GOLF

Taranaki Daily News, 25 November 1926, Page 4

GOLF

VVAIWAKAIHO links

SUMMER PLAY.

(By

“Stance.”)

At last summer golf seems firmly established. So far each week-end has seen the links thronged with playSrs and their number is constantly increasing. The club very wisely are admitting members of other Taranaki clubs to playing rights during the summer for the nominal sum of one guinea, and already quite a number have taken advantage of this concession. The sheep are keeping the rough well down and there are few places where one can lose a ball beyond all hope of recovery. The fairways are fast and the green good. One or two things, however, would tend to make the lot of the long handicap man a little easier. (1) The thirteenth fairway should be extended right back to the tee side of the hill. The big sand bunker is quite enough penalty without adding a big stretch of very rough as well. (2) The middle tee on the sixteenth should be moved forward more often when a mountain wind is blowing. Last weekend even scratch men had to use a wooden club to reach the green. This hole is intended as a test of an iron shot and not of a full wood. The putting is still as popular as ever and Stance would like to see the match committee organise a putting competition; not one of the knock-out description but more on the lines of a bowling tournament where each player plays every other one and the leaders play off on the two life system. Each match should be over 18 or 36 holes and ties to be counted as such. IMPROVING AT GOLF. BUNKER SHOTS. (By Harry Vardon —Copyright.) London, Oct. 21. There can be no doubt that a great many strokes are wasted in bunkers, either because people have no particular idea as to how the shots ought to be played or because, in attempting the recoveries they try for too much in the matter of distance. It is a sound policy to calculate that, if we can get out of a bunker at a loss equivalent to half a stroke, we are doing well. That means that we must accomplish the next stroke—or, at any rate, some stroke before the completion of the hole—a little bit extra well in order to retrieve the situation entirely. Sometimes the ball liqf so badly that we must be content to lose a whole stroke in just struggling clear of the hazard without being subjected to the humiliation of playing two or more shots in it. In the great majority of instances, this latter tribulation is the direct result of being greedy and trying to achieve more than is possible at the first attempt. Very seldom have I seen a ball so desperately tucked away in a bunker that it could not be retrieved in one shot by the person who played the stroke properly. It is evidence of the possibilities in this connection that good golfers nearly always recover at the first attempt, although it is obvious that—tlie uncertainties of lies in hazards being what they are —-first-class players, no less than the rank and file are at the mercy of the gods once they have struck the ball into a place of retribution. They recover at the least possible cost because they concentrate first and last on getting out of the hazard—a long way out if circumstances are favourable but, in any ease, out of it. The average golfer is apt to be excessively heroic. Or perhaps it would be correct to describe him as lacking in discretion. He resolves that he will risk the face of the bunker, and go for distance, trusting to make the bail rise quickly and skim over the top of the hazard. More often than not he goes crash into the face of it. There is much to be said for courageous golf, but only rarely is a bunker the place for its exploitation. It is much the same as in other walks ot life in which an individual finds himself in a predicament of his own making. The most daring way of trying to get out of it is not necessarily the best way. DEGREES OF DIFFICULTY. There is a fairly well defined type of shot -that serves in nearly all instances in bunkers. So far as concerns stance, the player hap to adapt himself to cir ; cumstances. He may have to stand with one foot above the other, or work himself into an unusual position owing to tile proximity of a bank of the hazard which does not permit him to dispose one leg or the other just as he would wish. This matter apart, there is a way of poising the body and swing for the shot which may be set down as the best that mortal has devised. Before dealing with it, however, let me remark that it is intended for real bunker shots; that is to say, shots in which the ball lies heavily"in loose, fine sand, so that its base is well set in the soil and our view of it begins more or less with its diameter. 1 think the American clubs have taught members to play bunker shots better than our golfers accomplish these shots, because the Americans have made it a practice—indeed, almost a solemn rite —to keep their bunkers constantly raked. The result is that there are invariably rows of furrows, only inches apart, in the sand, and a bunkered ball is nearly always in one of these furrows. Our bunkers very often consist of firm, level expanses of sand, or some other soil, on -which the ball ssts up as serenely as on the fairway. To be sure, there is usually the confronting face of tiie hazard to consider, but when the lie ie firm it frequently is not the true bunker shot that is wanted at all. The ball can be taken cleanly with the mashie or the niblick, due allowance being made for the degree of quick elevation whieh is needed to carry the bunker-face. The trouble is that many people, being in a bunker, play what they are pleased to call a bunker-shot without first considering the situation in a spirit of cold reasoning. It has sometimes been remarked how well the Americans play their bunker shots here. Walter Hagen, indeed, is

renowned as a man who obtains the par figures in this country as readily when ho is bunkered as when he is not. I imagine the reason is that he finds some of our bunkers easy. He could not do the same in America. THE REAL THING. However, we must apply ourselves to genuine bunker ehots —-those shots for which the ball is nestling down in the sand, or whatever the nature of the substance, in such a way that we cannot see the bottom of it. There are plenty of these shots to play, even if they are not so constant in their presentment as if we kept the sand for ever raked. Assuming that we have the real thing to do—that we ought not to expect to get very far with the shot, but that we must release ourselves in one blow from the clutches of the hazard — the first thing to do is to fix the eye on a spot about an inch or a half or two inches behind the ball. What we have to do is to stab the blade of the niblick forcibly into the sand at this spot so as to create such a violent disturbance of the soil that the ball flies up from its imprisonment and, with the grace of Providence, come to rest on the course. There is no need to finesse with the question of strength. Let it be a full swing—as full a swing as for a drive. If the ball is lying badly, we are not likely in any case to get very far. There should be nothing in the nature of an easy flowing swing at the ball. It has to be a powerful hit into the S'.nd behind the object. Turn the body well towards fho direction in which you are aiming (a position rather more open than that for the mashie shot); take the elub up fairly straight and slowly to the top of the swing; and bring it down with rhythm so as to bury its head behind the ball. As the blow is made there should be a perceptible tendency to thrust the weight of the body on to the left leg. This, at any rate, is how I get out of bunkers