GOLF
Ryder Cup Contest to be Played in July EXHIBITION GAMES American “Plums” for British Professionals (Notes By Niblick. ) The British team of professionals who will take part in the Ryder Cup match at the Ridgewood Country Club (New Jersey) this year will earn at least £4OOO in exhibition games after the international contest (states “The Sporting Life.”) That is the opinion of Mr. J. C. Black, an American golfer who left England recently after fulfilling a mission in London in connection with the match. “The match will definitely be played.” said Mr. Black, “despite all the disagreement over the dates. We want to give the British boys an even break in the matter of weather. They were unlucky last time, when the conditions were abnormally hot, but early July in New Jersey should provide conditions fair to both teams. “I feel rather annoyed that the American P.G.A. has made a suggestion regarding any alteration to the qualification rules for the match. We should, of course, like to see Henry Cotton in the team, but it is rather early in the (lay to discuss any question about the personnel of . the teams when the match will not be decided for at least seven months. In six months’ time several tournaments will have been played in Great Britain and you will, perhaps, have some new ‘stars’ who will claim places in the team.” Fiji Gets the Craze. Fired, no doubt, by the example of Australia in importing golfers, Fiji has determined to have a first-class course which will attract distinguished visitors, amateur and professional. There is a movement afoot to spend £lO,OOO in this direction, and, as the Governor has given his approval, the scheme should begin to take shape soon. Fiji has already six 18-hole courses, in addition to a nineholer at Government House, but none of these is up to championship standard. G. P. Lane, coach of the New South Wales Lawn Tennis Association, is booked for a season in Fiji, where he will coach both in tennis and golf. Keep the Head Still. Grantland Rice, the American who has an unsurpassed practicable knowledge of the game and an apt way of expressing himself, says that “it is not necessary to see the ball being hit in order to make a good shot,” but we do not agree with him there, remarks an Australian writer. Rice maintains that it is vital to keep the head from popping up. because that upsets the entire balance of swing. Well, that is what happens-in every case. The head pops up for the purpose of enabling the player to have a surreptitious glance at the departing ball about which he has his doubts as to the direction it might take. He may have been in the habit of hooking it, as Sarazen did, into the ditch at the eleventh hole at Morion on the occasion when he took a fatal seven there in the last championship. Docs Mr. Rice deny that if Sarazen had seen the ball being hit it would still have strayed so far from the proper- line as to pitch into file, hazard from which he had to lift? For is not any kind of miss-hit a mistiming of the ball, against which a watchful eye is the only safeguard? Has Mr. Rice ever seen a man miss the ball altogether, and docs he suggest that if the player saw the club make contact with it h<„ could possibly have missed it?
America’s Reigning Giant. Olin Dutra, the reigning champion of America, is a giant of Castilian descent. He is 6ft. Sin. tall, and weighs somewhere about 16st. New Zealanders have seen Gene Sarazen, whom he beat for the American title by a stroke, after being in arrears five strokes when he began the last day’s play. There is a curious contrast in their physical proportions. The one is a rugged giant, the other a tiny, if a sturdy, specimen of mankind. Still, it was not, as might be supposed, the incisiveness of the iron shots of the big man or the accuracy of his putting that gave Dutra his advantage. This was brought about 'by an extraordinary happening, because the winner wits ill ou the final day when he showed his finest form —he was suffering from a stomach ailment —but in spite of that —or was it because of it? for strange are the ways of golf—he performed with the most wonderful punctiliousness nil day. He did this almost wholly with driver, brassy and spoon, wooden clubs all. and with head bent dutifully down he smacked the ball along the narrow fairways of the east course at Merlon with unfailing precision. This course, of which the par is 71, is on the short side, but with small, well-guarded greens. Only straightness and an unbroken succession of clean shots could hope to secure a 71 and 72—the great scores which Dutra was able to hand jn for that day's nearly faultless play. The two rounds totalled from a couple to six strokes better than any of his attendants could manage, and Sarazen was beaten by a stroke, although leading him five strokes at the beginning of these fateful final rounds.
Don’t Cltase Rainbows. One of the modern crazes is the desire to alter one's style of play because someone has chosen to say that an essential detail of the swing is to keep the chin behind the ball or the hands in front of it, or to do something which they did not do before (remarks the golf writer of “The Australasian”). Even the born player, he with an equally able pair of hands and arms, which in swinging the club work as one big hand and arm in a ".■holly natural and therefore perfectly efficient manner, is apt to go tinkering with his style. He reads or is told about those incredibly silly and mischievous stunts, silly aud mischievous because they prevent the player from giving his undivided attention to the only detail which really counts —that of swinging the clubhead right through the ball. Sir Robert Simpson, the Scottish golfer who 60 .years ago wrote the “Art of Golf,” summarises all the instructions needful to enable the player to recapture whatever innate golfing skill there may be in him in the words. “Shake yourself well down and aim more carefully.” Shaking yourself down means getting into the most pliable position, that is, into a complete state of relaxation, and doing that imposes no tax whatever upon the memory during the operation of the swing.
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Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 106, 29 January 1935, Page 13
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1,097GOLF Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 106, 29 January 1935, Page 13
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