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  THE SPIRIT OF THE LINKS




  THE
  SPIRIT OF THE LINKS

  BY
  HENRY LEACH


    GREAT GOLF, WHAT POWERFUL CHARM IS IN THY NAME!
    WHAT CUNNING WITCHCRAFT IS THY FASCINATING GAME!
                         _Blackheath Golfing Lays_, 1867


  METHUEN & CO.
  36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
  LONDON




  _First Published in 1907_




CONTENTS


                                                        PAGE
  SPRING                                                   1

  MEN AND THINGS                                          37

  THE QUEER SIDE                                          75

  THE WANDERING PLAYER                                   118

  THE SUNNY SEASON                                       163

  THE PROFESSOR ON THE LINKS                             194

  THE FABRIC OF THE GAME                                 219

  WINTER                                                 251




THE SPIRIT OF THE LINKS




SPRING


I

To discover the secret of its wonderful charm is not the least of the
problems of golf. It is a game that encourages the reflective and
philosophical mind to close investigation, and so it is not enough for
the worthy player that he should take the things that he sees and feels
for granted, with no questions concerning the mystic influences that
seem constantly to brood over the links, and the people who are of them.
Each day as we go forward to the game, and in particular if it marks the
beginning of a special period of play, we feel these influences strong,
and it may happen that for a moment we wonder again as to their cause
and their origin.

Many minds have made great efforts towards the discovery of this secret,
but the fruits thereof have not been satisfying. Golf is not like other
games which stir up great enthusiasms in their players. Long spells of
failure or of ambition thwarted often kill the passion that has fed the
energy of the players of these games; but that is not the case with
golf, and golf almost alone. Nor does a surfeit of play lessen the
desire for it as it does in the case of other field sports, which need
close seasons for their healthiness. When one day’s golf is over, the
thought is of the next that will succeed it, and the hope already goes
forward to anticipation of the superior delights that may be in store.
And it makes the same appeal to all persons of all classes who once
attach themselves to it, and it has been found that the golf impulses
are as strong in the men of other races and of other colours as they are
in the British who have cultivated the game. This universality, the
constant enthusiasm, the unweariedness of the golfer, and the intense
ardour that distinguishes him from the players of other games, suggest
to us that some strong emotion of the human mind is touched by golf in
some peculiar way, that its principles and the conditions of its play
make a special appeal to some elementary feature of simple human nature;
for it is the appeal to these primitive instincts that is always the
strongest, the most overpowering.

Upon this line of investigation we come upon a clue that leads us to a
more satisfactory idea as to the secret than any other which has been
suggested. The strongly humanising tendencies of the game are evident to
all, and admitted. No cloak of convention can be worn over the manners
and thoughts of the player; he is the simple man. And what are the
subtle features of the primitive instincts that are awakened in him so
constantly, at almost every stroke, in every round, and on every day? It
is sometimes difficult to seize upon them, floating in a vagueness as
they do, but it does seem that all the strong emotions of the golfer
combining to make up his grand devotion to the game, are clustered round
the simple human instinct, most human and most potent of all, the
instinct of Hope. It is this hope that leads the golfer on through all
his troubles and disappointments, and it still urges him forward when he
has already ascended to a great delight. It is a hope that will never
permit complete satisfaction. This simple formula that the mystic charm
of golf is hope, will explain all the emotions that rise up in the
golfer in the course of a year of play. Take him from the first tee to
the end of his game. It is the fresh morning, and the ardour of the
golfer is warm within him, and he has a yearning and a high hope for a
great day’s sport. Here, on the teeing ground, he is animated by a great
desire to play the first hole as well as ever before, and to drive a
clean far ball that shall speak well of his skill and make good augury
for the strokes that are to come. If he succeeds his hope but increases.
Does he play the tee shot badly, and his hopes go forward to a great
recovery with the second shot of the game. If that should fail,
vexatiously, there may still be the chance of a wonderful approach, and
though the approach be not so wonderful, is there not the possibility
that the gods may be so kind as to steer a very long putt into the hole?
These are exactly the alternating sentiments; and if the fulfilment of
the hope be denied to the last putt, and the hole be lost, at the second
tee there is hope again that the indifferent start will be succeeded by
a flash of brilliance as shall restore the position and the complete
equanimity of the player.

And so it is from shot to shot and from hole to hole all the way round
the course, and “_Spero meliora_” is the eternal motto, even though the
present state be happy. If the whole round be weak and the result of it
adverse, there is the hope of the afternoon; and at the end of the day
the unfortunate golfer, moved almost to despair by his failures, soon
recovers again that optimism which is his constant succour, and then his
hopes are of the morrow. Does he not know now what it was that he was
“doing wrong,” the golfing sin that he committed all the day? To-morrow
the fault shall be corrected, and the swings that are made in
after-hours now give fair promise of a great change. A well-prepared
heart has the golfer, the like of which, as Horace says, hopes in the
worst fortune, and in prosperity fears a change in the chances. Give it
that the man has golfed above his true ability, and how he does fear
that the next game may put him back again; but here again there is
buoyant hope in evidence, and when the evening is filled with the
exaltation of it, how sweet it is to wander a little over the resting,
deserted links and mark the places where balls were pitched, and the
lines along which fine putts were made, and the points to which play
shall be directed when the next round is in the making, perhaps the best
of all.

So it is hope and hope all the way through the golfer’s life, and it is
the most joyous, the most uplifting of all the instincts, and the most
intensely human, and that which is given to man alone. It is because
golf strikes always this chord in his nature that it makes the strong
appeal to him. There is no other game or sport that permits him to hope
through failure in the same way, that leads him on, coaxes him, cajoles
him, even fools him. And this drama of the emotions of the individual is
played always in the most perfect setting for such a simple human
play--the sea and green fields and plain earth, and the simplest tools
to move a little white ball, not along marked lines or within narrow
limits or in protected arenas, but anywhere along that green grass, over
the hills and through the valleys and across the streams and rushing
rivers, while the wind blows now this way and then that, and the rain
pours. All the time the golfer pursues the little ball, alone with plain
nature and his human adversary. Here he is released from all the
conventionalities of mind that hold him in his other doings in this
complicated civilisation. The primitive instincts are in command; they
have the fields and the sea for harmony in the scene, and the golfer is
away from all the intricacies of the twentieth century, and is the
simple man and the hopeful man.

That is a fair creed concerning the command of golf, and we may reject
the theory that indomitable, persevering mankind finds the fascination
of the game merely in the failures and irritations that it brings and in
the desire to overcome them. The activity of that instinct of hope is
the mystic charm, and surely it is to the credit of a game that it
should teach the man to look forward with courage and cheerfulness, and
to be always something of an optimist, and the more of it the better for
his game. These things lead to the making of a good man as well as a
good golfer.


II

Men of other races, whose skins are not white, are afoot with this game.
Black men are playing; yellow men are becoming expert; red men have
achieved great skill. A few years since a golfer traveller found his way
to the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana, and he saw the wild Red Indian
at golf, and thought that it suited him better than his old game of
lacrosse. Spotted Horse drove off along the prairie--a plain prairie
with only a few shrubs about--and he followed and played the ball for a
couple of miles to the turn, and then played it back. There were no
holes; the game was to play the course in the fewest strokes. Here,
indeed, is the primitive golf. Some of the Indians are said to have made
fine drives--as good as the best that white men do--and this was all the
more remarkable inasmuch as it is the Red Indians’ pretty custom to yell
and howl in a frightful chorus while one of their number is addressing
the ball preparatory to making his stroke. So it does not seem easy to
put the red men off.

Golf, indeed, is the one world game; it is in essence that very simple
sport which so easily and certainly spreads over the planet. Everywhere
the British are pioneers, and they are by far the more numerous players;
but native proselytes are coming in fast in almost every quarter of the
globe, so now it may fairly be said that no other game is being played
everywhere by so many different sorts of people as this game of ours.
Sit on a magic carpet and be transported to any place, and there,
somewhere about you, will be a golf course.

I have lately had some talk with men from the East, who tell of the good
game that half-naked tribesmen, standing and walking in bare feet, have
learned to play; and, moreover, of the beautiful clubs, most exquisitely
finished and sometimes inlaid with ivory and fancy woods, that they have
made. I am assured that the “professional champion of Ceylon” is a
Cingalese caddie who holds the record for the Ridgeway course, made when
he was playing against a British golfer of thoroughly good class. The
Japanese are beginning to play, and good judges have been led to express
fears that their qualities and temperaments will bring them to a higher
state of perfection in the short game than has ever been attained
before, and which will surely threaten the supremacy of the white man.
Golfing at Kobe is a peculiar experience. The course is at Rokkosan, on
the top of a high mountain, and you must therefore climb the mountain
before you can golf on the course. You go by rickshaw to the foot of the
Cascade Valley, and are then carried up the mountain slope by coolies
for an hour and a half, when the tees and the bunkers come into view.
Those who play there hold that the view from this course is the finest
from any, though it can hardly be better than that from the course on
the top of Senchal Hill at Darjeeling, for from here there is
Kingenjunga, 28,000 feet high, to be seen, and from the summit of Tiger
Hill, overlooking the course, there is Mount Everest itself in view.

And there is golf in China too, six clubs for it. We had no sooner come
to the conclusion and officially announced some years ago that
Wei-hai-wei was a very desirable resort, than the golf club was duly
established there. In these days the building prospector first settles
upon his golf course, and advertises it, and then he builds his houses
round about; and in the same way it is realised that it is the proper
thing when seeking to make a new centre of Europeans abroad to start
with a golf course. I have been with men on shipboard who, having golfed
on the queer course of Tangier, have then speculated unceasingly in the
smoke-room as we sailed along the smooth waters of the West African
coast about the kind of golf that would be vouchsafed to them on
reaching the Canary Islands. Some time since I had a letter from a
highly-placed British official at Chinkiang on the Yangtse River, and he
told me how they had just begun to play the game out there on a new
course which was covered with crater-like excrescences. These are
Chinese graves, and they are said to make most excellent hazards. There
are pig-tailed fellows for caddies, and it was carefully ascertained
that no Chinese sentiment is injured in the matter.

There are golf clubs in all the States of Europe. There are very many in
France, and there are more each year, and it is remarkable that the
Frenchman is now establishing them for his exclusive use. At Boulogne
the Englishman and his friends of France golf together on a course where
some of the hazards were the earthworks of Napoleon’s camp--the camp
that held the Grand Army that lay in readiness for the invasion of
Britain. What irony is here--that the British golfer should play over
the Emperor’s camp! The Master-General must himself have walked many
times over the lines of our tee shots, and the shadow of the monument
that he built to commemorate his invasion of Albion, almost lies across
the course from which Albion herself, uninvaded, may be seen. And the
Mayor of Boulogne gives prizes to the British golfers who make the best
golf on Napoleon’s camp. I come to realise the depth of the meaning of
the lines cut into a marble tablet that I saw on the side of a staircase
in the Museum at Boulogne one day--“France and England have more good
sense than all the world,” and those lines were put on the stone more
than sixty years ago.

France is fair and free, but the game is played in Europe where the
times and conditions are not at all the same. There is golf in Russia,
and to it there was added a new course but recently. At the first
thought it seems a little odd that such a peaceful game should be played
in holy and revolutionary Russia even by Britishers. They have had two
courses in Russia for a long time past--one near Moscow and the other at
Mourino, a small village a few versts out from St. Petersburg. The men
who play here are of a hardy, determined strain, fine men for pioneers.
To get their golf they have to drive thirteen miles out from the capital
over bad roads; and in order to obtain a fair amount of satisfaction
from their game they have to returf their putting greens almost every
year, owing to the extreme sandiness of the soil. The Kaiser is
encouraging the game in Germany, and has given prizes for it; there are
eight clubs in Italy; and others in Austria, Holland, Belgium, and all
the rest. The game has flourished for twelve years past in the dominions
of the Sultan of Turkey, that is to say at Bagdad, and the golfers
there are pleased to tell you that their course is no miniature affair
as are so many at the outposts of the empire of St. Andrews, but that it
consists of full eighteen holes, and that, in the desert, they are very
sporting indeed.

It goes without saying that the game flourishes greatly in all the
Colonies. In Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the
others there are little booms of golf in progress, each of its own kind.
At Pretoria and at many places at the Cape the greens consist of
diamondiferous gravel, smooth and sparkling, and the first local rule of
the Kimberley Club startles the newly-arrived golfer from the homeland,
for it tells him that “It shall be lawful for a player to level the
ground on the putting green in any manner he pleases.” In India there
are some forty flourishing clubs, and that at Calcutta, with its five
hundred members and two courses of nine holes each, having been
established for nearly eighty years, takes rank as one of the premier
clubs of the world. There is the Aden Club in Arabia, the Royal Bangkok
in Siam, where an old and very imposing Siamese temple does duty for
clubhouse, and others all over Asia, as one might almost say. There are
many golf clubs in the Argentine Republic and the other South American
States. The Sandwich Islands are full of the game, for there are five
clubs there. In the East Indies there are three, and in the West Indies
there are eight. Wherever the Britisher goes he leaves his trail of golf
behind him. There is a story of Captain Adair holding a golf competition
in his camp when pitched on one of the passes leading into Thibet, at a
height of sixteen thousand feet above the sea-level. I have no
information about the game having been played in the North Polar
regions; but I am told that when the recent British Antarctic Expedition
was made in the _Discovery_, the Commander, Captain Scott, who is a keen
golfer, took some clubs down there with him, and in some leisure moments
“had a knock,” by way of reminding him of the old links at home, and of
seeing what the sensation of South Polar golf was like. It is said that
forged iron has a peculiarly cold and numbing touch in the frozen south.

It is the same game everywhere, and the law is always taken from
Fifeshire; but the conditions and makeshifts are sometimes peculiar. We
have said how at the Cape they putt on gritty earth that smacks of
diamonds, how in China there are graves for bunkers, and how across the
Channel, Napoleon’s trenches serve for the same purpose. Boulogne, after
all, is only in the nature of a corollary to our courses at Walton Heath
and Huntercombe, for hereabouts the golfers play where the legions of
mighty Cæsar were encamped, and the stables and the kitchens that Cæsar
made, huge pits deep in the earth, are in the line of play, and things
are so arranged that they constitute fine traps for erring balls, and
offer remunerative opportunities for skill with iron clubs in playing
out of them. And yet, if one must play bad shots, it is well that they
should be played in the direction in which Cæsar dug, for these pits
were made so long ago and are so deep that they are often beautifully
turfed with soft springy stuff, which anywhere except in a pit would be
a delight to play from, being so congenial to one’s iron. We must
applaud the Romans in this matter. It is nearly a pleasure to go into
their kitchens and stables; they were made so long ago and they are so
green and nice. There is golf at Old Calabar on the West Coast of
Africa, and there the putting “greens” are made of fine coal dust. So
they are “blacks.” At Mexico and many other places they are merely
“browns.” In Egypt, where there is much golf, they are often made of
rolled and baked Nile mud.

It is not necessary to say that there is nearly as much golf played in
America as there is in Britain, and that the time may possibly come when
there will be more. But it is not generally appreciated on what
old-established foundations American golf is played. The game has
traditions in America now, even as in Britain. In the archives of
American golf there is still preserved a document which shows how little
of a new thing is the game in the United States. It is an invitation,
reading as follows: “Golf Club Ball.--The honour of Miss Eliza
Johnston’s company is requested to a ball, to be given by the members of
the golf club of this city, at the Exchange, on Tuesday evening, the
31st inst., at seven o’clock. (Signed) Geo. Woodruff, Robert Mackay,
Jno. Caig, Jas. Dickson, Managers; Geo. Hogarth, Treasurer. Savannah,
twentieth December 1811.” The original is in the possession of the
granddaughter of the recipient. There seems to be some suggestion that
these pioneers of American golf were of Scottish origin, as pioneers of
the game until lately mostly were, and it might be appropriate to
mention that Savannah, whose people are said to be celebrated for their
love of pleasure, piety, and sport, has in it the oldest theatre in the
United States, while it also claims to have started the first Sunday
school in the world, founded by Wesley and perpetuated by Whitefield. If
it started here, this was not a bad place for American golf to start at.


III

Rulers, statesmen, diplomatists, begin to take more serious account of
the sport-loving factor in human nature than has been their wont.
Downing Street, Washington, the Quai d’Orsay, and all the other
nerve-centres of international affairs, where there are housed all the
cleverest modern masters of opportunism, have entered upon the study of
its peculiarities and tendencies, recognising that here is an instrument
of the most delicate perfection for the cultivation of amity between
people and people when the bureaucrats have set the lead. The British
Empire is being soldered up with sport. Besides the constant visits of
Colonial cricketers, have we not had with us recently two separate
detachments of Colonial footballers, and has it not been evident that
while the Colonial Governments have given their representatives the most
open and material support, even to the extent of voting them certain
supplies, Downing Street has smiled approvingly, and has, now and again,
when not many people were looking, given a pleasant little pat to the
wheel of friendship as it went rolling along from Cornwall to Edinburgh,
and from Blackheath to Dublin? And was it not an open secret that the
“very highest influences” were brought to bear upon the controlling
authorities, with a view to avoiding the recent breakage in the regular
sequence of Anglo-Australian encounters on the cricket field? The
_entente cordiale_ with France is being promoted from a toy model to a
big machine that is working in the streets, largely as the result of the
awakening of popular sympathies by such means as games. All the
congruous elements of different countries far apart are being attracted
to each other, as if magnetically, by such influences as the motor car,
the bicycle, cricket, football, and, far from least, by golf: and the
potency of these charms lies in the fact that when they are set to work,
men’s minds are relaxed from the general materialistic sternness of
their business times, and the humanity in them is asserting itself.

Now, all those good men who take the cosmopolitan view of human
happiness must see that among all games with powers like this there can
be none of greater adaptability and general use and efficiency than
golf. It may be, and is used by people of every colour, race, creed, and
temperament, in every climate and all the year round. No recreation,
apart from the simplest contests of the river and field, has ever been
so universal since the world began, with the single exception of chess.
And wherever and whenever it is played it extends its benign influence
towards the promotion of fast friendship among the players. There is no
freemasonry like the freemasonry of golf. To its temples in every land
are always welcomed the faithful and earnest craftsman from where’er he
came, and he is passed on the signs of the bag and the stance and the
little pimpled ball. For it is one of the articles of belief that no man
can be a good and enthusiastic golfer of experience and at the same time
a thoroughly bad fellow, for at the outset of his career the bad fellow
would never be happy in his game; others would not help to make him so,
and he would either be stung by the consciousness of his own defects and
reform, or he would slip away into the small silent pitiable minority
who leave the links one day never to return. Thus has our happy game of
golf wound a bright cordon round the world, and so does she play her
part in the great evolution of general contentment.


IV

“In spring,” we have been told in the _Georgics_, “heat returns to the
bones.” And the blood runs eagerly through the golfer’s veins. April and
May are the months of hope and of exultation. There is joy in the
present, in the showers and the sunshine, and a great joy in prospect in
the future. Each true golfer is a lover of Nature, and something of a
philosopher, and at this season, as at no other, when he gets wakened on
a bright morning and sees the country clean and fresh, and coming again
into bright green and many colours, while the birds sing at _allegro_
and _fortissimo_, a deep pleasure fills his being, the pleasure of
spring. He is alive, alive; and it is fine to be alive. Summer is
glorious, autumn is beautiful, cold winter has charms for those who have
proper feeling for it; but spring, the Germinal, is surely Nature’s
favourite season, and the golfer must always love his spring.

It gives him hope and thought. Change always induces reflection, and
here we have the change of the seasons, and a little of all of them in a
short space of time. An old proverb says that “April borrows three days
of March, and they are ill.” But as often she borrows several days of
May, and they are warm and sunny, and so hereabouts we have the winds,
and the showers, and the sunshine; and who can walk on the links to-day
and not think something of what the rain has been doing, and what the
winds have done, and what the sun is doing and is going to do? Here they
are all together, great master wonders to be thought much of. They are
much to all men; everything to the sportsman and the folks of the
outdoor life.

The sun and the rain are in such daily association in the days of the
sportsman’s spring, and more than ever is he inclined at this season to
give some passing thought to the phenomena of Nature, that one comes to
wonder sometimes whether he reflects as he might do on the eternal
exchange, how the drops of water that the sun takes up from the fields
over which he tramps, the golf links that he plays over, the rivers and
streams that he fishes, are every one of them placed back again, perhaps
not on the same fields or in the same rivers, but in some field or river
somewhere. The bare fact is one of elementary knowledge; but its
extensions are not so much so, and are interesting to think upon. If the
sun always gave back to each particular sportsman the rain that it had
taken away from his own playing fields and rivers, how dull would his
life be from the knowledge of what the weather and the seasons had
certainly for him in the future? With the caprice of the clouds and the
wind there is no such even and regular return of that which was taken
away. The golf links of the Lothians may be kept rained upon and moist
so that the turf is the most perfect, all with the rain that was sucked
up from the courses of the south coast of England, round about Deal and
Sandwich and Rye; and surely when the links in the south are parched,
and when they are green and moist in the north, we must think of that.


