The Lady on the Links.

Timaru Herald, Volume LXXXII, Issue 12796, 30 September 1905, Page 3 (Supplement)

The Lady on the Links.

(By a Mere Man.)

With the tennis girl, swimming girl, hockey girl, and a large number of other fairy well defined types we have been long familiar; but the lady on the links—or the golfing girl—is of a more pronounced individuality than any of them. Of all the girls in the world she is the most desperately serious. As she stand? upon that little levelled patch of turf which golfers ca"l a tee, and toys with her driving club in a manner that is threatening to the little white ball, she is a dainty and stimulating sight, and the ugly little caddie in attendance upon her with a big bag of gleaming implements only helps by contrast to set off her charms, just as if he -were a little Caliban and she Miranda. Not so long ago this young lady was tlie gentlest tennis girl, and the most demure that you would meet with on a dozer, courts, with a delightful tasto in summer gowns and a common inclination to stop her game and talk at tea. But now the strings of her racquet are limp and broken, she wears a loese, rough costume which will stand any amount of rain and mud, and is specially designed to give the .utmost freedom of movement—a most essential thing for good golf—and slie cares nothing for tea or conversation until she has ho'ed out on the eighteenth green. Everything else in life is made subordinate to the game, for, just like any man, she, too, has caught the fever. Many of these queens of the links sorrowfully admit that one of the drawbacks of the "game is that it enlarges the hands and* feet! But this doesn't matter. The sun and the rain and the exposure to all weathers are declared to ruin the complexion of the golfing girl. Nor does this matter.

But this golfing' girl wi : l yet have to fight for her existence as Guch, and in the battle" the man golfer is not to be counted always as her friend. It seems probable that within the next five years the position of the lady in the fast expanding world of golf will need to be definitely settled. There is not much congestion oq the links

■in this country as yet, but come it must, as it has done upon the suburban links of London and on many of those in the couti- | ties. Golf, says the brute—l mean the man—is not a lady's game, and already they grumble at their presence,- and even, in their most ungallant moods, declare roundly that they are a nuisance. To a, man the fact of watching his ball soaring upwards and onwards until, exhausted after a glorious journey, it drops towards the earth again a full two hundred yards away I from the tee, is an ecstatic pleasure which to most ladies must be for ever denied. There are exceptions, of course, but this distance is not to be driven by the besti of lady golfers more than a few times in a season. J. H. Tavlor used to sav, iu the days of the o'd gutty, that if a"ladv could drive fiom 130 to 150 yards she should be well satisfied, aud giving her ten yards more for the rubber-cored ball this is still a drive which has nothing of that beautiful soaring length about it which gives the golfer standing watching on the tee that ineffable sense of tingling, delighted nerves which is one of the richest things in a sportsman's life.

New even the ladies would admit that having a course of their own—as th-ev certainly will—where they may plav a "game of their own, and set "their"own "standards of excellence, would have seme considerable advantages. In the reorganisation of their game they could adopt a new golfing vocabulary which would meet- with a longI felt want. Golf, as a great- many of us know, is at times a very exasperating game. , which is apt to provoke a torrent of in- , vectire from even the mildest-mannered Bap. Seme people declare that they have heard golfers use unparliamentary language when accidents have happened at a critical stags, and although these - allegations can|not be substantiated by-reference to any standard work on the game it is not whollv impossible that there is some, germ of trutli j in them, particularly as we find a reverend gentleman in England advising all his brother ministers who tramp the links tin week days to reserve their strong language for the Sabbath. It is asserted that in a certain Presbyterian club in "the North of England there is a printed notice which runs, " Members are requested not to swear in the hearing of young caddies." But what young caddie is cot experienced and old in this line? 'Tis passing strange that such a notice should be necessary in a Presbvterian club, but then, no doubt, it- is composed of members all like the meenister who, haying taken three ineffectual strokes in a bunker, murmured piteously that he must " gie it up." " Nonsense, you mustn't give up a good game like this," his opponent protested encouragingly, whereupon the good man observed, "I wasna' thinking of the game; but I must give up'the meenistry."

These reflection upon golfing speech may not be true; but if they are they indicate a general tendency which must place the fair sex at some disadvantage. Quite lately the minister of a fashionable church in HallNova Scotia, declared that information had reached him that women who go to church on Sunday go to golf on Monday and " swear like troopers!" (Oh! the wretches.) Here, indeed, was a specific allegation of a terrible character. English ladies at once retorted that that was quite likely considering the very bad game that the American ladies played. Here in happy iTew Zealand, thev say, there is no provocation to make'use of such unladylike speech, although they admit they sometimes say—at- Jacob's ladder—" Dash 1" and " Oh, you naughty, tiresome little bill!" Altogether it is understood that- the'golfing girl is perhaps the most original type of femininity that exists to-day, and it- is from her advance in originality and her zeal that the trouble will arise; -but I speak, let- it be remembered of the future. She I will sacrifice the most delightful dream of ! a hat to have the pleasure of " going round" in one less than her previous best. Her old tennis friends sigh like the Pharisees and say that she is lost. But she knows.— (Auckland " Herald.")