GOLF.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 18, 15 July 1911, Page 7

GOLF.

GOLF A LA KAFFIR. An intelligent Hindoo has been heard to define billiards as a game in which two men, armed with long sticks, poke at a ball, while one player says: "Oh!" and the other: "Hard lines." Golf seems to have similar impressed the native South African mind. A Kaffir warrior was observed attentively watching the efforts of certain unskilful players to extract their ball from one of those deep • bunkers which greatly abound on South African courses. The following day this same Kaffir was seen to be belaboring a huge boulder with a big pole, and shouting, "Hang it!" the while. "This white man's game," said the dusky child of Nature. "Welly good game white man's* game." The story has the merit of being true. All golf stories are. INDOOR GOLF.

So just let us consider, says Mr. Henry Leach, one of the best possibilities of indoor golf and rescue it from the crudeness which characterises it in most golfers' households, where the most that is done is to putt plainly on a carpet or to try to loft balls into an easy'chajr. The pitching snot which is indicated in the last sentence is a poor thing. It is not very good practice, because no particular accuracy is required when the back of the chair is there to stop the ball, and the shot cannot be played very nicely because the club cannot get under the ball sufficiently, with the result that, as often as not, it is topped, and then the ball goes flying about the room. A cushion, however, is the ideal surface from whieh to play a pitch shot indoors, and if it is a hard cushion it comes very near to ordinary turf in playing quality. And to pitch into flaskets of different .kinds, according to the severity of the test of skill or the' quality of the practice, are much petter than chairs. A wide and low-sided basket, such as is used to contain ladies' sewing materials sometimes or the one that the little dog sleeps in, are excellent for easy tests, while a waste-paper basket is good for something more difficult In order to prevent damage a professional golfer has invented a woollen ball for indoor practice.' GOLF FOR THE "DELICATE."

. The right of golf to rank as an nthJ Ictic sport is no longer in dispute. The reproach (says Mr, Garden Smith in the Globe) that usqd to be levelled at it, that it was an old man's game, is rio\j seldom Jieard—never from anyone who lias ever seen it played by two first-class youthful exponents—and the fact that it can be played and enjoyed" by* men who are ho longer in their first youth, and'even by the elderly, is but ah added testimonial to its manifold advantages. But there is one respect in which the virtue of golf requires emphasising, and that is in its peculiar suitability for the numberless people who are what is , known as "delicate." There are scores and scores of people going about who have abandoned all hope of ever being .able to take any more active part in sport than is afforded by a game of | croquet or billiards. We do not say J that golf is a suitable game for all <J!eliI cate people, but we do say that there are very few among the numerous classes of delieatp people who lend inactive lives for no other reason than that they think any exertion is beyond them, who would not be enormously benefited if they would only take up golf.