V

It behoves every earnest golfer to keep a match-book in which there
shall be faithfully recorded the results, with some particulars, of all
the matches whatsoever that he shall play in the course of each season.
Yet it is likely that not more than two or three golfers in every club,
if indeed so many, keep such a record of the golf that they have played,
which is sinking away into the forgotten history of their golfing lives.
The idea of the private match-book may have occurred to many golfers,
who, on a careful consideration of the circumstances of the case, have
rejected it, though it goes without saying that the chief reason for the
absence of the book in the majority of cases is simple neglect. Those
who deliberately avoid the intellectual pleasures of the match-book do
so either because they conceive that there is something namby-pamby in
the thing, and that it savours too much of the keeping of a little diary
which so few people know how to keep, consequently degenerating into a
record of the trivial acts instead of the life-governing thoughts; or
they are deterred by the fact that there are no such books with ruled
columns ready for the purpose which are at all agreeable to their ideas
as to what a match-book ought to be. Certainly there is no ready-ruled
match-book; the little things to fit the waistcoat pocket are hopelessly
inadequate, and really are only fit for doll’s golf, so that it is one
of the things to wonder at that there are still apparently some
thousands of golfers--beginners for the most part, you may be sure--who
buy these trifles year by year.

But perhaps it is as well that there is no stereotyped form of
match-book, to which we might be persuaded to attach ourselves with some
misgivings as to its form, and the irritation that would be caused us in
the future by the attempt to fill up constantly one particular column
that might seem to be either unnecessary or suggestive of indelicate
revelations. You will not find the ideas of many men in agreement as to
what ought to go down in the book and what ought not. One will want
spaces reserved for full particulars as to wind and weather, of the ball
with which he played, and of the many other little details of varying
importance, forming the sum of the circumstance of the day’s golf.
Another will have a horror of such conceits, and will limit his
confessions to statements of the date, the opponent, and the result. As
in other matters, the medium is the happiest choice; but the difference
of taste which could not be accommodated by so many different varieties
of match-book, suggests at once that the proper course to pursue is for
each player to purchase a perfectly plain book and rule it off in so
many columns to his own satisfaction; or even, indeed, for the sake of a
neater and less formal appearance, and an arrangement which is more
accommodating, leave it blank, and let the facts of the match be
inserted in order, just as the man is disposed to insert them at the
time of the entry. Then a blank column will not in after years convey
any reproach in the matter of a possible suppression of the truth, nor
one overcrowded tell too much a tale of despondency and excuse on the
one hand, or on the other of that boastfulness that comes not well from
the heart of a good golfer.

Now the beginning and the continuation of a match-book is a serious
matter, and the golfer will do well to come to an understanding with
himself beforehand as to the policy that he will pursue in regard to it.
It is essential that the strictest truth, and all the essential truth,
should at all times be set down, and it is only a simple extension of
the principle involved that if any matches are to be recorded they must
all be so. The chronicler of the time must not consider himself as
historian, and set himself to discriminate between what is important and
what is trivial; for, as in all things, it will be many years hence,
when the matters have been well sifted in the cold recollection of the
mind, before such a determination can be accurately made. Therefore it
is the duty of the chronicler to state the full facts, that is to say,
as full as he determined they should ever be according to his system of
match-book keeping, and he must leave it to himself in after years,
when, the chronicler now exalted to the student of his own history, he
can ponder over the statements in his leisure and make such judgments
upon them as he is disposed. Thus it is of the essence of the proper
making of such match-books that no fault of the maker at any time or in
any game shall be in any way extenuated, and that nothing to the
discredit of the opponent shall be set down maliciously, so that in days
to come, when the player shall have advanced many more seasons towards
the end of his golf, in turning over these pages and with their honest
help fighting his matches over again, he shall truly behold “the bright
countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies.”
So it seems that the best match-book should rightly be a strictly
private thing; if it were meant as a book for the table or any other
place where it might be exposed to the gaze of the curious, there might
at some time come a reluctance to the owner to state in full the truth
of the day’s play, since the honest criticism of a partner in a foursome
or of an opponent, to some who did not understand, might not appear so
necessary as was actually the case. This faithful record should be kept
under lock and key, and it should be taken with him when the golfer goes
far afield for play which is to last more than a day, and the entries
should be made on the night of each day. It will be soon enough for
others to pry into this confessional when the golfer who whispered into
it at nights is no more. That such present labour will afford a rich
sequence of future pleasure there can be no doubt. Just as there are no
friends like the old friends, and no wine like the old wine, so one is
sometimes disposed to fancy that there is no golf like the old golf that
is now indeed but a memory, and one often much too dim at that. The
match-book will refresh the mind to the recollection of dear friends
with whom one is no longer associated, and of fine sport that one had
with them on days when the thrills of life seemed to be a little quicker
than they are now. By the mention of an incident, and occasionally by
giving the score of a few holes, much of the whole game, shot and shot,
is conjured up in the memory in all its keenness and its tensity.

And it shall come as a good recommendation in this matter that the
golfer who is the favourite hero of us all, as he was a pattern of the
golfing virtues, made a match-book for himself while he was still
playing the schoolboy golf, and kept it continuously for the rest of his
time. Freddie Tait’s match-book was just what we might expect it to be.
It was a very honest thing, and Mr. Low, who has handled it and copied
some of it for the deep interest of us all, remarks on the way in which
the brave soldier golfer never spared himself, his partner, nor his
opponents, but dealt out praise and censure with a level hand. One day,
though he had halved his round, he says, “Played as bad a round as
possible”; and at another time his comment is, “Never played worse with
the exception of a few iron shots.” Then as to a foursome it is, “The
characteristic of the game was the bad play of both”; and of his partner
in another match he remarks, “The play of Mr. ---- was feeble in the
extreme.”

There were eight column divisions in Tait’s match-book. First there was
the place for the date, then for the name of the links, and the third
for the statement of the parties to the match. The fourth column was for
the mention of the odds of the handicap if any, or for the name of the
competition if he was engaged in one. Then there was one column for
holes won and another for holes lost, a broad one for “remarks,” and a
last little one at the side of the page for the total of the score.
Generally the “remarks” were brief and pointed, and it is these which
make the record of the play of the most beloved golfer we have known so
real and human, so that it is a pleasure to sit by the fire and create
some fancies of these matches. Now and then there is a little humour;
here and there a touch of sarcasm at the expense of “F. G. T.,” as he
generally referred to himself. Round by round there is the full story of
the way in which he won the championship at Sandwich, and the next entry
concerns the very next match that he played, which was the day after at
Rye, when, with his honours new upon him, he essayed the task of playing
the best ball of Mr. H. S. Colt and Mr. J. O. Fairlie. The remarks run:
“H. S. C. and J. O. F. too strong for the golfed-out Champion, to whom
they showed no mercy. H. S. C. and J. O. F. both played a good game and
did some very fine holes.” Here there is a 6 in the “Lost” column, and
it is a notable thing that this, on 23rd May, was the first figure that
had appeared in this column of defeat since 16th April, though golf was
being played almost every day. In his comments on the final of that same
championship he twice pays compliments to the pluck of Mr. Hilton, who
in the game was very soon left without the slightest chance of victory,
and was beaten by a full eight holes. The gods would never permit the
favourite Freddie to be beaten by the finest player of his time, and
that player now refers to his early engagements with the soldier as the
day when Tait “commenced his career as the slaughterer of Hilton.”
Another day we find Freddie revelling in two glorious matches with
Andrew Kirkaldy on the new course at St. Andrews. In the morning he lost
by a couple of holes, but in the afternoon he was the winner on the last
green. “Another splendid match,” he rejoices; “both in great form.
F. G. T. only halved the third hole by carelessly moving his ball with
hand while removing a piece of grass. The hole was played out and won by
F. G. T., but he had, of course, to lose a stroke, according to the
rules of golf. This unfortunate accident made the difference of one
hole. A. K., 80, a magnificent score. F. G. T., in: 4 3 5 4 4 4 5 4 4 =
37.” Here is another comment, “R. T. B. very fair. Self good at first,
but got too many up, and then got careless, with the usual result.” He
lost that match by a hole. Another time, when he was playing the best of
two balls, he wrote: “Played badly. The two balls also bad.” That match
was fittingly halved. In this way we can follow the happy Freddie all
the way through the spring and summer to the end of the year on all the
best links that are to be found, and these judgments of his will serve
as models to other men who in this small matter would copy the methods
of the perfect golfer.

There is this entry in the match-book alongside the date 31st July 1888,
concerning a match with Mr. Norman Playfair: “Driving very poor. Put a
ball through a man’s hat and had to pay five shillings.” Young Freddie,
then only eighteen years of age, went to old Tom Morris to complain of
his ill-luck in the matter, but Tom answered him wisely, “Ah, Master
Freddie, ye may be vera thankful that it’s only a hat, and no’ an oak
coffin ye hae to pay for.” Even now, when the sad happenings of the
South African War, which at the time so wrung our heart-strings with
misery, have been somewhat mellowed by time, the great consoler, it is
impossible to glide into this channel of reminiscence without feeling
that the pleasure of it is touched with melancholy that the body that
held that noble soul should be resting among the trees by the banks of
the Riet River.


VI

There is nothing like the winds of March for testing the golfer in every
department of his play. Quite timid golfers are sometimes heard to say
that they don’t mind rain; but if a man does not mind big winds, regards
them both from the sporting and scientific standpoints, and manages to
make some respectable golf while they are in charge of the air, he is a
worthy player, and he may make his mark some day. It often happens that
you can apply test after test to two different golfers, and they will
both answer equally to them; but the wind test will separate them at
once. The man who can play the real game in a high wind, and use it to
his advantage at every opportunity, knows golf as others do not. He is a
finished player, and he rather likes the days of March for the rich
sport that they afford--the real big game of the links. The other man,
when he hears the wind playing like a German band round the side of the
house as he tries to get himself off to sleep at night, thinks to
himself that he will have to give up the idea of golf in the morning. He
should not. Even if he never learns the scientific treatment of wind in
golf, he would find his game improved generally and made more powerful
by playing it at times like these under severe difficulties, and it is
worth playing in a wind if only to taste the sweet joys of golfing in a
calm afterwards, just as there is one point of satisfaction in getting
wet through on the links because the change afterwards is so delicious.

You always find that a golfer is very much the better for a short season
on a very windy course. When he goes back to his home course, very
likely inland and protected, driving seems such a simple, easy thing,
and he lets out at his tee shots with a freedom and a certainty which
make for a greater boldness and strength in his game. North Berwick is
one of the windiest courses. You do get wind there in the spring months,
and there are hundreds of golfers who testify to the good that a short
stay there has done to their game. They have simply got to learn to golf
in all kinds of winds. It is like throwing a non-swimmer into seven feet
of water with only a thin piece of rope round his middle. He very soon
invents a way of making greater security and comfort for himself. Stay
at North Berwick long enough, and it may affect your style for life.
Mr. Robert Maxwell has a peculiar punching, but withal very powerful
style, which is attributed to his upbringing at North Berwick. A man
disposed to probe very deep down for causes and effects might arrive at
the conclusion that the reason why, speaking very generally, there are
better players and better courses, and more of each on the east coast of
Scotland than on the west, is because it happens that the links there
are more exposed, and there are more windy days upon them than on those
on the other side of the country. Not that there are not big winds very
frequently to be dealt with in the neighbourhood of Troon and Prestwick,
which surely have their full share, and it was at a championship at
Prestwick that old Willie Park delivered himself of his famous remark,
“Guid God! When I get ma club up I canna get it doon again!” so strongly
was the wind blowing on that occasion.


VII

In the spring the professionals come tumbling on to the stage of golf
once more with their happy welcome cry, “Here we are again.” Sometimes
in the middle of the summer season people are apt to say that we get at
least enough of these professional competitions, and that it would be
agreeable if we had a little more time to think of our own golf in all
its varied charm, instead of our attention being invited day by day to
the many permutations and combinations of “the quartette” in exhibition
matches, and the aspirations of such as Jones among those next to them.
But what a dull season it would be if Vardon and Braid were not up
against Taylor and Herd somewhere or other--it does not matter
where--just as in the olden time, or Herd and Braid did not show once
again at the little course of Slocum-on-Mudbury that there was something
wrong with their running in that never-to-be-forgotten foursome when
four hundred sovereigns were at stake. And then when Rowland Jones is
included in one of these foursome combinations, we say, quite pleased,
“Ha, Jones is coming on! Jones is going to assert himself!” One day Jack
White is in again--that happy-hearted Jack, who came by a great
championship in 1904 at Sandwich, where records were falling in every
round--and then we say to ourselves very good-naturedly, “I hope Jack
will get on to his drive again in one of these matches!” Or the fourth
man may be Tom Vardon, and that is very interesting, because Tom is a
great big sportsman who is stuffed tight with the effervescing joy of
life. If it is Andrew Kirkaldy, as it is occasionally, we rub our hands
and observe, “Grand matchplayer is Sam! Now we shall see how a foursome
should be played! Good as the best is Sam!”

The fact of the matter is, that these professional matches and
competitions are now a fast and integral part of our golfing system. We
may think that we could do without them, and in the summer-time we rail
constantly against them, and say that they never would be missed. But
how we should miss them! Golfing life would not be the same if there
were not occasions to make such almost daily observations as those just
quoted. The season would be without salt, and our little amateur combats
would seem to be lacking in an unknown stimulus that was always there
before.

Then what a void in golfing life would there be if there were not
constant occasion to express admiration for the supremacy and the
prowess of the triumvirate--Harry Vardon, Braid, and Taylor. When we are
too frequently told of the achievement and the skill of the heroes of
the olden time, it is well to think of what the triumvirate has done and
still can do. Perhaps not many golfers, even among those who pay
faithful attention to such matters, have a proper sense of the amazing
record of these three men. I had occasion to analyse it lately, and I
believe not in any other sport have the periods of three such champions
coincided as they have done in golf during the last few years. It is a
strange thing that the fates should have pitchforked Braid, Vardon, and
Taylor into the arena at the same time, each man being so much above
all outside the three. It is as if Ormonde, Donovan, and Flying Fox had
been in the same race for the Derby. In one sense it seems a waste of
exceptional talent on one period, to the possible impoverishment of
another, but golf spectators and players should appreciate the advantage
of the times in which they live, for it is unlikely that three such
golfers will ever be to the fore at the same time again after these
three have gone their way, and it is as certain as anything that a
hundred years from now the golf world will speak reverently of the great
triumvirate of the early days of the twentieth century. It will
certainly be remembered that after this triumvirate had been established
eleven years in each other’s company, they wound up a championship
first, second, and third against the biggest field that had ever
contested a championship, this being at Muirfield in 1906.

Three times in those eleven years the triumvirate collectively achieved
the highest possible distinction in this way, the first being in 1900,
which was Taylor’s year, the second in 1901, when Braid won, and the
third in 1906, when Braid was again successful. Taylor was the first of
the three to show activity, and he won the championship in 1894 and
1895. Not until 1896 was the triumvirate definitely constituted, as it
were, by the whole three, Vardon, Taylor, and Braid appearing in the
championship at the same time. In that year Vardon finished first,
Taylor second, and Braid sixth. In the following year Braid, in the
second place in the lists, was the foremost man of the three. Then there
was a remarkable run, for the triumvirate found the winner in seven of
the next nine years. Vardon scored twice running to begin with; then
Taylor and Braid; in 1902 Vardon and Braid tied for second place; the
next year Vardon was first again; Taylor and Braid tied for second
position in 1904, and this was followed by two championships for Braid.
Only three times in eleven years did the triumvirate let the
championship go out of their small circle, and it may be mentioned that
the three men who beat them on these respective occasions were
Mr. Hilton in 1897, Herd in 1902, and Jack White in 1904.

Adding up the records of positions and scores of all golfers who took
part in these championship competitions when the triumvirate did, and
making, so to speak, one long championship of it, the triumvirate lead
the way, and the rest--the very best of them--are absolutely tailed off.
The scores registered in the championships, added up, afford the
following result: Harry Vardon, 3426; James Braid, 3446; J. H. Taylor,
3454. Herd fittingly comes fourth with 3527, and then there is an
enormous gap between him and the fifth man. Taylor would, of course, be
in a different position if we counted in the two early championships
that he won, and let it be said for Taylor that, including this year of
1907, he has been second for the championship four times in succession
and five in all--a magnificent record such as stamps him as the most
brilliantly consistent champion of all time. But it is a heartbreaking
record for Taylor all the same, and this great and popular player has
all golfers’ sympathy.

Golfers are not like the brooks of poets; they cannot go on for ever. We
shall look to see the great men of to-day playing fine golf in twenty
years from now, and upon occasion they will play such rounds as will
make us say, “That was just as in the olden time!” But their average of
merit must diminish, and probably all the premier three, or at least two
of them, have passed the high-water mark of their ability and their tide
of supremacy is receding. Who, then, is to succeed them? For years past
we have been looking for likely and worthy successors. There are many
fine golfers on the links, and occasionally great things are prophesied
of some of them; but disappointment almost invariably follows. The times
do not seem to be breeding any more Vardons, Taylors, or Braids. A
triumvirate of the future is not yet in the making. Our grandparents and
other good people constantly tell us that there are as good fish in the
sea as ever came out of it, and it might seem a foolish thing to suggest
that we shall never again have such a band of supreme artists at the
game as those whose works we enjoy witnessing in these days. But are not
the chances heavily against there being again in our time simultaneously
three more men of such outstanding ability as these three, each one of
whom would be the sole man of his generation if it were not for the
other two? Cricket did not produce three Graces at the same time;
billiards had only one Roberts. You could not imagine three Graces and
three Roberts. But we have had them in golf in late years.

One is inclined to think that the fact is that the men who are great
to-day were trained in a severer and more heroic school than their
successors will be, and they had each a spark of genius which the
conditions of the time fanned into the full flame of glory. We cannot
expect three more of them to come along at the same time; but we might
expect and do want one more, someone who shall be an acknowledged chief
of the game, someone whom we shall be glad to see win the championship,
as we cannot be so glad when it is won by a golfer than whom there is no
one more unlikely ever to win it again. I am no believer in these things
going in a round of comparative mediocrity. What seems to be the matter
with most modern aspirants is that they have not that touch of genius
which is so evidently possessed by the men who have been making golfing
history during the past decade. They may drive well, play their irons
well, putt well, and they may do many grand holes and accomplish
numerous brilliant rounds, breaking many records. At times they may beat
the champions and past champions. But they are not the same golfers.
Watch them play a round and you can see the difference. They have not
the same genius. They are merely ordinary human golfers, though good
ones at that; they are palpably suffering too much from mere human
weakness. You see them trying hard, trying so very hard. The triumvirate
do not seem to try. It is just there. There is one of them who tries
less than any golfer who has ever been born, and he does more when
trying less than those others trying hard. Yes, it is just there--the
genius for the game.


VIII

We may set it down with some conviction that William Shakespeare was a
born golfer. It does not matter that golf was as rare in the glorious
days in which he lived as are eagles in twentieth-century Britain. We
do not say that he played golf, had seen it played, or had ever heard of
it. So far as we are aware, there is no evidence to support any such
propositions. Yet he was a born golfer, and if the game had come his way
he would have played it, and one doubts not that he would also have
excelled in it; so that it is well that it was after his time, or
England would not have been proud in the possession of such work of his
as is the envy of all other nations. For, of all the classic writers
whose work we read, there is none who gives such evidence in almost
every line of it that he was possessed of a perfectly ideal golfing
temperament, of a philosophy that seems constantly to have a subtle and
most perfect application to the life of the links. Through and through
it is the real golfer’s philosophy, that which is the best suited to the
intensity of the game, to its deep humanity, and that which serves for
the complete appreciation and full joy of the game. You may read all the
other poets, from Homer and Virgil to Byron and Tennyson, without ever a
thought of the links obtruding upon your study; but it is no evidence of
a vagrant mind, or one that is indifferent to the sweetest music of
words, that not three consecutive minutes can hardly ever be spent in
reaching Shakespearian lines without the fancy being touched by the
perfection of the philosophy and sentiment when applied to the peculiar
pleasures and pains of the golfer.

