A VETERAN GOLFER.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1565, 22 April 1920, Page 5

A VETERAN GOLFER.

MR. DAVID PRYDE. The performance of Mr. David Pryde at New Plymouth in the play for the Taranaki men’s amateur golf championship is probably without parallel in the Dominion, says the “Taranaki Herald.” To reach the final in a provincial championship when well over 60 years of age is an achievement of which few men can hope to be capable, yet Mr. Pryde has done this. Although he was far from allowing his opponent an easy victory for the final honours, the veteran player was not quite playing up to the best form he had shown during the tournament. It must be remembered that he had previously played and defeated two of the strongest men in the draw in the persons of J. F. Ritchie, a former winner of the championship, and A. E. Ekstedt. The securing of another championship by Pryde would have been popular among the admirers of a pertinacious and ever youthful member of the band of New Zealand golfing pioneers. Twenty-three years ago, Mr. Pryde was the champion golfer of New Zealand, winning the title at Auckland in 1897. Previous to that he had held the championship of the Hutt Club, and since then he has attained the same honour in the Feilding Club at various times. In 1898, his brother William won the New Zealand championship, playing at Christchurch. With the early history of golf in New Zealand the name of David Pryde must be intimately associated. Mr. Pryde came to New Zealand in 1885 when golf was hardly known in the country. He was instrumental in forming the Hutt Golf Club at the same time that the Otago Club (at Dunedin) came into existence. This was about 1890, and the

two clubs were the first to be formed in New Zealand with the exception of one which had been formed a good many years previously in Dunedin and had languished to death. After playing in the Hutt and the Wellington clubs, Mr. Pryde went to Feilding 16 years ago, and helped to form a golf club there. He has resided in that town ever since. His earliest recollection of golf in the Old Country carry him back to the time when feather balls were still used. They consisted of leather stuffed with feathers and coated with white paint. In wet weather the leather became soaked and if one “topped” a stroke the feathers were likely to fly. The club then used for mashie shots was simply a wooden club well laid back. It was called a baffy. The guttapercha ball followed the feather ball, and proved infinitely superior. Then, many years later, the rubber-cored ball now used replaced the “gutty,” and proved as much superior to the “gutty” as the “gutty” had been to the feather ball.