GOLF.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 209, 23 January 1913, Page 8

GOLF.

SOME INCIDENTS OF THE LINKS. The annals of golf record that in the summer of 1907, within a few weeks of each other, balls played by Mr. A. Andrew at Troon, and H. A. Loveridge, the Shipley professional, at Bradford Moor, were impaled on hairpins, with the corollary that the former took 10 strokes and the latter 7, including 5 putts, to hole out, while the hairpin manufacturer wrestled with the problem of devising a hair anchor that cannot escape under the stress occasioned by the fiercest brain storm ever engendered by a half stymie and "this for the match."

From the players' point of view, the I incident had its tragic side, but in view of the fact that the hairpins were not cribbed, cabined and confined in a lady's hair at the time of impalement, the element of tragedy in a literal sense was fortunately absent. What would happen to the wearer if the impalement process happened when the hairpin was in use must be a matter of conjecture, as up to the moment of writing the only indirect evidence we possess is the case of the young lady who was strolling across the course at St. Andrew's on September 28, 1907—a most ill-advised promenade considering that Royal and Ajicient Medal meeting was in progress —and who intercepted, with the point of a hatpin she was wearing, a ball in full flight, with the result that it was firmly transfixed. As the fair trespasser was unhurt the sympathy of the entire golfing world naturally went out to the unfortunate owner of 'tlic ball, whose shot was interfered with, and who, but [for the fortunate circumstance that the lady was moving, would presumably—- | Rule 17 (I)—nave had to play his next i shot from where it lay. Certainly, early | in the spring of 1905, a young lady who was walking across the North Shore I links at Blackpool was given a severe i headache through the agency of a ball ' driven by a golfer about 100 yds away, ' that struck and buried itself in the lining of the straw hat she was wearing, but as this errant missile failed to find the business end of a hairpin, our curiosity as to the probable effects of such a collision remains unsatisfied.

A caddie who was accidentally struck by a ball behind the ear on a suburban course some few years -ago succumbed almost immediately afterwards from the effects, but in view of the enormous number of golf balls that are struck in the course of a year it is nothing short of surprising that so few people are hit, and when hit, so comparatively little harm is done. Early in 1908, for example, a local advocate, when driving off from the 10th tee at Balgownie, Aberdeen, was struck full pitch on the back of the head by. a ball driven from the 9th tee, without any direful happening, and yet the force of the ball must have been far from spent at the moment of the impact, in view of the fact that it rebounded over the 9th green at a distance of between 33yds and 34yds, which fairly indicates that its kinetic energy at least equalled that of the ball that broke in pieces the pipe that was being smoked at the moment of impact by a pedestrian walking across the Blackley course who intercepted the flight of a urive early in 1908, with the result that he was bereft of the bowl of his pipe, and left with only a small portion of the stem between his teeth, and the conviction that he had been distinctly badly treated. When Mr. Balfour was accidentally struck on the head at the lltli hole by another competitor during the autumn meeting of the Royal and Ancient at St. Andrew's in 1908, the incident appears to have affected him far less than the striker, who, when he made the stroke, was playing to the 7th, out of sight of the right hon. gentleman, for, whereas the ex-Premier proceeded on the even tenor of his way, the unfortunate author of the mishap was so greatly upset that lie went completely off his game. —Harold Maefarlane, in Fry's Magazine.