GOLF

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2471, 26 May 1915, Page 4

GOLF

A Pocket Came. Evidently in America they have been at considerable pains to enable the golfer to know tho worst or the best even in the small space that is at his disposal. In addition to the idea of making the ball tell its own tale by means of the colour with which it returns to its owner, they have a scheme of pockets in a sheet of canvas. Let us suppose that you are practising full drives. If your ball disappears from view into the middle, pocket the shot is satisfactory. If it enters the right-hand pocket it is a slice (unless you happen to be aiming in that direction), and so on. The receptacles are fairly large, so that one does not need to be a. genius in order to find the middle pouch. As regards putting, it is now customary to construct courses of four, five, six, and even nine holes, on which tlie putts vary in length from six to twenty feet, all of them undulating. At the Country Club, Brookliue, there is an indoor school at which the pupils regularly play for a score. A heavy canvas is divided into two parte, each of which is eight feet wide and twelve feet high. One side is for the shots that are supposed to travel 130 yards or more, the otaer side is for shots of shorter length, even unto tiny putts. On the long-shot side the player has to aim at a narrow strip of canvas two feet wide; if he succeeds in hitting this comparatively small target, he rings a bell,' and wins cigars, nuts, and anything else that he may have wagered, and is also credited with a drive of 225 yards. If he misses he is reckoned to have hit the ball 200 yards. This, truth to tell, appears to be a very, poor way or dispensing justice. Most of us can remember missed tee shots which have stopped considerably short of 200 yards. The difference between ringing the bell and failing to excite its silvern tongue is not sufficiently great in the awards. However, it is the same for everybody, a circumstance which is always held to cover a multitude of shortcomings. On the small shot side, the player has to aim at a hole ten inches in diamctor in the canvas; if he lofts tho ball into this aperture it trickles down a funnel to fall dead by the side of the golfing hole on an artificial putting green. Should ho miss the gap tho ball will drop somewhere on tho green, fifteen or twenty feet from tho hole. The music of tho ball rattling through tho funnel must alono mako tho game worth pursuing. Influence of Cames. Games aro of little or no consequence now as spectacles, but their influence on tho individuals who play must remain important unless wo adopt conscription (writes It. E. Howard m tho London •'Sportsman"). Thoro arc future generations to consider. Tho younger men of to-day aro engaging in their grim, deathly sport- at tho front; tho older ones cannot think of their mimic warfaro on the field of athletic rivalry as they woro wont to think of it. But for them to abandon it altogether when they aro prevented from enlisting for the real tiling would be an attempt to stiflo the natural impulses which have produced the present British Army, and which will contribute very considerably towards the beating of Germany. Tho records of golf clubs in connection with tho raising of the new forces aro splendid; they could not well bo better, liven so, t-licrn are many men left to play, and it is certain that they will not bo misunderstood by any save a negligible minority if they continue to plav. Gone is the old power of concentration en the game; that condition alone makes it. a different pastime from that of months ago, but, golf in a submiesiva mood is not without ite good sfraseattsam _ ii

this convulsion will be a fuller realisation when the victory is won and everything can be seen in the proper perspective of the value to Britain of the sporting spirit. The country was caught unawares; unless millions of men had kept themselves fit by games and enjoyed the learning of the lessons which games teach it would have taken an incalculably long time to organise the present Army. A Club of Parts. Stem-visaged Scottish enthusiasts have been heard to declare that humour is utterly foreign to tho spirit of golf, and should never be permitted to enter into the game. So far as I have been able to observe Americans take their ■ golf just about as seriously as any race ' on earth, but apparently they have not been able to resist the inclination to inflict a very substantial joke on an ambitious. player who belongs to the Chicago Board of Trade. They have presented him with a club whioh, according to. the description, does everythinc but carry itself round the course. Inside it is alive with electricity; outside it bristles with switches and other devices. Its head is seven feet long, and has three dearly-defined spaces from which a drive may he made, one being for a slice, another for a pull, and the third for a straight shot. ,V coninasp and a spirit level on t-op of the head help the reformer in his preparations, and a little way up the shaft is a fishing I reel, the string of which is attached to the hall so that this latter object cannot be lost. Presumably the player winds up the reel as he walks along iititil he comes to the hall. Electriclitdit fittings mitigate the terrors of sndden darkness, and a motor ■ horn which is also affixed to the shaft averts the necessity of shouting "Fore!" A musical box in the head of the club canbe played during waits between the shots.