The Telegraph-courier. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1888-1946, 1923-10-11


time enough off to play-indeed,
it is probably only in America that a
game could gain such hold on the popu-
lation that it should come to influence,
in greater or less degree. the lives, for
tunes and sacred honors of all the people.
And at that, we have other games beside
it.
There is the Great National Came"
played with balls, bats and injunctions. in
back lots, on diamonds and in court rooms;
gamN which has grown into vast bust
ness, involving huge sums of money, but
which, notwithstanding the late unpleas-
antness, is still Clean outstanding, Amer
lean game, the like of which can be found
nowhere else in the world.
Then there is that other distinctively
American game, played with or without a
limit, inside or outside the home for
money, marbles or chalk-a game which
has been known to so refresh a wearied
money grabber that he found it no longer
necessary to go to bed at all, and, in adj
dition, a long list of other and minor games,
pool, billiards, and such milder forms of
insanity as horse shoes to the mere violent
kinds of physical alteration, such as tennis,
volley and football, and drop-t he-handker-
chief. Money grabbers or not, there isn't
man. women or child in the country
who doesn't know all Cor nearly alp about
one or more of these games including
how to play it or them.
This screed, however, is limited to a dis
cussion of the game of golf, the origin of
which is shrouded in mystery, but as to
which there are two explanations: There
are those who hold that the game was
started by lulauc who was permitted to
go on with his vagaries on the theory that
it is safer to humor a weak minded in
dividual than to cross him; there are
others who contend that long time ago
in Scotland shepherds watching flocks
that browsed heather covered hills were
wont to amuse themselves by knocking
small stones about over the pasture with
their crooks. Some enterprising fellow,
seeing the possibilities for dealing in golf
balls, systematized the habit into a game;
then, in order to get the price for the
balls, ii was made gentlemans game and
crooks were no longer permitted And a
new and original market for the improved
instruments Immediately invented was Gre
ated.
Dr. Edward w Box maintains that nei-
Their is correct, and that golf was invented
by a group of serious minded Hollanders
some two hundred years before the Amer
lean constitution was written-which, it
appears, also took place in Holland-and,
if so, our debt to the Dutch must be en-
HANGED by figures to stagger the magma
ton. For the game of golf is worth, to
us here in this country-but wait, read
the rest
The game of golf affects, to some extent
every person in the country. A strong
statement, but believe I can demonstrate
that the influence of this game is as wide
as the geographical limits of the country
and that it is a literal fact that there is
no person in the United States not shar-
ing in what golf is doing for America.
Golf Is Raging.
George AIDE said recently, that ain a
fewayears" the game of golf will begin to
invade the towns of 5000 and 1000 popu-
Iation, and then there will be a tremen-
dous impetus given the growth of golf
throughout the country. That remark is
absolutely sound, except that George didn't
make it soon enough Golf has not only
already invaded hundreds, perhaps thou
sands, of towns of less than 1000 popula-
ton. but is sweeping, particularly in the
central west, over the countryside like.
Of ,NF
more than a dozen towns in one State
west of the Mississippi river, none of them
with as many 1000 people, where rather
decent nine-hole courses are maintained,
and several of these towns have reached
little beyond the 1000 mark. In the same
State there are at least two courses on
farms without connection of any sort with
town or village and distinctly not of the
sort maintained by George AIDE on his
farm in Indiana. Those two little western
golf courses We're built by farmers who
farm for themselves and other farmers who
farm, and may be called community golf
courses in the purest sense Driving by
one of them recently, l observed a game
in progress. with two men and two women
playing, the men in overalls and the
women in sunbounets! The fairways were
as left by the livestock which grazed the
pasture, the green's only being moved. On
these and all the courses in the small COM
munities mentioned the appurtenances are
the crudest. But it all illustrates most
forcibly the real passion for golf which
grips the country.
Probably upward of two million persons
in the United States now glay golf There
is no other game which furnishes ex-
ercise in the open air being followed by any
such number. New clubs and new courses
are so numerous that the starting of an
other gets but passing mention and new
thousands daily take up the sticks and
go at the most elusive pastime ever CON