GOLF

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18578, 28 September 1928, Page 7

GOLF

THE ROYAL AND ANCIENT GAME OF

MX

“SLICE.”

Some Sidelights on Hose Bay Contest

Referring to play in the Australian championships, a writer in the Melbourne “Herald” says;— Says Grantland Rice: “Few understand the strain of a golf championship over 72 holes of medal play. There is nothing else in sport that, tears so deeply into the nerves, and this nerve pressure in turn has a direct bearing on the digestive organs. As a result in the closing stages, those still with a chance to win arc about half sick from nerve exhaustion and stomach disorders on the last day.” In the Australian championships, whjoh concluded at Rose Bay on Saturday, there was not only the 72 holes for the “open,” but right on its heels followed, for those who got to the final of the “amateur,” eight rounds of gruelling match play. A. D. S. Duncan, aged 53, and C. H. Fawcett, aged 47, fell heavilv bv the way. and two youths, Len Nettlefold, aged 22, and Arthur Keane, aged 19,

were left to fight out the final battle.

Alex Russell, cynic of the links, brilliant golfer, winner of our greatest golf crown in 1924, was among those given a real chance of winning the 192 S open, and was one of the favourites for the national amateur. Drawn with Ilarry Sinclair in the

first round, he completed the star pair from the onlookers’ point of view, and the crowd went out to see

them. I never saw a first-class golfer look more like a beginner. He sliced and niblieked his way round in such a way that his net score, had he been on the 18 mark, would have been 3 strokes worse than the best off the stick score of the day. Naturally he wanted to pack up and go home right away. Duncan Terrified. There was Arthur Duncan, ten times amateur champion of New Zealand, several times open champion, the greatest golfer the Dominion has produced and undoubtedly one of the finest amateurs in the game. With all his experience—perhaps in his 40 years of golf, he has had too much experience, or perhaps one can never be an experienced golfer—he was terrified by every short putt. His long game was all that could be desired. Long putts he could put right up near the hole. But a radius of a yard round the cup seemed for him to-be a deadly danger zone. As soon as his ball was in that, area he could not control, himself. He seemed utterly helpless to tap that ball cleanly at the hole. It was almost pathetic to hear of this brilliant golfer, when after the Nettlefold match his brotljer asked him why he did not do this or that to improve his putting. “You don’t understand, Ken,” he said. “I tried everything, but as soon as I tried to putt I was helpless,” and he gesticulated with his hands and head to indicate that the mending of the trouble was beyond him. This golf seems a wonderfulb' easy game—to watch ! Ilarrv Sinclair was noted throughout. Australian golf for his apparent iipperturbablc attitude and cheerful grin, no matter how- things were going. Winning or losing, it was his custom to saunter along and then hit the ball with the sureness a child displays in finding the right place to deposit a sweet. Sinclair started a hot favourite for the championship, but at one -stage of the last round who saw him told me Sinclair’s characteristic “don’t care” attitude suddenly and surprisingly dropped from him, and a couple of missed shots undoubtedly “got undpr his skin.” He'lost the championship, and some attribute it to this unexpected change of attitude at a vital stage. Fred Popplewell has never enjoyed a reputation for being impervious to influences outside the game. lie. is undoubtedly highly strung, and does not possess what is generally considered the ideal temperament. But “Pop” has a power of will that is unrivalled in golf. He dertemindedly set out to concentrate on that championship to the utter exclusion of all other things. He had the golf, and the concentration did the rest. Had the greens at Rose Bay been truer or had “Pop’s” luck been a little better with the putts, he could comfortably have beaten Joe Kirkwood's record total of 290. In his 295 he had 3 one putt greens, 11 three putts, and a couple of s’s at par 3 holes. Wandering round the links in a completely new role for him, with his left arm in a sling and his wrist in plaster of paris, was Ivo Whitton, unable to play by reason of the injur}' received in Queensland. By the great form that

he had shown earlier in the. season he shared with Sinclair favouritism for the event prior to his being put out of action. All the time he was about, acting as referee, steward or in any other capacity he could help. Probably Whitton will not play again this year. Following every match in which Len Nettlefold played was his pal, T. A. Field, the clever young Launceston player. Nettlefold was in a few tight corners on his way to victory, but the brilliant young left-hander never appeared in the least worried. He had the same even swing in his walk, the same cheery look, and the same gentle follow through on the innumerable occasions that he deposited his pipe on the turf before making his shots. It was otherwise with Field Every sensatioft of concern, pleasure, comfort or fear that Nettlefold, had he not been the coolest character in our golf, could have been expected to register, was shown by Field.