Only one other classic writer with whom we are familiar can give such
solace to the troubled player, such wise counsel to him who errs or is
in doubt, such chastening admonitions to those who have offended against
the spirit of the game and whose consciences are disturbed. That is
Marcus Aurelius, and we pass on the volume of his rules of life to all
those players who from time to time seek their homes at night weary and
depressed after a day on the links, when all has been for the worst and
despair broods darkly over the soul. After all, the golfer who is
indifferent to the ills he sometimes, nay often, suffers, and can in an
hour completely forget the tragedies of two rounds, is somewhat too
phlegmatic, and there will always be denied to him the higher ecstasies
by which the men of finer and more nervous temperament are uplifted. We
do not set it against a man that when he has done discredit to his
capabilities, he should show many signs of inward turmoil and display
much active vexation towards innocent persons and things on seeking his
home. He may rail against the arrangements of his household, and he may
appear peevish to the members of his family, and find new faults in
their manners and conduct. If they are the kind, sympathetic people that
they so often are, they will bear with him and wait patiently for the
passing of the cloud. On the morrow the good game may be back in all its
fulness and richness, and then at eventide there will trip lightly
homewards a happy and withal a penitent golfer, who will not be slow to
confess his fault and to make a full measure of amends. The colour of
life will have changed from the dull grey to the red of roses. And how
much thinner and poorer would be the days of our golfing life did they
not contain such constant change and yield to us such a variety of
emotion! But it is the days of sorrow rather than the days of gladness
that teach us the great lessons that all worthy golfers should learn,
and they should not neglect the cultivation of the philosophic spirit
for which the best opportunities are then afforded. So it is likely the
stricken player may find a deep and wholesome contemplation in his
lonely privacy at the end of the day, by meditating with Marcus Aurelius
on the morals of life and events. He will tell you that “you have
suffered a thousand inconveniences from not being contented with
performing what your capacity was given you to perform,” and so, by such
a little hint as this, he will lead you home to the simple truth that
your proper game is not your best game, and that much of the misery that
obtains in the world of golf is due to the universal habit of too high
appraisement of the quality of one’s play.

But it is Shakespeare who teaches us best to be good golfers, and the
secret of the perfect application of his sentiment and philosophy to the
golfer’s life is that his writings are so intensely human, and that of
all the diversions of man there is none that so much stirs in him the
simple instincts, reduces him to the simplest human elements. A round of
golf will sometimes bare faults and qualities in a man that have been
hidden from the time of their formation in his early years. It is to the
man who constantly undergoes this fierce analysis that Shakespeare will
most appeal. Let the golfer test his text and see the perfection of the
result. The quotation selected for the first day of the year for a
Shakespearean calendar that was hung up in a golfer’s den was--

   “Like a bold champion, I assume the lists,
    Nor ask advice of any other thought
    But faithfulness, and courage.”

Could a golfer take a better motto?


IX

No class of man looks forward to the spring with keener anticipation
than the golfer. Overburdened with his winter’s discontent, he fancies
it as a time of sunshine, of dry courses, of sprouting young grass that
holds up the ball on the suburban links and gives us the first good
brassey lies that we have had for some months, of the frequent
retirement of the energetic worm, of the quickening of the greens, of
the leafing of the trees and the hedgerows, and the brightening of the
face of Nature. The golfer is generally a strongly human man, who is not
careless of natural beauties as are too many in these increasingly
prosaic and strenuous days. Perhaps he likes the coming of the
springtime best of all, because he is then enabled to play his game in
the best degree of comfort. He is less hampered with heavy clothing, and
his hands and wrists keep warm without any cumbersome artificial
assistance. And then also he is persuaded, and he is evidently right,
that the balls fly very much better in the spring sunshine than they
ever did through the heavy and often murky atmosphere of the winter
days. Even the golf ball welcomes the coming of spring, and given that
it is properly struck it gets a better and longer flight through the air
when it is dry and light, and it runs better on the dry turf when it
comes down, so that the player finds himself being given encouragement
that helps him wonderfully on to his game. And so the man who usually
goes by the name of the Average Golfer believes all through every autumn
and winter that he comes on to his game best of all in the spring, and
that that is the only time of the year when he really does play his
best, his real game. The only time when he does not believe that he
plays his best game in the spring is in the spring.

The fact is that the conditions of springtime are rather made up of a
set of contradictions of a very aggravating character, and they often
play the devil with the game of this Average Golfer, the system of which
is not too firmly consolidated. This person, one takes it, is a man of
medium young to middle age, a great enthusiast, of good means, one more
or less constantly engaged in business, having a fair number of social
obligations to attend to in evenings, and a golfing handicap of
somewhere between six and twelve. This man is possibly afflicted with a
troublesome liver, and this organ has a peculiar and most aggravating
way of asserting itself in the springtime as it has at no other season.
Then it is up to all kinds of tricks, the entire physical system of the
man is disarranged and thrown out of gear, and the result is that when
all Nature is smiling and the larks are piping as though their little
throats would burst with the fulness of their melody, the erstwhile
hopeful golfer is in a wretched state of mind, trying new stances for
his drive, new ways of gripping, a swing much longer or much shorter
than usual, and manœuvring with his strokes in all other kinds of ways,
in the vain hope that he might be permitted to drive at least as well as
he did in January, instead of foundering one ball in three and lifting
up one of the others high towards the heavens. But there is compensation
in the increased hopefulness of spring. The game may be poor, weaker
than it was hoped to be. But it will mend; it will surely mend.




MEN AND THINGS


I

For one reason, if not for more, a Liberal Government is popular with
golfers of true feeling--because it gives Mr. Arthur Balfour, the
ex-Prime Minister, more to the links than when he is burdened with the
care of Ministerial office. In the days of the sweet idleness of
Opposition we find him at play on a golf links here and on another one
there; now opening a new course and delighting the assembled players
with a little speech, which is rich in the spirit of the game; and at
some other time enjoying a foursome with some old political friend, or
with J. H. Taylor or James Braid as his partner. As Mr. Balfour is the
better, as he will tell you, for being a golfer, so is golf the happier
for his intimate association with it; and some people who do not know
and cannot understand, not being of golf, think we make over-much of a
statesman’s interest in our pastime, as if the great of the land were
not bound closely up with other sports. Good and earnest-minded golfers
feel that they are kin to this player, because he is himself a pattern
of the man imbued with the best sense of the honour and glory of the
game. He is loyal to it, he has the sentiment of it, and he has seen
through to the inner recesses of its charm. Thus he is not ashamed, as
no good golfer ever is, of abandoning himself entirely to its delights,
of setting all his emotions and his thoughts free to race and frolic in
the joy of the links, and of allowing the high dignity of the great
statesman to sink away into the simple naturalness of the earnest
golfer. So we like this late Prime Minister not because of his political
rank, but because he loves his game and does his best by it, and is at
all times an example to the acolytes who come forward in nervous
ignorance of the great meaning of golf.

Then it is less interesting to consider what style of player Mr. Balfour
is, than what kind of man he shows himself to be amid the trials and the
triumphs of the links, where, it is indisputably held, a man’s entire
human nature, despite all efforts at repression, is forced up to the
surface for all to see. Here, then, we see the real Mr. Balfour as he is
never seen on the Front Bench at Westminster. There are no mashie shots
to foozle, and no drives to top into the bunker in the House of Commons,
to make a man feel that life is yet a feeble, disappointing thing. To
the Parliamentarian, the nearest thing in pleasure to laying a long
approach shot “dead” against the hole is a successful speech, or the
engineering of a majority on a division which is something above par,
and these are dull things in comparison. Mr. Balfour, then, as we have
studied him many times at this testing game, is a man of many and
quickly changing emotions, of a temperament somewhat highly strung and
nervous, and capable of enormous enthusiasms and alternative
depressions. There is nothing that is phlegmatic about this Ministerial
golfer. There is something of the schoolboy left in him. One day I saw
him driving from the tee and getting a beauty, so that his ball was
cleanly flicked for the best part of two hundred yards in a straight
line to the hole. It is not in human nature to wait for tardy praise in
such ecstatic moments, and he, his face aglow with pleasure, turned
about to his opponent, exclaiming, “I _do_ push them away, don’t I?”

On the other hand, there are times when he is sadly mindful of failure,
and he is much too serious a golfer ever to forget the most evil things
he has done. One time we saw him playing in a foursome--his favourite
form of golf--with Mr. Eric Hambro as his partner, and after foozling
his approach in a deplorable manner, he called out wearily to his
partner, “Do you know, Hambro, I once did that kind of thing for a whole
fortnight!” It must have been the blackest fortnight in the right
honourable gentleman’s career. He is something of a philosopher on the
links, and when he makes a bad stroke he sometimes explains how it came
about to those who are near him, or to the course and the sky, if he is
momentarily isolated. This, indeed, is one of the very few respects in
which the Prime Minister falls from what we may regard as the standard
of the ideal golfer. He is inclined to reach too hastily at a
conclusion, and some say to speak too much. Some masters have held that
the perfect golfer plays in absolute silence, and Mr. Balfour is not an
absolutely silent golfer, though in his case he is none the less
earnest. It has been stated that never on the links does he make use of
any other ejaculation than “Dear me!” but this statement, besides being
untrue, is absurd, and is not complimentary to him as a golfer. Let him
miss a shot or do anything which he ought not to have done, and the
human man comes out above the statesman, though, of course, nobody has
ever heard Mr. Balfour commit himself to any unbecoming remark. But in
the production of effect from the minor expletives he is most skilful.
“Botheration!” is the commonest of his ejaculations, and as he says it
whilst witnessing the descent of his little white ball into a yawning
bunker, one, as an old golfer, sometimes realises that the most
satisfactory results in this respect are not always produced from the
use of the strongest materials. “Oh, this is indeed shocking!” is
another favourite form of expression, which, as he says it, speaks a
volume upon the agony of the mind.

For the rest he is just a good, determined golfer, who is a first-class
sportsman, never giving any quarter on the links, and never expecting
any. You never see Mr. Balfour pick up his ball whilst there is still
the remotest chance left of his dividing the hole with his opponent, and
he would reject with scorn, like every other true golfer, the suggestion
that he takes his golf for the sake of the exercise only. It is because
he is thus keen that other and better players find it a constant
pleasure to match themselves against him, or to become his partner in a
foursome. They know then that they are out for golf.

“Big” Crawford, his old-time favourite caddie, who keeps a ginger-beer
tent alongside the eighth green at North Berwick, flies the Scottish
standard from the top of it when Mr. Balfour is on his most beloved
course. A Russian grand duke, who did not know the truth, once naïvely
suggested to Crawford that the flag was flying as a compliment to him,
the Russian. “Na, na, sir,” said Crawford, “begging your pardon and
with great respect, but it’s for one greater than you.”

“Who is looking after Mr. Balfour?” they whispered one time at
St. Andrews, when the right hon. gentleman was playing himself into the
captaincy of the Royal and Ancient Club, and was then Chief Secretary
for Ireland, and regularly attended by plain-clothes detectives in case
of accident. “I am looking after Mr. Balfour!” Crawford said when he
overheard. “I’m enough.” And he would have been.


II

It should not be set against a golfer for foolishness or faddism that he
gives pet names to some of his favourite clubs that have served him well
through many hard campaigns, and between him and which there has grown
up a very close degree of intimacy, for some of the greatest players
have given this rank of name to their trusted clubs. “My driver,” even
“My best driver” or “My old driver,” is a cold term to apply to that
fine head and shaft that you think have no equals on the links--at least
for you. All drivers may be called drivers; shall we have no other name
for the champion that has roamed with us and played with us over courses
all the way from Dornoch to Westward Ho!? Call him “Bill” if you like,
and “Bill” is a very good name; or if your fancy leans that way, and she
is slender and whippy, you may call her “Bess.” But better keep to human
names. There is a man who calls his baffy “Jumbo,” and it does not seem
a nice name. I have a golfing friend who has a driver that he calls
“Ephraim,” and it is one of the most wonderful drivers ever seen, with
such a long shaft that it needs a giant to wield it, but its owner is
something of a giant too. When I hear him ask for Ephraim I know that
mighty schemes are afoot, and, straining my eyes to the far distant
green, I wonder that even old Ephraim should ever be called upon to make
such efforts. But Ephraim has a way with him that makes for success. He
is not to be used often, and then when he is he does his job well. That
is Ephraim. And do not many of us know the famous golfer who has a dear
wooden putter who goes by the name of Fanny? Fanny has done fine duty in
championships ere this, and her master knows her every whim and mood.
She is a delicate creature is Fanny, and she is not so young as she used
to be, and Mr. John, her master, never takes her out in these days when
it is wet.


III

Many golfers carry in their minds a fairly clear picture of a club that
they regard as their ideal. They have some notion as to its looks, the
shape of the head, and the length and the thickness of the shaft.
Particularly do they know what that club feels like in their hands as
they grip it to make the shot for which it, and it alone, is perfectly
adapted. They have never seen such a club, and they fear sometimes that
they never will. Some old favourite of theirs has some of the points
that are possessed by this ideal, but it has not got them in the same
ripe perfection, and it has obvious faults which at times have cost
their master dearly. There is no reproachful word to say against that
old favourite. It is a good club, and it has done a fine service on the
links, and as for its imperfections, are they not what its maker gave to
it, trifling imperfections, too, which we are generously disposed to
overlook when considering that fine record of service. But it is not the
ideal club; it does not feel like that club that we sometimes handle in
our imagination, and then enjoy a glorious sense of power as with no
other.

It is a pleasant thing to treasure in the mind such a club as this; but
let it stop at that. If one grand delusion in which there is nothing
harmful, and which on the whole but makes for good, as most ideals do,
is not to be destroyed, never set out to reduce that club, now made of
but filmy thought, to cold iron or clumsy wood. It will not be the same,
be the fancy ever so exact. The first efforts will bring forth results
that will be far poorer in quality than those made by old favourites of
whom we have spoken, and it will be as if the favourites have jealousy
and resent these new-born interlopers, so that they will for the time
being cease to give their best work to the man who is so plainly
discontented, and who, being so, is lacking in confidence. And the
faults that are in those first models that come thus from the mind only
increase and aggravate the more as attempts are made to repair them. It
is a Will-o’-the-wisp, indeed, is this ideal club, be it driver or
brassey or cleek or iron, and it may lure the golfer to a shocking fate.
Let us cling to the old favourites and be kind and generous to them. It
has been said, and it is no doubt true, that the perfect wife has never
yet been born, and some men may reflect upon the advantages of life if
they had a perfect wife such as one whom they have painted in their
fancy. But in their honesty they will turn their thoughts away from such
conceits, and let them dwell upon the manifold excellences of the wives
they have, who have hearts that beat, and who, kind and patient and
generous, have those human weaknesses which would be faults in the
ideal, but which only seem to give to the being the greater human
completeness and even perfection. Thus, with this tolerant affection and
appreciation, must we look upon our favourite clubs, and leave the ideal
to lie unmaterialised and worthless in the mind, a pretty thing to think
about, but impossible.

Once there was a man who made a grand effort to materialise the ideal
that he had cherished through many seasons. It was a brassey. Some
twenty brasseys had he had made, but none of them was quite the thing
that he craved. There was something wanting, and thus his shots had not
the sting that they ought to have, or that he thought they should
possess. But, so often disappointed, he let alone his search for the
ideal for a while, and made good friends with one of the real. But he
could not forget the ideal brassey, and it grew more and more definite
in his imagination. He would look at it there with a smile on his face
as he would be going home in the train, and he would handle it and make
with it that long carry against the wind that no club of wood and brass
in his hands had ever made. Then he took the professional clubmaker into
his confidence, and in odd moments after rounds, in the shop they would
sometimes talk of this great club, but neither would venture to suggest
that it should be made, though they spoke of it as if it were made. They
would pick a new one from the stand, and the idealist would say, “Now,
Solomon”--he always called it Solomon--“has a shade more hook than that,
and there is a little sharper angle to his nose.” The worthy clubmaker
entered fully into the spirit of the fancy, and seriously, and he would
answer, “Ay, sor, but Sawlaman wasna made by my apprentice!” Another day
the golfer would recount the story of his play at a fateful hole, and of
the narrow margin by which a fine long shot failed to clear the hazard.
It was a moving theme, and after a moment of silence the maker of clubs
would say in summary, “Ay, ay, sir; it was a pity ye no had Sawlaman in
yer bag!” Yes, it was Solomon that was wanted, just Solomon.

Then one day the player fell to temptation again, and, stirred as of
yore by his foolish hopes, he resolved that he would pluck Solomon from
the stronghold of his fancy. It was a desperate thing to do, a mad and a
reckless thing, a defiance of the spirit world of golf. He told the
clubmaker of his resolve, and begged that he would give his closest
attention to the details of the commission and his personal care to the
execution thereof. The clubmaker, a good human man, was afraid.
Awe-stricken, he said, “Ye’ll no have ma try to make Sawlaman--a real
Sawlaman, sir. I couldna do it! I couldna do it! I canna make a
Sawlaman!” But the player had steeled himself to his resolve; and so for
days and days old Sandy laboured in his shop, and head after head was
shaped and rejected, and stick after stick was shaved and thrown away.
It was a weary task. Then the golfer went away for a stay at another
links, and a month later he returned, and on passing Sandy’s shop he was
beckoned in. “Yes, yes, Sandy! Got him? Got him?” In Sandy’s face there
was written a look that was half of disappointment and half of pride.
He whispered, “Not Sawlaman, sir, not Sawlaman; he’ll never be seen on
the links this life. But I’ve got David, and here he is!” And David,
with a black varnished head, most beautifully shaped, a fine greeny
hickory shaft scared on, and a feel and a balance when handled, and a
lie to the ball that spoke well for power and clean hitting. The golfer
fondled the club for a while, for he was pleased with it, but he could
see, despite his pleasure, that it was no Solomon and that the great
ideal had not been realised, and he knew now that it never could be
realised; for while he was conscious that this club was wanting in some
of the points that made Solomon so great, his imagination failed him to
discover them. It was a grand club, but it killed a great hope; and
there was something of sadness in the manner of taking it over. “Never
mind, Sandy,” said he. “It was a fine try, a very fine try; and I’ll
tell you what we will do. We shall never see Solomon, the real Solomon;
but let us have something to remind us of him, and then we will never
talk of him, the real one, again. We will call this one, not David, but
Solomon. He shall be the Solomon,” and so he is to this day, and in his
name he marks the renunciation of that great ideal. And some very fine
things he has done, for he is a most worthy club.


IV

The 1st of September is a fine date for the golfer, for it seems to mark
for him the beginning of the period of play which is the best of the
whole year. The summer heats are cooling, the tints of Nature are
turning to beautiful golds and browns and crimsons, and with a little
rain the turf begins to yield more to the foot and the club, and play is
pleasanter than it was in the dog days. We would have no sorrows to mar
the pleasure of such a day; but the golfer need only be braced to skill
and worthiness by the reminder that this date has a little black edge
round it in his calendar, for on that day there died one who was
certainly one of the greatest golfers who ever lived. That was Allan
Robertson.

It will always be a difficult matter to compare the golfers of a living
generation with those of a dead one, or to estimate the relative quality
of the golfers of two different generations, both of them of the long
distant past. We have no standards that are carried on from decade to
decade and century to century, and while men do not change, their
implements do, and the courses on which they play, while, what with the
alterations in implements and courses, the methods are much changed, so
that it is quite the same game no longer. Therefore it is impossible and
futile to make any comparison between the man we have to-day and whom we
like to think is the greatest golfer who ever handled a club, and some
of the great heroes of the past. That is a question that can never be
settled. What we do know, and we can think it for our modern
satisfaction, is that there are of necessity many more fine players in
these days than ever there were before, and there are dozens for every
one that there was in the days of Allan Robertson and young Tom Morris.
Therefore it must be much harder to assert supremacy in these days than
formerly, and all the greater is the feat of doing it not once, but many
times. If some of the old golfers triumphed as often, or nearly, we can
say for the men who live in our time, that, in the numerical weight of
their conquest at all events, theirs are by far the greater
achievements, and they must have that credit.

As in all other matters, it happens that estimates of the merits of
things of the past are necessarily indefinite; they vary from time to
time. One generation will have it this old-time celebrity was the
greatest in his line; while the sons of that generation make
hero-worship of another master, and say that he was the best. So it is
in golf. One time there will be a feeling that young Tom was
incomparably the best of the golfers of the early period of the game.
Then by and by a little of this enthusiasm will fade, and it will be
agreed that there was no one better than Allan Robertson. Sometimes a
wave of feeling will roll over these discussions in favour of good old
Tom, and of late years poor Bob Ferguson has been having justice done to
the magnificent skill that he displayed when he was in his prime. Now,
taking a mental vote from all the authorities one can remember to have
spoken or written on these weighty matters, it seems to result in Allan
and young Tom coming out at the top. Bob Ferguson is too near our time
for his merits to be properly appraised. Our grandchildren may better be
able to give his due to the man who won three championships in
succession, and tied for a fourth.

But there can be no doubt that Allan was a really great player in every
way. Like Bob Ferguson, and like Harry Vardon in our own day, the beauty
of his achievement lay largely in the concealment of his effort, and
this is the perfection of style. It has been handed down to us as
indisputable, that the easiness of his style was its most remarkable
feature, and that he never, never seemed to hit hard at the ball. His
swing was a long but a gentle one, and his clubs were light. He was the
first man to cultivate in its perfection that fine cleek play from long
range up to the hole that in our day has been accomplished with such
magnificent effect by Vardon. The 79 that he did at St. Andrews in
1858--he was then just turned forty-three years of age, having been born
in the year of Waterloo--was then and for a long time later regarded as
a most superlative achievement. That time he was out in 40 and home in
39, winding up with a 4 and a 3. That great things could be and were
done in those days, even reckoning their merit on the most exacting
modern standard, may be realised from the circumstance that, taking the
best scores at each hole in all Allan’s rounds on the old course, which
he kept, and making up a composite round from them, that round works out
to the strange total of 56,--out in 27 and home in 29. In this strong
essence of Robertsonian golf the ingredients, in the order of the
eighteen, are, 3 3 3 3 4 4 3 1 3 to the turn, and 3 2 3 4 4 3 3 4 3 on
the way back.

