WHEN LOVELY WOMAN STOOPS TO GOLF

Feminine vs. Masculine Temperaments in Tournament Play

Grantland Rice

THE female of the species may or may not be deadlier than the male. We have no intention of debating this unhappy question with Mr. Kipling. But, in the matter of tournament golf play, the female temperament is not only far less deadly than the male, but far less unbending, rigid— and boring. It may not be quite so effective in regard to general "results, but in the way of elasticity, buoyancy, and fun, there can be no comparison.

Some time ago Miss Muriel Dodd and Miss Gladys Ravenscroft, two very eminent English golfers, had just finished a one-dav tournament at Englewood, N. J., in which, possibly, seventy-five women had taken part. I had followed, that afternoon, the leading entries who included, in addition to Miss Dodd and Miss Ravenscroft, Miss Marion Hollins of New York.

On the way back to the club-house, I was vaguely conscious of a wide difference btween the general atmosphere of that tournament and of tournaments conducted by the sterner sex. There was, I knew, quite a difference, but I was not sure what the difference was until two ladies, just in front of me, solved the problem for me.

"Now this," said one of them, "is what I call real sport. Tournaments handled by men have always left me with an awful headache. They made me feel as if I didn't dare to breathe. They were so idiotically solemn about it themselves, that I felt I was at a funeral. But to-day everything was so different. When Miss Dodd missed a shot, she laughed, and the same with Miss Ravenscroft and Miss Hollins. And we all laughed with them. The players had a good time and so did the spectators. It was sport—not war."

THE facts had been most correctly stated. Among the women who played at Englewood that day, especially among the best of them, there had been a total absence of that morose masculine stolidity which characterizes all of our male-conducted tournaments. Both from experience and from close observation, I can say that men get very little real enjoyment out of tournament golf. They may quarrel with this statement, but the truth of it is undeniable.

When men play in a qualifying round, the spectacle is not only impressive, but dreary. A topped mashie shot into a bunker brings to the player an anguish beyond all words. A sliced drive means intense suffering, while a missed putt, close to the hole, pierces the poor man's heart with the poisoned arrow of a woe that may not be assuaged. When men play in tournaments they move from tee to tee, and from green to green, with the gravity that one might feel in marching out to bury the body of a friend.

The sky may be blue, the earth may be green, and the surrounding hills may be white, or crimson, but their strained vision only looks ahead—to the ball and to the flag in the distance beyond. Of friendly conversation there is little or none. They are at heart much like the two Scotchmen, one of whom at the 16th hole finally said "Dom," as he missed a putt, only to be berated by his partner for being a chatterbox.

Now, I don't mean to say that women esteem it an abiding bliss to top a mashie into a bunker, or to miss a short putt, but if one of these unhappy events should take place, it is not nearly so tragic a circumstance as when it takes place with a man. And if any annoyance is shown or felt by women, it is quickly dispelled bv a laugh or by some good-natured comment.

THAT day at Englewood, when Miss Ravenscroft or Miss Dodd or Miss Hollins had driven from the tee, they were off down the course, laughing and chatting together as if they were solely bent on being happy, and not on winning a silver mug.

"Well," you might reply in rebuttal, "their game shows the effect of introducing such a dangerous element as fun into tournament play."

Quite so, and yet that afternoon, with a strong wind scurrying across the course and conditions against good medal play, Miss Ravenscroft returned an 81 on her first round trip. Her mind had been sufficiently upon the game to reach the sixth hole, 530 yards long, in two shots with a very favoring wind; a result that should satisfy the mental concentration of any masculine player in the land.

That tournament was not the only exhibition of the feminine golfing temperament which I have in mind.

Shortly before the Englewood match, the woman's gold championship of the United States had been staged at Wilmington, Delaware.

Miss Dodd and Miss Ravenscroft were entered and it was almost certain that one of the two visitors would win. They finally came together for a great test match. Under the same conditions, two men, , on the night before, would have been keyed up to a high nervous pitch, sleepless perhaps and certainly under a heavy mental strain. Here was a championship at stake for which two young ladies had traveled 3,000 miles. Let us see how impressive the occasion was to them. Well, on the night before the tournament, they went to a dance, stayed there until three o'clock, and took the first tee on the next morning as if they were only off for a good tramp together. Miss Dodd played very badly and was soundly beaten, but, in so far as any dispiriting effect upon her could be discerned, she was having the time of her young life. When she topped a drive she almost invariably laughed, complimented her rival on a good shot, and then the two together went arm in arm down the course with the loser in as good a humor as the winner.

WHEN the match was over the loser was effusive in her congratulations, and if she was insincere her form was as remarkable as an actress as it was as a golfer, and—according to no less an authority than Harry Vardon—her golfing form is not surpassed by the best man player alive. She had only recently won the woman's championship of Great Britain, so it was not a case of her submitting to an expected defeat.

It is not my purpose here entirely to indorse the feminine attitude as exemplified in the instances mentioned above, but if the average masculine golfer could come a trifle closer to that attitude he would not only have a much better time, but, in my humble opinion, play a better game. The strain on him would not be so heavy. There would be a greater absence of that rigidity of swing, which comes from over-taut nerves.

To take his play just a bit less seriously, would bring a needed relaxation of muscle, and it is the absence of any such relaxation which accounts, in the main, for the high scoring in so many medal play rounds. Golfers, easily capable of doing an 81, or an 82, in friendly rounds, return cards of 90 or 91, in tournaments, curse their luck, and wonder why it is that they fell down so badly. The answer is, obviously, that they were getting their 81's and 82's when they were playing golf in easygoing rounds, in rounds, that is, when they were playing in much the same spirit as that shown by Miss Dodd and Miss Ravenscroft at Wilmington and Englewood.

"BUT regardless of the matter of scores think of the fun the men are missing! After all isn't it better to be able to laugh, or at least to smile, over a missed bit of luck, than to mutter morose and meaningless profanities because an approach that stopped twenty feet beyond the pin didn't have the ordinary decency to hit it and stop dead to the hole?