Golf ball in beer bottle

GOLF: For many years in golf clubs in England and elsewhere the four "bottle" shot which may have cost the genial Irishman. Harry Bradshaw the British Open Golf Title will be discussed. It happened around 60 years ago.

The ball fell inside a broken beer bottle and it is old history how Bradshaw played the bottle and the ball with his iron smashing the bottle into smithereens. This incident cost him at lest one shot and one shot would have won him the title outright, instead of his having to replay with South African Bobby Locke and lose. The beer bottle was a dead object which did not constitute a normal hazard and although there is no rule to cater for such a happening, Bradshow would, in the opinion of golfers well acquainted with the rules of the game, have been within his rights to take the ball from the bottle, throw the offending object away and replace the ball, all without kenalty.

At the worst, the ball could have been in an "unplayable lie" and the Irishman could have dropped the ball within a club's length and lost a shot. He would even then have possibly saved a stroke by the extra distance he would have gained. He could have at least have acted in this fashion and then taken his case before the Championship Committee to decide later as to what kenalty, if any he should incur. Why therefore he did not stop to think of this instead of "having a go?" Probably human nature. If one found oneself in a similar predicament, would one not think it was "rather fun" to play this trick shot and see what one could do with this unexpected hazard? That is possibly what Harry Bradshaw, a Carefree Irish man thought.

Or he might have taken the line, which many golfers are taking in discussing this incident that the general principle of golf is that the ball shall be played where it lies. This is the first known occasion for such an incident to have happened at least in a major championship. A.C. de S.