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Show AMAZING IS VOGUE OF GOLF Many Americans Now Play Game Un. known to Them Twenty-Five Years Ago. Twenly-flve years ago there was as much golf played in the United States 1.1 there is baseball played In the central cen-tral villages of the FIJI Islands. Which in to say, practically none whatsoever, writes (irantlund Rice in the New York Tribune. Yet facing 1017 there are 3,200 golf rourses, covering more than 300.0IX) ncres, Inhabited by something like 000,- 000 players of both sexes, from twelve to eighty years of age. In the broad span of a sport no one can recall sneh n development as tills in so short a time. The change from 1S90 to 1017 Is almost al-most beyond belief. No one knows curlier conditions better than Jack -lark, the well-known professional at the Madison Country club, Madison, Jonn. "I'll never forget," ho says, "when I 1rought my clubs from Scotland through the custom house In Boston fmck In May, 1800. The custom house ofllcor first thought they were a peculiar pe-culiar brand of walking stick. He insisted in-sisted they could be nothing else, and fy Scotch brogue was too much to iniake hi in understand. My brother Il!ob and I laid out a six-hole course at !West Medford, Mass., and when we fttnrted playing the entire community iaughed at us. The kids in the next field were playing baseball, and they thought we were crazy. But a few of them consented to try it out, and Immediately Im-mediately took up the game when they found It so much harder than It looked "The trouble in the early days," continued con-tinued Clark, "was loaning golf balls and clubs. When we lost what few balls we had, we had to send back to Scot-Hand Scot-Hand for more, and wait six weeks, as we couldn't buy ay over here. I'll never forget when I walked Into a big sporting goods store In Boston In 1911. 1 told the salesman I wanted a golf club. 'I know what you want,' he mild, and soon returned with a shinny stick. You call It golf over there,' he told me, 'but we call It shinny over here. And It was, all I could do to make him understand the two games were not the .same." |