CROWDS AT GOLF.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18421, 30 June 1925, Page 9

CROWDS AT GOLF.

CHAMPION PLAY SPOILT.

(3? CABLE—rRESS ASSOClATlON'—copisioht.) (Sidney "Sex" Service.) ; LONDON, Juno 28. Enormous crowds watched the final stages of the golf championship at Prcstwick. Players wero frequently delayed for lengthy intervals, while the spectators v.ero shepherded oS the course. MaeDonald-Sunth began accompanied by oOGO, and returned with a following of 10,000, ressmbliiiK a marching army, in which worried officials carried the standards. Several spectators were hit by flying halls and dogs were a very great nuisance. The "Daily Mail"' says golfers endorse Macdonald-Smith's complaint that conditions at Prestwic!; are impossible for championship golf. It is fo near Glasgow that crowds to see a free show are inevitable. Macdonald-Smkh f)»ys the eager, pushing spectators compelled him to drive in the direction dictated by the lines of spectators, instead of in the direction he desired. He drove away in a motor without waiting to receive his prize, and indicated that he would not again compete. GOLF OR "KOLF"? A BATTLE OF WITS. Whether golf dees more harm than good was a them© which provided an interesting debate between tho Earl of Balfour and Mr Leo Maxso (editor of tho "National Review' - ) in a debate which took place- at the London School of Economics recently in a series of lectures and counter-lectures promoted in aid of King Edward's Hospital Fund. Mr Maxsc- ..humorously suggested than tho opposition shown to the Earl of Balfour by the Arabs during his recent visit to Palestine was probably due to a fear that he contemplated turning the Holv Land into a gigantic golf links. (Laughter.) No doubt even the Lord President of the Council and other Ministers imagined that golf was a gam© of Scottish origin. Nothing of the kind. Like many other things dumped upon this confiding community, it oame from Germany, whereit was known as "kolf." But about 1410 the Teutonic knight* decided that it was not a game for men of blood and iron, so they discarded it, and it was dumped upon Holland, 6till retaining its name "kolf." In tho loth century it made a journey to Scotland, and was found to be the very thing that'.Scotsmen had long been looking.for—(laughter)—and they embraced it with that gravity which had made .Scotland the great nation that she now was. (Laughter.) For four centuries they continued to play it, just as they ato porridge and haggis—-(laughter)—-then a certain Mr Arthur Balfour startled his friends at a painful moment by giving it to benighted England, and from that moment everybody who was anybody began to learn all about it. T/ord Balfour, however, was not responsible for that development, which might be called "the golf craze," and which threatened our supremacy as a game-playing nation. The Earl of Bolfour, taking the opposite view, said that he hoped ho might have had something to do with tho spread of igolf thirty or forty years ago, hut let there be no exaggeration, for tho. other day a charming lady by whose side he was sitting asked him, other topics having failed, whether he had ever played golf. (Laughter.) That showed that, if ho indeed deserved ono fraction of tho reputation Mr Maxso had attributed to him, how fleeting was human fame. (Laughter.) As to the Arabs suspecting him of insidiously trying to introduce Western practices into the mountains and deserts of Arabia, that might be possible, but hardly likely, seeing that in that country it was easier to find bunkers than putting greens. (Laughter.) Putting on one side this Oriental speculation—(laughter)—and also the attempt to make them beliovo that golf was a Bosch invention, he came to Mr Maxse's thesis that while golf flourished in Scotland during many centuries, and was legislated against in the fifteenth century—because it prevented .Scotsmen learning archery to fight tho English—and again in the sixteenth century—because it occasionally prevented .Scotsmen going to church on Sundays—so far as England was concerned, it did not exist until a time within tho memory of most of them. That was not historically correct, because the Scotsmen who accompanied James I. to England to his now throne proceeded, vorv wisely in their own interests, to form a golf club' at Bin eleventh, which he believed was the oldest in the world, and existed up to twenty or thirty years ago. If they compared the fate of the poor middle-aged man taken to the seaside by his wife and children, with no means of filling tho weary hours of leisure, with that of tho man transported to a. healthy climate and beautiful scenery, participating in a game which would exercise all his skill to play even moderately, they would doubtless agree' that tho blessings of golf had been immense. (Cheers.l