GOLF RIDDLES

Shannon News, 18 May 1926, Page 2

GOLF RIDDLES

SOMi: CURIOUS SITUATIONS. (By Hurry Vardon, Six Times Open ] Champion.) There seems to be no limitation to the number ol" knotty points which may arise in connection with the rules of golf. For as many years as most of ua can remember, the Rules Committee* of St. Andrew's have ween publishing periodical batches of decisions on problems submitted to them by clubs in all parts of the world. The work continues and another set of riddles and answ-ers was promulgated a week or two ago. I suppose tnts truth is that a game which is pur- - sued in circumstances presented by Nature in her variety of moods throughout the universe is bound to produce an illimitable supply of newsituations. At the same time, there can be no doubt that many questions are thought out with refined cunning, and do not arise in actual play. Here is one of which I heard recently and which the originators proposed to submit' to the Rules Committee. , , I It is based on Definition 13, which says that a "stroke" is the forward movement of the club made with the intention of striking the ball, or any contact between the head of the club and the ball resulting in the movement of the ball. The party stating the case put forward the wholly admissible arguj meat that, in certain circumstances, when playing a shot in a bunker, i the golfer has no intention of striking the ball.' He aims two or three or four inches behind it, so that the disturbance of the sand will dislodge the ball from the hazard. This is, indeed, a familiar, everyday bunker shot; it is the method taught by all instructors for recovering from a heavy lie in sand. It J has been accepted for so long that i nobody is likely to be alarmed to ' the degree of abandoning it. Still, .there is the technicality. The player has 1 no intention of striking tithe ball. Consequently, if he makes no contact with it and fails to move it, .has he played a shot at all? A Point of Putting. Some questions on the rules are thoroughly perplexing. One of the leading amateurs, whose golf was developed after the war, had a curious habit on the putting green. When addressing the ball, he would not merely ground, the club in front of it; he would lift the club to and fro over the ball, and each time give the ground in front a sharp tap. He Avas quite unconscious of his ways until, in the fiuai of a big tournament, the referee pointed out to him that he was go : ins very near to infringing the rule which says that nothing may be pressed down with the club or in any other way. And then he went so'completely off his game as to be a certain loser. Inexhaustible is the variety of i curious incidents on the' golf course. 1 These are two engaging happenings related to me. The scene of the first was :i course in Middlesex. The shot of both sides appeared to go into the same bunker. But when the players arrived only one ball could be found. It lay tightly in a small heel-mark. A long search the full five minutes and more —was made for the other ball, both in the hazard and around it. No trace of it could be found. Ultimately its owner gave up the hole. His opponent thereupon lifted his ball out of the heel-mark, and there, beneath if. was the "lost" ball. How could the cause of perfect equitv have been met in such a case as this? And even if it had been known that one ball was covering the other, could the top ball have been lifted—out of a hazard—to enable the other man to play; 0.would its proprietor have had to tackle the shot with almost- the certainty of striking both balls? The Three-ball Snot. The other incident might be call od "the pawnbroker shot."" A player drove into the bracken. Ho found the ball lying in the thick of the. fern, but visible. He made a mi-htv swipe at it, and up came three balls—his own, and two more from the undergrowth! Hence the term "the pawnbroker shot." / As the tale was related to me, all the balls were of the same mak'e; they flew in various directions and the plaver could not for the life of him tell which was his. This happened, I am told, at Walton Heath during a meeting of the Old Carthusians Golfing Society. 1 have beard of people seeing double, but the circumstance of seeing treble is convincing. It would not be a bad thing if an expert sub-editor with a profounc knowledge of the spirit and practice of golf, "'ere. appointed by tho Royal and Ancient Club to go through the rules and cut. them down to bare essentials, reserving all the laws on points which do not often arise for a supplementary list, to which recourse could be had when necessity arose. If the rules were much briefer (if thev were made so even by ruthless excisions), the main points; and perhaps the real spirit of tho game, would be understood by a far greater number of people than at present.

That veteran ex-cliampion, Mr John E. Laidlay, hit the nail on the head when the . subject was under discussion on one occasion. "I don't know much about the rules." he confessed. "All I know is that I play the ball unless it gets into a place where I can't play it, and then I pick it up and put it in my pocket." And that, after all, is golf.