Duffer's Plea

Dwindling manpower, machinery and gasoline may force many a U.S. golf club to close its links before summer ends. One middle-aged addict who wants to prevent this is Walter Prichard Eaton, Yale Drama Associate Professor, who has roamed U.S. fairways for nearly 50 years. In this month's Atlantic Monthly Professor Eaton hazarded a cure: ". . . All we have to do is buy a flock of sheep. They know that already in England."

"Do I hear sniffs of derision?" he asks. "What . . . if the sheep leave a hoof print to spoil your lie? What if the greens are too slow or uneven to make perfect putting possible? What if, in the absence of rough, the man who slices has as good a chance as you? My answer is that you, Mr. Sniffer, are probably the man who slices and in your heart you'd be extremely happy to find that you didn't have to lose three strokes three feet off the fairway.

"My answer is that actually it wouldn't make enough difference in your score to be detected by a certified public accountant. . . . Nobody's putting was ever perfect on any green, not even Walter Travis', and you aren't Walter Travis. . . .

"You are merely one of the great majority who pay the bills and keep up the courses so that the slashing youngsters can boast of playing a 450-yd. hole with a driver and a No. 7, and so that the pros will give your course their haughty approval, and maybe so that tournaments can be played there [in which case you'll be kept off the links for their duration].

"You don't have as much fun as you used to when holes were shorter, golf was simpler, and you didn't live a subterranean existence in sand traps. And now you've got to give it all up because there are no men to rake out your footprints, or run the power mowers, or patch the elaborate tees, or manicure the target greens; and no gasoline for the machines if the men were available. . . . Silly, isn't it? "

It certainly is when a flock of sheep, an ancient shepherd, and a good dog would keep the course going. . . ."

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