LUCK IN GOLF.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3213, 12 June 1909, Page 6

LUCK IN GOLF.

(By a Philosopher). "Is there such a thing as luck in golf?" is the question which the London "Times" is trying to answer. To a notice the question seems absurd. To hjm it is all luck, and the luck ia all against him. If he has a nice clean drive in front of him he will surely hit a telegraph wire; in fact, he has been known to do it two or three times running. Yet if he wished to hit the wire he would probably try all day without succeeding. But what is not luck. That is merely the wise discipline of Nature. We do not learn golf by our own efforts. We are taught golf by that kindly parent Nature, who is anxious that we should learn how to control our language, and how to manage our clubs. JSIor must the courtesies and safeguards of the game be confused with luck. When your opponent's ball "catches the highest pinnacle of a distant bunker" you wisely remark to • him that he had bad luck. But you do that lest he may atack you with his club. It is an act of mere self-insurance. So when you pick "your own ball out of the hole after a long: steal," you say, "That was luck." Your remark, however, does not represent your feelings. It is only a courteous repression of that "caput tumcaeens" which otherwise might seem i.idecent and might provoke assault. So these courtesies and safeguards cannot be regarded as throwing light on the question as to whether there is really any luck in the game. Luck also is sometimes confused with what is failed superstition. When Huck. Finn burned a spider in the candle-flame by accident, he was careful to turn his chair round three time and to make various cabalistic signs on his person. But he took these precautions because his conscience was —like that of the Athenians—supersensitive towards possible injury from unseen powers. So the wise man hesitates before picking up his own umbrella, and always avoids walking under a ladder. None of these little bits, however, give any real help in solving the problem of luck.

Nor do the mathematicians and scientists help us. They say luck is chance and chance is probability. They tell us that no event 13 uncaused. They talk of probability series which exhibit regularity, in the aggregate and irregularity in the individual event. They show us how to calculate such series, and initiate us into the mysteries of statistics. They even assure us that when a penny has come aowo heads six times running it is still even chances whether it comes down heads or tails the seventh time; yet no tosser of pennies that ever lived believes them. So different is theory from practice. They would fain prove by their theories that no man is ever lucky; yet even their own theories allow for "runs" which to an outsider would certainly be called luck. But the language ot the mathematician helps us to put the question clearly. In playing bridge—or even golf—is it true that some men have "runs" cf j favourable circumstances on their! side, while others have "runs" of 1 unfavourable circumstance? And do these "runs" if they exist—last tor more than a mere set of games? Do they last for a lifetime? Are some men habitually lucky while others are habitually unlucky? Then may not life itself be regarded as one long game, a kind of long day at golf, a long sitting at bridge or piquet? For life is nor, like chess or draughts. It is more liksgolfor cricket. It is even more like an even-

ing at whist. And do not some men all through their lives have "runs" o± favourable luck, while others have aiso "runs," but of the opposite kind? For luck in life's long game means just that some men get more of the rewards and some men get less than their skill and their play deserve. Mathematically this seems nothing but pure common-sense. The "runs" are always there, and sometimes they last a long time. If in the lives of most men—-the aggregate—the good runs tend to equalise the bad, yet in the lives of some men there must he a continuous "runs" of good and others continuous "runs" of bad. And this conclusion is not only mathematically sound, but it answers t<> our ordinary judgments of life. What moralist will dare to say that in this life every man gets exactly what he deserves, that he has had no surplus of luck either on the good side or on the bad?