SOME ASPEOTS OF GOLF.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXX, Issue 11921, 18 July 1906, Page 4

SOME ASPEOTS OF GOLF.

A sharp distinction, 6o far the th» hygienic value of golf is concerned, has to be drawn between golf and cricket, football, racing, and many other sports, for when a man tells you he is fond of golf, he means that ho is fond of playing it. When a man says he is fond of any of these others, in nine cases out of ten he merely means that he is fonjd of looking on at them. He would as soon think of going into the wrestling arena with Hackcuschmidt as of putting \iis head into a football scrummage or his leg across a racehorse. The man who "goes golfing" does not go with a pair of field-glasses slung across his back, but with a set of golf clubs. It is likely enough thai* the latter has quite as good a day from the economic yoint of view as the former; it is quit© certain that he has a far better day from the point of view of his Jiealth. The financial injury inflicted by golf on doctors can only be equalled by the financial benefits to the shareholders in life assurance companies, many a man continuing to toddle round the links and pay hi« premiums regularly who would, long ago, but for the healthful influence of golf, have toddled down to the last bunker and left his executors to call in the sum for which he was insured. It is a thesis ! which might bo elaborated in almost endless detail if one were to dwell on the many incidental advantages which come in tho train of improved health— the better temper, the better head and vigour for business, and all the rest. The fall «en«e of the word "health" implies them. The golfer has done service to others who are nut golfers in a way which is' more direct than by the simple improvement of his own temper and his quality as a social being. Even for this those who are not golfers should be a little grateful; but what should appeal to their gratitude with a greater and more direct force, says the London Spectator, is the fact that the golfer (for his own selfish ends in the first instance, no doubt) has been the means of saving many a beautiful open stretch of country from the hands of the builder. Doubtless all that ho does is not always in the direction of adding to tho beauties of Nature. Tlie bunkers with which he has obstructed certain coupes as industriously, and assuredly with quite aa little of an eye to beauty, as the beaver obstructs rivers with its dams, are not lovely objects; the golfer himself, on those courses which are on common land, is sometimes known to have, in the absorption of his game, in a manner which indicates some momentary oblivion of that courteous consideration which is due even to those meanest of his fellow-beings who are not golfers. A lady has been known to come in from a walk on one of such courses inspired to observe epigrammatically that o^n the gof links the best of men cea«« to be human. It is to be feared that the epigram has fully as much justification ac it needs. At the same time, while making th<> concession, we can in justice claim for the golfer that, on the balance, he makes the world better than it would have been without him.