Allan was a great golfer, and a fine exemplar in every respect, for he
was a great-hearted player who never knew when he was beaten, was always
cheery and with a smile, and he possessed the very perfection of a
golfing temperament, as most, though not all, great players do. That was
why everybody found it such a delight to play with him, and why he and
old Tom, who had also a fine temperament, were as a foursome pair just
as strong and invincible as men could be imagined to be. That lionlike
finish of theirs to their historic match with the Dunns deserves all
the celebrity it has achieved, and will for ever hold, not so much
because it was an exciting thing and a great match, but because it was a
triumph of the golf temperament over another that was not quite so good.
Allan had the spirit of the game within him; he had the true soul of a
golfer, and his most casual utterances constantly indicated how he saw
right through to the back side of the game. “It’s aye fechtin’ against
ye” was a common observation of his, and there is only too much truth in
that simple remark, that the game is hardly ever with you, that it is
fighting against you the whole way round. He had no greater admirer than
his famous pupil. An “awfu’ good player” was Allan to Tom. “Puir Allan!”
soliloquised Tom once, when his old master was no more. “The cunningest
bit body o’ a player, I dae think, that iver haun’led cleek an’ putter.
An’ a kindly body, tae, as it weel does fit me to say, an’ wi’ a wealth
o’ slee pawky fun aboot him.”

“They may toll the bells and shut up their shops at St. Andrews, for
their greatest is gone,” somebody said when he died. He had golfed all
his life from the time when he first knew that he was alive. His father
and grandfather were golfers, and the first things that he played with
as a child were golf clubs that were made for him.


V

Surely we must account old Tom Morris as one of the wonders of the
sporting world, as he is indubitably in that relation to the world of
golf. How many times have we heard that the light of that long and
happy life was flickering towards its extinction, but the rumour has no
sooner been spread than Tom comes forward in some activity to give it
full denial. Long may he continue to do so; every time that we hear he
is sick upon his bed may a telegram come to us from St. Andrews to say
that again he is sitting in the chair outside his shop, watching the
couples as they come forward in their turn to hole out on that beloved
eighteenth putting green, which, with the clubhouse of the Royal and
Ancient beyond it, has during recent times comprised almost the entire
circle of his daily vision. Each time I go to St. Andrews I find him
still cheery, and indeed it seems to me a little cheerier than the last
time that I saw him taking the sun in his chair. There is the cheery
respectful greeting and the felicitous remark that it is “a gran’ day
for a roond,” and in the next moment he turns his head to mutter a
grumble towards those “boys,” who are idling away a few spare minutes
outside Forgan’s shop, and are giving evidence of the freshness of the
life that is in them, to which Tom, a stickler for decorum in all
connected with golf, however humbly or indirectly, demurs. Like most
others who are running up the score of their life’s round towards the
ninety mark, he is prone to tell you that times have much changed, and
that the boys were more sedate in the days when he was one of them. That
is as it may be. But despite all the antics of the boys, and the little
irritations that they give to old Tom, he remains a cheery Tom to the
last, just as he has always been. His life throughout has been imbued
with an optimism which has always been the most attractive feature of
his character. Every good golfer is an optimist. I deny that it is
possible to be a good golfer in the best sense and not be an out-and-out
optimist.

Another fine thing about Tom, and one that has always endeared him to
the golfing world, is the fact that there has never been anything in the
least niggardly in the gratitude which he extends towards the game with
which his life has been bound up. Suggest to Tom that there is anything
better in life than golf, and you have done the first thing towards
raising up a barrier of reserve between him and you. Listen to how he
spoke of the game of his heart on a New Year’s Day twenty-one years back
from now, when even then he was by way of becoming an old man. “An’ it
hadna been for gowff,” he said to the patron who greeted him in the
customary form for the first day of the year, “I’m no sure that at this
day, sir, I wad hae been a leevin’ man. I’ve had ma troubles an’ ma
trials, like the lave; an’ whiles I thocht they wad hae clean wauved me,
sae that to ‘lay me doun an’ dee’--as the song says--lookit about a’
that was left in life for puir Tam. It was like as if ma vera sowle was
a’thegither gane oot o’ me. But there’s naething like a ticht gude
gowing mautch to soop yer brain clear o’ that kin’ o’ thing; and wi’ the
help o’ ma God an’ o’ gowff, I’ve aye gotten warsled through somehow or
ither. The tae thing ta’en wi’ the tither, I haena had an ill time o’t.
I dinna mind that iver I had an unpleasant word frae ony o’ the many
gentlemen I’ve played wi’. I’ve aye tried--as ma business was, sir--to
mak’ masel’ pleesant to them; an’ they’ve aye been awfu’ pleesant to me.
An’ noo, sir, to end a long and maybe a silly crack--bein’ maistly about
masel’--ye’ll just come wi’ me, an’ ye’ll hae a glass o’ gude brandy,
and I’ll have ma pint o’ black strap, an’ we’ll drink a gude New Year to
ane anither, an’ the like to a’ gude gowffers.”

Sportsman, in the best sense, Tom has always been, and he was a worthy
predecessor of the men who are to-day at the head of the ranks of the
professional golfers. That is a pretty story that is told of Captain
Broughton’s challenge to Tom to hole a putt for £50. As everybody knows,
Tom was once famous as the man who missed the very shortest putts, to
whom there was duly delivered, when he was at Prestwick, a letter which
was addressed only to the “Misser of Short Putts, Prestwick.” On the
occasion under notice Tom was playing to the High Hole on the old course
at St. Andrews, and had got into sore trouble, so that he was playing
two or three more when Captain Broughton happened to pass by and became
a witness of what was happening. Tom, be it noted, always belonged to
golfers of that fine and sportmanlike persistency, who would never give
up a hole while there was a single spark of hope remaining alight. “Oh,
pick up your ball, Tom, it’s no use!” said the Captain half chidingly.
“Na, na,” answered Tom, “I might hole it!” “If you do I’ll give you
£50,” retorted the Captain, and it seemed a very safe retort too.
“Done!” responded Tom, and thereupon made one more stroke with his iron
club, and lo! the ball hopped on to the green, and glided on and on
towards the hole, hesitated as it came nearer to it, curled round
towards it, crept nearer and nearer until it was on the lip--and down!
He had holed! Then said the triumphant Tom, “That will make a nice
little nest-egg for me to put in the bank,” and the Captain looked very
serious and went his way. A few days later the Captain came along with
the £50, and with a smile and a compliment offered it to Tom as the
fruits of his achievement; but Tom declined absolutely to take a penny
of it. “I thank ye, Captain, and I’m grateful to ye all the same; but I
canna tak’ the money, because, ye see, ye wisna really meaning it, and
it wisna a real wager.” And to that he stuck.


VI

There are alarms and excursions in the ball business daily, and the
player takes a devoted interest in them all. The trade is striving with
might and main to put ten yards on to the drive of little Tomkins, and
poor old grandfather, who began his golf at sixty, may think as he goes
off to sleep at night that perhaps by the morning there will be a new
ball on the market which will enable him to get his handicap down to 20.
The good inventors are doing all that they can for him. They are trying
everything and each thing in all possible different ways. The other day
a great professional was taking stock of his shop, and he found that he
had twenty-seven different varieties of rubber-cored balls in hand. And
many golfers feel that they must try them all and each new one as it
comes out. The evolution of the golf ball is one of the most wonderful
things of its kind. All of us who have played golf for more than five
years can plume ourselves on the fact that we lived in golf in the
earlier era of the gutta; it is strange to think that possibly half of
the present golfing population cannot say that, so quickly has the game
been coming on of late. But not one golfer in five thousand of those
living now played in the days of the feather-stuffed ball, which was the
pioneer. It had the game to itself up to 1848, which was the year that
the gutta came in. St. Andrews was the great centre of manufacture of
the “featheries,” and in the shop of Allan Robertson alone there were
some three thousand a year made. Of course three thousand rubber-cores
would be nothing in these days, but making a ball was a big job then,
and they were expensive, costing about four shillings each. And a single
topped shot with an iron finished them absolutely! The ballmakers bought
the little leather cases ready made from the St. Andrews saddlers, a
small hole being left to stuff the feathers in. The feathers were
boiled, and it took a large hatful to stuff a ball tight with them.
Mr. Campbell of Saddell is believed to have taken the first gutta balls
to St. Andrews, and when he did so there was consternation everywhere.
They thought the trade in the featheries would be ruined, and that
anyone could make the new balls. So an attempt was made to boycott them,
and it is even said that Allan Robertson bought up all the lost balls
that were found in the whins and destroyed them by fire! Tom Morris was
working in his shop then, and they quarrelled so violently the first day
when Tom used a gutta that they parted for ever. Tom himself tells the
story in this way: “I can remember the circumstances well. Allan could
not reconcile himself at first to the new ball at all, just in the same
way as Mr. John Low and many other golfers could not take to the Haskell
when it first appeared. But the gutta became the fashion very quickly,
as the rubber-cored ball has done, so what could we do? One day, and it
is one that will always be clearly stamped on my memory, I had been out
playing golf with a Mr. Campbell of Saddell, and I had the misfortune to
lose all my supply of balls, which were, you can well understand, very
much easier lost in those days, as the fairway of the course was ever so
much narrower then than it is now, and had thick, bushy whins close in
at the side. But never mind that. I had, as I said, run short of balls,
and Mr. Campbell kindly gave me a gutta one to try. I took to it at
once, and as we were playing in, it so happened that we met Allan
Robertson coming out, and someone told him that I was playing a very
good game with one of the new gutta balls, and I could see fine, from
the expression of his face, that he did not like it at all, and when we
met afterwards in his shop, we had some high words about the matter, and
there and then we parted company, I leaving his employment. There are
two big bushes out there in Allan’s old garden. Well, one of them was
planted by him and the other by me, just about that same time, so they
cannot be young bushes now.” But by 1850 the guttas were in general use
and nobody was much the worse.

It is odd to reflect that golfers were very near the rubber core several
times during the fifty-four years that the gutta held office. As we were
told in the big law case, an old lady made balls that were wound with
rubber thread to make them bounce more; but, nearer to our rubber-core,
there were two golfers who at different times and places are said to
have made what was to all intents and purposes just the same ball in
principle that we use to-day, but not so thoroughly made and perfected.
One of these golfers used to make them and give them to his friends.
But there was no advertising and not so much enterprise in the way of
companies with big capital in those days, and these inventors let their
chance go by. What a chance! There were millions, and millions again, in
their idea.

None the less the Americans deserve the credit for being the men who
gave us the rubber-cored ball as we know it. But for their belief in it,
and their enterprise, there would have been no rubber-cores to-day, and
perhaps far fewer golfers. Let me tell the real story of how they came
by their idea and their determination. In the early summer of 1898,
Mr. Coburn Haskell was the guest of Mr. Wirk, one of the magnates of the
American rubber industry, at his house in Cleveland, Ohio, and both
being golfers, they golfed all day and talked golf during dinner and
afterwards. It was these dinner conversations that brought about the
Haskell ball, revolutionised the game, and made an industry which is the
most thriving of all connected with sport. Both gentlemen agreed that
they wanted a better ball than the gutta, something that would go
farther. At last, after many sittings, one of them observed that
something might be done by winding rubber under tension. Winding it
without such tension would result in the ball being too soft. This idea
was elaborated during the next night or two, and then Mr. Wirk hurried
away to his factory, obtained some rubber strands, and he and
Mr. Haskell spent nearly a day in winding, by their own hands and in
secret, the first ball of the new era. They covered it with gutta-percha
and gave it to a professional to try, without informing him of the
nature of what he was trying. They watched anxiously for the result,
and with the very first shot that the man had with it he carried a
bunker that had never been carried before, beating the best drive that
had ever been made on that course by many yards. Then the two makers
smiled happily at each other. They knew that they were “on a good
thing.” It took more than two years to invent a machine to do the
winding, and some time longer to perfect the process. Then the Haskell
killed the gutta in a season. Before that Britain supplied America with
all her balls. Afterwards she sent none; but the makers of the Haskell
bought 30,000 dozen that had been sent over, for the sake of the
gutta-percha of which they were made, and at the bare price of that
material.

In the first five months of 1903 the American people shipped 40,000
dozen of their balls to this country. So were the tables turned. Now
they ship very few indeed, as we make our balls ourselves. Instead, they
are threatening American golfers as to what will happen if they catch
them playing on American courses with British balls. Of the little ball
that was thought out over the dinner table in Ohio on those hot summer
evenings there are now half a million used in a week in the busy season
on British courses, and some fifteen millions, at a cost of about a
million pounds, in the course of the season!

But yet not one man in a thousand who looks upon his beautiful white
rubber core when it is new knows what and how much is inside it. In one
ball there are 192 yards of thread, the whole of which is stretched to
eight times its original length, so that, as it is in the ball, there
are 1536 yards of it--nearly a mile. This thread has to be wound round
something. It has commonly been wound round a tiny piece of wood; now,
in the case of some balls, it is being wound round little bags of
gelatine and things like that. Some people are under the delusion that
in the case of such balls the whole centre is gelatine, and that there
is no rubber.


VII

The man who has the courage to enter upon a medal round or a match with
a keen opponent and play with a cheap, or cheaper, ball, is a rarity,
and an admirable one. Faith goes for a long way in these matters. Give a
man the most expensive ball on the market to play with, and he feels
that he has got something which will do justice to his capabilities, and
occasionally let him off with light penalties for some of his errors.
Let him have a cheap ball and he is uneasy, with the idea that nothing
is likely to go right for him. When he has faith in his ball--his
expensive ball--he plays accordingly, that is to say, he plays with
confidence, and the probabilities are, of course, that in such case he
will play better than he would otherwise do, especially if he makes a
good start. If he has not so much faith in his ball--because it is
cheap--he will not play so well, because he will play without
confidence. This is really a truism which is emphasised over and over
again on the links every day. As this player cannot test his balls
accurately and show for a certainty which one is better than others, he
has naturally faith in the more expensive, because it ought to be
better, whether it is or not. So one comes quite logically to the
conclusion that the most expensive balls are the best. Now suppose that
the makers of any of our leading brands of florin balls were at this
stage to reduce the price of their specialities to a shilling each. What
would be the attitude of these golfers to that ball? They would say to
themselves, or suspect, that these makers were taking something out of
the quality of their wares, and if they suspected that, they would
almost certainly find innumerable happenings in their next match, which
in their opinion would give the utmost possible support to their theory.
Every drive that fell short of the proper standard would be put down to
the makers of the ball; this really very funny golfer would shake his
head and say that it was a great pity, and so forth, but that he would
have to give up this shilling ball, of which at two shillings he was so
very fond. And he would do it. But all the time there may not be a
particle of difference between the old two-shilling ball and the new
shilling one.

Once again one is tempted to the fancy that there is a good future for a
reasonably good ball to be sold at five shillings. It would not be a
popular ball, because there is a large proportion of players to whom
this one would at last be too expensive; but all who could afford to
play with it by making some little sacrifice, such as by cycling to the
links instead of going by train, by carrying their own clubs two or
three times a week instead of employing a caddie, or, simpler still, by
reducing the weekly or monthly allowance for domestic purposes to the
lady of the household because of the hard times, would certainly do so.
And as the rich golfers would play with it also, it would have a good
sale, and if it cost no more to make than the florin balls it would be
very profitable to the manufacturers. All the ordinary golfers would
play well with it. They would feel that they had the very best, that at
last they could do themselves justice. They would have confidence. Queer
world this of golf!


VIII

“The course is black with parsons,” was said one fine Monday at the
outset of his game by a man who had been kept waiting for a most
unconscionable time while a minor canon and a plain vicar had been
worrying away in bunkers on opposite sides of the first short hole. In
this observation there was some evident exaggeration, but it is being
borne in upon us every day how more and more popular is this diversion
becoming with the cloth, as indeed it should and might be expected to
be, since golf makes its greatest appeal to those of the most thoughtful
and philosophical temperaments, such as clergymen should possess.
Excellent is this association, and it is a poor and threadbare humour
that is constantly fancying the cleric in such exasperation with his
game that ordinary modes of expression are insufficient for him. Having
heard of the worthy divine who was horribly bunkered and in a heel-mark
at the Redan at North Berwick, to whom the most excellent of caddies,
“big” Crawford observed, “Noo, gin an aith wad relieve ye, dinna mind
me”; and of the other one who was reported as repeating the Athanasian
Creed at the bottom of “Hell”--the bunker of that name on the
St. Andrews course--one would wish to go no farther with such stories.
The celebrated Bishop Potter of New York was playing golf on the course
at Saranac, and he made a mighty attempted drive that topped the ball,
and another one that tore up the turf, and yet a third that almost
missed the ball, and each time he uttered a soothing “Sh-sh-sh-sh-sh!”
But the caddie was himself a golfer of a very stern and human school,
and in his great annoyance he exclaimed, “Man alive! sh-sh-sh-sh won’t
send that ball where you want it to go to!” The Rev. Silvester Horne,
who is one of the keenest of the clerical golfers, and has been known to
captain a side of parsons occasionally, once drew up a system of conduct
to be observed by brother clergymen when playing the game, and a very
excellent system it was, with severe adjurations against the doing of
many things such as are common with the ordinary golfer, and certain
small licences permitted to make the path a trifle less difficult than
it might otherwise be.

There was a worthy rector who was given to golf, and was somewhat
sensitive upon the subject of the large scores that were made by his
foozling. He had a pretty way; he did not count his score himself,
though who knows what subconscious ideas he may or may not have formed
as to its dimensions? But be that as it may, he would say to his caddie
as at last he flopped the ball on to the green at the short hole, “Now,
my boy, how many have I played this time?” The caddie, being official
counter to the rector, would say at once, “Six, sir!” Then the reverend
gentleman would stop suddenly in his march forwards, and would turn upon
this miserable little boy with a severe and awful frown, and would say,
or almost shriek, “Six! six! six! Whatever are you saying, my boy? Have
you been watching the game? Do you really mean six?” The caddie was
utterly cowed. “N--n--no, sir,” he would stammer, “I’m very sorry; I
m--m--mean five!” “Ha! That is better,” his reverence smiled. “Yes, no
doubt it is five; five, certainly. Let it be five. But”--and this very
seriously--“my boy, it is of the greatest importance to count the
strokes correctly at this game, and let this be a warning to you. Take
great care with the counting.” And yet it was six.

But, tell us, why is it that the clergyman, with all his magnificent
opportunities, is so seldom anything like a good player, so often has a
handicap deep down in the teens? You may see him on the links six days a
week, and yet he goes on from year to year no nearer to the degree of
scratch, still driving his short and very wayward ball with that
nervous, fearful stance of his, that slow, hesitating swing. I can
almost tell the clergyman on the tee, however he may be disguised, he is
such a doubter. Yet, with his opportunities, the Church ought to be by
way of finding a candidate for the championship. Can it be that the
philosophical temperament in excess kills keenness and makes a man
content in his own little kingdom of foozling and shortness--

   “Contented if he might enjoy
    The things that others understand.”

There can be no other explanation. But it is to be set down perhaps to
the clergyman’s credit that he is so often unorthodox in his methods.
On the links he is the broadest-minded man alive, and he is tolerant of
all things. Why, if ever in London one wants to be reminded of just the
way in which the Barry swing is done, one might seek out none other than
the Bishop of London, for if ever a man performs that fall-back,
bent-kneed swipe it is Dr. Ingram, as photographs will prove. If this is
to be, then an archbishop might play no stymies, and how then shall a
curate become a champion?


IX

We have not that form and ceremony in the management of our golf clubs
that our ancestors had, nor is there so much idea and sentiment
employed. Golf in these days seems often to be regarded too much as a
work-a-day affair, so that at few places besides St. Andrews is there
any real preservation of the old feeling. Else, the true spirit
dominating, why should there not still be chaplains to all the
old-established golf clubs? How much the chaplain counted for in the
great golfing days of old may be gathered from the minute of the
Honourable Company which they made when settling an appointment to the
office. The club then had its home at Leith, the date being 1764, and it
was entered in the book--“The Captain and Council, taking into their
serious consideration the deplorable situation of the Company in wanting
a godly and pious Chaplain, they did intreat the Reverend Doctor John
Dun, Chaplain to the Right Honourable the Earl of Galloway, to accept
the office of being Chaplain to the Golfers; which desire the said
Doctor, out of his great regard to the Glory of God and the good of the
Souls of the said Company, was Religiously pleased to comply with.
Therefore the Company and Council Did and Do hereby nominate, present,
and appoint the said Rev. Doctor John Dun to be their Chaplain
accordingly. The said Reverend Doctor did accept of the Chaplaincy, and
in token thereof said Grace after dinner.” Whether the general company
of golfers is at present in as “deplorable situation” as the Honourable
Company was at this time, is a nice point which need not be inquired
into.


