GOLF

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 336, 24 June 1911, Page 7

GOLF

••-.AN EXTRAOBDINARS! SHOT. ■■.;■■ Tlie other day at Biarritz (writes Horace Hutchinson in the Westminster Gazette) I was stopped by a man whom I knew only by sight saying to mc, "If you will allow me, I should like to tell you of the most extraordinary shot, as I believe, ever played at golf. It was you that played it, and I was the only man who saw both ends of the strokeits playing and its denouement." This sounded well worth listening to, and he then told me that he had »een at Prestwick in the year 1888 on the occasion of the amateur championship. He was among a few spectators who had followed over the great Himalayas, as ibe immense range of sand-dunes on that course is called, the match in which I was engaged against Mr. "Andy" Stuart. I was holder of the championship in that far-oil" date, and Mr. Stuart, in that match, knocked me out. On the following morning he had to meet Mr. John Ball, who ultimately won, and Mr. Stuart, having the bad habitthere is a moral attached to this subsidiary part of the story—of sharpening his razor on the palm of his hand alter shaving, took the stroke rather too heavily and cut such .a bad divot out of his skin that he was not able to play, and haa to scratch to Mr. Ball. I was extremely sorry that Mr. Stuart should be so unfortunate, but I remember that I could not help thinking that, if he had to suffer the misfortune at all, it might just as well have befallen him a day earlier. All that is a digression. We were playing the hole next after the short one of the Himalayas of which it is certain that Mr. Hilton must retain a very vivid memory, for it cost him a third open championship. I had sliced my approach badly, and was over the hills to the right of the green. My caddie and I went after the ball, Mr. Stuart and the lookers-on remaining , about the green. | 1 pitched the ball up into the air, and came over the hill to see where it had gone; but there was no sign of it. The spectators declared with one accord that it had not come over the hill at all. My caddie and I wore equally emphatic that it hail. The ground was quite open. It seemed like a conjuring trick, or as if the ball had vanished into thin air. Then a man of the. St. Andrew's town club, one Kirk by name, who is since dead, poor fellow, said, '"Well, [ did think I felt something tug at my pocket," and he looked in nt the outside breast pocket of his coat, and there lay my ball, on his handkerchief. He had not seen it go in, had only felt the tug, and not until we began to talk about tho extraordinary disposition of the hall did it occur to him to connect the tug with the drop of a golf ball. What seemed almost equally curious was that none of the spectators, so far as I could learn, had seen the ball.

In the fifth round of the British amateur championship there was a meeting of ilie prodigies when Bruce Pearce, the 1 lfl-'ycar-old Tasmanian, met Charles Evans, aged 21 years, and after one of the most exciting contests on record, victory rested with the young Tasmnninn at the I9th hole. The greatest interest was aroused in England by the visit of young Evans. Tn all probability he was the only American competitor in the championship, despite announcements that P. HerreshofT, J. G. Anderson and others would enter.