Is golf becoming too easy? One oes not suppose that this is the first time such a query has been made within the recent rather wonderful golfing years, but it is prompted at this time by the amazing happenings of Inst week. was nowhere suggested that G. A. Whitcombe's wonderful perform: ances were due entirely to his long hitting off the teo, a department of the game in which the virtue the golf-ball of to-day must mitted. Whitcombe is a long hitter certainly, but was it not the dead-Iiness of his mashie play that was chiefly responsible for his creating anew Deal record one day and hitting it out of existence the next? even than th although it was not accomplished under championship conditions, was the contemptu- I ous treatment which F. F. J. Brown, from Honolulu, accorded the terrible Old Course at St. Andrew's, exprossed in his smashing of the George Duncan record of 68 by returning an astonishing 67, Presumably it was Mr. Brown's long hitting that the trick here. And what of Inst year's "open" at Troon? ne forenoon Joe Kirkwood and g: 'Macdonald Smith returned cards of 69, and, watching the Australian reel off a string of threes, one could not but question Troon's right to classed' as a real championship course. It all looks so_absurdly easy. Last year also at Gleneagles we had Rowland Jones—a grandfather, mark you, not one of the fiery younger school—coming in with a record of 68. It's all remarkable. And does it not poi to the attainment of a better go ing. standard among the top no! chers than to any increase in virtues of the mechanical aids the game? For do not we, great majority, with all. those wonderful new bails and clubs to our ands; go plodding on, seeking to break' our depressing so's with, in eases, as much hope of ever doing so as Joe Kirkwood has of finishing last of eight competitors in any modern contest? Therein lies the answer to the question with which this article opened. Golf, as. the majority know and play it, is not becoming too easy.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.