Fore!

Golf is a gentlemen's endeavor which began during the Renaissance and engaged the mind and body of civilized man 300 years before he first tried to play the piano. The keyboard has been largely mastered, but golf remains elusive and distant, withstanding the best efforts to bring it to terms.

To the true golfer, the lure of this "royal and ancient" game is complete and irresistible. He will play anywhere and under any circumstances. On the lush layout near Wankie in Rhodesia, an elephant rifle for protection against dangerous animals is a must. In Victoria Falls, club members share the course with crocodiles from the Zambezi. When the intrepid British explorer Robert Scott went to the South Pole, he took along a shag bag of practice balls and a midiron to work on his approach shots. An Australian, Stanley Gard, once played 256 holes in a single day. Only a fellow golfer can really understand this passion for the game. To nonplayers who share the opinion of Westbrook Pegler that golf is "the most needless outdoor game ever designed to waste the time and try the spirit of man," the bewilderment is absolute. Certainly no game supposedly played for pleasure gives so much pain to the participants. In the earliest history of golf, men went to jail rather than forgo their regular round. During the 15th Century so many Scottish soldiers sneaked away from' archery practice to play at the links nearby that the game was temporarily outlawed. In 1593 John Henrie and Pat Rogie were arrested in Edinburgh for "playing of gowlf on the links of Leith every sabbath at the time of the sermonses."

Although the law and the Church have since relented, the punishing strains of this Scottish invention carry on. Going for an easy tournament win, Bobby Jones once lost 18 pounds in three days. A professional, Ivan Gantz, who almost never had an easy win, became so enraged about his bad play in a match that he bashed himself in the forehead with a club and finished the round with blood streaming down his face. Gantz, who was plagued by a balky putter, used to get so infuriated watching his putts go off line that he regularly flung himself into sand traps and water hazards.

But, in spite of everything, golf remains a triumph of hope over experience. No matter how high the handicap, every golfer is convinced deep in his heart that he is on the verge of conquering the game. If he can just hold his left arm straighter or turn his hips more quickly, everything will fall into place. Brassie shots will stay on line, an easy camaraderie with Palmer and Nicklaus, a scratch handicap--all these can be his. After all, Walter Travis never even began to play the game until he was in his middle 30s and four years later, in 1900, he was the National Amateur Champion.

Golf is the eternal siren's song. Ostensibly, all a player has to do is stand over a ball that cannot possibly move until it is hit. Then, by taking a club that has been specifically designed for the job at hand by experienced craftsmen, a man is required only to strike at this immobile sphere and keep it somewhere within a spacious acreage of greensward generously provided by an indulgent greens committee. Almost any golfer with the requisite number of limbs can, without ever hitting a really exceptional shot, par any given hole on any golf course in the world. (That he can continue to play that same hole and not par it again for the next ten years is a mystery as impenetrable as Stonehenge.) But no matter. Even a single great shot is as possible for the duffer as it is for the professional. Last year an 84-year-old geezer scored a hole in one. So did a nine-year-old boy. So did a woman who was eight months pregnant. Cheered by the warmth of these comfortable dreams, the duffer can engage in a sporting game that is unequaled for the richness of its lineage. The player today who finds himself tightly bunkered can be consoled with the knowledge that Britain's James I shared a similar anguish. James, in fact, was the first head of state to become hopelessly addicted to golf. He was so smitten he established the honored position of Royal Clubmaker. Later, miffed over the rising prices of decent golf balls, he created the post of Royal Ballmaker in an effort to keep the price down to four shillings apiece. In America, President Taft, swathed in a pair of blazing knickers, set a precedent for American Presidents to follow. Wilson, a high-handicap aficionado who usually shot in the 100s, wooed and won Mrs. Edith Bolling Galt, whose game was a ladylike 180. Eisenhower ignored political jibes to play. The late President John F. Kennedy, a keen player in his own right, refused to allow any pictures to be taken of him while actually playing. He relented once and promptly lashed out a slicing drive that hit his own caddie standing well down the fairway.

The game today is peopled by the giants of the sporting scene. An Arnold Palmer and a Jack Nicklaus make money beyond the wildest dream of a Mickey Mantle. Last year each man won more than $113,000 in official purses alone and easily another half million each in endorsement and related earnings. "Arnie's Army," the gaggle of fans that troop after their hero regardless of his standing in the field, is the most loyal group of fans in sports today.

