EFFECT ON GOLF

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIV, Issue 21064, 16 June 1938, Page 9

EFFECT ON GOLF

Big Prize Money Raising the Standard How does the average club golfer benefit from the great professional competitions such as the £2OOO “Daily Mail” tournament won by Alfred Perry at Newcastle-on-Tyne? asks a writer in the “Daily Mail." This question may quite naturally arise in the mind of the long-handicap week-end golfer, who rarely plays with, or takes coaching from, his club professional. But what that club member probably does not realise is the vast improvement which has been noted in the standard of play of the British professional golfer in the past few years. And this improvement cannot fail to be passed on to the amateurs who avail themselves of tile expert’s tuition. Until the “Daily Mail” tournament was revived three years ago there was no golf contest in which the holing of a single putt, the playing correctly of a single stroke meant a year’s Income to a player. This tournament has, naturally, engendered an entirely new aspect of the game in the minds of professionals. It has helped them to overcome that inferiority complex from which they suffered so badly for many years. Britain, in fact, has retained the Open championship—which at one time seemed the prerogative of United States golfers—since the “Daily Mail" tournament has been running again.

Watch on Opponents Professional golfers to-day are encouraged by the prizes, which in the various British tournaments total nearly £15,000 in a year—the biggest being the £5OO first prize in the “Daily Mail” tournament. They realise that they must know everything possible about the game and train seriously if they are to have the slightest chance of success. In the tournaments themselves they watch most carefully every tiny change of style on the part of their rivals, ever eager to spot anything that may help them to improve their game. The good effect of this keenness and concentration is bound in the end to be felt by all golfers. The great tournament players are now learning in the hardest school, that of experience. And the better they succeed in the big contests the more valuable becomes their teaching. There is one thing which impresses itself more and more on my mind as I watch the great tournaments, and that is the tremendous value in golf of what we will call, for want of a better term, the “match temperament.” Golf demands such extreme concen- I tration that the player with a keen imagination suffers agonies. When Henry Cotton, the Open champion, is playing in a big tournament one hears remarks about his tense, drawn features, and his forbidding appearance. But Cotton is working at the game which is his profession, and concentrates all his energies on each stroke. In contrast to Cotton, there Is Alfred Padgham, a former Open champion, who appears to be enjoying every moment when he takes part in a tournament; or Alfred Pe r ry, who relieves his pent-up feelings in the physical energy of his crashing drives. Terrifying Putts It is a remarkable think that the almost childishly simple act of striking a ball on the putting green a distance of two feet into a hole four times the diameter of the ball can terrorise normally calm men. Even the victorious Perry hit a phase when his calm concentration and detachment seemed to be failing him. You will have read how he found it almost impossible to putt until a cinematograph camera operator some forty yards away silenced the whirring machine. The effect of that small incident, which occurred on the last green in his morning round, was still evident two hours later when Perry began his second round badly. Not until he had < regained control of himself did he prevent his winning lead from completely disappearing. There comes the time inevitably in all big tournaments when success or failure depends on one, frequently simple, stroke, and # t lr. the man who can remain completely detached and unmoved in the tense drama of such a moment who wins. The calm of -he star professionals when surrounded by a vast gallery is a lesson to all those temperamental amateurs who are put ( off their game by the colour of their . caddie’s tie.