GIRLS’ CHAMPIONSHIP.

DEFEAT OF THE PIG-TAILS. GOLF IN WIND AND RAIN AT STOKE POGES.

By GEORGE W. GREENWOOD. The grown-ups – those with their hair up as distinct from those with their hair down – had matters pretty much their own way in the first two rounds of the Girls’ Championship, which were played yesterday at Stoke Poges. More deplorable conditions for young girls to play in could not be imagined. A pitiless rain swept the course for hours, producing waterlogged greens, which made the putting on some of them absolutely farcical. No wonder that, in these circumstances, the grown-ups pounded their little and, presumably, weaker sisters rather severely. In the end no pig-tail survived the storm of wind and rain. They made a plucky fight of it, although the victory in almost every case went to the young lady who could hit the hardest, and at the same time maintain a grip of the club. Gloves were soon discarded, because they rendered the task of gripping more difficult than ever. Mackintoshes were also laid aside because they clung to the legs like wet sails, and made freedom of movement well-nigh impossible. The girls preferred to be drenched to the skin, and many of them were, rather than be hampered by too many clothes. None, though wearing thin stockings and equally thin shoes, seemed to mind wading through pools of water; in fact, they regarded it all as extremely good fun. And so it was, probably, when you had to search for the hole on the green, and to find it submerged in the middle of a miniature lake. You actually drove the ball on several of the greens in the hope, seldom realised, that it would plough its way, like a torpedo, to the neighbourhood of the hole. The championship – of which Miss Winifred Sarson, of Cooden Beach, is the holder, but on account of age is now ineligible to compete – is confined to girls who were eighteen years of age on March 1 last. Three have since reached the age of nineteen, and it is a rather curious fact that all of them, greatly to the glee of the younger girls, were defeated in the very first round. For instance, Miss Rhona Rabbidge, of Fulwell, who is nineteen, and a stylish little golfer, was completely overwhelmed by Miss Muriel Wickenden, of Nevill, Tunbridge Wells, who now wears her hair bobbed. Miss Wickenden is Miss Rabbidge’s junior by two years, and yet, by sheer power from the tee and through the green, combined with unquestionable skill in the playing of the shots, the younger girl won by 7 and 6. Miss Rabbidge, a serenely happy golfer, managed to halve two holes in the first nine. She got into hopeless trouble – so, for that matter, did most of them – in the swollen waters of the stream that runs along the right of the green at the short seventh, while at the eighth hole she sliced two shots into the wood. Miss Wickenden was the only young lady I saw who reached the difficult third green, a distance of 175 yards, against the wind and rain. In the second round, Miss Wickenden, who is the holder of the Kent Championship, trampled upon Miss Betty Ingles, who had come all the way from Drumpelier, near Stirling, to the extent of 7 and 5.