GOLF

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 280, 20 August 1921, Page 5

GOLF

EVOLUTION OF THE BALL SINCE THREE HUNDRED YEARS AGO —T The "Sydney Mor;ning Herald” publishes interesting articles on the evolution of the present/day golf hall, the first nf which is published below. The “Herald” states:— ; We play with beiautifully-made golf balls which have beexi scientifically made to travel the maximlum distance with a minimum of effort, i Whether any will be made to travel /further is a matter of doubt. This statement is made in considering a letter ,'written by Douglas Holland, a cousin oic James Braid, who was very possibly the longest driver that ever lived. In 1914 -E. C. Bliss was noted in the golfers’ ’ handbook to- have driven 445 yards at the sixth hole at the Herne Bay golf course. Thero was a drop of 57ft. from the tee and a fairly fresh following wind.. The distance was measured and the i'all taken by a surveyor. The font appears to be quite authentic. Rolland wrote: The longest ball I ever drove to my! recollection was 295 yards with a guttie ball, at the seventeenth hole at Sandwich. It is true that I drove the burn to the fourth green at Prestwich. Mr. Bliss might have driven 445 yards on ice, but never on a golf i course. You can hiit ns hard as you like, bnt- a golf ball won’t take it. There was no wind with me when I drove. You might get 490 yards if you pitch on a stone. The point is., of course, that there must be u limit to how much force a golf ball will takes. , The industry of ball-making in Scotland was organised in the days of James VI. On April 4, 1603, he issued a grant confirming the appointment of William Mayne ’for life ajs clubmaker, amongst other things, to His Majesty. At that time the golf balls made in Holland were more in demand than any others, as they were much superior. They were bought to such an extent ! that In 1618 James VI Issued a letter patent granting, one William Berwick a.hd his associate n patent for the manufacture of golf balls for the enace of 21 years at a fixed price, on their undertaking to furnish the kingdom with better golf balls than were made in Holland. Early Form of Golf Balls. A lot might be written about the early form of golf balls, but when golf became the game it is now the balls were made of leather, stuffed with feathers. Royal Sydney has quite a number presented by a relation of Allan Robertson, while Manly has one, of great antiquity, presented by Mr. Tulloch. They are weird looking objects, and appear to vary greatly in size At any rate there must have been a great art in stuffing the balls and- hammering them. These balls were in course of time superseded by the gutta porcha. This was in the year 1847 or 1848, when Sir Thomae Moncrieffe brought a - piece of that snbstanca to Scotland and had one made to his own order. Curiously enough, though tried several times, the ball would not fly and it was discarded. The caddies, however, discovered that the more they knocked it about the better it went, even better than the old feather ball. This led to a. curious discovery, that the reason why the ball would not travel in the air was on account of the smooth surface. To get rid of the difficulty the ball makers placed the ball in P. cup designed for holding it and hammered nicks in it with n. chisel made for the purpose. This was before the method had been invented for having the marking engraved in n mould, so as to turn them out machined hammered, as opposed to hand hammered. The' New Ball. The new ball was a source of great profit to the professionals, for- it was considered good work for a man to turn out threo feather balls in a day. The case was of cowhide, and a large hat full of feathers in their loose and dry state was needed for stuffing them. These were crammed into a three-parts finished case and sown up. As can readily bo imagined, it was hard work, much more so than hand hammering the new ball. A great many golfers remember the old gutta ball.' It is doubtful if, in spito of the grumbling at the price of the present balls, they aro not much cheaper than the guttarf. For one thing, the face of the club in those times had to be constantly renewed if the heads did not break, while a mishit ball was at once out of action unless it could be remade. If the ball was hit in the middle of the club with any regularity the face would) get worn away in the middle, when the usual practice was to have -a leather face put on. It is somewhat curious how conservative most people are, even in sport, for Mr. Hutchinson states in his book, "Fifty Years of Golf," how it was some time before the machine-hammered balls found general favour with the golfing public, certain players asserting that hammering by hand was essential to the right tempering of the stuff of the ball, while others, like that great little man, .Tammio Anderson, then at the top of his game, confessed, with a perfect knowledge that tho reason was only subjective, that "he could na’ strike” a machine-ham-mered ball. Many golfers are much the same now. Besides the gutta percha ball there was the Silvertown ball, which was subjected to greater- pressure by hydbaulio power. Then there was the ball called the “Eclipse," but more commonly known among golfers ns the "putty,” because it was of a softer substance than tho gutta. The putty was a soft indiarubber ball, which went off tho club without any click. It had little carry, but made up for it by a lot of run. The Haskell ball then appeared on the scene, and entirely revolutionised the game. The players who were invincible in the gutta days were very contemptuous of it. It certainly was the cause of tho huge boom that set in, for men who could not hit the gutta ball at all found that they could get quite good results with the rubber core. This was in the year 1902. Taylor Beats Ockenden.

