IS GOLF TOO COSTLY?

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19144, 29 October 1927, Page 13

IS GOLF TOO COSTLY?

TBE PRICE OF BETTER COURSES. (tunvuu.r wamn tor not mess) tßy Hairy Vardon, Six TMmes Open Champion.) It is sometimes said that gorf is becoming too expensive. This, perhaps, is a question for the amateur rather than tho professional. The amateur does all the paying in connexion with the pastime, whereas the professional is privileged to live by it. All the same, tho latter has a fairly shrewd idea as to what it costs to be a golfer, especially when he competes in tournaments without winning a priae, or takes part in private matches for the sheer pleasure of playing, as ho does far more often, I think, than where the professional in any other game is concerned. Moreover, as an individual who is i golf trader as woll as a golf enthusiast, he is apt to hear all the grievances about cost. It Ls in tho nature of humanity to unburden ita soul on this subject to the man who does some of the receiving. Consequently, he has a qualification to express his viows on the problem. JvOt us examine the situation. It is not that the complainants suggest that anybody is profiteering. For example, one has only to take the trouble to ascertain the iinnncial condition of golf clubs to renlise that no exhorbitant profits are being derived. Even tho "oSuhs that have fcirgo memberships need to be well managed to pay their way. The truth is. perhaps, that with tho country groaning under tho weight of tremendous taxation, many people find golf not dear hut more than they can comfortably afford. Tho Economical BalL In what way could it be made cheaper? Tho present halfcrown ball is, in point of fact, more economical than the old gutta-percha ball at a shilling. With ordinary luck, the rubbercored ball can bo made to last at least four rounds, and often more. It is beside tho point if the individual feols that he must put down a new ball at the start of every round. One thing cortoin is that the'"gutty" was seldom of any use after one round, so that for tho average person, the expenditure on golf balls is probably less than it was twenty years ago. Certainly it can be less, and that without diminishing the pleasure of playing. Clubs are double the old price, which is about the proportion of everything, but to the golfer who already has a complete set and to spare, a now club is an occasional pleasure, liko a sent at the theatre, and hardly qualified to rank as a serious contributory cause to his regular expenditure on the game. So exactly where is to bo i oca tod the ground of his trouble? I suppose he feels as much as anything the increased annual subscriptions, especially when he belongs to several clubs. The requests for these subscriptions, like the more brusque demands for taxes, come in large portions; he iB asked for twelve guineas here, teu guineas there, and eight guineas somewhere else, and he begins to think that golf has attained a degree of oxpensiveness which neither his bank balance nor his income can endure much longer. Tho charges for railway fares, cab fares, lunches, and caddies amount to far more in a year than the doubled dues to the clubs of which he is a member, but he consoles himself with the thought that whatever he did for a day's recreation would cost him as much as the railway and cab fares to the course, and that wherever he lunched he would have to pay as much for the meal as at the golf club; verylikely more. The raised subscriptions come as annual blows; they crystallise the increased expenditure oy (Descending upon him in solid lumps. Whether club subscriptions ever will be lower seems to bo open to considerable doubt. If the step could be taken, probably it would he tho best thing possible for the continued vitalisation and expansion of the game — the activity and growth that it must be able to command in order to make the clubs successful—for it is the subscription, the jumping-off place for the year, that sets the golfer ruminating about increased expenses and convinces him that he must economise somewhere.

Drainage the Bevenne. At prsoeut the cost of running a club is unquestionably very high. Take the oase of a club which has no pretensions to greatness. It conducts its affairs so as to give as much pleaoure as possible to its members on a course of eighteen boles that never could be made very good, and, in a club-house that may be described as unpretentious and homely. It attempts nothing on a big scale. It is a club of which I know little, but I do know that it is typical of many. Its eye is to economy; It gives Its secretary an honorarium of £SO a year; the prises that it prosents do not cost £4O in twcive months, the papers that it provides in the club-house cost a shilling or two a week. And yet it has to spend £3OOO a year to carry on ita modest work, over £2OOO «f that '«m being absorbed by labour, rent, «nd That being so, the expoa<2Hn-*» ■** some of the proprietary debs, « whose courses everything that win be done to secure improvement is itooe almost regardless of sost, Must »» enormous. Even can one pity «* "»«- fortunate proprietors. Rants and rates «td taxes appear never likely to be reduced. Presumably labour offers a more hopeful ontr look, and it is a very big item in &» annual outlay of almost *r«ry *ott club One thing fairly certain is tb*t the golfer, with all his perturbation about the price of things, would never go back to the unsophisticated state of affairs that prevailed thirty years when fairways, putting greens, enjl bunkers took something like pot-luck —doing their best to remain usable with only the most perfunctory attempts at upkeep. The modern golfer has come to know better conditions, and the clnb has to provide them for him.