X

In a day when the young school of golfers is making such a determined
advance it is often difficult to make distinctions of merit and to
determine who are the most promising and who will most probably become
the really great golfers of the future. We are a little too much
inclined to get into the way of saying that this man is likely to be an
amateur champion of the future, and that that player is almost a
certainty for the high honours of the game. When people talk in this
irresponsible fashion they forget several things--that competition now
is many times keener than it was in the days when the Balls and the
Taits and the Hiltons first became champions, and when it was quite safe
to prophesy beforehand that they would be, and that in the future it
will be keener still; that there is more luck than ever in the game and
in the selection of champions, and that if the honour is to be denied
to such a fine player as Mr. John Graham, who has forgotten more about
the game than some of the younger school know, nobody should say that
others are likely to be champions; and that because a man does some fine
golf for a week or two it does not follow that he is a fine golfer.

The game no doubt is easier now than it used to be, and it is more
difficult for fine distinctions in merit between players to be
reproduced in the balance of holes; but still in the long run knowledge
and skill will tell, and those men of the younger school who are deeply
thoughtful and scientific golfers will in the end separate themselves
from those of their rivals whose methods are more of the slapdash order.
With all the advance of the young school, and its scores of men with
high plus handicaps, each of whom is declared to be good enough to win
the championship if it finds him on his day, one would seriously
hesitate to suggest that there are more than five or six young players
at the present time who show any promise at all of becoming as good
golfers as Ball and Hilton and Laidlay have been. The remainder may be
only the veriest trifle their inferiors, and the difference may be so
small that it may constantly be not indicated in the results of
competitions, or it may even show a balance to the credit of the players
whom we are regarding as the inferior ones. But in the long run the
minority, who know more about the game, will triumph, and will be
separated from the general ruck. With all the talk that there has been
about the levelling up of the players as the result of the rubber-cored
ball, depend upon it that in twenty years from now we shall still have
a high table in golf, at which will sit the acknowledged masters of the
game, just as some of those whose names we have mentioned have sat at
this table for the past decade or two.


XI

Perhaps it would be as well for the golf of some of us if now and again
a time of quiet and inactive thought were enforced. It is certain that
many men feel much the better in their game for having been deprived of
play for a time, greatly irritated as they have been. The fact is that
he who is a faithful golfer often plays it mentally when real shots on
the links are denied to him. It turns out that this mental golf is of a
very thorough order; never is the player so analytical and severely
critical of his methods as then, and never does he grope more patiently
or more intelligently for the hidden light that is the source of
success. It is simple fact that men have discovered grave faults in
their play in this way, such as they never suspected during the whole
season that they had been committing them in real play on the links. And
in the same way others have come upon great secrets of fine details of
method, making for the improvement of their game, which they would never
have encountered at golf on a course.

The chief, if not the only reason, and one that is quite good enough to
be convincing, for this somewhat peculiar state of affairs is, that this
is essentially practice and experimental golf, in which the player is
constantly wondering and trying something new; while the golf that he
plays with clubs and balls on the green grass is far too often
exclusively match-play or score-play golf, and that is regarded at the
time as too responsible a thing to permit of any experiment. The old
ways may be bad ways, and no doubt many of them are; but we must stand
by them on occasions of this kind, we say to ourselves, when the wise
precept of an old player-friend flashes across our mind, the opponent
being one up with three to go, and a very vindictive fellow. It is
evident, then, that we do too much of this match and score play, and
that the consequence is that we are never given time and the opportunity
for thought and practice and the working out of experiments and ideas
that might prove of the utmost moment. Our game runs along a little
old-constructed channel, and it gets clogged with fault. When we go out
to golf for the day, no other possibility presents itself to our minds
than that of the two rounds, one before luncheon, and the other one
after, with living opponent or opponents, and always upon such occasions
we must trust to the old ways to pull us through. How much would it make
for future improvement if one of the rounds, or a long afternoon, were
devoted to simple lonely practice with one club, or at most two, in
which new ideas might be tried, theories considered, and different and
perhaps more effective ways to salvation worked out. Spend an hour thus
in close communion with one’s cleek or iron, and what an intimacy is
established that never would have been otherwise! There used to be
suspicion, distrustfulness, fear, and neglect--and what may follow upon
such relations save utter failure?--but now there is friendship, and an
appreciation of capabilities and qualities that bodes ill for the
arrogance of the opponent who has seen so many failures with this cleek
or iron, that he has come to think that when it is unbagged it is time
for him to be adding one more hole to his score. The man who never does
any of this practice golf never gives himself a chance of learning how
to play more than one stroke with one club, and when there is only one
stroke to a club it is not generally a very good or very reliable
stroke, as can easily be shown.

Thinking thus, we perceive the value of influenza and the minor
illnesses, and come to realise the truth of the remark by one earnest
golfer, that the thing that of all others had most improved his game of
golf was a severe attack of typhoid fever, which all but summarily
terminated his career. When this man told us that he emerged from that
disquieting experience a new and better golfer, and one more thorough,
the observation seemed cryptic to the point of absurdity, and it was not
taken very seriously. But it is certainly true that a very earnest
golfer will think long and hard upon all points of his game during a
dull period of enforced rest and idleness such as comes at sickness, and
then all the sins of omission and commission loom up in his troubled
mind, and he corrects the faults that he knows now, as probably he would
not admit before, went to the undoing of his game. The entire position
is revised; in the early days of convalescence we send downstairs to the
study for some favourite volumes, and we look up Vardon, Braid, or
Taylor on a subtle point of which we have been making mental
examination. The thoughtful studies of Mr. John Low are a stimulant at
such times. Such introspection is a fine thing and most fruitful, and
little wonder after all that the player does indeed return to health a
wiser and a more complete golfer, who will now go farther in skill upon
the links than ever he would have done in the old, narrow, careless
days.

What follows is a story that bears somewhat upon the moral that we have
been thinking over. There was a man who was in want of a shot that would
come between the driving iron and the wood, and he could not find one.
Of the cleek he had no good word to say; he could not play it. Of
driving mashies he had several, and some of them were well enough at
times, and at others they were like the cleek, so that what with his
driving mashies and his cleeks, this man was in constant jeopardy when
there was a shot of a hundred and sixty or seventy yards to play, and so
he was unhappy in his game. It happened that one of his driving mashies
was one that had been gifted to him upon a day by a great player, who
said, “I pick this from all that I have seen; may I never play more if
it is not a perfect club!” The man tried it, and it seemed to him that
the head wanted more ballast, and after a little while he allowed the
club to be gathered to his fine collection of idle relics, saying to
himself consolingly, “What suits one man does not suit another.” Thus it
came to pass that the perfect club that a champion player declared he
would love to play a long-short hole with to save the life of himself or
his dearest friend, lay for months and years in a dark cupboard.

In the even cycle of this golfer’s life the time of torment came round
once again, and, as it had seemed before, it was more desperate than it
had ever been. There appeared to be no remedy. All the tricks had been
tried, and all the clubs generally put into commission had been
experimented with, and there was no good result. And then a strange
thing happened. Things were at about their worst, when, as sometimes was
the case, this poor tormented golfer awoke in his bed very early one
morning in summer. The sun had not long broken the darkness; it was
about three o’clock. Being a man who went to bed betimes and who was
early refreshed, he did this time, as on others, lie in long thought
upon the events of life and his own affairs, the perfect stillness of
the time conducing to effective contemplation. And, as was inevitable,
the chain of reflection brought him round to the prevailing worry of the
game, and for half an hour or so he considered this grave problem from
every conceivable point of view, and subjected each iron instrument that
was concerned with it to the severest cross-examination, from which none
emerged with an unspotted reputation. It is not always in the human
golfer to attach entire blame to flesh and blood, and wholly exonerate
inanimate iron. Pride must have its place, even in the times of
adversity. This man was self-assured that one reason for his
failure--not the whole reason, perhaps; but still one reason--was that
all his searchings and purchasings had yet left him without the club
that he really needed, that one which was resting somewhere in a shop or
in another man’s bag, that was the affinity of his game, the thing that
was meant for him and which one day might come his way. He had a vague
instinct of what the feel of that club would be like, of the shape of
its head, its balance, and the length of the shaft. When he encountered
it he would know it at once for the long-sought-for club.

Then, as by a gift of the gods, an idea flashed through his mind and
caused him to start up, thoroughly roused from the dreamy state of
lethargy. That club! That old despised club that had come to him from
the champion with such a glowing recommendation, wasted entirely! That
was the club that was wanted; it must have been one of the most
irresponsible and illogical moments of his golfing lifetime when it was
rejected. Did it not conform to that ideal that was vaguely felt in the
mind? As he handled it in imagination now, did it not seem quite
perfect, that above all other clubs its true motto was “Far and sure.”
When a golfer makes discoveries of this kind about his old clubs, that,
poor things, cannot speak for themselves and tell him what he is doing
wrong, he is man enough to own his previous mistakes, and this player
owned them. He was all contrition, repentance, humility. He wished to
abase himself before the champion club and promote it to the captaincy
of his bag. Therefore when there is no sound to be heard save the
chirruping of the birds and the creaking of stairs, see this inspired
golfer leave his room, clad in a dressing-gown, at half-past three in
the morning, and go forward to the ransacking of a rubbish cupboard in
search for the wanted club. And there it was found at last, a little
rusty, the marks of privation from golf and of severe neglect written
plainly upon its face, but sure enough that same grand club that had
lived in the remembrance until at last it was appreciated. Yes, it was
just as it had been imagined to be. It was the perfect club; it would do
what all others had failed to do. Happy club in which there is placed
such belief and confidence, for the less likely is it ever to
disappoint! In his mood of repentance the man gets a little emery and
brightens up the blade until the first shafts of the morning sunlight
glint upon it. Being a handy man with a tool or two, he takes out the
tack at the end of the grip and unwinds it, laying it back again in some
way to suit the fancy of the time. And then the grip is waxed, and the
club is ready, and it is laid to a ball on the hearth-rug, and how that
ball could be hit, with a fine, low, skimming flight that would yield
much length, and the stroke, having been something of a push, would dump
the ball at the end of it just down beside the flag! It is no use. Let
it be four o’clock or twelve, why should the conventions keep us off the
links when these exalted moods are upon us? The golfer hurries through a
bath, puts his clothes about him, and with the whole world of golf save
this one unit still asleep, even unto the most watchful greenkeeper, he
hurries down to the course with a few balls and just this one club, this
one fine club. And there the truth of it all is realised. It is the club
that was wanted, and the shots that come from it are just as perfect as
shots by this man will ever be. The balls are fired off up to the first
green one by one, and it is found then that such are the virtues of this
club of exquisite balance that it is a splendid thing to putt with!

It is a glorious morning. The pearly sky seems to speak well of weather
prospects for the day when it opens out, and there is not wind enough to
curl a wavelet on the sea, which simply makes a little soothing creamy
lapping on the pebbles. How grand is the fine expanse of the course in
this morning freshness, and is there not something of rugged beauty in
that huge sandy projection which marks the short hole far out? This
indeed is the time of day for the golfer to be abroad. Happy man who is
in this mood, having found that which was lost. The golfing life is not
the same. A little thought and much confidence, and see to what they
will carry you! Make the most of them, you happy fellow, for they may
not last--they may not last!




THE QUEER SIDE


I

Probably it is true that golf carries its votaries farther in enthusiasm
than does any other game or sport. It is characteristic of the golfing
enthusiasm that it does but increase as time goes on, and that not in
the case of one man in twenty does it show any diminution, while the
game is such a jealous mistress that it is rarely the convert to golf
maintains any regular association with other sports unless he is of such
complete leisure that it is impossible for golf alone to fill up his
hours. Practically every golfer, therefore, is a keen enthusiast, and
though we dislike to hear the phrase come from the lips of those who are
not of us, we have to confess that there is some justification for the
extremity of this enthusiasm being described as “golf fever”; for indeed
at times it provokes the player to the doing of many things which in the
cold light of reason afterwards would not be regarded as completely
rational. We are all enthusiasts; but who was the greatest enthusiast
who ever was? An impossible question to answer, of course, if for no
other reason than that the limit appears to have been reached by
hundreds; but tradition can always settle matters of this kind in its
own way, and it has determined for us who was the keenest golfer, and
has seen to it, moreover, that his memory shall be safely perpetuated.
Thus we have old Alexander MʻKellar as the patron saint of the man who
likes to get his three and four rounds a day in the summer-time, and is
miserable unless he has a club in his hand in his resting hours.

It is something to have become regarded as the keenest golfer, for it
goes without saying that every other worldly consideration of every
description whatsoever must have been sacrificed to the attainment of
that vast distinction. Such a man must have really earned the title of
“Cock o’ the Green,” which was given to MʻKellar, and with that title
his fame will be handed down through the generations as it is affixed to
an historic print. This picture of the old worthy, who indeed was fairly
“mad” on the game, was first circulated more than a hundred years ago,
and has become one of our most cherished golfing antiquities. His
enthusiasm brimmed over when in the act of play, and “By the la’ Harry,
this shall not go for nothing!” as he used to say involuntarily when
addressing the ball, became something of a catch-phrase in his district.
He did his golf from Edinburgh, and Bruntsfield Links was his playing
ground. How often does one find that they are the keenest golfers who do
not take up the game in their youth? It may be true that generally the
man who does not swing a club as a child has not such a good chance of
becoming a player with pretensions to championship form as have those
who made such early acquaintance with the game; but do we not find that
these men become the fondest and most thorough players, making up in
enthusiasm and real enjoyment what they lack in skill? Thus there is a
grand compensation after all, and let us weep no more for the golf that
we missed in our schooldays; for some of those who played it then are
they who now find their greatest ease of heart for some weeks of the
year at fishing, shooting, or some other sport in which something has to
be killed.

And so the “Cock o’ the Green” did not begin his golf at all until he
was quite a middle-aged man, and all likelihood of his ever becoming a
really finished player had completely vanished. And he was of
comparatively humble means. He had saved a little money, such as went
for some justification for his constant idleness; but his wife found it
necessary to keep a tavern in Edinburgh when they went to live there.
MʻKellar gave no hand in the management of this tavern; he had no time
for anything but golf, and bitter were the upbraidings that he had to
endure from his worthy and industrious dame as a consequence.
Mrs. MʻKellar may indeed be set down as the first that we know anything
about of that long line of sufferers who go by the name of golf-widows.
This lady might have borne her isolation better if it had not been the
fact that she was somewhat mocked for it, and found the name of her lord
a byword in every neighbour’s house and at every street corner for his
over-indulgence in the game of golf, fair “cracked” on it, as everybody
took him to be. She tried to shame him once, but had much the worse of
the experiment. She thought to make him a butt for the laughter of his
companions by taking to the links one day his dinner and his nightcap.
But when she arrived there he was in the throes of a hard-fought match,
and when she offered him the meal he answered her kindly, but with some
touch of impatience, that she might wait if she chose until the game
was completed, when he would attend to her, but that for the time being
he had no leisure for dinner. And the game went on. So she came to
loathe the very name of golf, and was scarcely civil to the tavern
customers who were players and friends of her good man. But one day she
had a sweet revenge upon him. She set out for a journey to Fife, and was
expected to be away for at least a day. No sooner was her back turned
than hospitable MʻKellar went forth to bid his golfing friends to his
house, which, when its lady was in residence, they might in no wise
enter. A fine feast was prepared, and the party was a merry one, when
the door opened, and there stood, with a countenance drawn with
suppressed wrath, Mrs. MʻKellar, who had been obliged to return, through
the ferry being impassable as a consequence of the severe weather that
prevailed.

Every morning the “Cock o’ the Green” hurried through his breakfast, and
away he went to Bruntsfield Links with all the haste possible, never
returning home again until night had fallen. Sometimes, indeed, he did
not come then, if there were any good golfing excuse for not doing so.
Many were the times when he was discovered playing at the short holes by
the dim glimmer of a lamp, and a moonlight night was an almost
irresistible temptation to him. Heat and cold did not diminish his
ardour; and in the winter, when the snow covered the course, he would do
his utmost to persuade an opponent to share a round with him; and if he
failed he would go out alone and wander the whole way round playing his
ball from flag to flag, the greens and holes not being discoverable.
Like all keen golfers he loved the foursome, and preferred to be tested
by it if he could find a partner of any quality whatever. One day he was
in Leith and fell in conversation with some strangers there,
glass-blowers they were, and, as always, the subject turned upon the
game, and from the game in general to the prowess of the “Cock o’ the
Green” in particular. The men of Leith affected to think little of his
play, and challenged him to a match, upon which moment a Bruntsfield
youngster made his appearance. “By gracious, gentlemen!” exclaimed
MʻKellar, “here is a boy, and we will play you for a guinea!” The match
took place, and victory lay with MʻKellar, who was so excited when the
last hole had been played that he ran post haste to the shop of the
clubmaker, screaming, “By gracious, gentlemen, the old man and the boy
have beat them off the green!”

The artist Kay, who made the picture of him, went out on to the links
one day to draw it from the life unbeknown to the hero, and when he came
to know about it afterwards he was sorely disappointed that he had not
been given the opportunity of posing. “What a pity!” he lamented. “By
gracious! If I had but known I would have shown him some of my capers!”
Perhaps it was as well he did not. When he won his match he would
sometimes be so mad with joy that he would dance round the hole for a
minute. Such delight was pure, for though he did wager a little on his
matches he did not risk more than he could well afford to lose, and it
was the game he tried to win and not the little that he bet. On Sundays,
when there was no golf to be played, he fulfilled the duties of
doorkeeper to an Episcopalian church, and held the plate. Douglas
Gourlay, the famous ballmaker, one day put a ball into the plate by way
of joke, guessing what would happen. He was right, MʻKellar’s golfing
cupidity was too much for him. His eyes glistened, and in an instant the
ball was transferred to his pocket. Poor old MʻKellar! Weak enough he
may have been, but he did love his game as absolutely nothing else in
life, which for him ended nearly a century since.


II

It is an ancient game; but let no man think yet that we have realised a
fair part of the curious situations that may arise on the links when the
golfer hits a ball, or that we have a full appreciation of the
possibilities of their complexity. Very quaint are some of the
difficulties that twice a year are presented to the Rules of Golf
Committee sitting at St. Andrews for the special purpose of discovering
solutions thereto.

From far Manawatu once there came a plaintive cry for help. These
New Zealand golfers confessed that in all the holes on their greens
there is an iron box with a small flag on the top to mark the holes. In
an inter-club match the caddie of one of the players before leaving the
green, when replacing the box, put it into the hole, flag downwards,
exposing a sharp point on the top. One of the next two players, when
approaching to that hole, landed his ball on the top of the box in the
hole, and it remained there. Then the arguments began, and not until a
letter had sailed the seas from the Antipodes, and the Royal and Ancient
Club had sent her answer back to this outpost of her empire of golf, did
they subside. The man who had executed this wonderful shot had held that
he could reverse the box and put it into its proper position and claim
the hole. It hurt St. Andrews to think that away there in New Zealand,
left to their own resources, they should give themselves up to such
queer-fangled contrivances as hole flags with boxes on them. If a bit of
cloth and a stick of sorts is good enough for the old course, why should
Manawatu want what these Royal and Ancients sarcastically referred to as
“mechanical contrivances”? The high authority begged leave to observe
that the Rules of Golf did not provide for such “mechanical
contrivances,” and the New Zealanders were recommended to make local
rules to suit them.

You may always tell from the form of the answer when the St. Andrews lip
has curled at the question that has been asked of it. Nowadays the
committee can hear the mention of a hedge without a rise in its
temperature; but when the secretary, in reading out the problem of the
moment, has to say “mud” there is uneasiness still. The committee move
in their chairs, they fidget, they scowl, somebody mutters “Tut, tut!”
and they all cough to hide their agitation. “Mud” is the word you must
not say. I have not seen the committee in this agitation; nobody except
its own members has, for it is a very private committee; but this sudden
disturbance can be imagined most clearly. Yet these inconsiderate
golfers will keep on mentioning mud, and St. Andrews answers them back
with as much asperity as is consistent with the preservation of its own
dignity. One time in a matter of this kind they gave a snubbing to a
Kentish course. The club there, in all seriousness and innocence,
propounded a very pretty point. “Playing in a foursome,” they said, “A
is left by his partner’s approach shot a six-inch putt for the hole; but
A’s ball pitched in a small piece of wet mud left on the edge of the
green (presumably from the boot of a player in front). A small piece of
this mud clung to the ball, and was on the side of the ball A had to
strike. A played the stroke, and the ball and the mud stuck to his
putter, and the head of the putter and the ball on it were exactly above
the hole.” This was surely a most delightful situation! See how pretty
is the combination of this foursome pair, and how they do play each the
game to suit the other, thus: “His partner then with his putter tapped
the ball off A’s putter and it fell into the hole.” A charming incident!
“Did A or his partner lose or halve the hole, and would A have been
within his rights in shaking the ball off into the hole, or what should
they have done?” Said the Committee to the secretary, “Tell these good
people that the Committee have no experience of such tenacious mud, and
such a contingency should be provided for by the local rules,” and then
they hurriedly spoke of the weather and the wind and the state of the
eighteenth green, and how the Major got a bonny 3 there the night
before--anything to get this taste of Kentish mud out of their
St. Andrews mouths.

