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Unlike the proverbial carpenter, Sarah Henderson does not hesitate to blame  the tools of her trade - those clubs - which can drive a  player to distraction  if things are not going right.

In Henderson's case, however, she  has every right to be selective when she goes  in search of a set of golf clubs that  would suit her down to her stockinged legs.

For, you see, the new Hong Kong Amateur champion is  exceptionally tall. And we are not talking of her 5-foot, 10-inch frame.

'My inside leg measurement is 33, which is long. My long legs  created problems in my balance when I played with regular clubs. So I had to go in search of tailored clubs,'  Henderson said.

Balance is important in golf. People with long legs have problems  getting down to the ball and  into the swing of things.

'I bought custom-built clubs made by Henry Griffitts. They had to extend the shafts by one inch and a half to suit me.'

With her new set of tools, Henderson made her debut at the  Hong Kong Amateur Closed Championships earlier this month  - and won hands down. Her nearest rival was 15 strokes behind.

In the past,  perhaps some 20 years ago when Henderson  was toying with the idea of turning  professional, she would not have been able to go out and buy a set of tailor-made clubs off the rack.

'The problem with old fashioned technology is that if you had to extend the shaft, the all-up weight of a club would have increased correspondingly. The club would  have become too heavy. But with modern technology,  which uses ultra-light shafts, anything is possible,' she said.

Henderson, managing director of Parker Bilham, Far East ('I'm half the company'),  found a new lease of life on the golf course  when she returned last May, after a break of close to nine years.

The Englishwoman's love affair with golf began as a teenager when she would  spend time  with friends at the 'local bunny park'.

'We would hire a 7-iron, a putter and a golf ball for three pence and play pitch and putt.'

Henderson would mow lawns after school to earn pocket money.

'This old lady I had been cutting the grass for  told me she'd heard I had been down at the park with  friends with my putter and iron. She said she could not continue to pay me,  but  in return for my work  in her garden she would give me golf lessons. I later found out she had been England's women's champion in the 1920s.'  Henderson  cannot remember the name of  the old lady, but those lessons stuck with her, and turned her into a serious golfer.

All that took second place after Henderson's marriage and the birth of her two sons in the 80s.  Life, however, was not a bed of roses.  Her marriage broke down, and she left Britain for the United States to play golf.

She  returned to England to continue a career in broking, and with one thing leading to another, she found herself on a plane heading for Hong Kong in April 1997.

A chance outing at the Foreign Correspondents Club saw Henderson (who had been away from golf for almost nine years), being invited to Mission Hills.  But it was not until last November that Henderson started to play seriously, when she took part in the Chinese Ladies Open Championship in Zhuhai.

'It was my first competitive round in a long time. I finished the first round on level par, but the next day I had food poisoning. I somehow managed to finish the round with an 80 and was rushed to hospital where I was on an intravenous drip. On the final day I shot 76.'

Not a very auspicious start to her career in Hong Kong. But Henderson had raised enough eyebrows, and soon she was in demand.

She made her debut at the Hong Kong Amateur Closed Championships and blew the field away, so much so that she has  been picked to play in April's Queen Sirikit Cup team event,  to be held at Fanling.

Henderson attributes her recent success to her coaches - Linford Jacquelin, who deals with the technical aspects of her game, and Keith Lawson ('my head coach').

Most importantly,  Henderson's new-found success has been built around a  Henry Griffitts putter development from laser technology.  'Putting is half the game,' she said.



Made-to-measure clubs meet tall order from ex-champ