GOLF

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20108, 29 March 1928, Page 3

GOLF

WANGANUI CLUB RESULTS OF MIXED FOURSOMES. Despite the wet weather there was a good muster at Belmont last Saturday for the opening of the 1928 season. Mr and Mrs D. Meldrum headed the list wtih the good score of 3 up, while Miss Wall and Air J. Harold, were second with 2 up. The following are the detailed results:— Mr and Mrs D. Meldrum, 3 up. Miss Wall and J. Harold, 2 up. Miss Christie and C. N. Armstrong, 1 down. Airs Hastings and F. R. Dunsfosd, 2 down. A PERPLEXING PROBLEM SPEEDING UP SLOW PLAYERS TIME LIMIT FOR A ROUND (Specially written for the “ Chronicle ’’ by Harry Vardon, six times Open Champion). From time to time, discussion arises on the subject of those golfers who, by taking a long while over their shots, cause constant irritation to the procession of players in the rear. Complaints under this head seem to have been more than ordinarily rife during the past year or so, and the question attracted unusual attention on tho occasion of last season’s amateur championship at Hoylake. By no means, however, is a lethargic rate of progress peculiar to certain, individuals who aspire to fame, and feel that they can secure it if they concentrate on their preparations for shots to a degree that makes the match a long drawn out test of nervous endurance. There are people who, although they start slowly, are not necessarily overawed by the importance of a national event.

Dr William Tweddell, the winner of the 1927 amateur championship surely qualified for inclusion in this category, lie suited his playing pace to his mood. He began by acquiring a reputation for excessive caution, and finished by hitting the shots as readily as anybody. In championships, there always will bo the players of little experience ar.d big hopes who metaphorically put their backs to the wall and decline to be rushed to destruction. If they are normal in their everyday pursuit of the game, and if they return to normality when they have gained confidence they may be accepted as inevitable examples of what an exceptional occasion will do.

But there are also many golfers in the tranquil paths of club life, golfers with no special ambition beyond that of finding enjoyment and exercise in the pastime, who have cultivated the habit of playing slowly. Moreover, tho habit is catching. If one man reveals it, the chances are that his opponent will become infected by it. It may be unconscious imitation on the part of the rival, or a deliberate policy born of the thought: “I’ll tackle him in his own way-’’ Thus is spread the burden of a general slowing-down in tho playing-pacc, for it is obvious that it needs only one match to develop into a slow-motion duel for all the matches following it to be affected. Time Limits. Somebody suggested recently: not something be done to fix a timelimit for a round? The idea is not revolutionary; there is already a legal restriction of five minutes to the time that may be spent, in looking for a lust bail. For vh u sake of office sociability, 1 oiften have a round with a colleague who has cultivated the practice of taking as long as possible over hi 4 shots. There are plenty like him, and during the crowded week-ends they are taking a lot of pleasure out of the game for the majority.

“All the way round the course, it is like waiting outside the pit-door to go into a theatre. If I meet such a man in a tournament, there is nothing in the rules to prevent him from sitting down at some stage in the match and refusing to go on until ho feels like it. I cannot claim the hole or the match. Suppose somebody had the courage to present, such a situation as a test case in a championship? There is no rule under which the authorities could act to make him proceed with the game. “This may be a reduction of the problem to the ridiculous, but the fact remains that excessive slowness is only a question of degree, and can come down to zero. Why shouldn’t a club have two or three experienced officials at different points of the course on busy day’s to take note of very slow players, and tell them that they are wasting time and must keep pace with other people?’’ Supreme caution is born in some individuals. and it can have its saving grace of being so interesting as not to drive rhe opponent into the doldrums of weariness. Air E. A. Lassen, amateur champion in his day, had his traits in this direction. I am told that before putting he would sometimes walk solemnly to a. bunker and rub the head of his putter carefully in the sand so as to defeat the glint of a strong sun upon it-

He has been known to remove his sho«‘s ami play in his stockinged feet i.f he found himself slipping on sunbaked ground. Dr. Tweddell was seen 'I i mini ng the face of his putter in the Hoylake bunkers; and it was evidence of his hoedfulness that, in his match against Air R- T. Wethered, h e picked up the lighted cigarette which his rival had set down temporarily on one green and handed it back to him.

James Braid at his best would study his putts with a profoundly which nobody surpassed until C. H. Al:.vo cams to the front—and then Mayo, questioned about his deliberativeness said that ho practised it because he had watched Braid, and thought it was the proper thing to do. Tn recent times. Archie Compston has been an example of the slow and yet interesting rather than irritating player. Salvation in More Speed? It would not be fair to rank any of those men among the tortoises of tho links. Lach of them has had the quality of being slower on some occasions than on others, according to the mood of the hour. Tho root of tho question lies with tho players who have become slow from sheer habit; those who never seem to be able to make up their minds which club to take, who waggle to a point of muscular constriction at which they have to stop and begin again, and who. on the putting green, are always looking for invisible loose impediments and slopes that do not. exist. It is painful to think of them as be-

ing at the mercy of two or three club ofncials scattered about the course on busy days, but the fact remains that at present the loiterers have everybody else’s pleasure more or less at their own mercy. Alter all, the slow-move-ment problem of the golf courses is very like the problem of London traffic; it is all a matter of uniformity of pace. Speeding up might conceivably be the very means of an improvement of form which, the slothful golfers are seeking.