• • •

Golf was brought to America in 1888 when John Reid, the father of American golf, wrote to Scotland for some clubs and a few feather-stuffed balls. After they arrived, he rapped out a few shots down what is now 72nd Street in New York City and began the age-old golfer's search for a match. He found one quickly enough and the game was first played in America on February 22 over a three-hole course in a cow pasture in Yonkers.

Then, as now, bright plumage was the sartorial order of the day in linkagewear. When Reid established the New St. Andrews Golf Club, the official uniform for all players even on the hottest day consisted of a red jacket, white shirt and club tie. Trousers, while not specified, were, presumably, mandatory. Top honors for the most- if not the best-dressed golfer in the history of the game, however, must go to Adam Green, who played during the early 1900s. Green regularly golfed in patent-leather shoes, wing-tipped spats, knickers, checked jacket, celluloid collar and cuffs and red gloves. Thus attired, the resplendent Green wore goggles while driving off the tee and then switched to a monocle for his approach shots.

Golf, said Dr. Samuel Johnson, is "a game in which you claim the privileges of age and retain the playthings of childhood." Just how many of Dr. Johnson's playthings a golfer should carry has always been a delicate point. "Do not carry more clubs than absolutely necessary," counseled expert Joshua Taylor. "Unless you feel full confidence in a weapon, you had better leave it in your locker." For a long time golfers heeded this advice. In Scotland a man who needed more than three balls and six clubs was considered a spendthrift, and probably the sort of man who couldn't be trusted out of sight in the rough. When Chick Evans won the 1916 U.S. Open, he had only seven clubs in his bag.

Walter Hagen changed all of that. "Sir Walter" was the master of the grand gesture. In the days when touring professionals were barred from using the members' entrance of English clubs, Hagen stayed outside and shared a box luncheon with his caddie on the running board of his Rolls-Royce. On the course, however, Walter was something less than the caddie's friend. He regularly played with his bag loaded down with a dazzling assortment of clubs, a dozen or so balls, an umbrella, a clock, ball cleaner, a thermometer, a wind gauge, a caddie whistle, a rule book and a complete change of clothes. Hagen made up for the excess baggage once when he won the British Open and tipped his caddie by giving him the entire purse. The giant California shotmaker Lawson Little went even further and regularly carried as many as 30 clubs.

For today's golfer something smaller than Lawson Little's armory is in order, but the investment in basic equipment is still extensive. The rules of golf today allow a player to carry no more than 14 clubs with him on any single round, and there is extensive lobbying by professionals and club manufacturers to increase that maximum to 16 to allow for more specialized clubs. Although some purists decry this proliferation of equipage as an attempt to buy shots in the pro shop instead of making them on the course, most players want all the help they can get. A golfer going first-class buying clubs can plan on spending more than $100 for a set of four woods, and around $175 for the usual complement of nine irons. While there is a plethora of "bargain" sets on the market, it rarely pays to try to cut corners. Any set of irons selling for less than $125 is almost certainly sacrificing quality craftsmanship. The top manufacturers, such as PGA, Wilson, Spaulding, MacGregor and Northwestern, as well as some special autograph lines, such as Hagen, Hogan and Palmer, all make high-quality equipment within similar price ranges. Last year PGA came out with the first really new club since Gene Sarazen developed the sand wedge to compensate for his generally poor trap play. Called the "scrambler," this club combines a heavy sole on the bottom of the blade, like a wedge, to help it get through thick rough, and a straightened face like a midiron to get distance. Effective for shots as long as 150 yards, the scrambler is an excellent buy for players who spend a good deal of time off the fairway.

The best way for a player to equip himself is to go first to a golf professional for help. A good teaching pro will know the right equipment for you. "Don't try to teach yourself golf any more than you would medicine," goes the old warning, "it's too expensive"; a pro is absolutely necessary to anyone trying to play golf seriously. The average golf score in America is around 105, yet almost anyone can be regularly shooting in the 90s within one season if he gets the proper instruction. And the difference between going around in the 90s and going around in the 100s is the difference between actually playing one of the most satisfying games devised by man and hacking at a ball with a stick.

A half-hour lesson with a good pro should cost between $4 and $10, depending on the stature of the teacher. Probably the best instruction of all comes from a playing lesson, when the pro goes along and plays nine holes with you. It will cost $10 to $25 for nine holes, and the pro should discuss each shot with you and answer any questions. Remember (concluded on page 149)Fore(continued from page 96) however, a pro is just that, and don't expect him to play with you for free unless you are good friends.

