A GOLFING JOKE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 179, 27 January 1912, Page 10

A GOLFING JOKE.

The West Middlesex Golf Clubgrounds was the scene a few weeks ago of ail elaborate jest. The Press Golfing Society held a meeting to celebrate the return of its most distinguished member, Mr. Harold Hilton, from America, where, as all the golfing world knows, he defeated America's best players "in manner most convincing." In the programme of the welcome home was a match between knights of the pen and knights of the pencil. "The Pen"—that is to say, those who write for the papers --turned up in full strength, but the "Pencil" team was one short of its proper number until the match liad actually started. Then, just in the nick of time and to the obvious relief of the artists, their team was reinforced by a bespectacled Viking whom they enthusiastically welcomed as "Good old Zorn." He was a bulky person in shabby velveteens, with a fine ilowing flaxen beard, a leonine head, and sported blue spectacles. To the penman he was introduced as llerr Zorn, of Scandinavia—"a fine artist, but, poor fellow, as deaf as a post." And it fell to llerr Zorn to play Harold Hilton. The amateur champion was at the top of his game, but the Scandinavian played equally well—so well, indeed, that sundry eminent photographers followed him up, taking his poses for various strokes, and sundry more or less eminent golfing journalists followed in their train, making notes of the stranger's play and analysing the difference between the foreign manner and that of our native golfers. It was not until the very last hole that the amateur champion of Great Britain and America gained the victory, and so enabled his

side to claim a draw for the whole match. Then the stolid, silent Scandinavian showed the cloven hoof; he tore at his hair, which came off;,he tore at his beard, and that came off also; and then he doffed his spectacles, and stood revealed as C. R. Smith, the well-known professional to the West Middlesex Club. It was a joke that "came off' to perfection, for no one except those responsible for Smiths transmogrification suspeeted the psuedo-Viking—certainly Mr. Hilton did not. The professional naturally came in for very hearty congratulations on his admirable acting of the part assigned to him, and on his performance in playing his redoubtable opponent to the last hole in the inconvenient conditional of wig, beard and spectacles.