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My Open Championship Experiences
By HAROLD H. HILTON
I MUST candidly acknowledge that very longest of our courses appear com- the most pleasing and interesting paratively short. In 1904 all rubber- open championship meetings I have cored balls were comparatively big ever been present at are undoubtedly and light for their size; they would ali those in which I have-for a change float in water, and in consequence a been merely a spectator, and to my way great deal more ingenuity was required of thinking the championship of 1904 in the art of controlling them in their at Sandwich was the most wildly ex- flight than is necessary with the small citing within my recollection, as the heavy ball of the present day. I should have liked to have seen the competi- golf played at that meeting was, on the whole, as good as, if not better than, Hoylake attempting to combat the tors in the recent championship at any which has been seen in the event stormy conditions with an old-fash- in the whole of its history. During ioned floating rubber-cored ball. The more recent years there may have been majority found it more than difficult to some finer individual performances control the new small heavy ball. than those accomplished by Jack My first appearance in an open cham- White, Braid and Taylor in 1904, but pionship meeting was no fewer than never within my recollection can I twenty-two years ago, when the event remember three players maintaining was played for in 1891 at St. Andrews, a finer average excellence of form than and my appearance there was in a these three men did on the final day at measure the result of mere chance, as Sandwich; and it must moreover be I had not the slightest intention of remembered that in those days we were playing. Two days, however, before it all playing with a ball which would was due to begin, my father came to now be considered old-fashioned and me and said he was going to send me out of date, as the ball makers had not up to the open championship-a piece then evolved the small heavy ball of news which somewhat surprised me, which has served to make even the as he did not altogether believe in my
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