Probably there are those who will hesitate to accept the dictum of an ancient Scotsman that ''anybody can teach Greek but to play gowf needs a heid.''
The same people will hardly, however, venture to deny that a game to the requirements of which a change in the rules of procedure of the House of Commons a few years ago was said to be attributed and of which - as the activities of the militant suffragists have made the world know - the leading statesmen of the Empire are ardent devotees commands some peculiar fascination over the minds of the person whom it provides with innocent and healthy exercise in the open air.
As it is not a game in which anyone can attain real proficiency without the sacrifice of a great deal of time it is hardly to be expected that in a country like ours, where there are few men of leisure, it will in, at any rate, the present generation assume the importance of a national institution such as it has almost become in the Mother Country where, according to a no less veracious authority than Lord Rosebery, there is no common that is so lonely or so deserted as not to expose to view two gentlemen followed by a couple of boys each bending under the weight of a bundle of clubs.
But those who have anywhere had experience of the pleasures of the game, and of its disappointments and trials are more than mildly enthusiastic concerning its charm. It is a special characteristic of golf that it is an intensely engrossing and absorbing pastime. No other game, it has been said, is so effective in concentrating the mind and exacting painful attention to the importance of small things.
A breath of air well calculated may turn the scale of fortune. The trace of a wormcast, a slender needle from a neighbouring pine tree, or a patch of alien turf unheeded on the green may fill a week with searchings of heart. It is recorded of an Englishman of considerable possessions and large business interests that on a morning on which he is going to play golf he declines to open his letters in case they should contain anything that would distract his attention, and it is to be feared that there are many players who find that their business distractions interfere seriously with their efficiency on the links.
Yet something is learned by the golfer even in the darkest hour. And the veriest neophyte has the occasional consolation of seeing the player, whose name is mentioned only with bated breath penalise himself with an indifferent stroke. For the game is one in which the giant is liable to be suddenly shorn of his might and to foozle everything, while at the same time the laborious and despised plodder, striving some painful inch to gain, may be carried over the most exasperating obstacle by a sudden wave of efficiency.
The N.Z. Championship tournament which is to be begun on the Balmacewen links to-day has attracted the presence of many of the most accomplished players in the dominion, keen to secure the prize of the championship, and we trust that not a few of the competitors may enjoy the satisfaction of accomplishing good rounds and so be put at peace with their share of the world. - ODT, 13.10.1913.
