GOLF.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 796, 20 April 1910, Page 7

GOLF.

There is something lite a.war, of extermination befog carried on just now against blind holes, and especially against those which can bo reached in one shot. At Deal, for instance, the "Sandy-Parlour" is, .writes Mr, Bernard Darwin in the "Evening Standard," being reformed beyond recognition, and- instead of a rather' easy hole,' where we cannot see where we are going, we have an exceedingly difficult one, where we can_ see with ay-hdrrid 'clearness the various hazards that yawn. open-mouthed to receive our ball; then, next door, at Sandwich, 1 * all sorts ,of revolutionary schemes are boinu Hatched.. The

Haiden" is to be played from a different angle, so x thnt the original mountain .will'play but a very subsidiary part, and the lesser hill, which will for- the present make the shot a blind one, is in the end to be removed bodily. Discussing wbioh is the most critical hole oil golf ■courses, Mr. Henry" Leach, m the London -"Evening News," writes: —A. general verdict would very likely bo that the most important hole'on the whole course,, being the one that the greater number of matches are settled at, is the seventeenth. Probably the architects try to make each hole just as good as others without any favour so far as the early part of the courso is concerned; bu they concentrate themselves on thei ratteinpt to obtain a good testing finish, and it is perhaps the case that they strain for a .strong seventeenth more ' than any .-father Tnkms tliein all in all, the seventeenths are generally rather good. There is the famous one at' St. Andrews-certainly the most celebrated hole on any links —and next to it there is the great Alps at Prestwick, which, despite the blind second that has to be pjayed to it, is held up by. the critics to public admiration. One does not condemn the Alps; but why these people who arc so bitter in their attacks on blindness say no bad words of the seventeenth at Prestwick is a matter that one cannot pretend to understand.