Judge — March 1938 — page 30: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CRAZY GOLF By Alec Duncan Every month Alec Duncan will award a dozen Tommy Armour Championship golf balls each to the writers whose descriptions of crazy golf shots appear on this page. Of course, all letters become the property of THE JUDGE. At the end of the year they will all be considered by Alec Duncan and The Editors of THE JUDGE; the best one will get a set of handsome matched woods. ECENTLY we ventured onto Joe Cook's Sleepless Hollow Golf Course at Lake Hopatcong, New Jer- sey. The course is par for nightmares. The first tee Joe refers to as “Schultz's,” and, sure enough, Schultz was there to serve us a round of beers to help unsteady our nerves. The second hole would put anyone on his mettle as a sharpshooter. The green is an island about forty feet in diameter. The water moat about it is supplemented by a sand trap, just to make sure it isn’t too easy. We moved on thankfully to the third tee, which the comedian explained was a cinch—"Only sixty yards.” It was only sixty yards—but you have to chip through an iron caisson eight feet in diameter and twelve feet long, raised and turned on its side. The afternoon wore on and the party arrived at an old stone water tower, some forty-five feet high. Cook went prancing up the wooden steps, and we followed to find that the top had been seeded down to form a green. (I also happened to notice that one of the cad. dies, a midget who had been wearing a mustachio, had suddenly and unobtru- sively exchanged it for a full beard. Since nobody seemed to find this procedure at all unusual, I held my tongue.) The following hole, as I recall, is known as the “Hill to Hill.” It is just that, and 297 yards lie between them. Unfortunately for several players, the brow of the second hill was not the beautiful greensward it purported to be. The balls bounced far and wide, and we discovered that actually the hill is hard New Jersey granite, painted green. We moved on to the prize hole of Sleepless Hollow — the Hole-In-One. When you make the bowl-shaped green, as one of us, too modest to name him- self, did on his drive, your ball rolls automatically into the cup. There it slips into a pipe and comes out in a desk below and beyond the green. Joe there- upon opens the desk, producing both the ball and a handsomely printed “Hole-In-One Certificate,” which he fills out with the winner's name. Just as Joe presented us with our certificate, Schultz popped up, dressed as the Big Bad Wolf. We fled. Here are the letters that get the dozen golf balls apiece this month: MISSING ON THE LINKS The last member of a foursome hooked his drive off the fairway. All were sure they had seen it rip through the branches of a pine tree, covered with Spanish moss, but after hunting high and low, they could find no trace of it. The player who had lost it prepared to play another ball from where the original had last been seen. He called for a club when, suddenly, there was a thump behind him. He turned, and there, lay his old ball. It had been stuck in the clinging moss, and a slight breeze had shaken it loose, missing his head by inches. F. A. Slack, Venice, Florida. LEAPFROG The match had been keenly contested, and as we approached the green one of our opponents picked up a small bull- frog and placed it about six inches from the hole. My partner's ball lay about fifty feet from the cup, on the opposite side. “This is a real jinx," said our oppo- nent. “You can’t get in now in less than three putts.” The frog remained perfectly still while my partner putted. It was a good shot, but, as it neared the hole, we could see that it was a bit too hard. The ball rolled straight over the center of the hole, and we groaned. But it hit the frog right on the nose, and bounced back into the cup. The frog followed. Marvin G, Pearce, M.D., Houston, Texas. UNDER THE BRIDGE Marvin H. McIntyre, secretary to President Roosevelt, was playing with newspaper men at Warm Springs, Ga., on the little nine-hole course there. The first fairway crosses a creek. Mac drove, and his ball landed in what looked like the creek, directly un- der the bridge. Instead of hitting the water, the ball struck a small stone in the creek and ricocheted out from under the bridge and onto the fairway. It was the only shot the boys there had ever seen go under a bridge. And Mac had a good lie on the fairway, too. Claude A. Mahoney, Washington, D.C. The Judge comicbooks.com