DEMOCRATIC GOLF.

Taranaki Daily News, 20 September 1921, Page 3

DEMOCRATIC GOLF.

fTHE WAYS OF ST. ANDREWS.

WHERE EVERYBODY PLAYS. To many people in New Zealand mention of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews conveys an impression of a golfing centre for the select among players—champions and near champions. It is quite the reverse, as the following article by a special correspondent of The Times shows:— To find real democratic golf, you must come north of the Tweed, and for choice to St. Andrews, now more than ever recognised on both sides of the Atlantic as the headquarters of the gome which has conquered the world. Before you have been a day in the place you will realise, if your previous experience has been confined to English courses, that here on the links between the sea and the Eden a surprising number of the written and unwritten laws by which pkty of southern courses is governed are regarded, if they are thought of at all, as modern inventions. Golf at St. Andrews is not the weekend luxury of the well-to-do; it is the daily game of the people in the streets. Every one walks about in hobnailed boots or shoes. The inhabitants carry cleeks and drivers under their arms instead of walking-sticks and umbrellas. Sooner or later in the day young men and maidens, old men and children find their way to the old course, the new course, the Eden course, or the Jubilee course, or the ladies’ or children’s or town putting courses, of which the Royal and Ancient Club is the centre. The hotels exist for golf. The pictures on their walls are of golf and golfing celebrities—Old Tom Morris, hands in pockets, standing in front of the club applauding Arthur Balfour as he drives the ball that confirms him in the captaincy, or watching Freddy Tait and Edward Blackwell start for the last medal that Freddy was ever to play. Leslie, Balfour, Melville, and other golfing celebrities watch you eating your breakfast and seem to bid you good-night as you go upstairs to bed. You dream of golf, you live for golf, you talk golf from morning to night. It meets you at the station after the run in from Leuchars and Guardbridge along the Eden and old courses, where there qre eight lines of outgoing and homecoming players between you and the sea, and, counting the crossing lines of play, four more. The undulating plain across which you look to the line of sandhills, smooth-shaven, trodden firm by the feet of countless generations, is alive with knots of players and their caddies--fishermen, small boys, and even girls, in addition to the, alas, fast-dwindling band of regular caddies round whom so many golfing stories hang. FREEDOM FOR ALL, From early morning till the light fails, every four minutes through the. day, a fresh match starts on the old course from the tee in front of the club, where Alexander sits in his little sentry box calling out the names of the' couples who have won places in the ballet the evening before. Singles, three-ball matches. foursomes, and four-ball matches follow one another in unending succession. There are no tiresome rules restricting the number of players in a match or confining particular varieties of the game to stated hourse, except for the limited allowance of numbers allotted to the members of the old house. Ladies, girls, and little boys take their turn with the rest. Your dog. if you and he so wish, follows you round. The club pays for the upkeep o" the old course, and the town takes the green fees to pay for the lately constructed Eden course? The club keeps up the new course and takes the green fees to keep it up. The Jubilee and town putting courses pay for themselves, the latter many, many times over. All courses are open to anyone who wants to play on them. There is no snobbery, no class, sex, or age distinction, and no (feeling that the possession of money is an indispensable part of the game. A ball and the wish to play —that ia all you need. On the autumn meeting day of the Royal and Ancient Club, members enjoyed the courtesy of the green. From the moment when Lord Haig, the cap-tain-elect,. played himself into office and won the Royal Adelaide medal by hitting the first tee shot, there was no room for anyone to play but the 159 members who had gathered from all quarters of the United Kingdom for the i chief event of the club year. But this is only one of the very few exceptions to the general rule that prevails throughout the rest of the year, and even then the other three courses were for the rest of the world.

That, it seems to me, is the way in which golf should bo managed, wherever it is played. The. upkeep of courses must necessarily be defrayed by the members of the club to which they belong, but there is no reason why municipalities should not provide courses for their ratepayers, and none that I can see why even private clubs should not throw open their greens for moderate fees and at particular hours or on stated days to players other than their regular members. To a certain extent the concession would make the conditions of play less agreeable than they are as things stand now. It would, for instance, in crowded days, take three hours to play a full round, as it does here in mid-week and during July and Augiist, instead of the normal two hours and ten minutes; but the gain in the greater happiness of the greater number and the promotion of good feeling between the. different classes, between the rich and the poor, would outweigh the obvious disadvantages of a purely personal nature to the general benefit of the community and the national standard of play.