U.S. WILL OPPOSE FLOATER BALLS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18450, 28 April 1928, Page 7

U.S. WILL OPPOSE FLOATER BALLS.

COURSES REDUCED TO DRIVES AND PITCHES, DECLARES CHAMPION

BY WALTER HAG EX

(American Professional Golf Champion).

Officials of the United States Golf Association would like to see the wooden club shot brought back into golf. About the only use long hitters have for a wooden club now is off the tee. Even the midiron is seldom used, the number three iron, the mashie or mashie niblick being the clubs usually needed by scratch players to reach the greens with second strokes. Leaders in British golf are dead against the present balls, and I have it on the best authority that before the British championships are contested this spring the Royal and Ancient of St Andrews may rule fin favour of the floater ball. The British don’t .care for it when Bobby Jones shoots Sunningdale in 66-88, and then goes around St Andrews in nothing. Whatever the British do, the United States will never go back to the floater. But it probably will do something to stop the present conflict among the manufacturers to produce such longflying balls, which reduce the courses to drives and pitches. I believe that W. C. Fownes, jun., former president of the United States Golf Association, favours a ball which would be in between the floater and the longest of the present day balls. It is a fact that the long hitters have practically no use for the brassie off the fairway. J. Wood Platt. Philadelphia amateur tells me the present ball has reduced Merion and Whitemarsh, two fine Philadelphia courses, to drive and pitch shots, and ,1 know of a great many courses which are in the same fix when the players who carry heavy artillery start working on them.

Difficult Strokes Eliminated. There is no doubt the most difficult strokes in golf are long seconds, with number two irons, midirons or wooden clubs, and that these strokes have been largely eliminated from golf. It is not especially taxing to hit a mashie or mashie-niblick to a green and hold it, but ifr is another matter to play a long iron or wooden club shot to the green. The tremendous improvement in golf balls is nowhere better demonstrated than at the first hole of the old course at St Andrews. The green is guarded by the famous swilcan burn, and when golf was * first played there it required two good strokes to carry this burn and reach the green.

In this age long hitters drive nearly to the burn, aqfi have nothing but a chip shot to the unless the wind is dead against them.' The average golfer gets home with a drive and mashie or mashie-niblick.

The varlue of thousands of golf holes has been affected the same as the first at St Andrews, by the far-flying balls. In the last amateur championship at the Minikahda Club, Minneapolis, there wasn’t a single hole Bobby Jones couldn’t reach in two strokes. The par four holes were all reduced to drives and pitches, and the par five holes were reached with two wooden club strokes. Drive and Pitch Championship. Even the famous Oakmount course in Pittsburgh, over which the last open championship was held did not present opportunity for long seconds at par. four holes with the exception of the fifteenth, when there was no following wind. The players were able to get home at two of the three par five holes in two. Unless the tees are set back, Olympia Fields, in Chicago, where the next open will be played, will be a drive and pitch championship. In playing exhibition golf over hundreds of courses, I don’t find use for a wooden club except off the tee for one in fifty par four holes. If the British go back to the floater, this will serve to arrest American interest and participation in the Old Country championships. The British Walker Cup team comes to Chicago this summer, and officials of the Royal and Ancient will be along. The ball question will be threshed out at that time, and perhaps some international agreement will be reached. A standard ball, with not quite the present carrying power, is in the offing for championship play. But the average player, out for the fun of it, will probably alwavs patronise the long-flying ball. (Copyright 1928 in all countries by N.A.N.A.)