MIXED GOLF FOURSOMES

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 29, 4 February 1939, Page 4

MIXED GOLF FOURSOMES

ANATHEMA TO'MANY PLAYERS

PLEA OF GOOD FELLOWSHIP NOT SUSTAINED

MIXED FEELINGS OF SECRETARIES

A new season’s fixtures are being arranged. Here and there is raised a voice from the wilderness urging more mixed foursomes. “Let us have more of these get-togethers where we all meet one another,” is the plea. But it is only an isolated one, writes

“Cock o’ the North” in the Sydney Referee. While I feel that there is certainly a case against the mixed foursomes, I don’t subscribe to the sweeping assertion that “no man enters into mixed foursomes deliberately and of his own free will and accord.’* I have distinct recollections of at least one ageing bachelor expressing to his club secretary virtually an ardent desire for a partner. “One selected' for her attractions as a female, please, rather than for her attainments as a golfer.” He really didn’t care how poorly she played, but she must be no wallflower.

Though admitting a modicum of truth in the claim of the late Pv. J. H. Moses that “Club secretaries wish mixed foursomes on you behind your back.” I join issue with him in his further claims that secretaries single out members six months in arrears with their subscriptions or that an unscrupulous friend (?) runs you into one so that he can square off some trouble with his wife over somebody else’s wife! Far from accepting this doctrine of the member in arrears being unable to kick I have found that the cove (and the associate) in arrears can and does kick like blazes. His (and hers) invariably is the voice loudest in fault-finding, and, every club—should a secretary tell? —has its percentage 3 months in arrears. Unraveling Marital Tangles. I Almost every man worth his salt has differences at some time or other jwith his wife. If it is not over some[body else’s wife it is over somebody else’s daughter, sister, or mother.

Should there be something in the suggestion that the mixed foursome has a conciliatory angle calculated to smooth out those vexing rough edges of the eternal triangle problem: That it restores for golfing man fallen prestige at the family hearth and for golfing women the idyll of “Jove in a cottage,” then that maybe the greatest justification for its survival. If it is that the poor old secretary does his damndest to boost up the entry it may only be that he so thoroughly appreciates the position: That whereas 100 men would be out any winter Saturday afternoon the mixed foursome probably would only touch the 80 to 90 mark. That the 50 to 60 regular active playing men who summarily are dismissed from their playing ground for the day will bite his ear—good and hard—sooner or later. That the financial aspect of those 50 to 60 good clubmen who contribute 12 guineas each subscription, and £lOOO in the bar between them having to give way to 40 to 50 Associates at a miserable £4 4s each, and a few afternoon teas is all topsy-turvey.

That those 40 to 50 Associates can play from Tuesday to Friday inclusive all the year round—even allowing Monday as “washing day”—where the ‘breadwinner” has only the weekend for his health-giving recreation. That there’s an awful lot of boloney in the story “sold” by ambitious mothers of eligible daughters, husbands of non-golfing wives, and bachelors of scores of years standing that Mixed Foursomes “do a club good” . . “mix the members up beneficially.’ . . . “spread good fellowship” . . . “cement esprit de corps” . . . “that they are the due of the Associates, anyway, for their work of running the bridge tournament, the annual dance, and for providing the suppers’” Do they really mix? Are Mixed Foursomes fields picked “out of the

hat?” Your secretary knows better than that. No! Mr. and Mrs. SmithSmith play with Mr. and Mrs. JonesJones. In regard to any possibile enhancing fellowship any secretary is aware that the same two couples dine together on Wednesdays, bridge together on Fridays, theatre together on Saturday evenings; that the respective wives shop, tea, and gossip together every Tuesday and Thursday, and motor the kids to the same beach on Sundays. They come to the club together—for mixed foursome—play together, tea or spot together afterwards, and generally stick together till time to go off home in the one car—still together. Commonsense it is that were an out-of-the-hat affair seriously mooted not more than a handful of men, all old enough to know better, would enter, plus some committeemen out of a sense of duty, where permitted by their wives and a hrace of Associates possessed of a life-long ambition to appear in at least one mixed foursome. Club mixed foursomes, as they are, have practically nothing to recommend them, rationally speaking. Strive as they may have through three centuries of the game —clubs have evolved nothing to improve them. And they definitely give an unfair advantage to the single

men and married men with no-golfing wives. After all, it is the member whose wife also golfs who puts the most cash into his club and really he should receive the greatest consideration. A secret ballot of his kin might well find the mixed foursome relegated to Mondays, when the wife is glued (allegedly) to the wash tub, or Fridays, when the husband simply must attend the office, it being payday. Little wonder it is that a club secretary “wishes” the mixed foursomes on its members. Pride in his club and self stirs him. “Well! if we must have mixed foursomes,” is his muse, “then I simply must get a fewout playing. For the reputation of the club—for appearances sake.” Well may all golfers visualise the secrctary-cum-Associate scene. “And who is this man, you say will play with me? Why, I don’t even know him. What is he like? Is ho old or young, short or tall, thin or fat, fair or dark? What does he do? Who is he?” Players Without Handicaps. It is simply staggering how some women blithely enter the club mixed foursome having no L.G.U. handicap, and knowing only too well that she hasn’t any right to a handicap, and