Atlanta Georgian. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1912-1939, 1912-09-06
Bv Mark AllertOn.

DO not think That very many
people BECOME golfers because
of a fixed determination or
malice aforethought. A few. in
deed, do because their doctor tells
them to, or because golf is the
fashion, or because (and these are
the raresD they realize that. of all
games, golf presents the greatest
number of opportunities for enjoy
ment.
he rest take to golf as some peo-
pie take to drink. They are in
duced to play a stroke or two, and
these strokes lead to a round. and
that round to many rounds; and
before the victim knows where he
Is, all that matters to him in heaven
ABOVE or earth beneath is the hit
ting of a ball well and truly. and
the lowering of his handicap.
1t is rather a pity, from one
point Of view, that the golf habit,
like the drug habit, seizes upon its
victim in this insidious manner. Let
me explain why.
1t is at this season Of the year
that the golf microbe gets busy.
All sorts and conditions of people
who have hitherto known golf only
as it is interpreted to the comic
press 60 to a holiday resort where
there is a golf course. There they
meet some indulgent friend who in
Vites them to game. Protestinga
half-contemptuously, they accept
the invitation, and in nine cases
out of ten they are inoculated. The
golf microbe has them in it's power
: life of Futile Hopes.
They continue to play strenuous
and inefficient golf with whomso-
ever they can beguile. If they be
conscientious people they will play
solitary rounds by themselves, or
even practice the shots that are
most difficult to them. And one
day--after they have gone back to
town and joined q club-they VIII
get a handicap and take part in
matches. and q regret to say it,
the rest of. their life viii be one
long regret and series of futile
hopes
The reason of this horrible fate is
because these people have been
content to teach themselves. They
have Rugged to themselves the de-
fusion that golf is quite an easy
game. that anybody ought to be
able to hit a ball with a stick with
a bit of wood or iron at the end of
it. When they fail to hit the ball
to their own satisfaction they
blame this, that and the other cir
'cumstance They refuse to believe
that there is a right and a wrong
way of hitting the ball, and that
the right way can rarely be at
tanned by intuition.
Golf is an extraordinarily tickle
game and one day it will delude
these people into thinking that they
really have mastered it, while the
next it will convince them that the
difficulty which a camel must eXpe
rience in endeaVoring to enter the
eye of a needle is nothing COM
pared to the difficulty of hitting a
golf ball toward a green.
Most of this difficulty is due to
ignorance. The majority of begin
ners have been told, or they have
read in books, that in playing a
stroke one must not move ones
body. or drop ones right shoulder,
or move ones head. or snatch in
ones arms, or do any of the other
half-dozen things one is so curl
ously apt to DO. And these dear
souls do their best to put into
practice the knowledge that is
theirs. and they fail simply because
they lack the
. power The giftie gle us
To see oursels as ithers see us.
BY watching a foozier play on
will Ig