AMATEUR GOLF STATUS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20786, 22 July 1937, Page 12

AMATEUR GOLF STATUS

TEAM FOR ENGLAND RUMOURS RIFE IN AUSTRALIA More interest is rising about discussions of the amateur team to visit Britain next year than over any other move in Australian golf. Already persistent rumours are current that when announced after the national meeting next September, the team will be a surprise one, writes J. M. Dilon, in the Sporting Globe, Melbourne. Most considered that there are “three certainties.” Some are saying that perhaps only one of these will be in the four. The tales have to do with questions of amateur status (or doubts about it), and proposed stringent medical tests prior to the passing of players as fit for the strenuous tour. Prominent personalities associated with the government of the golf game in both State and National spheres have been very outspoken lately on points appertaining to doubtful practices endangering amateur status. While they insist that they may or may not agree with the regulations governing amateur status, they emphatically state that regulations as they are will be their guide in selecting a team. They will not put Australian golf in any danger of having directed towards it, or any persori officially associated with criticism that cannot be fully answered. Leading amateurs in Great Britain who have mixed golf and business, and have not conformed to the letter of the amateur definition, have been barred from the British amateur championships.

Every golfer in Australia desires that when the team of four is named it will contain the best we have, but they must are laid down for amateur golfers, and be the best eligible. Official limitations are laid down for amateur golfers, and selection to represent Australia is confined to those who strictly conform to these limitations. Cannot Have It Both Ways Other considerations lead any golfers to value up their amateur standing against their business welfare, and they decide to prefer the business side to the purely amateur game with its disadvantages, they are quite entitled to do that, and they are wise in considering their careers in preference to their

golf. But they cannot have it both ways under existing regulations. Above all our governing body, after accepting the invitation of the Royal and Ancient, does not desire to put their hosts in the position of having to debar one of their own guests from participating in,the 1928 British amateur. That St. Andrews is at present very determined to let nothing pass was evidenced last week by the action in warning Miss Pam Barton against taking money for her book which is about to be published. If she does she will lose her amateur status. Things like this have gone unnoted in the past, and it is significant that Miss Barton remarked that she had been advised. by the L.G.U. chairman, and no less an authority than Bernard Darwin,'that she was quite safe on the lines she had worked. If Bernard Darwin, a member of the rules of golf committee, and a former captain of St. Andrews, is not clear on the lengths to which St. Andrews is prepared to go to keep amateurism in golf within rigid regulations, it seems that the ruling body is definitely tightening up in a manner that may surprise many. Many, among whom is myself, feel that any serious attempt to insist on strictly amateur attitudes along lines which were easily maintained in the days before games became such international affairs, is fairly hopeless. They hold that more elastic rather than more rigid regulations are advisable. However, laws are laws and, particularly in golf, they are not made for any other purpose than to be obeyed.