There are more than 14,000 golf courses in the world, and half of them are in America, occupying more than one billion dollars' worth of real estate. Of the 7112 registered U.S. courses, a handful qualify as authentically great.

Brookline, outside of Boston, where teenager Francis Ouimet defeated the English giants Harry Vardon and Ed Ray in 1913 to win the U.S. Open, remains one of the great tests of the classic game. The Merion Cricket Club near Philadelphia, where Bobby Jones completed his grand-slam victory of winning the U. S. Open, the British Amateur, the British Open and the U. S. Amateur in 1930, is still, perhaps, the best all-around course in America. The giant Pine Valley outside of Camden, New Jersey, is the most horrific course in the United States. The great golf-course architect Charles MacDonald once said that "the object of a bunker or a trap is not only to punish lack of control, but also to punish pride and egoism." There are no egoists at Pine Valley, particularly at the 570-yard seventh hole, which offers one fairway trap that measures an acre and a half and has rough inside it. Jack Nicklaus interrupted his honeymoon just to play Pine Valley while his bride, Barbara, waited in the car (no ladies permitted). Pebble Beach and its neighbor Cypress Point, in California, are, by common acceptance, the greatest oceanside courses in America. Georgia's Augusta National, where Gene Sarazen won the Masters Tournament in 1935 by stuffing in a four wood from 235 yards out for a double eagle, is another supreme example of golf-course architecture at its best. The Delray Beach layout in Florida is a new course that has achieved greatness to the point where Arnold Palmer is paying $12,000 of his own money to join. In recent years the velvety greens of Palm Springs, California, have become the winter capital of golf in America, where more than 400,000 rounds are shot each season on such modern marvels as La Quinta, Thunderbird and Eldorado.

While most of the fine courses in America still belong to private clubs, the day has long since passed that the venerable Chevy Chase Club outside Washington, D. C., closed its austere gates to "persons engaged in trade." The courses, if not actual membership, in almost any club are available to guests upon introduction and invitation. Some of the best courses in the country, such as Pebble Beach, double in brass. Pebble Beach serves as a private membership club for those living in the area and is open on greens'-fee basis to anyone staying at the adjacent Del Monte Lodge.

Probably the best single golfing buy in America is a special off-season package offered by Pinehurst in North Carolina. From November through February there is a winter rate of $89 a week which includes a comfortable room, meals, tips and access to five championship courses.

The accommodations at the various clubs and resort hotels run the full range. Burning Tree, in Maryland, sticks close to the simplicity of its turn-of-the-century clubhouse Sanford White designed, when all a golfer wanted was a place to change his clothes and store a handy supply of potables. Other golf clubs have expanded their facilities to include bridle paths, polo fields, tennis courts, hockey rinks, bowling alleys and dance hall all in one huge, monstrously equipped clubhouse. The eminent golf critic Herbert Warren Wind described one such as looking "like some magnificent luxury liner that someone had forgotten to launch." In Texas, naturally, it is possible to arrange to have frozen daiquiris helicoptered out to you while on the course.

The true believer must sooner or later make the pilgrimage to the British Isles and play the ancient courses of the game's birthplace. British Overseas Airways Corp. offers the best single sporting tour available--a 15-day visit to the great courses of Scotland and England for $695 round trip from New York. This allows you to tread such legendary courses as Prestwick, Troon, Gleneagles and, the holy of holies, the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews.

In both Scotland and America some of the externals of the game are changing. Regular courses have been getting longer. A course length of 6800 yards was once considered more than enough. Now tournaments are played on courses measuring 7200 yards. Today's players are a different, beefier breed. From the hallowed spot at Augusta where Sarazen hit his four wood, Nicklaus in the Masters this year used a five iron to get home and probably could have hit a seven if he had felt like it.

Where there isn't room to build a regulation course, developers are carving out specially designed pitch-and-putt, par-three courses with powerful lights rigged to wrench a few more hours of playing time out of the day. But in spite of refinements, improved equipment, changed concepts and all the rest, the ancient challenge of golf remains.

"Those who are familiar with the game know that no man living can ever hope to approach its possibilities," said golfer John Henry Smith. "They know it is the grandest sport designed since man has inhabited this globe."