A point of some curious interest was that which arose in the course of
medal play on the course of the Higher Bebington Club some time ago. A
player had one of those most tantalising putts a yard in length to play,
and, like many a man before him, he missed it! In his aggravation at the
circumstance he snatched back his ball, and, without having holed it
out, he replaced it where it was before, in order to try his putt over
again, to satisfy his _amour propre_ that the holing of such a putt was
not beyond his mortal capacity. This is an old way of attempting to gain
some small crumb of satisfaction from a very disappointing business. At
the second attempt he holed that putt, but his partner then told him
that he was obliged to disqualify him from the entire competition for
not having holed out when making his putt. The competitor agreed that he
had done wrong, and accepted this fate; but some time later, when he had
fully thought over the business, and read up the rules, he protested.
Yet his committee maintained that he really should be disqualified, and
after much argument the seers of the Royal and Ancient were begged to
give their decision. And it was a very interesting decision. The high
court held that Rule 10 of stroke competitions applied, and that,
therefore, if the player replaced his ball directly behind the spot it
occupied after he had missed the putt, the penalty was two strokes only,
the second putt thus counting as in the competition, though it is fairly
clear that the competitor never intended it for it. “But,” said the
committee, “otherwise he was disqualified.” Those who discover feelings
and frames of mind behind the mask of simple sentences would be moved to
say, in this case, that in that last simple sentence St. Andrews was
trying to cover up somewhat the absurd position to which the rules
brought this case; for it was clear that the essence of the problem in
relation to the law was as to whether the player replaced his ball
behind the spot where it first stopped, which came simply to this--Was
he short of the hole the first time, or did his ball run to either side?
If he was short, then he was saved, and he is allowed to go on under
penalty of two strokes; but if he over-ran the hole--which from the golf
point of view was better than to be short--or if he went to either side,
then he would be disqualified. That ruling has grown since then.

Pity the club committees in their constant troubles. Was ever committee
so sorely beset as that which had come, by devious means, to knowledge
of the faults of its members, and when honour seemed to forbid that the
knowledge should be acted upon, though otherwise would an injustice be
done to the sinless golfers. It was in County Sligo. A medal competition
had been played, and when all was over the members of the committee--as
such high officers constantly solicitous for the welfare of things
will--wandered through the rooms and the corridors of the club. And it
came to pass that one of them overheard a conversation that he was not
supposed to overhear, between two members of the club, in which it was
alleged that certain competitors had played on the putting greens before
starting. The committeeman knew then that these men should be
disqualified; but how was he to act? He told his colleagues, but they
likewise were sore in mind as to whether they were justified in taking
notice of the fact that had thus come to their knowledge. Were they
bound to investigate this matter, and prove it one way or the other, or
was it sufficient if they waited for someone to lay a formal objection?
In their despair they appealed to St. Andrews; but this again is one of
the nice points that the chief authority would rather others settled for
themselves, and they said accordingly, that the committee must use their
own discretion as to whether it was a case for their interference.

Upon other occasions the committee at St. Andrews has been called upon
to indicate the proper course of procedure when a ball, after being
played, lodged in the turned-up part of a player’s trousers. It has been
somewhat naïvely asked by Kenmare whether, in a mixed foursome, when the
lady missed the ball off the tee, she should “try” again, or whether her
gallant partner should rid the tee of that persistent ball. It had to
tell the County Down Club that a player could not carry a special flat
board round with him from which to make his tee shots; and it has had to
straighten out some quite frightful mix-ups in ladies’ competitions.
Sometimes it happens that some casual decision of this sort serves a
good purpose in bringing the portion of the golf world that has been
somewhat inclined to wander, back to its duty in the observance of the
strict letter of the law, as in the autumn of 1906, when on the appeal
of Aldeburgh it declared how, when in long grass or anything of the
kind, the player was only entitled to move so much of the obstruction as
would enable him to find his ball in the first instance, and was not
entitled to arrange things so that he could see it while attempting to
play it. A player is not so entitled to a full view of his ball, though
he will sometimes tell you that he is.


III

That which was regarded by our ancestors as a most amazing feat, namely,
holing with the tee shot, has become exceeding common. One week not long
ago it was done in five different parts of the country, and in three
other separate weeks there were four cases reported. Why this increase,
then, of doing holes in 1? The reason is simple after all. It is not
that it is any easier to do the trick than it used to be. Probably it is
rather harder, since it is more difficult to flop the rubber-cored ball
down plump on the green at the short holes than it used to be in the
days of the late lamented gutta, and a good deal harder to make it sink
down into the hole as it ought to do when it gets there, instead of
running around it and then away, and generally behaving badly. If it
were any easier to do than it was formerly, would not the champions be
doing it? But they are not. Harry Vardon has still only one hole in 1 to
his credit, and while Braid gets his 2’s very often, the 1’s don’t come
his way. The simple reason for the frequency is the great increase of
golf. Everybody plays golf now and is always playing, and in such
circumstances somebody must always be holing in 1, or very nearly. That
is the simple fact, and the man who now performs this feat is no longer
worthy of a paragraph all to himself in the morning newspaper. He will
simply go along with half a dozen others in the weekly list.

Still there is room for distinction in holing in 1 yet, and the men who
crave for such notoriety need not despair. If every man can hole in 1,
obviously the proper thing to do is to find some particular way of
doing it that every man cannot equal, or at least is not likely to do.
For example, J. S. Caird, the Newcastle-on-Tyne professional, was out
playing the other day, when in the course of his game he took the
fifteenth in 1 in a very strange way. He popped his ball up into the air
with his mashie, and down it came plump into the hole, falling clean
into the tin and never bouncing out again! Fancy pitching into the hole
in 1! Luckily the caddie was standing there and took out the flag in
time, and one cannot be surprised that he was so overcome with the
strangeness of the thing that happened, that his imagination was fired
until he saw something of the supernatural in it, and believed that his
eyes had witnessed more than they really had. At all events, to the
players and to the people afterwards he described in the most
circumstantial and convincing manner how the ball at one time seemed to
be flying far past the green, but how when just above him it came to a
sudden stop in mid-air and then fell vertically into the hole! Why were
we not told the name of this ball?

Another advance on the simple feat of holing in one stroke is to do it
twice within a year. The first man to do this was Mr. L. Stuart
Anderson, who took the tenth and fifteenth at Balgownie (Aberdeen) in 1
in 1895. Since then I have heard of three other men having done it, one
at Fort Anne, another at Bristol, and the third at Tunbridge Wells.
Mr. Anderson, by the way, who is now the secretary of the Royal Portrush
Club, holds the record for the greatest number of times that one man has
done a hole in 1; and here again is another suggestion to the ambitious
one-stroke man. Mr. Anderson has done it seven times. He began by doing
it at the expense of his sister, Miss Blanche, at North Berwick, which
perhaps did not matter much, as sisters are indulgent, and wound up for
the time being by doing it (the seventh at Tavistock) in the presence of
and in a match against a parson, which, to say the least, was
indelicate. I have heard of a lady who has done this thing four times.
Another out-of-the-way feat is to hole in 1 just when you hear that
someone else has done so. One April evening, when the course at Heaton
Moor had not the appearance of stirring events happening upon it, such
as would go down into history as records, two of the members of the
club, not playing together, did two different holes in 1 each. At
Christmas time in 1899 a most remarkable feat was performed by Mr. P. H.
Morton, celebrated in his day as a Cambridge bowler, who took the first
hole on the Meyrick course at Bournemouth twice in one day, morning and
afternoon, with his shot from the tee. It is a better achievement than
usual to take a tolerably long hole in one stroke, and, in this class,
honours at present are with Mr. J. F. Anderson, who with a wind behind
him and playing on a frost-bound course got the ninth at St. Andrews in
a single shot, and the ninth measures 277 yards. It must be accounted
excellent also to do the trick one-handed, as did an amateur with the
promising name of Willie Park when playing to the eleventh on the relief
course at Troon. Mr. Park had to do it with one arm or not at all, for
he has only one, and he was certainly to be congratulated on the fact of
his unfortunate state not preventing him from graduating as a
hole-in-oner.

Men who seem to have an abnormal sense of humour say that it is killing
to do a hole in 1 when the other man is giving you a stroke. The other
man has then to do it in nothing to halve, or 1 less than nothing to
win, and the situation is delightful. I have authentic information of
this situation having arisen, and it was rendered all the more
interesting from the circumstance that the man giving the stroke was an
Open Champion, and the other party was a lady. It was at the twelfth
hole at Walton Heath, and one need not hesitate to say that the man who
was giving the stroke was James Braid, who thought awhile on the wonders
of this most interesting world, and then took a short cut to the next
tee without troubling to play the short hole.

Concerning the coincidence connected with the name of Park, just
noticed, it may have been perceived that two of our greatest heroes in
these matters are of the name of Anderson. This coincidence can be
carried a long step farther, for perhaps the most valuable hole in 1
ever gained was by another Anderson, and that was Jamie, the champion.
He was playing for the championship at Prestwick and making his last
round. He knew he was very close up, and that he had nothing to spare.
He was playing the next to the last hole on the course as it used to
be--not as it is--and was just about to hit his tee shot when a girl
standing close by remarked to her father that the player had teed his
ball outside the teeing ground, and that accordingly, if he played his
shot from there, he would be disqualified altogether. Jamie heard,
looked, and quietly removed his ball and placed it within the limited
space. Then he made his shot and holed out in 1, and very properly he
raised his cap to the little girl and said, “Thank you, miss!” for she
had done him a very good turn indeed. A few minutes later he was in
possession of the Championship Cup. That was in 1878. It is clear that
the Andersons are the men who do the holes in 1, particularly as another
of them, Mr. W. W. Anderson, once in 1893 worked most gradually and
systematically up to a hole in 1 at North Berwick by taking the fourth
in 3, the fifth in 2, and the sixth in the minimum 1. One in 1 and three
in 6!

The worst of these tricks is that you don’t get anything for doing
them; you must pay instead. The injustice of this arrangement has been
borne in to many minds, notably to that of Mr. Balfour. The right
honourable gentleman has never holed in 1, but he has done a hole in
two strokes when he received a stroke from his opponent at it, and his
caddie ingeniously argued with him that this was exactly the same
thing--2 − 1 = 1. It was Point Garry out at North Berwick, and
Mr. Balfour was playing with Tom Dunn. “I am astonished!” said
Mr. Balfour, pretending that he was. “Am I to pay you for looking at me
doing this? Should I not rather receive the money for performing the
feat?” But he paid.

There is one hole in the world where you do get paid for achieving a 1,
that is if you happen to do it at either the Easter, Whitsuntide, or
Autumn meetings. This is what is called the “Island Hole” on the course
of the Royal Ashdown Forest Club in Sussex. It is an excellent hole, and
a gentleman who played it on one occasion fell so much in love with it
that he endowed it with a sum of £5, the accumulated interest on the sum
to go to the competitor at any of the meetings named who should do this
trick of getting it in 1. Ever since the endowment was made the interest
has been growing and growing, and nobody has qualified for it. Money
accumulates so fast once it gets a fair start, that we can imagine this
interest some day amounting to a fortune, and then what a scene there
will be at the Island Hole at Easter when the golfer, having been
training at the Redan, the Maiden, and a few like holes for a whole
month previously, comes here with weird clubs and balls made of lead,
and has greed written in large characters across his face.

The moral of the hole in 1 is excellently stated by a great master of
the game. It demands not only a perfect shot but a perfect fluke. It is
a case of the gods giving to them that have, and those that have not are
cast into the bunker in front of the green.


IV

Curious, indeed, are some items in the list of the feats of golf. In the
game heroic there is testimony to the pluck, perseverance, and
enthusiasm of Mr. J. W. Spalding, who in the spring of a recent season
came by an awful motor smash in France and lost an eye, but had no
sooner risen from the hospital bed and been sent to Italy to recuperate
than he was at his golf again, playing himself back with his single eye
to the game of scratch quality that he enjoyed before, and--good for
you, Mr. Spalding--but a few weeks went by ere one more scratch medal
came his way. Nor shall we forget how a popular champion struggled home
to the seventy-second green at Prestwick while the blood was oozing from
his lungs.

There are feats of other kinds, as those which count as freaks, poor
things enough but wondered at by some. What shall we say of the
Pittsburg golfer who wagered four thousand dollars that he could play a
ball over four and a half miles of the city streets in one hundred and
fifty strokes? Beginning at five o’clock in the morning, he did this
thing in one hundred and nineteen strokes, but lost a thousand dollars
in damage done to property on the way. That man found an emulator in
London who undertook to play a ball from Ludgate Circus to a fountain
basin in Trafalgar Square. There are men who like to drive fine balls
from the glass faces of other people’s expensive watches, and others who
prefer the tamer sport of driving from the eggs of hens. There was the
man of Sandwich, who, with a champagne bottle as his only “club,”
played, and--Oh, shame upon it!--beat a neophyte who carried a full bag
of the most improved clubs. There was the old-time golfer who lofted
balls over the spire of St. Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh, and another
who tooled his gutty from Bruntsfield Links to the top of Arthur’s Seat.
Better and more purposeful was the practice which Mr. Laidlay used to
undertake before championships, when, with Jack White for caddie, he
would play a ball from the first tee at North Berwick to the Roundell
Hole at Gullane, six miles away, by way of the Eel Burn Hole, the sands
along the shore, the neighbourhood of the fishermen’s cottages, and
away over Muirfield and the rough country to the top of the hill,
playing from whatever lie his ball chanced to find, and once doing this
course in a total of ninety-seven strokes.


V

Do we not sometimes hear one sort of sportsmen make it a complaint
against golf, that the player does not run any personal risk of injury
to his life or his limbs? Some of these men will tell you that you only
arrive at real sport when such dangers are incurred. It may be so, but
we shall not on that account seek to increase the risks of golf. It is
one of the glories of the game that it is such fine sport and commands
the wild enthusiasm of the best sportsmen, though it threatens the life
neither of the player nor any of the living creatures made by God that
give the fulness to Nature, and add, though it may be unconsciously, to
the golfer’s joy as he strides over the links on a fine morning. In
other sports, when man goes wandering over the hills, he takes his gun
with him that he may kill something. Leave him alone with Nature, and as
the lord of creation he is impelled to go forward to the attack on the
lesser beings. In golf alone does he roam over the country and by the
side of the sea with never a thought of what he may kill passing through
his mind. He has a great joy in his own life, and he is all benevolence
and wishful for the happy life of others.

Things have been killed--accidentally--at golf. Many luckless birds have
got in the way of tee shots, and even a fish lost its life on a golf
course, and is now in a glass case in the clubhouse at Totteridge. By
some devious means it got on to the course one day when there had been
heavy rains and much overflowing all about. And--let it be whispered to
the shooters and the mighty hunters!--men have been maimed, and even
killed on golf links, though we pray that, despite the extra sport,
there may be no more of them, and that the single pain of the game may
be the skin-blisters and corns that sometimes will come up at the bottom
of the left forefinger and elsewhere. I did not think better of golf as
a sport when one day, in playing my way outwards on the North Berwick
links, a ball from a hidden tee came upon me unawares and carried the
pipe that I was smoking away with it for some twenty or thirty yards,
while I stood to wonder what was happening. And even by his own deeds
may a man court perils, for we heard the other day that one was playing
at Ravenscar when he took a full mashie shot with the object of clearing
a stone wall; but the ball struck the wall and rebounded with great
force against his head. And from his head it rebounded again over the
wall, so it was said; and it was not astonishing to hear that the player
was slightly stunned! If adventure in the form of fierce conflict with
wild beasts and reptiles is what the full-blooded sportsman wishes, he
may have it. A member of the Royal Sydney Club played his ball down a
hole, and he put his hand down it to see if he could recover the ball.
He seized hold of something soft and drew out a venomous brown
snake--which he hurriedly pushed back. I am told by my golfing directory
that at Umtala, in Rhodesia, “the course consists of nine holes. In
addition to other hazards, lions are occasionally in evidence.” I happen
to have had some private confirmation of this report, and it is told me
that if ever a golfer in Umtala indulged himself in such a freak as golf
by candlelight, as players have been known to do elsewhere, he might not
complete the game that he had projected, for the king of beasts is
accustomed to prowl over the land at night, and picks up any little
living thing that he may find about. In other respects there is
something quaint about this golf at Umtala, for I am informed that in
the daytime the course is frequented by crows with white bands round
their necks, which go by the name of “Free Kirk Ministers.” They are
thieves, and now and again they swoop down and fly away again with the
ball.

They are fine pioneers of the game in South Africa, and it deserves to
prosper there. They have needed strong hearts and much patience and
forbearance. I have been to golf with a man who has lately come back
from a short visit there, and he says that their “greens” look as if
they were covered with millions of garnets; and poor as the putting may
be from some points of view, it can be performed with marvellous
accuracy, and the people of the Colonies deny that anybody loves the
game more than they do, or is more enthusiastic in it than they are.
Their trials are uncommon and severe, but they become accustomed to
them. At Wynberg, or some place like that, there is a lake to carry at a
short hole, and one knows what sometimes happens when there is a water
hazard between the tee and the green, one shot away. Here the avoidance
of it is not made any the easier, because a long line of Kaffir boys is
formed up on the near side of the lake, stripped, with eyes aflame with
eagerness, and wildly gesticulating with their arms and hands, and
jostling and scolding at each other while they seem to be appealing “Me!
me! me!” to the golfer on the tee. Away the ball goes from the tee, and
at the slightest indication that it was struck with dangerous
inaccuracy, splash go all the Kaffir boys into the water. It is very
much like the game of throwing sixpences overboard when your ship of
voyage is at anchor off some Eastern port.


VI

Rummaging through a second-hand book shop in Oxford Street one day, I
came upon an old volume of sporting anecdotes published far back in
1867, and long since out of print and forgotten. Turning over the pages
in the evening, and encountering therein many stories of doughty deeds
by river and on field and moor, I came at last upon what must evidently
be the original version of the story which has been more briefly told by
others of the golf match at night for £500 a hole, and I cannot do
better than quote it direct from the book. One of the contributors was
quoting from a letter he had received from a well-known sporting friend
of his, in which this gentleman gave him a short description of golf,
about which nobody else belonging to the book appeared to know anything.
In his prefatory remarks concerning the game the correspondent said:
“The game of golf is quite a Scotch game; it is played at Blackheath,
Wimbledon Common, and a few other places in England; but the players are
always Scotchmen. It is a game requiring a good eye and great skill;
and people who get over the first difficulties of the game are generally
quite as fond of it as the English are of cricket.” With no
disparagement of the attractions of cricket, one would be inclined to
say that in these days the English who get over the first difficulties
of the game of golf, and even those unfortunates who do not get over
those difficulties, are much fonder of it than the said English are of
cricket.

Then, concerning that great match, the correspondent writes: “Lord
Kennedy and the late Mr. Cruickshank, of Langley Park, were good
players, and had frequent matches for large sums of money; but the most
remarkable match ever played by them came off during the Montrose race
week many years since. At the race ordinary they got up a match of three
holes, for £500 each hole, and agreed to play it then and there. It was
about ten or half-past ten p.m. and quite dark. No light was allowed
except one lantern placed on the hole, and another carried by the
attendant of the player, in order that they might ascertain to whom the
ball struck belonged. We all moved down to the golf course to see this
curious match. Boys were placed along the course, who were accustomed to
the game, to listen to the flight of the balls, and to run to the spot
where a ball struck and rested on the ground. I do not remember which of
the players won the odd hole; it was won, I know, by only one hole. But
the most remarkable part of the match was, that they made out their
holes with much about the same number of strokes that they usually did
when playing in daylight. I think, on an average, that they took about
five or six strokes in daylight, and in the dark six or seven. They
were, however, in the constant habit of playing over the Montrose
course.” Surely this must be accounted one of the most extraordinary
games of golf we have heard of.


VII

In days gone by the position of the lady in the great world of golf was
something of a doubtful quantity, but there can be no question that she
is now an established institution, and that she will stay. There have
been men who have said that golf is not a lady’s game, and many who
still stoutly maintain that it is at all events only a game for very
young ladies who have not taken upon themselves any serious domestic
cares. But it makes little difference what they say. For the first time
in history a married lady won the Ladies’ Championship in 1906. The
ladies have a golf union of their own, which is the kind of thing that a
large section of rebellious men have been sighing for for many years,
but are apparently still far from getting. Moreover, they have an
inter-county championship, which again is what men say they ought to
have, but cannot get.

