GOLF IN AMERICA

Taranaki Daily News, 28 November 1934, Page 7

GOLF IN AMERICA

EXCELLENTLY WELL-KEPT LINKS. MAKING GAME LESS STRENUOUS. Golfers in America might well be envied by devotees of the Royal and Ancient game at New Plymouth, according to Mr. C. C. Ward, who returned this week with his wife after a visit to America and England. “It is no wonder Americans play excellent golf,” he said. “The links there are really beautiful golf parks, except for the hazards and bunkers, with the grass cut short from tee to green. It is mown smooth as a lawn so that one cannot tell where fairway ends and green begins.” At some of the tees, he continued, there were pretty little shelter sheds and the tees themselves were of plastered concrete. Many fairways were divided by rows of tall trees planted 30 or 40., feet apart. They gave delightful shade from the scorching sun and an acurate driver could walk from stroke to stroke in the coolness.

The bunkers were evenly raked or flattened, often very shallow, and they did not seem difficult to play. Golfing under such favourable conditions could not be nearly as strenuous as the game at New Plymouth, and a man could do his 36 holes there and still be fresh. He was not surprised to see golfers everywhere on the links. “There would be no time wasted there in searching for lost balls in long grass or climbing barbed wire fences,” he added. “The one redeeming feature about the matter is that perhaps if golfing were as easy at New Plymouth we would not find it so fascinating. We might all become experts and nothing else.”