GOLF.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16942, 17 January 1923, Page 3

GOLF.

(CONTINUED FROM PAGE TWO.) Another young golfer who is beginning to show* great promise is Miss Halmai Loughnan. When ploying with the professional last week she drove on to the Pines green, from the ladies’ tee. Some drive ! Miss Glenna Collett, the United States lady champion, lias been presented with a motor-car by her friends in honour of her victory. Miss Wethered ”s success in the ladies” open championship at Princes’ tins year was in a sense a triumph for feminine golf, for she. has proved that a typically feminine game can he do velo]>ed until it reaches at least to the standard of a first-class club player in men’s golf. Miss Leitch. whose ascendancy had boon so lr.ng maintained, is the possessor of a style which, selftaught as it admittedly is. yet consciously or unconsciously derives its chief features from masculine model*. She plays golf like a man and in spite of some obvious handicaps in the matter of temperament, the results of her encounters with even the super-golfers among the ladies, were usually unflattering to the feminine style. Rut that style has at last had its revenge. Even Miss Wethered. however, adopts the masculine tradition in one respect, for she is one of the comparatively few Indies who have successfully adopted the overlapping grip. ; Tt is interesting to note that the two greatest players which ladies’ golf has so far produced should both be unorthodox in their manner of holding the club. Miss Oocil Leitch has always tired the old-fashioned palm grip and Miss Wethered’s grip, though almost universally .adopted by the professionals, has generally been regarded as unsuited to lady players. In pre-war golf Miss Mabel Harrison, the Irish champion, is the only outstanding player one can rememl>er to have employed the true over-lapping grip. Miss Wethered declares that there is li« golden rule in the choice of grip, but eiie thinks that the over-lapping grip presents no necessary difficulty to a lady and that it adds an evenness to | tho hold upon the club, while the hands w ork in greater harmony because they ore closer together. It is an undeni- | ©hie fact that tho mere size of 'each individual player's hands, and particu- ; lniiv the length of the fingers, is an j important factor in the problem. J A great deal has been said about j putting—“ How to Putt,” “ The Cor- i xect Methods,and what-not. Miss ! Wethered is a living example of the | ‘ eye on the ball,” or. in other words, i “ bead stationary.” Hut there is one i other thing that the lady champi’on j does* she hits the ball when putting | The majority of golfers seem willing i to do anything on the green except I hit tlie ball. So many players “ tap ” i the ball towards the hole, others ' ‘ scrape” it. There are a. few who try to squeeze it out from between the blade of the putter and the ground to ! pet it into the hole. Miss Wethered ! ©imply “ hits ” the ballstraight towards i the hole. Her putting style is described as partaking of the nature of her drive. The club is taken back only a short way, of course, but so far as it goes it- is following the same kind of wide arc as her driver does in the full fwing. The result is that for the few inches that it has to travel before ithits the ball the blade of her putting cleek is travelling back and forward along a straight lino which is the continuation of that on which the ball is intended to travel. In this, as in her other shots, the plainness and simplicity of Miss Wetliered’s style makes j the stroke seem absurdly easy, and for j that very roaSon it is an excellent : model to copy. A few years before the war ladies’ golf had begun to get into a rut. The management of tho L.G.U. itself was stiil in the hands of a circle of older people who had done noble work at its institution, but wh’o were no longer abreast of the times. A system of handicapping which had nothing in particular to recommend it except the thoroughness with which it was carried out had been overworked until handicaps generally were far to*o low. Th > consistency with which Miss Cecil Leitch finished firsc or second in open handicap meetings ought of itself to Lave 'been sufficient that there was something wrong, but the. warning went unheeded, and tho inevitable result of these too flattering handicaps was that ladies’ golf foil ink) n. condition of self complacency wholly prejudicial to play. And in fact the play of tho rank and file of the championship entrants was very much worse than it had any right to lx*. Even now it should he better than it is. In spite of one match in which she was taken to the nineteenth hole. Miss Wetliered’s play at Hunstanton f!.\.wo<l that there is still too big ; t gap beween her and even the best of the ether members of the younger school. Hut a great change of spirit has accompanied the drastic revision that has been made in the L.G.U. handicapping eastern. The pleasing feature of the golf at Hunstanton was the number of young players who showed promise of one day rising to Mbs Wethered’s standaid, and were being encouraged to try. They have still a hal’d road to travel, but at least they are not handicapped by am delusion that they have already arrived. We are told that men’s golf lias fallen into exactly the> same state in the ' the war ladies’ golf was 'v before it. Handicaps in r ;os .. .ve fur long b??en too low their handicaps i' mini in- : 1; ; ors have . : the need fcTuiiXovenicut. In clubs Uie

handicapping standard has been raised, so that Uiis source of error is now being rnrmvd, but it still remains that handicaps bulk far too largely in the golfer’s mind, until lie is apt tA> forget that it is his gross score and not his net score that is the measure of his ffkill. There is nothing that peels off a golfer’s illusions about his own game so completely as a card and pencil round without the friendly camouflage of a handicap ! Miss Joyce Wethered, the English lady golf champion, crowned a successful season’s competitive golf with a remarkable success at the Surrey County ladies’ open meeting at Walton Heath, Surrey, when competing in a field numbering nearly 120. She s«» dominated the- fisid. that only the rules ct the competition prevented her taking all the l rizes iu the open and closed compelith::is irom scratch and from handicap m her division.