The Reformer and the Proposed New Golf Ball

BERNARD DARWIN

I WRITE this article in a state of considerable mental trepidation. It is not that I am frightened of the task; there is something far worse than that hanging over my head. In about a week's time I must give a golfing talk over the radio. Nor again is that the worst. I have talked before and survived hut then I have talked all by myself. This time I must take part in a duet, a duologue, a discussion—call it what you will— on the limiting of the golf ball and I have a very formidable adversary.

This is my friend Captain Harry Graham who writes charming light verse (are not his Ruthless Rhymes famous everywhere?) and amusing plays and is an established wit. In the ordinary way his jokes would naturally be much better than mine and now I come to the worst thing of all—I shall not be allowed, I suppose, to try to make jokes. I must be the serious golfer earnestly expounding the case for this unpopular project of limiting the golf ball; he is to be the golfing man in the street who desires to be left in peace to play his game as he pleases and not to be worried with the woes of champions and championship committees.

THESE no doubt he will deride with bitter jests, and will march triumphantly through my poor defences—horse, foot and artillery. It hardly seems to me a fair match. "It's unekal and that's the fault on it" as Mr. Tony Weller used to say "Even his grog worn't made half and half." However, there the horrid thing is coming ever nearer to me, and I must go through with it. It occurs to me, however, that I might have a fairer field and a little more favour if I tried to write something here on the same subject, which really is a popular one in the sense that it concerns the great mass of people who play golf. I promise not to be in the least alarmingly technical about it for the best possible reason that I am incapable of it. I am a wholly unscientific and unmathematical person and my views on decimal points, which have just to be mentioned, are those of the late Lord Randolph Churchill who, when Chancellor of the Exchequer, called them "those d—d dots."

This proposed new ball would normally have come up to be voted on at the general meeting of the Royal and Ancient Club last autumn. The question was, however, postponed because the authorities of the United States Golfing Association were still investigating and experimenting with characteristic thoroughness. I take it, however, that it will certainly be decided one way or the other this year. The subject therefore is entirely a topical one, and so now for a few facts and a few—very few, I assure you—dots.

The law at present lays down that the golf ball must not weigh more than 1.62 ounces nor have a diameter of less than 1.62 inches; in other words it must not be too heavy or too small. The ball, as tentatively agreed upon by the U. S. G. A. and the Rules of Golf Committee at St. Andrews, must not weigh more than 1.55 ounces nor have a diameter of less than 1.66 inches; in other words it is to be a little lighter and a little fatter than the present one. The point on which the American authorities have been making further experiments is the "coefficient of restitution" which in ordinary language may be translated, I believe, "resiliency". I have been privileged, under the rose, to see the record of some of these experiments, and it is a very fat volume and not at all light! I gather that so far at any rate the question of any increased resiliency is more or less negligible, so that it is this i.55 or 1.66 ball which will soon be either adopted or rejected.

If the matter were to be decided at this moment by a plebiscite, there is very little doubt as to what would happen. The new ball would be hurled to perdition. The great mass of golfers would reject it because they think it is going to make the game much harder and less pleasant for themselves.

THEY think this for two reasons. First of all they suspect those in authority. I have no right to say that of America, but I can say it of my own country. Golfers seem too often to believe that there is a body of malignant persons (individual names unknown but collectively called "St. Andrews") forever darkly plotting to trample on the golfing man in the street and spoil his fun. Secondly, they have not tried the ball and they are too lazy or too obstinate to do so. It is not a difficult thing to do because the ball-makers regularly make a larger and lighter ball which is in effect the proposed new one. If the ordinary golfer would expend half a crown or a dollar, as the case may be, and buy just one such ball and try it, I believe the proposed change would be accepted with no more than the inevitable amount of grumbling produced by any change anywhere; further, that in a few months everyone could have settled down and would have forgotten that there had ever been any trouble. At present, however, people are so mortally afraid of losing a few yards of length even for a single round that they will not try it and so continue to believe that their game is to be ruined.

I confess that I too have been rather lazy—I have not tried it as long or as thoroughly as perhaps I might, but I have played some golf with it, enough to enable me to judge whether other people are talking sense or nonsense. Now does the ball make the game much harder for anybody? I do not for a moment believe it does. Ii seems to take at the very most ten yards— let us say five a carry and five a run—off a normal drive of 200 yards. From, the really "tigerish" driver it takes, of course, rather more, because there is more to take, and from the short hitter it takes less. I should say that it reduces the length of iron shots proportionately; further that it is a little—only a little harder to manage and control and so demands what is surely a good and interesting feature, rather more variety of shot. I ought to add that in some of my trials I found the difference between the two balls so very slight that I had moments of wondering if all this trouble was worth while.