John Henry Taylor -won his first open championship 27 years ago, writes Enderly Howard in the "Daily Mail." He turned 50 last month, and in tho closing etages of tho professional tournament on tlio Roehampton course. Barnes, S.W., hes set about his rivals with all the power, accuracy,, and wholesome aggressiveness that lifted him into the front rank in his early manhood. Ho beat James Ockondon by 5 up and 4 to play in the final of 18 holos. Ockenden—ls years the junior of Taylor—lias suffered no blow so severe ns this since he came into prominence on tho links. It was an astonishingly fine performance—the result of virility as well as exactitude in hitting—on the part of the veteran who founded the line of English professional champions. The first; time that I saw Taylor play was on the Bromley and Bickley course in 1895, when honours were gathering fast round his then slim figure, and I am not sure that his golf was one whit better than in this tournament. It may he remarked that hie victory was gained on a short course —Roeljpmpton measures no mors than. 5050 yards—and that on a long course the younger and harder hitters, thfo pick of whom competed in tho eliminating stages, would have been supreme. The answer is that Taylor, using a new brand of the restricted hall that doe, not seem so far to have restricted anybody’s driving very seriously, consistently outdistanced Ockendon by 10 or 15 yards. And Ockenden Is by no means a short driver, as wo saw at Mid-Snrrey Inst autumn, when he (beat Duncan and Braid. In nearly every golf match there is a critical shot goes a very long way towards deciding the iasua In, this final

lit was presented nt the third hole. Taylor—more accurate with his trusty spoon for the second shot than was Ockendon with his iron—had taken the lead at the second holo, but he looked like losing the third (490 yards) when his pitch scooted over tho green, and finished in the bunker beyond. It lay In a strip of sand about two feet wide, with a bank two feet high immediately in front of it. Ho played the "sand explosion" shot for all iio was worth. He hit the soil four inches behind the ball; up came that object, sluggishly but surely, in a cloud of sand; it ran four feet past tho pin, and ho got down the putt for a half in 5. If Ockenden had won that hole he might have been inspired to do anything afterwards, but somehow tho picture that presented itself from that moment was a picture of Taylor full of confidence, with his tail up and wagging fiercely, and Ockenden fully conscious of tho condition. As so ofton happens in such circumstances, the turn of the luck favoured the resolute. Taylor was playing for low, long shots with a little "draw” on them, so as to obtain length, and for the greater part accomplishing them with groat skill in n, stiff wind. At the fourth, however, the "draw” was just a littlo too pronounced. His ball swung off os if to find a resting-pinco in the rough on the left of tho green, but it struck n tree, and finished at tho foot of tho green. Then Ockenden was very short with a run up. and Taylor, down in 4 to 5, increased his lead to two. Tho element of the "draw” entered into his mashie shot to the sth, and the ball ran over the green into suclf n heavy lio in t]y> jungle-like long grass that he took 2to get back. He lost that hole, and any chance that Ockenden possessed disappeared finally at the 6th, where he was laid a dead stymie when he had a putt of littlo more than a yard for tho hole. Kirkwood Defeated. The defeat by 7 holes up and 6 to play which Abe Mitchell, the North Foreland professional, inflicted on J. H. Kirkwood, of Rivcrsdale, Victoria, tho Australian open champion, at Gleneagles, in Perthshire, on July 11, in the 36 holes final tie of tho "Glasgow Herald” Thousand Guineas Tournament, makes the match appear to bo less interesting than it actually was. ■ But though it was apparent, soon after the start, that tho Australian, had embarked on a forlorn hope, tho 4000 spectators who followed the gams showed their appreciation of the plucky manner in which he kept the play alive, and clever recoveries from bad lies, bv generous applause. Ho did not have the best of luck, but, strangely enough, this master of trick shots only succeeded in negotiating one of three stymies which he was laid during the round. Mitchell displayed one weakness throughout the day, a tendency to spare his approach putts, although he missed very few holeable ones. But his magnificent driving in a high wind would have discouraged a less stout-hearted opponent than Kirkwood prove; to be. Through the green the Australian invariably had to play tho odd, and he soon dropped into the fatal erroi of pressing with the inevitable sacrifice of direction. This was his undoing, and but for his clever approaching he could not have carried the match so far as , did Both played their best golf in hm firetreund 5 , 1 when Mitchell hod n score of 71 to his opponent s <4, and led Honour, wcre tatho semi-finals on Friday, each taking J!so.—“Observer.”