable localities are not infrequently strong for tennis. Golf is a social game, just as tennis is, to a large extent, an unsociable one; golf is leisurely, loquacious; tennis is active, full of combat, niggardly of speech. The points of dissimilarity are numerous, and plenty of people find in one game just the things that fail to attract them in the other. Tennis is immeasurably the more strenuous of the tw'o games, and it requires physical and mental fitness and stamina, on an average, far beyond anything that is possible in golf ~ Golf, and pretty good golf, can be enjoyed when a player is very far from being up to the mark, whereas tennis, of a worthwhile kind, would be utterly out of the question. Even the seasoned tennis player who may once have enjoyed a good ranking, knows full well tltat he must keep fit or the joy of the game will be succeeded by a feeling of dissatisfaction during the game and a bad time afterward. Either the victim of such an experience buckles down to work and “becomes lit again, or he bows to the seemingly inevitable —and seeks an easier

game. Another great advantage is possessed by golf. As the average golfer is older and better off than the average tennis player, so he is much more apt to engage in what may be termed benevolent propaganda. He welcomes young players, makes their golfing ways smooth, mixes business with the game, makes if plain that golf is a worth-while, sport to the man who wants to make his way in the world. Employers and their friends enjoy having as guests young employees who have “the makings” of good golfers. Golf is very far ahead of tennis in this propaganda work. The young man and sometimes the young woman—keen to get on in the world, finds golf a much fairer prospect than tennis. He can get more time off to play golf, acquaintances are made more quickly and numerously, the path is smoothed in a score of ways. Very often the preference is for tennis, viewed as a game, but the solid advantages are on the side of golf. Consequently most of the young people choose the easier way and are lost to tennis —-for there are no half-way measures about that game. ~ . Yet lawn tennis to employ the formal and correct name, is even more universal than golf, and it flourishes, like unto the •rreen bay tree, wherever men and women play games. Tennis retains its popularity in the old strongholds—the homes of the English-speaking races; yet the non-English races have come in enormously and . brought to the game an eagerness and spontaneity that transcends all bounds.

A level plot of ground, a net of sorts, two players with racquets and balls—these are all that is needed; and it is small wonder that there is no closed season, no time of the day or night when, all over this terrestrial sphere, almost countless thousands of tennis lovers can not be found tasting the joy of mimic warfare and the delight of rapid motion in the great outdoors.