There is a tendency in the discussions about the new golf bali to overlook a new rule which comes into operation on May 1, and which will possibly have a more direct effect upon the majority of golfers than any legislation over the size and weight of the ball. The new rule which unifies the penalties for a lost ball, a ball out of bounds, and an unplayable ball at stroke and distance, will come to every player plus or long handicap, for it means that the player who has lost his ball or finds that it is unplayable—and "'unplayable" will doubtless be interpreted by the player himself—will go back to the place from where he played his last stroke. It is going to add seriously to the congestion of already overcrowded courses.. The old rule of ''lost ball, lost hole" had the great merit of simplicity. But its unfairness was on occasions just as evident. Many well played balls down the middle of the course got lost in a rabbit scrape or by straying a yard or two off the fair-incurred the hole, while en wildly out of bounds could carry on with the lesser punishment. Now what will happen will be this. There will be a diligent search for the lost ball, and with balls at their present price full advantage of the legal five minutes will be taken. the player will go back, and when ther, through the green or on the tee produce on the players behind the irritating effect of "cutting in," and add to the congestion and the delay. It is calculated that on a busy day the operation of the rule will add from half-an-hour to three-quarters to the round. Probably men of the scratch class will not avail themselves of the new rule, but among players into whose golf the element of human frailty more largely enters—and they are the vast majority—the player will in nine cases out of ten go back, and "banking"? on his opponent also encountering trouble on the way to the hole or dropping a stroke or two in some other manner, hopefully strike off another ball. Mr. Croome, of the R. & A., thinks that the new rule will speed up play, for the reason that if the anal ball is a_ satisfactory the player will spend less than the statutory five minutes over his search for the first. But only the new rich—and not many of them, fortunately, are golfers—will leave a good 2s. 6d. or 3s. ball in the rough without availing themselves to the full of the five minutes search.
That great man the average golfer, who is really "the" golfer, must often rebel against the lead given by specialists on- questions of goli politics. They seem in a Teague to dethrone golf from its position as an essentially democratic game: they are banded together to uphold a tiny tiny oligarchy of amateur and professional super-men, and to keep in humble subjection all those thousands of common folk who maintain the courses, pay salaries to che professionals and admire the exploits of gifted "gentlemen players." Nobody asks us what sort of balls or clubs we like to play with, or how long and heavily bunkered we desire our courses to be. We are never consulted about the rules—they are dropped down to us from Olympus.
We are quite willing that our rulers should arrange competitions and championships, but we are getting a wee bit tired of being harried in the every-day playing of the game. Balls never fly too far for us, we can leave out stymies if we please—though personally always insist upon them—and, rule or no rule, no oligarchy is going to make us block our courses by going back and replaying when we Jose a ball. If I read the: signs of the time among the humble folk who simply play the game and let most of the rules go hang, the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.