The major humour of the position was, that when things looked worst, even in that impossible looking situation when Fawcett was 5 up and 7 to play, it was Nettlefold who came along and cheerily and banteringly bucked up Field when the latter was in a serious state of mind. It was a fact. ii think, that Nettlefold got a lot of fun throughout the matches by watching the reflection of his own and his opponent’s shots on ( the susceptible Tommy Field. But I believe Field, even in the Fawcett case, had very firm confidence in the ability of his friend to come through successfully. :: Slow-Motion Golfers. The playing pace has again been much under discussion in recent weeks on account of the appearance in public competition of Mr Erl Watson, a young Glasgow golfer of pronouncedly deliberate habits, says the “Weekly Scotsman.” He was subject of comment in the Scottish Amateur Championship at Muirfield in July; talk was revived when he turned up in the Eden event. If Mr Watson had been merely a notoriety seeker, he could not have had a better draw for the qualifying play. His partner for the qualifying play was Mr Carr Brown, who expressed his view of slow methods by starting off in the tournament with a large deck chair, especially carried for him in his equipment. Greatly daring, he unfolded the chair and sat in it while Mr Watson prepared for and eventually played his strokes. This comedy—not, one may say, desirable ,in any competition. and not to be emulated—took place in heavy. rain, and when Mr Brown's chair got too wet for comfort he gave up the idea. Mr Watson takes three and a half hours to do eighteen holes, and as he gets along pretty quickly between strokes it will be seen that he spends a lot of time over the hitting of the ball. He has to concentrate, and that comprises walking ahead to spy out the line, picking up odds and ends from the ground, taking practice swings, having manv addresses, looking a dozen times from ball to hole on the greens, and so on. If the practice were to grow it would not be practicable to conduct tournaments at all in any reasonable time. It is to be hoped that 'Mr Watson and his kind will, for the sake of themselves and other people, try to speed up. Otherwise they will usher in an era when we shall have to play every hole by the clock and somebody will be there to see that wc do it. The Ideal Husband. The golfer is the ideal husband (declares H. V. Morton in the “ London Daily Express”). He is a man of steady habit and' fine patience, otherwise he could not play the game. He is a man of some substance, otherwise he could not afford to play it. He has made some position for himself, otherwise he could not disappear from his work with such frequencj-. He is generally a man of highly desirable age, a man from whom the fret and fever of youth have departed, for golf is the malady of the mature. Observe how rashly the good things of life are squandered in one place! As if this catalogue of qualities were not sufficient he possesses that ideal attribute in a husband—a genius for disappearance!

Some men love their homes with a concentrated and adhesive passion, which induces, in some women, a desire to scream, to run away, to swear, to drink, to be beaten, and ill-used. Such unfailing loyalty to that which is theirs, such suffocating satisfaction with life, such a tender concern with all the intimate details of domestic life, and, above all, such unbearable übiquity, cause men of this type to be appreciated onlv when they have taken their first and last long journey from home.

It is not strange that women do not love the perfect man. Perfection leaves nothing to the imagination. How often, I wonder, have women prayed in the secret depths of their hearts that, their husbands might develop small vices? Now the golfer produces all the phenomena of vice without becoming vicious. He is away from home as carelessly and as often as the philanderer. Yet in all the long records of the Divorce Court has there been one co-respondent cited as “a golfer?” There has not! Golfers are the most moral of men. They are debunkered of passion. Then again, the temper of a golfer is as uncertain as that of a drinker. His generosity when flushed with victory is as sudden and magnificent as that of a man who is trying to soothe a conscience.

Add to this the astonishing fact that the golfer is impervious to boredom (otherwise he could not play golf), and you have a man who will not ’only never revolt against marriage; but will also bring to that adventure all the qualities that compose happiness

Hawke’s B*ay Champion. FI. B. Lusk, veteran golfer and great I match player, followed up his success in the Rotorua championship by winning the Hawke’s Bay championship. At Rotorua he had a very close match in the final with the ex-professional, Morrice winning 1 up. At Napier, however, Lusk overwhelmed his opponent, O. S. Geddis. He was brilliant in the first 18 holes, which he finished 7 up and he went on to win 11 and 10. Lusk will be missed from the New Zealand championship meeting at Balmacewen, he finding it impossible to attend the tourney this year, ss A "Toaser.” Complete as the rules of golf sometimes appear to be, some unsual circumstance is continually cropping up which is not covered by the existing law, and a real “teaser” has just been submitted by a Manchester club to the powers-that-be at St Andrews (says an English journal). During a round a player’s ball became almost buried in clay of unusually thick consistency in a bunker. Railing up his sleeves, he descended into the depth of the trap and hit the ball a mighty swipe. It did not, however, sail smilingly over the face for the simple reason that it was firmly embedded in a piece of clay, which was just as firmly stuck to the face of his niblick! What, then, was the next step? Should he have walked to the. green and shaken the ball off his niblick into the hole, or should he have taken another club and played the ball : off the face of the niblick, which might have resulted in transferring the prob- J lem from one club to another? A wag, asked what he would have.done under similar circumstances, replied, “I should have gone home.” And that seems just about the best and happiest solution!