GOLF LEGION’S BURDEN

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIV, 22 January 1931, Page 11

GOLF LEGION’S BURDEN

DOCKING THEIR ALLOWANCE

(By Harry Vurdon, Six Times Open Champion ) (Specially Written for “The Mail”) I suppose that 75 per rent, of the golfers in this country have doublefigure handicaps, and it seems to me that they are labouring more and more under the sense of a grievance concerning the system by which they have to take their strokes in match-play. Certainly they are becoming increasingly frequent and fervent in their private criticisms of the principle. It is their one and only plaint. Considering their numerical strength, they behave with admirable restraint and often wtih noble magnanimity in oilier matters. When they are told that the course to which they have sworn allegiance, and which they have been trying vainly for years to conquer, must be lengthened and made more difficult, so as to satisfy modern requirements as a thorough test of the game, they accept the announcement like heroes.

When money is required for the purpose, they usually provide most of it, so that the better players may have a better time than ever. When they are informed that the new tenth hole, measuring 460 yards, will be one of the finest two-shot holes in the land, they listen with rapt attention, as though tlie irony of describing it thus to a man who will be lucky ever to reach it in three shots had no touch of bitterness.

They are, indeed, a very patient and amiable people, always ready to agree that the conditions of play should be dictated by golfers who have the knack of hitting the ball truly and strongly, and who, therefore, know what everybody ought to be culled upon to accept. But there is one point concerning which many members of this struggling army have serious misgivings. They are not at all satisfied about the reasonableness of the arrangement under which, when they meet in match-play anybody who is rated as their superior, they receive only three-fourths of the handicap difference. A HAPHAZARD BEGINNING

Nobody knows when or how the system originated. The first reference I can find to it is a statement made in 1890 by Mr Horace Hutchinson, the leading authority of that day, that “the man who receives a stroke a hole from a scratch player in match-play will require probably somewhere about one half as many more strokes in score play.” The theory is that the inferior goner needs a larger allowance in score play because be is the more likely to have one or two very bad holes, at which every stroke is taken down in evidence against him. In match-play, he merely loses these holes ; the punishment is not the heavier because lie makes such a muddle of them as to lose them dreadfully. The better golfer, being the steadier, has less opportunity of profiting by this possibility of light escape; lie is not often guilty of very bad boles. And so he is not called upon to give his inferior so n\any strokqg in a match as in il score competition. On the face of it, the principle is plausible. But the argument concerning very bad boles can also be applied for a converse purpose to very good boles. Take the case of a plus-tliree player who is opposing a sixteen-handicap man. The chances are that the former lias several brilliant holes: it is because be intersperses brilliancy with steadiness that he is plus-three. Every now and again, he does a hole of 460 yards or thereabouts in four strokes; that is his form. Ihe eighteen-handicap man plays it tolerably well for him, but takes six for it. That, also, is his form. _ It is by no means a bad hole for him, and He is receiving a stroke, but lie loses it. Ihe stroke is useless. The same kind of thing happens at a hole of, say, 340 yards. One small slip means a five for the long-handicap man. The plus giant, with a long drive and a mashie-niblick shot, may hole out in three, and win even though he is giving a stroke. Indeed, these things happen constantly. Perhaps it is true that the longhandicap golfer, escaping with no more than the loss of the hole in match-play even when he plays the hole atrociously badly, does not deserve to be deprived on tiiis ground of twenty-five per cent, of his full allowance of strokes. He has to cope with the fact that at some of the holes which he plays as well as he knows how. and at which he receives strokes, he loses ground because his opponent accomplishes “birdies” —a way with plus players and a proper thing for them to do All the evidence goes to show that, as handicapping now stands in this country, the back-markers can about to give full handicaps in match-play. How often does a man with a long allowance win a match tournament under the present conditions? Three out ot every four of the competitors aie moic or less long-handicap golfers, and, receiving only three-fourths ot tlie strokes which ’they are rated to receive, they are usually trampled upon before the semi-final comes under consideration. HUNTING THE CRIPPLED I commend any club with a matchplay tournament in view to try the system of giving full difference in handiCa \Vliere mediocrity is the keynote of two contestants with respective handicaps of, say, fourteen and eighteen, it matters little whether the one gives the other three strokes or four. Anything is possible in that match. Where a plus or scratch man meets a long-handicap player, the former wil brace himself the stronger for the duet if he has to concede the full allowance of strokes. As often as not, lie will bo equal to the task. At present, lie is rather in tlie nature of a tiger hunting animals whose leg-power has been reduced from four to three, and this certainly means hard work lor the pool rabbit.