Some of the oldest but least common golf traditions have reference to
women, and it seems to be the fact that one of the first monarchs in
England or Scotland who ever sought pleasure and relaxation in trundling
a golf ball over the links was Mary Queen of Scots, and that she played
on golfing ground no less celebrated than St. Andrews. This was in 1563.
During that winter Mary occupied a house in South Street, and it is
generally believed that she yielded to the spell of the place and played
golf on the links with Chastelard, the favourite, who was subsequently
beheaded. Although the evidence that she did thus play at St. Andrews is
not conclusive, it is very likely that she did so, for it is quite
certain that she played at Edinburgh and elsewhere, and it is variously
quoted as a specimen of her heartlessness on the one hand and of her
enthusiasm for the game on the other, that she was found playing it only
a few days after the murder of her husband.

It is suggested that the golfing ancestors of the present lady players
were fish girls, and the evidence on the point is comprised in a minute
of the Royal Musselburgh Golf Club, dated 14th December 1810, which
reads thus: “The club to present by subscription a handsome new creel
and shawl to the best Female Golfer who plays on the annual occasion on
1st January next, old style (12th January, new), to be intimated to the
Fish Ladies by William Robertson, the officer of the club. Two of the
best Barcelona silk handkerchiefs to be added to the above premium of
the creel.--(Signed) ALEX. G. HUNTER, Captain.”

But the modern golfing ladies absolutely ignore all this ancient
history, and, in a manner, started afresh with a Year 1 on the inception
of their championship, like the French people did at the time of their
big Revolution. What happened before did not count. Thus, from their
point of view, they arrived at a sort of millennium straight away,
having no brakes of custom and conservatism on their wheel of progress.

Consequently it is no business of the modern writer to argue as to
whether the fair sex ought or ought not to play golf; the fact is there
that they do, and that more of them do so every week. And they do it
very whole-heartedly. In the box-rooms of the houses of golfing ladies
are sundry old tennis racquets with their stringing limp, despised and
rejected, and their once favourite croquet mallets have been cut down in
the shaft and are now used for odd jobs of carpentering about the house.
It is said that the golfing girl does not care a jot what she wears on
the links or--_mirabile dictu!_--what she looks like, so long as she has
boots or shoes on with which she can get a firm stance, or upper
arrangements which enable her to swing with ease. Thus one hears that
she has enormous nails in her footgear, wears the loosest of Irish
homespun costumes, and wouldn’t be seen in a picture hat. And she is a
fine, robust, healthy creature, who loves the game as much as anyone.
The great professionals say that she is a splendid pupil--better even
than the men. Harry Vardon holds that the American ladies--whom he has
studied on their native links--are better and more thorough than ours;
but he thinks that ours are very good when they roll up their sleeves
and give up the big hats. “They seem (ladies in general, that is) to
take closer and deeper notice of the hints you give them, and to retain
the points of the lesson longer in their memories,” says Vardon, and
James Braid concurs in the judgment. The only drawback to all this big
hitting, hard tramping, and devil-may-care spirit of the girl on the
links is that, according to Miss May Hezlet, one of the queens of the
links, it enlarges the hands and feet! But think of the freedom!

When the ladies play among themselves--as they generally do--they
employ, according to report, a golfing vocabulary of their own, which,
though unconventional, let it be said in haste, is quite proper.
Elsewhere than in happy England, the blessedness of whose sporting girls
has been sung by Gilbert of the Savoy, it may not be the same; indeed it
appeared in the newspapers a little while since that the minister of a
fashionable church in Halifax, Nova Scotia, declared from his pulpit one
Sunday that information had reached him that “women who went to church
on Sunday, went to golf on Monday and swore like troopers!” When this
was brought to the attention of the English ladies, they said that the
information that had been given to the reverend gentleman was very
likely true, as those ladies probably played such a very bad game. In
England there was no occasion to make use of such expletives as were
suggested, and a “Dash!” and “Oh, you naughty, _naughty_ little ball”
were generally found sufficient to meet the exigencies of the most
trying situations. At one time there seemed to be some considerable
rivalry and jealousy, quite characteristically feminine, between the
British and American lady golfers. But Miss Rhona Adair as was went over
to the States and won all her matches, the strain of the
effort--believing that she really had the credit of her country at
stake--being, so it was authoritatively said, largely responsible for
the breakdown in her health that ensued. Then the Americans sent over a
big team of ladies to try to capture our Ladies’ Championship with one
of them. The battlefield was at Cromer, and such a scene was there as
one by one the American flags were hauled down! At the end of the
meeting the British lioness held undisputed possession of the field, and
she placed the Cup on her tea table.


VIII

Perhaps there is more to be said for keeping one’s score for the round
when playing a match than is allowed by many people who occasionally
discuss this matter with some heat. It may be agreed at once that the
golfer who consistently subordinates the importance and interest of his
match to his anxiety regarding his aggregate score is to be condemned,
and more than ever so when his reckoning of his figures is done openly
and audibly, and when he is guilty of remarking, for example, a
splendidly fought match being all square at the eighteenth tee, that he
has a 4 left for 79, showing in what direction his strongest ambition
lies for the time being. Such a person is an undesirable opponent, and a
nuisance on the links. In match play the match is the thing, and those
who do not want the match, but only the score, should go out alone with
their caddies. Yet at the same time it must be remembered that a man’s
scores for the round are often the only real indication that can be
afforded him of knowing what exactly is his form for the time being, and
how well or badly he is playing, and it is eminently desirable that he
should from time to time be posted with this knowledge, which in either
case should act as an incentive towards the improvement of his game. A
man may be winning all his matches with two or three holes to spare, and
if he is of a placid temperament and not given to any closely
discriminating analysis of the details of his own game, he may often be
living in a fool’s paradise with regard to the quality of his golf and
the accuracy of his handicap. It may be true that handicaps are provided
chiefly for match-play purposes, and that if a man can win half his
matches with the handicap that is given him, there is not much cause for
fault-finding; but, after all, handicaps are supposed to represent the
relative strengths of all players, even though they do not, and it is
reasonable to expect that the holder of a certain handicap should be
able to go round his course, say, one time in three or four at a net
score that would come out at par. One must doubt whether the average
seven or eight handicap man does this, which, of course, leads to the
usual conclusion that the general tendency in medium handicaps in these
days is to make them too flattering.

And, again, when a player finds himself winning his match with so much
ease that the match itself has really very little interest for him, if
any at all, when he is playing well and his opponent’s game has gone
completely to the dogs, it is surely pardonable for him to concentrate
his chief attention upon his score for the round, so long as he does not
do it obtrusively, and does nothing to indicate to his opponent that he
has other things in mind besides the question as to whether he shall
achieve victory at the twelfth or thirteenth hole. It is simply a matter
of common sense and good manners, and all scores should be kept
mentally, and should not be spoken of until the round is over. The
keeping of a score will often urge a man to greater effort and the
display of greater skill in a particular emergency, and will thus tend
to the improvement of his game. Nearly all players of great skill and
long experience agree that there is nothing in the world like much score
play for the betterment of the golfer. It strengthens the sense of
responsibility, and of the need for the utmost concentration of thought
and effort upon every shot that is made, and when a golfer has taught
himself to do this he has gone a long way towards the achievement of
that severe self-discipline which is an essential characteristic of the
good and sound player whose game has always to be feared. It is because
they have not that self-discipline and have not cultivated that sense of
responsibility, that the majority of amateurs are absolutely terrorised
by a card and rendered incapable even of playing anything like their
real game. They do not so much fear to make a bad shot when it will only
mean a lost hole, which may be won back five minutes later; but it is a
different thing when the bad shot may cost three strokes, which have to
enter into the final reckoning. Yet the bad shot is equally bad in
either case and ought to be equally regretted, but is not. And if an
amateur does not keep some mental account of his score when engaged in
matches, he has scarcely any other opportunity of practising medal play,
since it is not customary and is not desirable that pairs should go out
together matched with each other on the strokes for the round and not on
holes.

Apart from the objections which have been urged against it, and which it
has been suggested may not be quite so well founded as some people
appear to think, one is inclined to fancy that in many cases one of the
drawbacks to the continual counting of one’s score is the inclination
that is bred in the player to self-deception, and in the course of our
golf we come across many curious instances of it. The simplest and most
frequent is the waiving of the lost stroke for a stymie. If the
player’s ball is within two feet of the hole when the stymie is laid
him, it may be legitimate enough for him to reckon that if he had been
engaged in pure score play he would have holed the putt that he was in
the actual circumstances unable to hole, and therefore to deduct a
stroke from the actual number taken on the round. But in the weakness of
their human nature many who are thus engaged in score counting go much
farther than this in giving themselves the benefits of doubts. It is
difficult or impossible for them to draw any line between that which it
was very likely they would do and that which they might possibly do. If
for the purposes of their score they give themselves the two-feet putt
which they would have holed but for the stymie, then surely there can be
no objection to giving themselves a thirty-inch putt, and if that, then
one also at a yard, and a yard and a half--two yards, three yards, four.
And, pursuing this process of self-cheating, you will find the golfer
submitting it to himself that he may count it as one stroke to get down,
when he is fifteen or twenty feet from the hole, on the reasoning that
many a time in his life before he had holed such putts, and was certain
to do so again, so why not this time?

This is but one of the many frauds that players are brought to practise
upon themselves in their yearning for a good round. Have we not known
them to give themselves a four or five feet putt when their opponents
had already given up the hole, because, though they had the time and
opportunity for making the stroke, they were afraid that they might miss
it, and so spoil that nice score which they were building up? They say
to themselves that if they did putt it they would be certain to succeed,
so what matter. And worse still is the case of the man who goes up to
his ball in such a circumstance and putts at it, perhaps with one hand,
pretending to himself that he is not trying! Yet if the ball goes in he
feels a wholesome satisfaction of having done his duty by his card; and
if it does not go in he still counts it as having done so, because it
would have done if he had tried properly. There is also the case of the
other man who, having missed such a putt by half an inch, perhaps
unluckily, makes a bargain with himself that if he can do that putt
immediately and successfully four times one after the other, he will
count it to him after all, having thus proved that it was well within
the scope of his ability, and that his first failure was an accident and
not likely to occur again. And I have heard of men who, counting their
scores, and having obtained a lie of most exceptional badness after a
good shot, have declined to include in their mental reckoning the
fruitless stroke that followed, on the ground that the chances of their
getting such a lie in a medal round were a thousand to one against!

Strangest case of all, I once played with a man who told me at the end
of his round what a good score he had done, and proceeded to detail the
figures 4 5 5 3, etc. “But,” I said, “you were in the bunker at the
first hole and took 6.” “Yes,” he said, “but in counting my score I
always give myself a 4 at the first hole, no matter what I take;
because, don’t you see, if I were out to make the best return possible,
as if trying to break a record, I could play the first hole two or three
times, if necessary, until I got my par 4, and then go on with that
round. I would be giving up the round each time when I failed, and
starting a fresh round; so, you see, the 4 at the first is always
certain, and so I always count it, whatever I do.” I saw,

   “Oh, what a tangled web we weave
    When first we practise to deceive,”

even to deceive ourselves.

Thus does this score counting and this yearning for one’s record round
breed a moral cowardice in such men. There is only one score to count,
and that is the one which would be passed according to the rules of
stroke play. If golfers must count scores they must be just to
themselves, and they must not even temper their justice with any mercy,
for the laws of golf are inexorable, and in them there is no mercy.


IX

There are many who hold that the most exasperating opponent of all is he
who is afflicted with an amazing indecision when about to make his very
shortest putts. For a minute he will stand with his putter to the ball
as if in abject fear of his fate, and surely at such a time there are
strange fancies flying through his brain. They must be like the fancies
of a drowning man. It was agreed among a company of his friends that
these must be the jerky thoughts of such a man whom they well know when
he was engaged gloomily upon the dreaded task of putting a ball that lay
eighteen inches from the hole, the little patch of putting green that
intervened being perfectly smooth and level:--

    This is a very simple job,
    And when I have holed the ball
    I shall be certain of my half-crown.
    Still, I must be careful. It is very easy to miss these short putts;
    And I have missed many thousands, costing me
    Many pounds--scores of pounds.
    And now that I am up against it,
    And looking at this putt,
    It does not seem quite so easy as it did at first.
    It will require most careful management--a most delicate tap,
    And very accurate gauging of strength.
    One needs to be very cool and deliberate over these things.
    One’s nerves, and stomach, and liver must be in prime condition.
    I wish I had not been out to dinner last night.
    Was it Willie Park or Ben Sayers
    Who said that the man who could putt could beat anybody?
    I believe him--Willie or Ben.
    This is really a most awkward putt.
    The green looks slower than the others. It is very rough.
    Why don’t the committee sack the greenkeeper,
    Who ought to be a market gardener?
    It is like a bunker between
    My ball and the hole. Such very rough stuff.
    One, two, three--six--nine--why!
    There are eleven big blades of grass
    Sticking up like the rushes at Westward Ho!
    The grass becomes so very stiff and wiry in this very hot weather.
    (Yes, it is too hot to putt properly.)
    My ball will never break through this grass.
    It is one of the hardest putts I have ever seen,
    I wish I had more loft on my putter.
    I _was_ an ass not to bring that other one out from my locker,
    Where it is eating its head off (so to speak).
    I think, also, that a little cut would do this putt a lot of good.
    But how? The green slopes from the left;
    Yet it seemed to slope from the right.
    Also, it goes downwards to the hole.
    This is a perfect devil of a putt!
    I know my stance for putting is not good,
    But Harry Vardon says that every man has his own stance,
    So perhaps it is all right.
    But I had better move my left foot; it seems in the way.
    I see that two--four--six--seven of the pimples on this ball
    Are quite flat.
    Nobody can putt with a ball like that.
    A man ought to be allowed to change his ball
    Even on the green at times like this.
    I must allow for those pimples.
    Confound that fellow Brown!
    He seems to be waiting.
    And he is smoking his dirty shag so much
    That I can hardly see the hole for smoke.
    If I lose this hole I shall lose the match.
    I am quite with Johnny Low in his new idea for handicapping,
    When he says some of us should be allowed to play
    Our bad shots over again.
    In that case I would have one good smack at this ball
    To get the strength and the hang of
    Everything. And I am certain--yes, I am quite absolutely certain--
    That I would hole the ball next time.
    However, what does it matter?
    Better men then I have missed such putts,
    And I am not a chicken--live a hard life--lot of work--
    Office to-night--awful day to-morrow.
    And as the wife was saying--
    Let me see. Oh! hang this putt!
    He can have his half-crown if he wants it,
    But I am going to have one good smack
    At this ball. Now--
    No, that was wrong. Now, yes, yes--

           *       *       *       *       *

    My godfathers!
    And my godmothers!
    I have missed that putt again!

            [_When the ball came to a standstill it was just an inch and
               a half short of the hole, and considerably to the left of
               the proper line to the middle._]


X

Some of those cantankerous people who have no sympathy with games, and
but a limited confidence in the wise precept that the healthy mind is
most frequently to be found in association with the healthy
body--practical people they like to call themselves--will sometimes ask
you what is the good of golf. It is generally useless to attempt to
humour them by advancing the proposition that it returns a dividend of
fifty per cent. in mental and physical efficiency, and seventy-five in
the general happiness of the subject.

What are really the least convincing examples of the practical value of
golf are the most effective in argument against such folks. With them it
may count a word in favour of the game that a man once playing it found
that his ball from a full drive came to rest on a sixpence which had
evidently dropped through a hole in the pocket of a previous player.
Here, indeed, was a material practical gain! They will be impressed also
with the possibilities of the game when they are told a little story of
how a man, who was not in quest of art treasures at the time, discovered
an old master accidentally, and entirely through the medium of his golf.
It was in this way. A Montreal art dealer was playing the game on a
country course one day in 1903, when he sliced a ball so badly that away
it went through the window of a cottage hard by. Thereupon there came
out from it an old lady, a French Canadian, who was possessed of
remarkable power of speech, of which the golfer was given much
evidence. Presently, when her attack was somewhat exhausted, the poor
golfer offered to recompense her for the damage done to the window; but
then it was put to him that the broken glass was not the only casualty.
The ball, after passing through the window, had continued its course of
destruction by breaking the glass that covered the picture; and without
making any examination of the nature of this damage the player agreed
that he would give a matter of a pound for the picture besides paying
for the broken window. This soothed the feelings of the lady of the
cottage, and she pressed upon him the picture, for the damage to which
he had paid so handsomely. He took it away with him, and at home in the
evening he was led in a spirit of curiosity to make some examination of
it, when, to his astonishment, he discovered that it was a Dutch
interior by Teniers, which he sold a few days later for £500. To the
credit of this golfer be it said, he sent a cheque for half the amount
to the cottager. This is an excellent story to tell to the absurd and
practical people, and a true one.

It might be of service to add to it an account of a shot that was played
on one occasion by a gentleman of no less scientific importance than
Professor John Milne, who is known as a great seismologist, the man who
is most in evidence when earthquakes are troubling. When the earth is
still the Professor will leave his instruments in the Isle of Wight to
their own care for a period, and he will wander away to the links for
some golf. To what great feat has the golf of this professor led him?
Why, he of all men became the first to drive a golf ball across the
Victoria Falls on the Zambesi River--a hundred and sixty yards of
roaring, foaming water. That was when the British Association went for
its annual meeting to South Africa, and Professor Sims Woodhead, the
celebrated Cambridge pathologist, was so much impressed by the
achievement, that he too attempted to drive the Zambesi, and succeeded.
But these are the things that may be done by Professors once, and not
always. Two more balls were teed on the bank, and the Professors smote
them with their clubs, but those balls were claimed by the Zambesi, and
perchance they have been digested by the crocodiles. Now here you have
something done by golf which was not golf, but which marked the advance
of civilisation into the dark regions of the African continent. Our
practical friends must allow this to the credit of the game, not only
for the achievement in itself, but for the possibilities that it
suggests, for is not a picture at once conjured up of the resourceful
golfer driving a ball from the shore to a sinking ship, when all other
means of establishing communication therewith had failed? To the ball
there will be tied a silken thread, and the thread will help a string
across, and the string will drag a rope. Thus must we plead for golf!

While in these serious aspects of the battle of life the game is thus to
come to our aid, it shall be of similar service also in the gentler
paths. Once upon a time a maker of golf balls told me how he had
suspected a rival of putting cores from old balls made by him A into all
so-called new ones made by the rival B. Therefore A for a little while
wound a tiny piece of tissue paper with the rubber of his cores, and on
the paper there was written A’s name and address. Some time later the
tissues came home again through the medium of the balls that bore the
name of B. There was this damning evidence of the pilfering of the
cores. This story is not told as a hint to the trade, but surely it will
convey one to ingenious persons who wish for a mode of secret
communication with others which will be sure and safe. May it not be
that some Romeo of to-day has already come by the device of lofting a
ball or two on to the balcony of the fair Juliet, who in the seclusion
of her chamber may be discovered in operation upon the cover with
hair-pins and fire-irons, and presently in raptures upon the endearments
expressed in the _billet doux_ of her Romeo?

Perhaps it will not avail us as golfers to tell our practical friends
that the principles of the application of physical force which have been
taught us in the game, as of the steady body, the fixed centre of
movement, and of the hand being under the constant leadership of the
eye, have benefited us not merely in the playing of other games, such as
billiards and tennis, but in the attainment of greater proficiency in
some of the most practical and useful of domestic occupations, so that
the man of all others who may be depended upon to hang up the pictures
in a new house as pictures should be hanged, is the golfer who has got
his handicap down to 6. We will tell also to the critic of our game that
it affords a scope for a kind of humour that is of occasional service to
some wits and others. It helps them to raise a laugh over the tea-cups
when they say that they will take the odd or two more in sugar. We do
not like this jugglery with the terms, and it is only to be excused in
such exceptional cases as when the doctor tells the new golfer that his
temperature is 99° and the patient inquires anxiously as to what the
bogey is; or when, in discussing the frowning fortunes of some
unfortunate acquaintance who has had a hard time in life, and is called
upon for severe labour in his last days, it is said of this poor chap
that he is playing the nineteenth hole and has made an indifferent
drive. But, in seriousness, we like our golf to be kept sacred to
itself, and unassociated with the generally duller pursuits of this
workaday world.


XI

Is there not a considerable superstition of the links? Even great
players have old clubs that they carry about with them, not so much for
their practical value as for the luck of the thing, as they fancy it;
and a man once said at Prestwick that he always carried in his bag a
queer-shaped iron, though he never used it in these days. This was
because on one famous occasion many years before, when he was seven down
with eight to play, and won the match by a brilliancy that did not
belong to him, he could only account for it by the circumstance that
this club had somehow found its way into his bag by accident. As a small
acknowledgment to the gods, and a hint that such favours would be
welcome in the future, he vowed that he would carry that club with him
on the links for evermore, but that never would he play with it. And he
keeps his vow most steadfastly, to the irritation of the burdened
caddie.

Some sentiment clings to that cleek belonging to Mr. Edward Blackwell,
which, it has been said, is “shaped like an old boot,” but which, as we
all know, has done work upon which any cleek might be congratulated. And
is it not declared that before Mr. Travis set out to play in the
championship at Sandwich, Ben Sayers lent to him for mascot his
favourite spoon?

