OUT OF BOUNDS AT GOLF

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIV, 5 January 1931, Page 9

OUT OF BOUNDS AT GOLF

DIFFERENT RULES FOR CHAMPIONSHIPS (By Harry Vardon, Six Times Open Champion) (Specially written for “The Mail”) It is an interesting commentary on the golfer’s simple way of making his own laws for the game in accordance with his conscience that next year’s British championships will be decided on courses where different rules prevail on a point of considerable importance. At Westward Ho ! which is to be the scene, of the amateur championship, the penalty for getting out of bounds is stroke and distance. On the Carnoustie links, where the open championship iS to be played, the punishment for a similar error is loss of distance only. Thus the misdoing at one place costs a stroke more than at the other place, and the disparity is often sufficient to affect results and histories. At first blush, it seems hopelessly illogical that the two classic events of men’s golf in this country should be contested in circumstances of such divergence of rule. It may be claimed that the situation has reason on its side from the local point of view. At some places the out-of-bounds areas are few. It appears, therefore, to be the sentiment of authority that the most ought to be made of them as seats of retribution.

At other places, out-of-bounds regions are numerous, and embarrassingly easy to enter. Consequently, the feeling prevails (and is translated into law) that the penalty for the errant individual who invades their precincts must bo as light as possible.

Whatever we may think of the plausibility of these respective ideas of justice, the fact remains that the character of a bad shot is not modified by the existence of many opportunities for making it. Rather ought this latter factor to act as a deterrent.

The divergence of procedure on championship links has led to a similar state of affairs on courses all over the world, and it would be far better to have one hard-and-fast rule on the subject. If that were agreed, the penalty for out-of-bounds would have to be loss of distance only, so that the player’s penalty would be limited to the shot which had gone wrong.

It is certain that the majority of golfers regard it as tyranny to inflict a punishment of a stroke as well as loss of distance for an error which, in most cases, is not particularly heinous. SEVEN FROM THE TEE Particularly is this the case, in an era when medal competitions are held everywhere.

I remember receiving a note from a friend in New York concerning the fate of Mr Robert Gardner, ceptain of an American team that visited Britain, in the United States amateur championship that had then just finished. He related how Mr Gardner failed to qualify for the match stages because at the first hole in the eliminating test by strokes, he pulled three consecutive tee-shots out of bounds.

The penalty for each stroke being stroke and distance, he had played his seventli shot before he left the teeing ground, and the hole cost him twelve, which wrecked his chance immediately. It was certainly a very deplorable tiling to hook three consecutive shots, but almost every golfer knows that this particular tendency is as hard to shako off as an attack of sneezing. It may be arrested after a little while but it has a way of being more malignant while it lasts than any other virus to which the golfing flesh is heir, and virtually to count a man out because he has an attack of it on one teeing ground is desperately severe. Mr Bernard Darwin and Mr Horaco Hutchinson did once manage between them to put seven balls out of bounds at the first hole at Hoylake. As they were contesting a match in the amateur championship, their transgressions merely cancelled one another until somebody at length hit a straight shot. Still, a player infected with a temporary slice might easily do the same thing in a medal round.

There was a French open amateur championship final at Versailles in which Mr Cyril Tolley met T. D. Armour, then an Edinburgh amateur, but now an American professional. From the first teeing ground, one hit three shots out of bound, and the other hit two shots out of bounds. The - penalty on this course is stroke and distance so that, when at length they did get away, one had played his seventh shot and the other his fifth.

PREMIUM ON CAUTION As a rule, the possibility of sledgehammer punishment induces pawky play. Nowhere is this more pronounced than at the seventeenth hole at St. Andrews, where even first-class golfers often take an ultra-safe line to the left rather than risk the straight drive over tlie railway sheds which might gain distance but might, alternately, end in a penalty of stroke and distance. A fixed rule of loss of distance only on all courses would, I believe, meet with popular approval and satisfy the cause of justice. The individual who has to bear the full punishment allowed by the Jaw in this connection usually feels a certain sense of grievance about it, because it gives him exceedingly little chance of halving the hole in matchplay, and outrages his idea of equity in score-play. For that reason, it fosters cautious golf, which may be profitable, but which is never worthy of encouragement.