On the Other Hand
From the Kansas City Star.
It is a tribute both to the game of golf and to those who play—the fact that you never read of two players getting into a brawl over the golf table and hitting each other on the head with a golf cue.
Those persons who feel sorry for Chick Evans because he can’t putt may like to know that Vardon and Ray, interviewed when they returned to England, agreed that “Evans with his new club is the best putter in the United States.”
Paying club dues for the three months beginning January first used to be our notion of zero in entertainment. We are obliged to lower the temperature twenty degrees since the war tax was added to the dues.
One of the things in golf most difficult to explain is “the feel of the clubhead.” We have tried to convey an idea of the sensation to persons who have solicited an opinion, but without success. Perhaps this will explain it: Take a full swing with the mashie for a chip shot of ten or twenty yards. Practise that for a while, and you will begin to discover that there is something at the end of the shaft.
The young woman with the golf club who appears on magazine covers or in railway folders is shown, as often as not, holding the implement in an exceedingly awkward manner. Artists of yesteryear were better observers. A reproduction of a painting, “The Golf Players,” by Pieter de Hooch (1630-1677), represents, for one item, a child holding a club as a Vardon of that period might have grasped it.
Mr. Topping is a well known American golfer, and the mention of his name has evoked many smiles and decrepit jests. It is not generally known, however, that he is related on the paternal side to the Hookers and on the other wing to the Slicers, two other celebrated clans whose lineage details occupy many pages in the Almanac de Golfa.
After prayerful consideration the Western Golf Association has ruled that as long as a golfer depends on the literary merits of his articles to sell them, he will retain his amateur standing. One could almost whittle a wheeze out of that.