SPORT AND SPORTSMEN.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20440, 19 October 1934, Page 11

SPORT AND SPORTSMEN.

ESg @l] if! t*j gg g; I*; S®SsS SS! IS 'They Just Swing It. “ Time and again many hundreds, leaving the field of an open golf championship. have said, ‘ These star players just take their hands and swing the club head.* There is more to the golf swing than this, but it remains one of golf’s most important fundamentals. Naturally the hands cannot report for work under the following conditions:— (1) When they .are too tightly gripped. (2) When they are incorrectly placed. (3) When the wrists are locked, shutting off all hand power. (4) When the bpdy add shoulders, lurching and lounging, take control. (5) When there is. too much leg and muscle tension.” —Grantland Rice. Putting Cash Into Coll. “ T;Y,S," writes:—A week ago the Victorian Golf Union prohibited Sarazen and Kirkwood from using any golf course ifi the State for exhibition golf, adding. We cannot allow Sarazen and Kirkwood to commercialise the game.” An impartial observer, after reading the following from the Melbourne “ Herald,” of October 3. would have cause for believing that Kirkwood and Sarazen are not the only persons trying to commercialise golf. The paragraph reads: — Victorian enthusiasts have every reason to be gratified over the manner In which those responsible for our golf have planned and completed arrangements to mark Melbourne’s Centenary by a great links carnival. With the solitary exception of racing, no sport is offering more, and actually golf is offering more than racing when the relative ” revenue ” from the events is considered. With £SOOO and two gold cups attached to the Metropolitan meeting, £3OO and a gold cup valued at 150 guineas at Peninsula, £SOO for the international America v. Australia professional match, and this States share of expenses guaranteed for the British amateurs’ tour and their matches. Victorian golf has done admirably. The comparison of the cash reward in racing with the cash reward in golf is significant of a present-day tendency. One can envisage the day when golf courses may have all the atmosphere of the race track with bookmakers calling the odds, tipsters doing a profitable business on the side, and stipendiaries on the look-out for inconsistent running. Already, as a matter of fact, a good deal of wagering goes on in connection with big tournament golf at Home: even amateur events are not immune. Kirkwood and Sarazen, therefore, can be acquitted of the major charge of attempting to commercialise the game. It has already been commercialised. How Shaw Hit Them. By taking the open golf championship of New Zealand for the sixth time and the professional championship for the same number of times, A. J. Shaw, the unattached Wellington professional, proved his right to be regarded as New Zealand’s premier golfer (says a writer in the “ Do- ► minion ”). “Niblick” followed Shaw throughout the four rounds of the open championship. and had hopes each time of recording a record for the course, yet Belmont had a word to say, and in the end Shaw finished up with an average of 4’s for the four rounds, doing 73. 71, 73, 71. This was a sterling exhibition of golf, and the fact that Shaw has to be blamed for not breaking 70' in every round only goes to show what a truly outstanding player he is. The Belmont course is 6111 yards in length, and six of the holes are over 400 yards in length, and seven of them are over 350 yards, yet never once had Shaw to use a wooden club for his second shot. It was a drive and an iron every time. That Shaw did make mistakes at times, and bad ones at that, only goes to prove that even the greatest golfers are not machines. This is one of the charms of the game. JJ Sv M Fuller Coes North. F. S. Fuller, who during the past few seasons has been a conspicuous per former on Wellington Rugby football fields as well as in other parts of the Dominion when on tour as a representative player, has returned to the Wairarapa. where he was brought to light as a player of considerable promise • says the “Post”). After coming to Wellington he added greatly to his exceptional scoring record, built up mainly by his wonderfully accurate placekicking. He scored heavily for the Eastbourne Club, and invariably did well in representative matches, though during the past season he was handicapped a good deal through injuries, which also affected his chance of gaining a place in the New Zealand team. Fuller, no doubt, will play for Wairarapa next season. Gene In the Bunkers. Gene Sarazen, the crack American golfer, who is now amazing Australia, has one peculiarity. He never chips from bunkers. With a big niblick of his own design, he explodes every shot from pits and emphatically says that that is the only way to tackle those shots. When the flag is forty or fifty yards from his ball, he usually gets down in two.

Sarazen’s six woods include a couple of drivers (one a heavy one), brassie, spoon and two rather fiat No. 4 woods —one something like a wooden cleek. Although he had a dozen irons, Sara zen is adept at using the relatively low range wood and seems to prefer it to the longer irons. Asked by one of the gallery in Melbourne. on the first tee when he was loosening up, how far his longest drive had gone, he said, “ That is a hard question to answer. You know I am not a long driver.” Then he let into one which probably went 290 yards. Writing in the “ Star ” from Selangor, in the Federated Malay States, a correspondent says that J. B. Whittaker, a former swimming champion of St Andrews College, Christchurch, won. the 1.P.0.H. Swimming Club’s annual gala on September 10. Whittaker won after a thrilling tussel with O. Watson, the club’s captain. During the afternoon an exhibition of diving was given by E. M. MacDonald, of the Federated Malay State-; Police MacDonald is an Olympic Games representative.