Salt Lake Tribune | 1918-10-27 | Page 16 | Golf and Tennis are not Popular Sports in France

GOLF AND TENNIS ARE NOT POPULAR SPORTS IN FRANCE Yankee Soldiers Overseas Like Baseball and Boxing Box-ing Much Better; Evans Predicts Big Boom in These Games After War. CHICAGO, Oct. 26 Golf and tennis do not seem to be very popular with our soldiers in France, if letters from the front are a real criterion. While here and there a mention occurs of a round at one or other of the few French courses still being kept up. or of an informal international match between teams representing the various allies, yet these are really isolated instances in-stances and there is nothing to indicate any spread erf the golf bug to the rank and file. The doughboys' letters teem with accounts of baseball games, one chap, by the way, writing to his father of how he won a contest with a " screaming three-bagger three-bagger that cleared the bags," and being killed within two hours after he had dropped the epistle in the post bag and there are tales of pushball, football and soccer struggles, or field and track sports, even of indoor baseball and basketball, but only now and again is there any reference to either golf or tennis. Experts N ot Dubious. Yet a number of experts, including the great and only Chick Evans, national open and amateur golf champion, and B. Norris Williams, second, former national na-tional tennis champion, have gone on record as declaring that there will be a great boom in these two sports after the war. Evans has even gone so far as to assert that the total number of golf clubs would be doubled in this country within a decade after peace Somes, and that the total number of golfers will be trebled. On the face of it, this seems like a rather reckless prophecy, for the chances are that with the elimination of the demon rum the total number of clubs will drop out rather than increase within the next ten years. As for the golfers, it may be that the returned soldiers, seeking exercise, will take up the ancient and honorable game, but it would seem that something a bit more strenuous would be more apt to appeal to a chap who had been spending spend-ing the last 3'ear or two in the trenches. Tennis More Probable. So the prediction of "Dick" Williams, now a lieutenant in the American army, that tennis will have the greatest revival in its hsitory, seems much more likely to come true. You can get more concentrated exercise out of an hour of tennis than out of a day of golf, and if you are still )Toung enough to be quick on your feet, with a good eye and wind, you would be likely to find the court game more to your fancy. When you come to consider the physical difficulties in the way of plaving golf and tennis in the battle zone, or even at rest camps, the cost of the necessary paraphernalia, courts, links, and so on, it's not remarkable that the average Yank with only $30 a month with which to buy himself tobacco and other small luxuries, is satisfied to stick to baseball and other sports fostered by the camp athletic director. The officers, of course, have more chance for a little recreation on the side, and some few privates, who have independent means, are able to join in, but these exceptions are few and far between.