"' Bills

"' The Bogey Amendment Bill was read a third time and passed.

"' The Women's Handicaps Bill was read a first time.

"'Championship Courses

"' The House then went into Committee on the Championship Courses Bill.

"'Mr. John Blumond (scratch) asked how much longer the just claims of Ireland were to be ignored. Irish golfers were in such a state of irritation, due to the way in which they were neglected, that it was impossible for them to settle down to the improvement of their game, with the result that Irish driving was never so bad as at present, and his suffering compatriots could not putt for nuts or potatoes. [Left Sitting].'"

"Rather good," commented the Author at the end of this recital. "Wasn't it that young Norris who circulated the jest that if he could play his mashie pitches properly he would be down to scratch and in the running for a small kind of office, and that if he could get to plus 7 he would be the President of the British Republic?"

"That's the man," the M.P. answered. "Very nice sort of chap, too. We must bring him down here one day. Richardson took him down to Rye for a week-end once, but had to go back to town again without him at the end of a whole week."

"Ha!" said the Colonel, "but that's nothing in comparison with the true story of the non-golfer who went to Sandwich for a week-end nine years ago, and at the invitation of his friend experimented with the game, and has been down there ever since, playing it!"

"Good man!" exclaimed the Author. "But what about these statistics, William?" the Colonel inquired.

"Well," said the M.P., "I have calculated that at the present time there are over a million acres under golf in Great Britain, and that a sum-total of about £4,700,000 a year is now spent on the game in this country. But you get the queerest results when you come to consider the balls that arc used in a year, and what happens to them." "Proceed," said the Colonel.

VI

"Now, just consider the ball," the M.P. responded. "Pretty little pimpled thing, isn't it? Stuffed full of delight! Full of promise for at least two hours' fine health-giving enjoyment! We used to think a half-pound tin of our favourite tobacco was the most heartening sight to see; but a box of new balls has it now. One ball is such a tiny little thing. You can hold sixteen of them in one hand! I have seen a man hold eighteen, and possibly that is the record. Giving a ball four rounds of life, two men could play together morning and afternoon for more than a fortnight with the balls that are held in this hand. But just see how many are needed by the great world of golf!

"To begin with, there are said to be 300,000 golfers in this country. It has been reckoned that at the height of the summer golfing season, when the players are busy everywhere, not less than 500,000 balls are used up every week. This, indeed, seems to be a most reasonable estimate - less than two balls per man per week, with an enormous percentage of players out on the links four or five days a week. It was semi-officially stated last June that one firm of makers, and that not by any means the biggest, was working night and day, and turning out 100,000 balls a week. Decidedly half a million is well within the mark. Taking the whole year round, if you say one ball per golfer per week, that is surely a very modest reckoning. It is practically a certainty that it is an underestimate. At that rate we have a grand total of 15,000,000 balls used up every year by the British golfers on British links. Fifteen millions!"

"Good gracious!" the Parson exclaimed. "One would hardly believe it!"

"Yes, let us see what we can do with these 15,000,000 besides play 6,000,000,000 shots with them, which is what may be done, allowing four rounds to each ball and a hundred strokes to each round, and what with foozlers, women, and children, you will find that a hundred is a very fair average, even if it is only the medal-winning score of the 20-handicap man.

"Seven balls go to the lineal foot, and thus there are forty-nine of them in the square foot. It seems hard to believe that all the balls of a year could, if packed nicely together after the fashion of eggs, be laid out in a fair-sized field of seven acres. But stay! I can give you some fancy idea of what this annual ball crop really means after all. There are seven to the foot - in one little lineal foot you have sufficient balls to last a careful week-end player for a couple of months. Now, bring out the army of caddies that there are in the country and set them to work teeing the balls up right against and touching each other in a line, beginning with the first at Charing Cross, or, to be more appropriate, on the Mid-Surrey course at Richmond. Then proceed northwards. There will still be a few balls left in the pockets of the caddies when they have continued that long line of one year's balls right away through Rugby, Stafford, Carlisle, and over the Border range to Edinburgh, and on to the Braid Hills course. We can join the premier courses of two capitals with the balls of one year, for the line we make is 405 miles long, and at us. or 12s. a foot it would be considerably more expensive than the ordinary permanent way. It is a wonderful line. Nine yards of it will last a busy golfer a whole year, and he need never be reproached for putting down a dirty ball."

The Hon. Member for North-East Fife was fairly warmed to his theme by this, and he pursued enthusiastically: "There is some food for reflection in the incidental mention that I have just made that the British golfers play 6,000,000,000 shots every year. Puck boasted some time ago that he could 'put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes.' It might surprise this sprite to know that the British golfers could do the job in ten minutes, which is the time we might give them to drive a dozen balls each from the tee. If those were fair drives, and were put end to end, they would easily go round the world, with a little to spare. Evidently, then, the British golfers go the distance of the circumference of the world many times over in the course of the year. You may take it that the average player, what with going off the line, waddling about on the putting greens, walking from green to tee, and so on, does a tramp of four miles in every round of eighteen holes that he makes. At four rounds a week, that is sixteen miles a week, or eight hundred in the golfing year of fifty weeks, a fortnight's holiday for illness, dissipation, and foreign travel, being allowed in all these annual calculations. So our 300,000 British golfers in the course of the year walk and tool their balls for a matter of 240,000,000 miles. Most of this abundant exercise would not be taken if there were no golf.