Queer Shots in Golf.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIII, Issue 12, 22 September 1909, Page 60

Queer Shots in Golf.

BY

HARRY VARDON.

A golfer is not at this strange game very long before he discovers that there is a great scope for variety in the shots that can be made with the golf ball and the golf club, and not merely in different circumstances, but with the same club in the same circumstances. This variety is infinite, and one is led to believe that it is this fact, and the feeling that it brings with it that one never knows what is going to happen, that in a large number of cases is responsible for the strange fascination that the game exercises over those who take it up. Some queer things happen at times in football, cricket, and billiards. But in nene of these games do

Stranger Results Sometimes Accrue than when the golfer plays, and they happen frequently even when the man is supposed to have cultivated the game to a very fine point, and become as familiar as any man can be with the law of cause and effect in golf, and obtained a very large amount of control oyer the cause. For instance I was hardly ever more surprised in my life than at the most astonishing result of the second shot that I played when going to the last hole in one of the rounds of the Open Championship when it was played at St. Andrews. I had not a very difficult shot to play with an iron club up to the green, but, by some extraordinary chance, the ball not only shot away to the right, as if badly sliced, but went soaring aloft in such a wonderful manner that it alighted on the top of the very high houses that run parallel to this course, and stopped there. A Chance in a Million.

This is the kind of queer shot that may be described as accidental, and 1 have encountered others in my experience that come in the same category. Thus, one of the most curious coincidences that one can imagine is the hitting of your opponent’s ball with yours in the long play through the green. It is becoming quite a common thing to do a hole in one stroke; but anyone who takes the trouble to think the matter out will agree that the chances are very much more against the two balls "kissing” through the green, and, as a matter of fact, it is a thing that one only sees done once in a lifetime, if that. Strangely enough, then, it happened in one of the biggest matches I ever played in—certainly the biggest single-handed game in which I ever took part—the reference, of course, being to my great match some years ago against Willie Park, over two courses, North . Berwick and Ganton, when there was a sum of £ 100 at issue between us, and some considerable commotion was caused in the golf world. At that time 1 was just

Coming Well On to My Best Game. Well, in a match between two good players, where both do the proper thing or something very near it every time, it follows that the balls axe not far from each other, or ought not to be, after each stroke, and it often happens that there is only a club or two’s length separating them. But on this occasion Park drove a very long ball from the tee at the eleventh hole, and then 1 drove, and my ball pitched down from its flight right on the top of his! Mr Norman Hunter and Mr Mansfield Hunter, his brother, were forecaddies on this occasion, and both were quite close, and saw the incident. This accident considerably affected the game, for it happened that my ball, after pitching on his, rebounded backward® for a couple of feet, and then stopped there, so that I not only lost a lot of run, but, with the other 'ball just in front, my next shot became a rather difficult one, particularly in the matter of follow-through. As a matter of fact I duffed the stroke and lost the hole, and it is worth mentioning that this strange incident was the means of putting an end to a very peculiar sequence, for up to that point in this big 1 snatch—ten holes played—all had been halved. In the category of queer shots also probably the man who played a stroke at Ravensear some time ago would think that his ought to have a place. He made a full mashie shot with the object of clearing a atone wall that was some way in front of him. But the ball struck the wall instead of clearing it, and it rebounded back and hit the player, slightly stunning him, and then from his forehead it rebounded again,

and this time cleared the wall! I did not see this shot, but there are some people who say they did, and it seems to me that it must have been one of

The Queerest Shots Ever Accomplished.

and almost worthy to rank with that other one, about which no official details are fortlrcoming, when a golfer was alleged to have played a low shot across a river which was very much infested by salmon. He played a beauty which just skimmed the water, but before the ball reached the other side a salmon leaped up at it and took it in his mouth. However, so well had the golfer played the shot, and so much steam was there in it, that the salmon was dragged out of the water and on to the bank, and wished that it had left the ball alone. That was a very good shot; and it deserved all it got.

Freak Shots. There is another variety of queer shots which goes very properly by the name of freaks, and opinions will differ as to how much consideration they are worth, though they certainly indicate a very fine degree of skill on the part of the player. America is a great place for this sort of thing. Not very long since a player there wagered that he could drive a ball off the top of a hen’s egg without breaking the shell if he were allowed to dent the egg at one end slightly to begin with in order to make the ball stick on it. He performed the feat. Another man of Pittsburg made a wager of £BOO that he could drive a ball four and a-half miles through the eity streets in 150 strokes. He began at half past five in the morning, and did the job in 119 strokes, but he made less than £7OO profit, for he did more than a hundred pounds’ worth of damage to shop property on the way.

"When They Come Off.” There are really not many queer shots that you ean do when you try to do them. The push shot with a cleek that gives a fine length to the ball and then makes it drop fairly dead, and th« negotiation of a stymie by lofting over it, are among the queerest, but the description does not exactly fit. These! shots are good rather than queer. Tn thel

way of a really legitimate tried-for shot most people seem to think that one that I played in a competition at Northwood a season or two back was one of the

queerest, or uncanniest, as some people said. At Northwood the clubhouse is built on the side of the home putting green, and I managed by a rather care-

less shot to play my ball right up against) the corner of the clubhouse on the aid* farthest from the green, so that I had the building between me and the hole, which was just on the other side. I made rather a useful miblick shot that sent the ball almost perpendicularly up in the air, and then it seemed to get a curl that took it over in the direction of the hole, and it flopped down right beside it. It is very nice when these/ things come off. As I have said many a time, golf is certainly a very funny game.