.SPoRTING ASPECTS
President's Putter, 1954
By PATRIC DICKINSON OW that the Putter is over, one can say that this should really be called the Undergraduate Page, for when, late on Saturday, Geoffrey Agate hit a Mag- nificent pitch to within two feet of the 20th hole of a desperate match, the last graduate was out and the semi-finals were in the hands of four undergraduates—a thing never known before. The President's Putter is a knock-out competition for Members of the Oxford and Cambridge Golfing Society, and it is held annually in early January; a ridiculous but perfect time of year. Ridiculous because the weather always threatens to be appalling; perfect because somehow Jupiter contrives to relent and after niceties of torment to allow play. This Year, for instance, after the mildest of weather, a north-easter began to blow about a week before—a wind like a dentist's drill that made one's whole being a hollow tooth with an exposed nerve.
On the Monday night snow fell, on Tuesday thawed, and practice was possible on Wednesday. On Thursday the wind Perfected its technique and play was agony. The score of 78 (par is-72) with which Magdalen and Trinity, Oxford, tied for the Croome Shield represented first-class foursomes golf. But worse was to come. On Thursday night it froze hard and an Friday we played on iron ground which caused one's ball to perform antics as if it wore lunatic seven league boots. Ridiculous to get up in the dark, to be on the first tee at 8.45 (sunrise 8.5) in the chilling wind Perhaps, but also Perfect for the friendliness, the genuine amateur spirit which Pervades this tournament. You will see few, if any, tight-lipped automata snailing their dour way round in five hours. At the Putter, we walk and talk together, even laugh at each other's shots—and get on with the game. That does not mean we do not play seriously. Everybody likes to win, but 1 know of no other meeting where losing is of such little account. This is largely due to the way the Society has grown up, for it is certainly an organism rather than an organisation. Again, the choice—though choice is too strong a word—of Rye as its headquarters just happened naturally and nobody quite knows when—not even Bernard Darwin. But looking back new, it is impossible to imagine any other place. Rye is a splendid winter links, at its best now, with its Tian greens smooth and slippery as silk, and the ball lying tight on the fairways. There is something, also, particularly atmospheric about Rye; about the ridiculously romantic little town climbing up its conical hill to the great church, about the zig-zag Chestertonian drive across the marsh to the narrow line of sandhills on the left bank of the Rother. Rye be not a links upon which a major championship will ever oe played, but if one looks at the President's Putter, with the golf balls of its winners pendent along its shaft like a cluster of fruit, one is reading a major part of the history of amateur golf since 1920. Holderness, Wethered, Tolley, Beck, Crawley, Duncan, Lucas, Micklem. . . . One of the delights of this tournament is that we humbler mortals may catch one of the great men on an off day—and in an 18-hole match one false step is hard to retrieve. and Helm. Bull, this year's Oxford captain, beat Micklem, the holder, and one of our finest golfers, on Friday afternoon. Wherever one looked the young were driving their trolleys like tumbrils and the heads were falling. How exciting and exhilarating it was !
On Saturday and Sunday the weather was perfect and the golf of these young men as good as could be. There were six undergraduates'in the last eight and any one of them was good enough to win. As it turned out, Gordon Huddy was the one, and fully deserved to be; his golf throughout the meeting had been immensely impressive. There is no doubt that this year's university match at Rye in March will be a vintage one. " They never come back." There will be a pretty determined effort next year to put youth in its place— but I am inclined to think that youth is in its place already, and is going to stay there.
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