Noble experiment number 2

DAVID GRAY

First, Prohibition came to America; and now a new menace confronts us —the Balloon Golf Ball

It is no secret that these United States receive with wistful submission any and all measures proclaimed as attempts to make a better world. Protest is subsequent.

On January 1, 1931 the six million golfers of America accepted meekly, if not gladly, the new millenium-bringing golf ball. What they would (if they could) do today to the gentlemen who handed them this blessing is information not fit to print.

The advertised purposes of the new ball were humane, albeit savoring of the cureall. It was promised that it would save the shorter courses from the ravages of the par butcher and at the same time make golf easier and happier for the dub, who comprises ninety-eight per cent of American golfdom. It would shorten the length of the long courses and lengthen the shortness of the short. The national temperament, being whait it is, detected nothing fishy in all this though the unworldly Scot and the simpleminded Briton held aloof.

At present writing it appears that the new ball has conspicuously failed to save the par of the shorter and easier courses. The great masters are breaking seventy as regularly as they ever did. With no regard for the feelings of the new ball's designers they have learned to drive it, pitch it and putt it. It is their business, and their scores prove that they are on the job. Some of them seem to be even longer with the new ball. The important fact, however, is that those supergolfers whose tee shots have been shortened, still have length enough and to spare for the necessary carries. As a par saver the balloon is a flop.

While this is interesting it is purely academic—to the dub. What concerns him is the promise that the balloon was going to make him a better and happier golfer, pleasanter to his caddy on the links, kinder to his wife and children when he went home. Ask him how this promise has been fulfilled and expect no soft answer. The discussion in any locker room, after a round in a twenty mile summer breeze discloses his state of mind. He is not happier or kinder. His conviction is that shots that, with the old ball, would have got him over water and bunkers have plopped in; that slices and hooks that would have left him in the decent rough have bent around and buried him in the woods; pitches that would have fallen on the green have been wafted into traps; putts that would have dropped have hung on a blade of grass on the cup's edge. Life on the links, for the dub, has become a good deal more dismal and tragic than ever it was before.

Here and there one finds some loyal idealist (somebody, in spiritual essence, like the dry mayor of Los Angeles in France) who maintains that the new ball is all right, but if he discovers his opponent ringing in an old ball for a tee shot into the wind he is outraged and talks of writing to the Committee. Reason would suggest that if the new ball is better, why not let an adversary struggle on with the old one? But, the new bailer will have none of that; and that, in the last analysis, is the acid test.

Out of the maelstrom of eight months' experience, certain facts or at least certain convictions regarding the new implement, seem to be crystallizing. The first is that while the new ball behaves satisfactorily if hit very truly, it behaves worse than the old ball if not hit truly. The significance of this appears when it is realized that the dub, and by him is meant the player who never breaks eighty, only rarely and by chance ever hits any ball truly. His course around the eighteen holes is one of approximations and the increase of erroneous angles even when there is no wind is marked and painful. In a gale the results drive strong but inexpert men to tears.

A second fact or conviction has to do with the matter of length. The new ball, it appears, in effect takes more distance from the tee shots of the poor player than from those of the fine player. That is, the ten or fifteen yards which it takes from each is immaterial to the fine player but vital to the dub. On the four hundred yard hole the dub, with his happy and maximum drive of two hundred yards with the old ball, can never be hole high in two with the new, whereas the expert, shortened from two hundred and thirty or forty to two hundred and twenty-five simply takes a longer club for his second shot. This is the cruelty of it. The hope of par is gone forever unless the dub pitches dead with his third shot and it is this hope of par which keeps six million Americans plodding around the fairways striving, suffering and paying the bills.

A third fact which is unquestionable is that the new ball is larger than the old and when it is not in a hole, sits up higher and more invitingly. But this happy fact is offset and neutralized by another. A golf swing that will hit the new ball truly will also hit the old ball truly and such swings are as rare with the dub as visits of angels. If the new ball is not hit truly its behavior is much more discouraging than that of its smaller and heavier brother under like treatment. Consequently its appearance of being larger and, therefore, easier to smack is, for all practical purposes, an illusion and a snare.

The new ball appeals to the expert because he reports that it is easier to "control" and stop. But this virtue has no appeal to the dub because, intentionally, he has never been able to stop and control any ball and never will be. It is like relativity. It may be true and beautiful but it has no practical application to his personal life.

A final fact, which is also undeniable, is the way of the new ball in the wind. It has already been referred to but it is so devastating to the hitters of untrue and uncertain shots that it has to be constantly kept in mind. In agony the dub cries, "Why make this game any harder than it need be?" This is the question to which ninety-eight per cent of American golfdom is trying to find a reasonable answer. If the game were designed for professional exhibitions there might be reason for increasing its difficulties but whatever it may have been designed for it has become the great American pastime for the American business man and he wants to combine as much fun with his exercise as possible. He can do his suffering in his office.

No reasonable man should doubt that the governors of American golf conceived their noble experiment in probity, in the honest desire to help humiliated golf courses and make the game more popular with reasonable men. But the dub, alone with the new ball in a gale of wind, is not a reasonable man. He is willing, nay anxious, to believe the worst. He credits the current rumors that the new ball was hatched in darkness, that at least one of the great ball manufacturers engineered it to shut out the competition of foreign balls and to crush weak American rivals by compelling the introduction of new machinery. He is ready to believe that the interest in the weaker courses was unholy and tainted with real estate speculation. He suspects the illustrious professionals, who praise it in print, of being paid to praise it. He even deplores the kind things that Mr. Jones says about it. This is madness, of course, but the golfer who never breaks eighty is never wholly sane. Even in lucid moments Ije cannot see why the balloon was imposed upon him as it was. If it is a better ball why not have let it win its way upon its merits in competition with the old ball? The new ball is legal in England as well as the old. Why not the same arrangement in the United States? Why should a small, self-perpetuating body take it upon itself to poison our happiness, even though that body meant well?

In at least one famous golf club on the wind-swept shores of the Atlantic open revolt has raised its head. The old ball is supplied and played by most of its members. It is the only way the carries can be made against the wind by any golfer of lower estate than a Jones or a Hagen. If the parallel of Prohibition observance holds true, general rebellion is indicated in the near future. There will be bootlegging of old balls brought in from England, if not rioting and disorder. Perhaps some potent member of the National Golf Committee will be put on the spot.

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More conservative counsel is not unheard. The larger size of the new ball is appreciated. A better ball than the old might be evolved by combining the old weight, or even a bit more, with the new size. But the ideal ball, to the golf fans, is not a ball that is going to save courses or make the game harder for the mediocre player. The man who never breaks eighty is not worrying about the courses. If a pair of exhibitionist professionals come to his home club he is not humiliated if they butcher its par. He would enjoy seeing them break sixty, not seventy. These supermen are so far above him that he cheers when they make an eagle three on the five hundred yard hole he once made in five and never will make in five again. He worships them as gods. They may do anything they can to his course, and the more the better.

Whatever the National Golf Association meant to do or has done, it got the psychology of American golfdom wrong. The par of a course is like the baseball pitcher in his duel with the batter. The crowd is with the swatter. It is the Babe that brings the customers, not the wily, Judas-faced pitcher who strikes him out. Human nature wants a ball swattable and swatted. Golfdom, in this at least, is human and hopes, aspires and labors daily to swat it.

If the governing powers of golf have hearts they will give the fans either the old ball or a bigger and longer one. Bi-metalism in the world of money seems impracticable but there could be no potent objection to a double standard in golf balls.