MY imaginary man in the street may reply that he is willing to assume the truth of what I have said and yet remains entirely unmoved. He finds, he says, that he wants every yard of length as it is, that the present ball is, Heaven knows, quite difficult enough to manage, that his own eccentricities provide him with all the possible variety of shot that he can desire—and more also. That is a natural thing to say and not a very easy one to answer. It is only human—and I do not claim to be in any degree a superior person in this respect—to think of our own shots on our own courses and how they may be affected. Nevertheless, we must try to take a rather more detached standpoint and think of the game and not of our own personal games. If we talk about billiards we do not mean the game as played in some rustic inn

On a cloth untrue

With a twisted cue

And elliptical billiard balls

or by players, of whom I am one, who rarely make two consecutive scoring strokes. No, we mean the game as played by good players on a good table, and we must think of golf in the same way, namely at its best. In every game or sport there is an ideal balance to be maintained, in games between attacker and defender, in sport between hunter and hunted or man and Nature. Golf from this point of view is rather a sport than a game; the balance must be maintained not between the two opponents but between man, armed with the best, most efficient clubs and balls, and Nature in the form of the links.

Continued on page 116

Continued from page 92

Taking golf today as it is played by the best golfers, can there be much doubt that the balance is not ideal, that it is tipped in the players' favour? It is not that the players "burn up" the courses with their wonderful scores, but that they do those scores in rather dull and monotonous ways which might be made more interesting. To certain tests worthy of their great skill, they are scarcely put. The brassy shot is not quite atrophied but it is played far too seldom by the best players and Heaven knows we cannot make our courses still longer in order to force them to play it. Yet it is the final shot in all golf. There is one glory of the drive and another glory of the approach, and the brassy shot up to the pin alone combines the two. The iron play of the champions, though brought to a great pitch of perfection, is hardly exciting, since they play, very wisely and profitably, just one shot with a series of differently graded clubs. Up goes the ball high in the air; down it comes on a well watered green; in it goes, makes a nasty little hole by its own weight and stops in a yard or two. It is intensely skilful but it does grow dull. If only, for instance, they had more often to keep the ball down against the wind or to play the lower pitching shot which grips the ground at the second bounce, squirming its way into the turf. They do not play these strokes because they do not need them and it would not be good business to try any needless experiment. Moreover, this is really true also of much humbler golfers. It may not be so obviously true because they cannot play one shot with monotonous skill, but they are not in fact asked, any oftener than is the champion, to essay any other kind. I am quite aware that it is easy to talk nonsense about variety of stroke but I am quite sure that there is not enough variety in the modern game with the modern ball and I hope, without being too sanguine, that the new ball might do something to redress the defect.

There is one respect in which, in my belief, the lighter ball is going, very perceptibly, to help the weaker brother. He does still have to play a good number of brassy shots and the modern ball is a diabolically difficult one with which to play them, because it takes a great deal of picking up. Just observe a number of average golfers playing brassy shots in winter time or on any day when the ground is wet and heavy and the worms have been busy. How many do they hit clean out of all the number? Very, very few I venture to say and a large percentage are topped or at any rate the ball adheres to the ground, which is much the same thing. Those golfers would have been far better advised to take spoons or even irons, but, being of a properly sporting disposition, they like to take a risk and a brassy with unhappy results. I am sure that in this respect they will be better off with the new ball and will thus gain on the roundabouts fully as much as they have lost on the swings. Some cynical person may ask why if the lighter and larger ball can confer such benefits upon this ordinary player, he is never found to use it. It might be wiser of him in some cases if he did but it is tolerably certain that he never will, as long as his neighhours do not, for he would rather give up anything in the world than a yard of length from the tee.

Again I am not posing as a superior person and blaming him for that. Quite apart from variety nobody wants to be outdriven by more than he can help, for it can make the rest of the game uphill work. If, however, this new ball does come in, and the world in general uses it, there will be no reasonable cause for complaint; when everybody loses a little length nobody will know that he has lost any. That which it would really be sad to lose is not a paltry little bit of distance but the delightful sensation of a clean hit, and that this ball can and does give.

Having come almost to the end of the chapter I find there is something that ought to have been said at the very beginning. I hope I shall not be so forgetful when I come to that ordeal by microphone. That one thing is this, that we live in a free country, that the new ball, if it is adopted, will only be compulsory in competitions and that people will be able to play in friendly games with any kind of ball they like. Whether or not it will be adopted here I should be sorry to prophesy confidently. The decision rests with the members of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club in general meeting, that is to say with a body of golfers of all sorts of views and all degrees of skill. I would go no further than this, that I think they would give the ball the trial and that seems to me the right thing to do. I am not a red hot enthusiast. I am very far from holding that the game of golf has at present been ruined for, of course, it has not. But that balance of power between man and the game has been thrown a little out of gear. It is not so perfect as it once was; it wants adjusting and it is surely worth while trying to adjust it.