GOLF.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 49, 19 August 1911, Page 9

GOLF.

CARNEGIE DISCOURSES ON THE ANCIENT GAME. Andrew Carnegie, millionaire and golfer, has lately been discoursing about thV royal and ancient game. As the advocate of simplified spelling, he puts his system into practice in the following extracts:

The game of golf in my .voting days I was the proserv of the upper classes in I Scotland, sure mark of the gentleman, and a sickly plant soutli of the Border. No lady was ever seen on the links. The missionary work in various lines which the northern member of the United Kingdom has performed for her southern nabor is too large to recount, but in the South the noble game now ranks high, its most notable exponent being the Scotch ex-Prime Minister and leader of the Conservativs, Mr. Balfour, a "pawkie chid" as Scotch as brose. The writer red that at a recent conference of political leaders, when the present dangerous position of hereditary peers had produced profound silence, Mr. Balfour restored hilarity by proposing to change the subject and take up the real pressing question of the age—"How to keep on the line of the putt." The charm of golf—who can analyse and decide in what it really consists'? First we need to use the plural. It has not one, but a score of charms. We are under tho sky, worshipers of the "God of the Open Air." Every breth seems to drive away weakness and diseas, securing for us longer terms of happy days here on earth, even bringing something of heven here to us. No doctor like Dr. Golf—his cueres are as miraculous as those sometimes credited to Christian Science, minus its unknown and mysterious agencies which are calculated to alarm prudent people. Not the least of the virtues of golf is its power to affect the temper and especially the tung. We hav only to remain silent to produce unusual results. The preventiv treatment, successfully applied, has its richest field upon the green. There was a pictur in Punch recently in which a caddie following a player was haild by the other caddies, "Where are you going, Sandy?" "I'm going to hear this gentleman play golf." Clever lads, some of the caddies! A real duffer of noble presence was on a practis game alone. Repeatedly he had foozled in his attempts to drive an<l finally exclaimed, "Well, I never foozled like this before!" j Caddie, astonisht, "Your honor has played before?" A cousin of mine made his first trial one morning in Skibo links, ■ and, as is often the case when' taking it all easily and not trying hard, he sue- ' ceeded wonderfully. He could hardly wait for the morning game. We started and he foozled everything, and ait last I herd exclamations, and cald out to him, "What 'nation,' Morrison?" He replied apologetically, "I know, I know, I felt it, but I didn't think I said it." We I hav a celebrated professor who was lost' from site for a time. His caddie at last came in site, and being askt, i "Where's the professor 1" he cald out, "He's down among the whins tailking to hissel'." A deacon was reported as having resigned from his office in the kirk. Being askt why he did so by his minister, he explained that he had either to resign or quit playing golf, and he knew he couldn't do that. Skibo links hav some celebrities whose first efforts at golf begah there. Frederic i Harrison had been initiated one morning and was playing his first mutch. When he was foozling his way to the long hole for some time I turned round and askt, "How many?" "Three," he replied. I; had seen him miss frequently. After ; three and seven had eacli been affirmed , several times by the players, they proceeded to locate the strokes. After get- ' ing in a few "air strokes" in counting the seven, Harrison exclaimd, Oh, make it twenty if you count these; I only hit the ball three times!"

There are games and games. Does a game make friends closer and dearer to each other, or does it arouse ill-feeling and jealousy and drive men apart as rivals, even foes, each grudging the success of the other? We often hear accounts of the rivalries aroused by some of the games, football especially, and very naturally so, playd as it is with us when men roll on the groiind attending to disable each other. The reverse is the case with golf . Men become dearer friends than ever; the oftener they meet on the green, the fonder they become of each other and the greater the longing for their chum's society, and in after years, if separated, each warms as the name of the other is mentioned, and ends his panegyric with the ever-en-trancing words murmured with emotion, "Ah, we played golf together!" Short, simple, sufficient! Golf gives us intervals for exchange oi mutual thought which strengthen the ties between ns. Wo rejoice to see that our chums are playing well, and applaud their success. G*lf is a game entirely free from fysicay struggles over opponents—the ineradicable root of evil in football.