GOLF

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 72, Issue 90, 16 April 1929, Page 5

GOLF

CHAMPIONS’ TRIALS CROWDS THAT TROUBLE. A MOB OF TEN THOUSAND. [Specall written for the “Chronicle” by Harry Vardon, six times open champion.] It is interesting- to learn that 2\lac<lonald Smith, the former Scottish golfer who is now a naturalised American, has entered for the British open championship, which takes place at Mnirficld, East Lothian, in May. He says that he is a certain starter. He has withdrawn the declaration which he made at Prestwick four years ago that never again would he compete in his native country. Certainly the crowd tried him highly, but it is good that time has healed the sore feelings with which ho went back to his adopted land. Mac Smith .as lie is called,‘is an extraordinarily line golfer. In truth, I have never seen a better. And I happened to have the chance of judging his virtuies long before he made a name for himself He was playing immediately behind me in an American open championship, and the way in which his iron shots kept buzzing up to the pin and stopping there directly I had left the green made me remark sevc u.l times: “Whoever it is that is hitting those shots ought to "win this championship.” And he was so little known that nobody could identify him.

I dare say that Mac Smith would have won several national titles if circumstances had not detached him completely from the game for some years at an important stage of the golfing lifo. He has been striving since to make up the leeway, and, at the age of 37, is not too old to succeed. But his temperament will have to adapt itself to big crowds. Everybody who has Avon championships knows that a surging multitude of spectators can be a big trial, but that, rightly or wrongly, it has to be taken as part of the game. Nor has the imposition of a half-crown charge for admission solved the problem entirely. Quitting the Arena. Still, the crowds are better now than they used to be. Circumstances reached r very had pass when, in 1925, Miss Joyce Wethered and Miss Cecil Leitch contested the final of the ladies’ championship at Troon with an uncontrollable mob of 19,000 people rushing hither and thither all the afternoon. But they were even worse in the open championship on the neighbouring Prestwick links a month later. Mac Smith went back to America protesting that the crowd prevented him from winning after he had gained a lead of five strokes from his nearest rivals at the end of three rounds, and needed only a modest last round of 78 to secure the title. It has taken him. all this time to recover from the trial. I believe that Miss Wethered stated immediately after her ordeal that she had made up her mind never again to take part in championships. Robert Maxwell came to a similar decision when he was still at the zenith of his career as a first-class amateur golfer . ' Mac Smith said, on the evening of his failure at Prestwick; “I would have kept coming over until I won, but I did not think a crowd in Scotland would have behaved as they did.” It is sincerely to be hoped that time will tempt Miss Wethered to emerge from the retirement which she has imposed upon herself. It is in the interests of a game that the highest possible standard should be set, since every player is inspired by it, and the better her or she plays the greater is the pleasure that the pastime affords.

Miss Wethered has set a wonderful standard in ladies’ golf and in spite of all the triumphs that she has achieved, she is still only in <he early days of her on the links. It would be a thousand pities if she were to find contentment in final seclusion just when other countries are producing challengers of unexampled skill for supremacy in ladies’ golf, such as Miss Glenna Collett, of America, and Mlle. Simone Thion de la Chaume and her sister-in-law, Mme. Robert de la Chaume (formerly Mlle, de la Blan) of France. The Intimate Touch. Still, to maintain their value as tests, the championships must be made tolerable for the players as well as exciting for the onlookers. George Duncan told me plaintively at Prestwick that the crowd kept on dashing up to him, slapping him on the back, and making some such remark as ‘‘Stick it, George!” As he said, it would not be considered the correct thing in cricket if, with Jack Hobbs well set in a test match, the crowd had free access all the while to the pitch and could dance around him between the overs, giving him congratulatory pats ami enjoining him: “Conic on Jack, let’s have another century from you.’’ Popular Shows. The crowds at championships in Scotland have always ben troublesome, because they are very large. Excursion trains are run at astonishingly cheap lares; and thousands of people with nothing to do, and knowing little if anything about the etiquette of golf, pour on to the scene. How long this phase of the problem will last nobody can say, but while it exists the championships must be held on courses where entry can be restricted to followers who have a proper interest in the proceedings. In one instance, Mac Smith was mistaken, I think, in his criticism of the crowds. He said: “When .1 missed a putt, some of them cheered.” What happened was that Abe Mitchell, playing on a green close by (several of the greens at Prestwick are virtually continuous), holed a long putt just as Smith missed a short one, and it was from Mitchell’s following that the. cheer arose. The crowds are not unsporting.