GOLF.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLI, Issue 10, 2 September 1908, Page 12

GOLF.

Writing of the recent matches in the Old Country, Mr. Horace Hutchinson, a well-known authority on the game, says that all who saw the play were of ons poinion concerning Taylor, “who has quite recovered that wonderful accuracy in his opinion concerning Taylor, who has recovered that wonderful accuracy in his approach strokes which made him so nearly invincible at one time. He showed this facility of laying the ball dead with his mashiei again and again in ths French championship, in the match wherein he defeated Vardon at the opening of the Harewood Downs course, and in the competition which he won, chiefly by virtue of a wonderful first round, at Lancaster. And I think that this approaching of Taylor's is worth something more than a mere distant and respectful attention. I think that it is worthy of some pious study and imitation, and, moreover, that it is well worth a man’s trouble to read what Taylor has to say about it both in his other writings and about i, both in his other writings and more especially in his “Golf Faults Hlustrated,” because he is a man who seems to understand his own methods, and I to understand his own methods, and I belive that those methods can be copied and the disciple’s game improved by the copy. But his driving counsels and putting suggestions no man, unless built on Taylor’s stalwart pattern (in which case the former may have some possible value for him) need worry about. “It was a golfer of a generation earlier than Taylor's, Jamie Anderson, namely, who delivered himself of the dictum that ‘there is no putting in first-class golf.’ What Anderson meant by his was that the first-class golfer ought to lay his approach so near the hole, that he ought to hole out with the next shot. Thus ■there would be no approach putting, and even the holing out putts would bo short. In commenting on this dictum, it may be noted that he who made it was so good a putter that putts were easy for him to hole, which every man would not find easy; also that he was rather a short driver, playing at St. Andrew’s in the days of the “gutty” ball, which meant that he was seldom on the green in two, but that he generally scored his four all the same, because he chipped up his approach so near the hole. When we see the modern professional banging his second shot time after time on to the green, we are more likely to deliver our modern selves of the dictum, that there is no approaching (in the mushie sense) in first-class golf. Against this dictum of Jamie Anderson we may place that of a great player, the present Willie Park, whose date is between that of Anderson and that of Taylor, that ‘the man who can putt is a match for anybody.’ It was not true, as Park himself proved immediately after lie had said this, by the result of his match with Vardon in which he could, and did, putt, but could do little else as it should be done, and was easily beaten by Vardon, who certainly could not putt, but as certainly could do everything else that the "ame required. Taylor’s approaching is quite a different business from the approaching of Jamie Anderson —much more scientific, in my opinion. On the other hand, Anderson was a much better putter than Taylor; the result in both cases is similar, that after the approaching club was taken in hand (Anderson was rather before the date of tlie mashie) not more than two strokes were required to hole the ball. And Park (better putter than Anderson again, and, at his best, the most accurate there has ever been), often worked out the sum to the same conclusion by holing a really long putt off a less accurate approach shot.”