The Leavenworth echo. [volume] (Leavenworth, Wash.) 1904-current, 1905-07-28
Golf.

When the advice giver essays to
point the average person to the road
to strenuous, healthy life the pre-
scription Is "Play golfI" This sugges-
ton strikes home, and the seeker after
athletic development, with health and
sport thrown in, confidently secures
annexation to the nearest golf club.
What happens in the first stage of the
treatment is told by Alfred Britt in s
recent issue of Public Opinion. Says
Mr.. Britt:
The secret of the rapid spread of golf
Is undoubtedly the appeal which 1t makes
to the average" man. In golf this aver
age man is known as the duffer. II
should not be assumed that there is any
discredit attaching to the state of being
a duffer. In fact, he is the only chap who
really enjoys the game. Professionals rise
and fall; champions come and go, They
endure for a season and then go into the
sporting goods business or write a book
and retire to proud and exclusive silence
on the royalties. But the duffer we have
always with us. No sensible golfer would
be a champion if he could. When the
champion has trimmed his score down to
an irreducible minimum there Is nothing
more to live for. The man who has
climbed to the topmost tip of the Matter
horn can go no farther.
But the common, ordinary duffer, the
man who plays because he needs the exer-
else and usually gets 1t. is the man who
never climbs more than halfway up and
then runs out of breath-or legs He
never makes more than a moderately
good score, but he always expects to do
better the next time The fact that he
seldom does is not a permanent damper
to his spirits. He goes forth the next
Saturday with his clubs freshly polished
and a bag full of the latest brand of balls
pneumatic fin keeed, copper riveted
warranted to fly far and straight per-
haps. At night he wends his way back to
the clubhouse dragging the same old
score of 115 for the eighteen holes, but he
has achieved his small victories neverthe-
less. That ninth hole in bogie is balm to
his bruised soul.
The great charm of the buffers golf is
its uncertainty. Travis always knows
what is going to happen before he plays
his shot / never do. Therefore the po-
tentialties of my game are many times
greater than those of Travis
The unlnitlated must be advised that
Travis is champion golfer, but ii
goes without saying that the writer OF
the above is "duffer," describing his
own game. His further reflections Oh
golf are equally interesting from any
point of view. He says:
Golf is both a virtue and vice. Like
the former, 1t is its own reward-at least
if It isn't most of us are very poorly
paid for our golf. Like the latter. 1t is
first endured, then pitied. then embraced
From being the game of milllonaires, the
companion of the automobile and the
steam yacht. the pastime of habitues OF
summer resorts who have nothing else TO
do and don't know any better, golf has
become the customary recreation OF the
hard worked business man; the links are
the refuge from the tireess ticker and the
fretfuI telephone Beginning as fad of
the brainless few-the modern Athenians
constantly seeking some new thing-golf
is now the solace of those with overde-
veloped or overtaNed brains. Lawyers,
doctors Judges, merchants, editors au-
thors and newspaper men are weekly
among the light hearted throng who pur-
sue the gutta percha sphere overland
into-bunkers and occasionally into the
holes
Lapsing into a serious vein at the
close. Mr.. Britt rings in the advice
quoted at the opening of this article
and commends golf as a game combin-
ing mental exhilaration with moderate
exercise. From being the sport of
kings" it has becose the support Of
kings" or what is the same, the soy
ereign masses Of the republic.