GOLF.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18365, 24 April 1925, Page 17

GOLF.

THE CRICKET-TRAINED PLAYER. MR F. S. JACKSON'S NOTABLE PROGRESS. (smcux.lt warms roa "Yam rasss.*" (By Harry Yardoa.) There is a consensus of opinion thai the Hon. F. S. Jackson affords the best example seen in this country of a devoted cricketer taking up (gait comparatively late in life and becoming, an accomplished and orthodox player on the links. Well-known amateurs whose jndj:ment I respect tell mo that Mr. Jackson is good enough to play for Ito,*land against Scotland at golf, just a* he used to appear for England against Australia at cricket, and that U perhaps rather a handicap so far as concerns his prospects in this directoou that people aro apt to think of him a« only a convex-t from another game which constituted his real fort-' amongst sports. Certainly when Mr Jackson p*»J a in inter-team golf, he seems osnalhr to beat the top man of the other ski.* on the latter's homo course, and ire all knoxv that these successes gained under -strange conditions indicate a more than ordinarily pronounced capacity for mastering the difficulties of too game. H* was at it again last Saturday, when in the contest between tho House of Commons and the Sandy lodge Ciob at Sandv Lodge he beat toe local leader, Mr T. H. P. Kolesar, who was in tho last eight of the amateor championship at Sandwich in 1914, by 2 and 1. Mr Jackson went ronnd in ?* strokes—4 better than the scratch score for" the course—and after playing many rounds there I can bear testimony to the fact that such figures want a lot of doing. The record is 79 by Edward Ray, and the best that I hare done is 73. Mr Jackson has won tho ParKamentary Tournament three tune* in the past five years, but has not competed in the classic events of The linn eo ofteu as one might have wished. If he had done so, he would perhaps have come under close consideration for • place in the English team, sjnea he possesses, in addition to style and effect, that valuable quality which w» know as the fighting spirit that what matches. Beginnings. I remember the time when, with taw. country still full of enthaezaaa, abons his prowess as England's oapteba awd Yorkshire's captain at cricket, ha began seriously to study golf on the Ganton course, in Yorfaihire, where 1 was then professional. There is a story, aocepted now aa a kind of tradition, that Mr Jaokaoninade himself a scratch player within, six months of taking up the game. This had been set down as a record injwogross until it transpired t » little waft* ago that a V.O. of the Gnat *War, Lwut.-Cbl. J. Sherwood Kelly, .had secured the handicap of scratch wiuna four months of his introduction to goMThere has never come under my personal observation a player who made Buch remarkable advancement as this. It sounds almost like a miracle for » person entirely strange to a difficult game to become bo brilliant in a few months. < I have known a phgejr develop something like scratch form in a year—l believe that Mr Sidney H» Try, of billiards fame, did it—bat a year is very, different from a half or a third of that period. T I think that if Mr Jackson were eonsuited, he would explode this story about, his having- come down to scratch > within eix months, of the start of hj» \ gaining career. If I remewihw" rightly, he had a rtandicap of six at Ganton at the end ! of his first.year at the game, and pn> gressed steadily from that paint, lake most men, of confirmed cricketing habits, . his main ' ambition at the ootaefc | was to hit tremendously' long drive*. - |He set himself fb do.that in the spina of a Jeasop flogging the bowling on a> I cricket field. He has confessed that . he thought then that nothing much else was necessary in order to win at gaff. FoUowißg-Ihxough.

The completeness with which Mr Jackson transtocmeaVhia style earn 'he had come to appreciate the finer points bf the gome said much for his adapts- 1 biliiy. ' At the present time, hj» swing is of • the kind essentially associated* wish: * golfing practices and. precepts. It ja all a matter of 'ease sad perfect tinißg. Indeed, he represents the', school--'of - method that prevailed in » former generation; the round steady swing ia -which the' club-head gathers pace toning down by the influence of leading afi the way instead of the foreef&l hitttagwhich has come into vogue among the present race of young players. The latter are so concentrated o» this forcing action that the/ cheek the follow-through very soon after the is* pact. Putting so much fury into the blow they have to stop the dab-head quickly, for if .they were to foßowthroogh with it, they would be swnag off their feet.

It is possible that, when everything goes weu, this principle secures a. £rttie> extra distance, but I hare never bees able to satisfy myself that it is the equal of the old way in promoting straightness. Mr Jackson, ceasing from a game that calls for a eons&fcfable matter of hitting the ball as distinct from swinging at it, baa set * good example of many younger goiter* who, so far as concerns games, ns*e> given their time exclusively to ilte links. '.. : """5

It has occurred to me that Aawrem, fj players differ from British, in tho wp, i that their best men cohirate nlihcr \ more of a follow-through—hiujUQiTU - with iron clubs—than oars are iTisftiiwl ',' to allow. There is not quite so 'mnek, ] of thai forcing action by which tbeehfc. ~ is stopped with such suddenness altar? $ the blow that, as somebody has ssjd, "The shaft quivers like a harp string;'* There is Btill a, lot of virtue m taev <oU follow-through.

The passion—it can be called M&&C : less—for volumes /if personal rnniiwTs : cence becomes more intense as tons goes on, and British publishers areacmhard put to it to find nqbed msa sad women willing to write their i—^mirf 1 ' - All sorts- of expedients are tried to "get round" the coy celebrity. Sk» . new Earl of Oxford who has oftea hesm approached but has always refused s» ' write a book of the kind, is, it eesass, \ engaged on a work which thoagh it viß.4 be in no sense a book oftdwminiiionina»y cannot fail to be full of Interesting sad | valuable recollections, if, as russoa* , says, it is to take the form ofs> hiatmf '' of the House of Qmnrnmß daring li»» j past fifty years. The writer, as 3L H. i Asquith, the most brilliant .Oxford asst ;; of his generation, entered Pirlimssit j in 1836 as Liberal Member for Sbs% Fife. That, of coarse, is not fifty jjj|igjj ago, but it will be fority yeas year, and from bis first entry firo jflsVfls lie life Mr Asquitn was closely "09»w»cft--':|i ed*with the leading statesmen ai*|gfl*-| Kant social and literary mid-Victorianera. " ■•'.'' '"■'-"!w !^^j