THE ENGLISH AMATEUR

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19512, 10 June 1933, Page 14

THE ENGLISH AMATEUR

HARTLEY’S UNLUCKY HOLE One of the most exciting matches in the English amateur championship, when Eric Fiddian, the holder, put out Rex Hartley, ended in a blaze of excitement at the twenty-first hole after a number of remarkable incidents. Both were members of last year's Walker Cup team. At the eighteenth, where the match was all square, Hartley, after cutting his drive into the rough, hit his next shot up against a wire fence guarding a sunken road. Near the ball was a gateway which the referee permitted to be removed, and from this very awkward position Hartley played a miraculous- shot over the wire, but a good way short of the’green.

Meanwhile Fiddian, with an open shot to the green and the match virtually nn his pocket, cut his iron shot away into a bunker on the right of the green. This gave Hartley new hope. He played a beautiful running shot to within six feet of the flag, and holed the putt for a half in 5.

This was a providential escape, but an even more astonishing incident, and one which Hartley will have cause to remember for the rest of his days, occurred at the twentieth. He had played a glorious second shot to v/ithin about four feet of the pin, while Fiddian was over the green. After Fiddian had played his fourth shot, the ball stopping on the lip, the odds were incalculable that Hartley must win the hole. He had two for it, but in some unaccountable way he knocked in Fiddian’s ball for a half in 4. There followed swift retribution, for at the next hole Hartley hooked his drive into the gorse, and was never within sight of a half.

It was a wonderful fight, first one and then the other getting in a shrewd blow. Hartley, for example, squared the match with a 2 at the tenth, where Fiddian knocked his opponent’s ball much nearer the hole. Fiddian drove the green at the fourteenth, a hole of 280 yards, and won it in 3, but Hartley replied by holing a chip shot of twenty yards at the next for an “eagle” 3. And so the match, a desperate business in all conscience, went on to its amazing climax. Hartley had prevously had a tough fight with Alarie de Forest, a brother of the British champion. After a very indifferent display in the outward half, Hartley was 2 down at the turn. He accomplished the next eight holes in the following remarkable figures: 3,4, 3,4, 3,3, 3, 4. Even so he only won three of them, and was 1 up with the last hole to play. Here his mashie shot plunged over the green into the heart of a gorse bush, whence it was impossible to play the ball. He won, however, at the nineteenth, where de Forest was bunkered from his drive, and took two shots to recover.