Other golfers have other fancies. Some have it that it is unlucky to go
out to play without a supply of money, for then surely shall the
half-crown be lost; and others fear that it might go hardly with them if
they had not the company of their favourite pipe. On severely important
occasions, Andrew Kirkaldy will hie himself beforehand to his
tobacconists in St. Andrews and buy himself a new pipe for luck. Does
not special fortune attach to special golfing clothes, and is not the
light grey jacket that which brings most luck? Think of all the fine
players who jacket themselves in this way with darker wear below, which
is out of the usual order. Mr. Hilton has a jacket which goes always
with him as the lamb went with Mary, and has thus played its part in
championships innumerable. This is a jacket that has won its place in
golfing history.

The superstitions about the winning of certain holes are stupid and
general. Why is it such an unfortunate thing with some people to win the
first hole? And yet do they always try to win, and do not bemoan their
fate if they lose. A trifle more reason, perhaps, is there in the old
couplet:

   “Two up and five to play,
    Never won a match, they say.”

But of course matches have been won when the winner was two up with five
to go, hundreds and thousands of them. There is one man of high
championship rank who has a list of exceptions to this rule, which he
applies for his own consolation when the fates decree that he shall be
two holes to the good as he stands upon the fourteenth tee. If it suits
him, he will put it that the spell will not work if it happened that he
fluked the thirteenth with a long putt; and he holds upon suitable
occasion that it has nothing to do with a foursome. One may suppose that
the essence of the idea is that the man who is two up at this state of
the game is just short of being in nearly the strongest position
possible, and is sometimes a little inclined to be slack in consequence;
and then, if he loses the next hole, and is only one up with four to go,
a sudden fear seizes him: he feels that he must fight for his life,
becomes flurried, presses--and then the rest of the tale is soon told.
But the best and the worst of the proverb lies in its recitation by the
man who is down when his opponent, bold in confidence, is taking the
honour at the fourteenth.

It must be held as an unfortunate thing to play a ball into a graveyard,
and it is better, perhaps, that one’s attention should not be called to
the memorial stone hard by the eleventh tee at Deal, which tells of a
foul murder committed upon some fair maiden at this spot in the long ago
when Deal was unacquainted with the game that has given her fame.

We hear that the most famous lady players carry charms when engaged in
their most important games. She who won fame as Miss Rhona Adair is said
to have invariably worn a particular ribbon with a gruesome device of
skull and crossbones upon it whenever she very much wanted to win her
match. White heather is supposed to be a most potent charm, and it has
been told as a secret that some ladies decline to wash their hands
between rounds, though luncheon comes in the interval, lest evil should
befall them afterwards.




THE WANDERING PLAYER


I

The golfers and other people who know nothing of St. Andrews are often
inclined to fancy that some of the enthusiasm professed by those who
have a tolerable golfing acquaintance with it is affected, because it
“is the proper thing,” and because it harmonises with the feelings of
many revered members of the old school of the game. Perhaps such
scepticism is pardonable, particularly when it is known that there have
been many hundreds of golfers who have gone to St. Andrews once and
failed to be impressed by it, and have not hesitated to declare their
doubts about its supremacy on their return to their native links. These
people belong to one of three classes. The first is the smallest of the
three, consisting of good golfers of sound discrimination, whose
idiosyncrasies of taste lead them honestly to the conclusion that
St. Andrews is greatly overrated, and that it has superiors in various
other greens. The second and largest batch is composed of men who lack
both the necessary golfing knowledge and the true golfing spirit. The
third consists of those who have not had sufficient time to know, for
verily St. Andrews is, to a large extent, a cultivated taste, and there
are many worthy golfers to whom its first appeal has not been entirely
convincing. There is a more or less vague something that attracts
instantly, but the rest only comes to the Southron stranger after two or
three, or even more, visits of fairly long duration.

The English golfer does not generally love St. Andrews at first sight,
but he shows that interest in her which leads him to talk about her and
awakens the suspicions of his friends. Then he may speak of her with
indifference, but he goes back to her again and again, and at last one
day, when he returns to his home after one of these visits, he feels an
exquisite soreness at heart, a sweet longing, a strange exaltation, and
he knows that a change has come over his golfing life, that he is at
last in love with St. Andrews, and that he cannot do without her.
Forthwith his plans for future golfing expeditions are changed and
modified. He must now always think of St. Andrews. If he is a man of
leisure he must go there at least once a year, and even if he has but
little time to spare he will be going to Scotland once in a twelvemonth
with his bag of clubs, and must so arrange his itinerary that he shall
touch Leuchars Junction going or coming, and shall run down that little
strip of railway which makes to the golfer the finest travelling in the
world, for two or three days of heartening play on the premier links.
All golf is good, but there is something subtle about the St. Andrews
golf which makes it not quite like the other, and the man who learns to
love it, though the love come in his riper years, when the emotions are
slow of action and may be weak in result, is faithful to it for the rest
of his golfing days.

Probably no man has been able completely to define the charm of the
place. Its charm is of its golf, for though it has some natural beauty,
and is greatly historic and of celebrity for its ruins, it casts no
enduring spell over the man who does not know the use of a driver. The
constant talk of it and its tradition has something to do with the
charm, no doubt. The stranger, who has never struck a ball there, feels
something of nervous ecstasy as he hears the brakes go on the train that
slows down on its approach to the station. There, during the last two
minutes of his journey, is a view of the links, the Swilcan Burn, the
players going out to the second and approaching the seventeenth--and
there goes a ball on to that famous road!--just like the fathers of golf
used to do in the olden days as it is written in the books. Then,
walking in St. Andrews, one seems to breathe golf as never before. All
the men and boys one sees are players or caddies; there is a knot of men
at the street-corner talking about the 76 that one of the professionals
did in his evening round; there are many golf shops; it is all golf. On
the walls, and in the hotels and post offices, there are displayed
official notices, giving the warning that those who play on the course
with irons only, or who practise putting on the eighteenth green, may be
fined 20_s._ or--wonderful enactment!--be sent to prison for a period. A
personage of no less consequence than a Cabinet Minister, this being
Mr. Asquith, has been stopped under this rule. The pipes that one hears
seem to be skirling a song of the greatness of the game and the glory of
the men who used to play it here in the olden days. Above all, one comes
instantly by a deep sense as of walking on hallowed ground, of being one
of the heirs to a great heritage in golf, and to a great
responsibility. Life and the game are stronger things than they used to
be. That same subtle oppression of soul is felt as when one has a first
glance at the Pyramids or at the tomb of the great Napoleon in the
Invalides. These things stand for what was a great might, and in its
golf St. Andrews is truly mighty.

And so it comes that the spirit of the game seems to brood over this
hallowed spot, and stirs the golfer with fine imaginings and gives to
him great impulses. It is all so different from anything else. On the
evening of his first day he knows that St. Andrews is not like the other
places, and when, after his first rest, he kisses the morning, he is
glad and he is exalted, because he is at St. Andrews, and there is not a
man or woman in the place who will not talk to him of the game that he
loves and sympathise with him in his ardour. The golfer has come home at
last.

It is difficult to describe the merits of the wonderful old course. It
is there. The people who do not know it cannot be made to understand,
and the people who do know it have not to be told. It would be hard for
anybody to prove that it is not the best, if the severest, test of
scientific golf. Nothing but scientific golf will avail the player here.
Of late years people have been railing against the bunkers on the
course, and the increase thereof; but after all it is to be remembered
that the placing of the majority of these bunkers has been the result of
the aggregate of thought of some of the best golfers in the world for a
period of scores of years, and they must be considered in the spirit
that Mr. John Low suggests, that no bunker can really be unfair. It is
there to be avoided, and it is the best shot that avoids it. No doubt
this view might lead to awkward conclusions if pressed in some cases,
but it is apparently sound as a general principle of scientific golf, as
apart from the mere pastime and the sensual passion for hard hitting. If
a bunker is in the middle of the course at just the distance of a good
drive, it is obviously the duty of the driver to play to one side or the
other and avoid it; and that is just the characteristic of proper play
at nearly all of the St. Andrews holes, that the tee shot has not only
to be cleanly played, and at the proper strength and so forth, but that
over and above all these things it has to be so accurately placed as on
no other course. Position means everything at St. Andrews, and the
number and variety of the undulations of the course, the constant
bunker, and the extreme diversity of the glorious putting greens and the
approaches thereto, bring it about that a man may play a hole a thousand
times and it has something new to offer him every time, and he might
play rounds on this course all the time from his childhood to his old
age, and those of his last years would be riper with interest than any
that went before. Here, indeed, is a course for character; there is
nothing like it.


II

Hoylake is new in comparison, but Hoylake is old for England, and it is
the leader of golf in the southern section of the kingdom. Hoylake has
fine traditions of its own which it would not exchange for those of any
other centre or club, and while it has always had the most perfect
respect for the dignity and the conservation of the game, it has
occasionally shown a commendable disposition towards useful progress. It
was the Royal Liverpool Club at Hoylake that took the initiative in the
establishment of the Amateur Championship and the international matches;
and at other times it has impelled St. Andrews towards unwilling, but
necessary, action. The club may look back with pride upon the
earnestness and dignity of its pioneers. They were true golfers of the
old and most worthy school, and when they began the game there they had,
as in some other old places, to take a pinch of sand out of the hole
that they had just putted into in order to make a tee for their next
drive.

By some it is said that it was the establishment of the links at
Westward Ho! that gave the idea for making a golf course at Hoylake to
the Liverpool golfers. Some of the people of West Kirby played there
about the middle of the last century, and the Rabbit Warren, as the
present links was then called, was used for golf about 1865. The Royal
Liverpool Club was established four years later, and for twenty-six
years, before the building of its present handsome clubhouse, was housed
in the Royal Hotel.

In those days the course began on the hotel side, but with the change of
residence there was some necessary changing of the order of the holes,
the old first becoming the present last, the old second being now
numbered the first, and the old last is the present seventeenth. The
land of the links is leased from Lord Stanley of Alderley, whose
ancestors acquired it in the time of Queen Elizabeth; and it is
significant of the increasing richness of Hoylake, due largely to its
golf, that the assessment upon the club by the union overseers, which
used to be £165, was recently raised to £500.

In the quality of the golfers that it has produced Hoylake can challenge
the whole world of golf. It alone has found an amateur winner for the
Open Championship--two of them. It bred the inimitable Mr. John Ball,
who has six times won the Amateur Championship--1888, 1890, 1892, 1894,
1899, and 1907--and is good enough to win it again; and he won the Open
Championship in 1890, thus holding both titles at the same time, being
the only golfer who has ever done so, and quite likely who ever will. A
brass tablet in the entrance-hall and the clock over the clubhouse
commemorate this achievement. Mr. Harold Hilton, winner of the Open
Championship in 1892 and 1897, and the amateur event in 1900 and 1901;
and Mr. John Graham, junr., one of the finest products of Hoylake,
despite his insistence that he is a Scottish golfer when it comes to
International rivalry, is now at the top of his game, and is good enough
to win one Championship and very nearly another. So true is it that a
fine course will breed fine players.

Of the quality of Hoylake there can be no two opinions. It is one of the
very best courses in the world, and by common consent it and Deal are
the two best in England. Hoylake is far better than it looks. The first
hole is generally cited as being one of the best two-shot holes to be
found anywhere, and it is always good, no matter where the wind is. The
course looks easy. If you play thoroughly well it may not be difficult,
but if you do not play well it rends your miserable game asunder. What
the possibilities for failure are, were exemplified in a grossly
exaggerated manner in the final for the Amateur Championship in 1906,
when the finalists halved the sixth hole, which goes by the name of the
Briars, in 9! They lost their heads, and a player needs his head at
Hoylake. The course is famous for its putting greens. They are fine now;
but they are not what they used to be, for in the old days they were so
magnificent that it used to be said by everybody that it was a sin to
walk upon them. The water has in late years been drawn from the land for
the purposes of wells, and this has made a difference.

St. Andrews and Hoylake--a noble pair!


III

Choosing a companion for a golfing holiday is at all times a serious
business, and the light and thoughtless manner in which some young
people perform the task is, in the interests of their own future golfing
welfare, deplorable. Young people are mentioned advisedly, for you do
not find the old golfers making their selections hastily, and they do
not live to regret those that they make as do the hot-blooded youths who
are swayed by the fancies of a moment. These select at haste, and often
enough they repent bitterly before the golfing trip is over. The same
nice discrimination should be exercised in the choice of such a
companion as would be, or ought to be, in the choice of a wife, and many
of the points that have to be taken into consideration are similar. As a
general principle, youth should not mate with age for the purposes of
many days’ golf in their own exclusive company away from home, when the
twain are cast upon their own joint resources and have their pleasure
and their welfare bound up with each other. It is a good thing that
there should have been a long and tolerably thorough acquaintance
beforehand, and there should be some approximate equality in playing
ability. The partners to this important contract should be satisfied
above all things that not only are their ideas and ideals concerning the
good game largely alike, and their tastes outside the game agreeable to
each other, but that their temperaments agree to the point that they can
make the necessary allowances for each other’s waywardness of conduct,
when in the interests of continued concord it becomes imperatively
necessary that this should be done. Trials of this kind will have to be
endured, and it is well that there should be a firm resolution
beforehand to bear with each other’s weaknesses, satisfied always of the
high value of the man. Some old golfers have said, and wisely, that it
is a good thing to go away on a golfing holiday with a man and never to
golf with him--to get the game with others, and to talk of it with the
companion of the trip at breakfast in the morning and at dinner when the
play for the day is over; and there can be little doubt that in this
maxim there is much wisdom, though it is not necessary to carry the
recommendation to the extreme. Too much familiarity with the game of one
man breeds some contempt for it, even though it be a game that is more
remunerative in holes than that possessed by the other; and while there
are no rivals like old rivals, still, if their rivalry is uninterrupted
it becomes dull and uninteresting.


IV

There is an old golfer who says that it cost him many weeks of failure,
and many hundreds of pounds, to come by that experience in conducting a
golfing holiday as enabled him to make a complete success of such always
afterwards. For the benefit of others of the smallest experience, who
are liable to err grievously, he offers the following precepts:--

“However keen one may be, and however much one may enjoy the excellent
golf that is obtained on a good seaside course, it is a great mistake to
play too much during a short holiday, and failure to appreciate this
fact has completely spoiled more golfing holidays than any other cause.
The early keenness is followed by carelessness, and after a while the
game becomes somewhat of a taskmaster. Then one’s game suffers severely,
and even a strong physical constitution is hardly equal to three rounds
a day kept up constantly. Yet that is what many holiday golfers try to
do, and when they have finished their vacation they are sick of the
mention of golf, and wish they had gone fishing or shooting instead. My
advice is never to play more than two rounds a day, and to play no golf
at all on two days of the week; whilst, if the holiday lasts a month,
the man will be all the better for a four or five days’ rest in the
middle of it. He will then enjoy all his golf, and the entire holiday
will be much more of a success.

“On a holiday course, where there are many visitors, one sees a greater
variety of clubs and golfing implements than anywhere else, and
numerous novelties of a more or less attractive character. However
favourably many of these ideas may strike you, do your best to resist
the inclination to invest in them, because, if you once begin doing
this, you will have a dreadful quantity of rubbish to take home. A
golfer who thinks several times before he buys a new club when he is at
home, somehow seems to be a very irresponsible creature when he is
holidaying, and will purchase wonderful brasseys, niblicks, and putters
at the slightest provocation.

“As soon as you get on to your holiday seaside course, don’t make the
mistake of beginning to play for larger money stakes than you are
accustomed to do on your home links, even when you are invited to do so
and you may feel it difficult to refuse. Comparatively small beginnings
in this direction have a way of developing before the holiday is far
advanced into gambling on the game to an extent that the player cannot
afford. Apart from this important view of the matter, the pleasure of
playing the game is completely ruined. A ball on the match is enough for
anybody, no matter what balance he may have at his bank, and in starting
a golfing holiday a man will be wise to make up his mind in advance that
he will not play for more.

“When you are a complete stranger and alone, and you beg the club
steward that he will find you matches, do not hesitate when he offers
you an opponent, even though the latter’s handicap is either too large
or too small to give you the most enjoyable match. Take him on at once,
and be thankful. The steward, who is always an obliging fellow, has a
rather difficult task in suiting everybody, and you should be greatly
obliged for the favour he does you in supplying you with any kind of
match.

“If you are a long-handicap foozler, make your start for the round
either very early in the morning or very late, say nine o’clock or
half-past eleven. Either of these times is just as good as half-past
ten, and you will miss the crowd, have a clear course, and spare
yourself the anxiety of being a constant annoyance to the scratch men
behind you if you started at the busy time. You will play a much better
game.

“At the commencement don’t announce your handicap as either more or less
than what it is at home, whatever your views upon the accuracy of the
latter may be. If you say your handicap is more than it really is, you
are grossly dishonest and a cheat, though some misguided players do so
without any full sense of the grave responsibility of their action. On
the other hand, many players with the best of motives say they are
several strokes less than they really are, for the purpose of seeing
what they can really do at a shorter handicap, and thus, as they put it,
pull their game out. They also do it with the object of getting better
matches, but their sins will find them out. They may very likely lose
most of their matches, and their opponents, perhaps, will not care to
play with them again, wanting something more to do. Besides, they may
run up against some of their own club fellows, and then they may look
rather foolish.

“Don’t give your newly-made opponent-friend a long account of your many
brilliant performances on your home course, particularly if the account
is by way of being an excuse for your falling off on the present
occasion. The probability is that he will take a large discount off your
story, and in any case he doesn’t care an old gutta what you do at home.

“Also, don’t make the shocking mistake of discussing with him the play
and the manners of other visitors to the course with whom you have been
having matches, or whom you have otherwise encountered on the green. It
is very bad form, and, besides, after you have been denouncing some
person or other, your companion may inform you that he is a friend of
his.

“Don’t ask permission of your opponent to take your wife or your sister
or your mother round the links with you to watch the match, even with
the proviso that she shall keep at a convenient distance from you both.
Like the good fellow he is sure to be, he will say at once that he will
be delighted, and will be most agreeable. But would you be delighted,
and would you play your best game in such circumstances? Would not the
presence of a lady stranger rather irritate you, however gallant you
might desire to be? And what if all the players on the links did this
kind of thing? The proper place for ladies who do not play golf is the
seashore.

“Do please remember that as a visitor to the links, even though you are
made a temporary member, you have no _right_ to be there, and are only
admitted to the course by the courtesy of the members. This is a point
in manners which is far too often neglected, and when the neglect is
carried to an extreme the golfer may find his application for temporary
membership refused another season. There must be no arrogance in your
conduct in the clubhouse or on the green. Do not complain about the food
or about the state of the course. You are not obliged to eat or to play
there, and the members have got on very well in the past without you,
and will doubtless survive your departure.

“Likewise remember that others who are playing on the course have at
least as much right to do so as you, even if in your opinion they do not
play such a high-class game as you do. Therefore don’t get into the
habit of calling out ‘Fore!’ to the couple in front unless it is
absolutely necessary to do so, and don’t complain loudly that people who
take four putts on the green have no business to come to such good
courses and interfere with the play of others.

“Assume that your opponent, though you do not know him well, is both a
gentleman and a sportsman, as it is extremely likely is the case, and
don’t allow any contrary idea to enter your mind unless the evidence in
favour of it is overwhelming. Then say nothing about your suspicions,
but simply make a convenient excuse when he asks you for another match.

“If a point of difficulty occurs in the course of your match, do not
squabble with your opponent about the rules or stubbornly maintain your
own position against his arguments. It is better to waive your point and
even lose a hole than do so. You are unlikely to convince him, and it is
quite possible that you yourself are in the wrong. Besides, you will
score most heavily by gracefully waiving what you feel is your right.
He will feel that afterwards.

“When you are leaving at the end of your holiday, do not forget to
tender your best thanks to those to whom they are due. When you get home
again don’t tell untruths about the great things you have done while on
your holiday. The people to whom you tell them will not believe you.
Indeed, you must be very careful as to how you tell the good part of the
truth.”


V

When you are one of a special party that sets out for a sojourn at some
place, solely for the reason of the golf that it affords, and when in
due course, the time having been well and enjoyably spent on the links,
your friends determine that they will return home or depart to some
other place for golf, do not on any account yield to an impulse to stay
behind them, on feeling that you could enjoy still a little more play,
and persuading yourself that among the people you know who are staying
in the place you may make up good matches. There will be no further
enjoyment, for all the days that follow will suffer in comparison with
those full ones that were spent when those bosom companions helped to
the happiness in every hour. The course will not be the same; there will
be a ghostly silence about the rooms of your lodging place, and the
atmosphere of the town or village may seem unfriendly or at least
indifferent; whereas before, in the independence of your association,
you had not cared what it was, but formed a vague impression that the
people were pleasantly conspiring to add to the comfort and the
pleasure of this expedition.

On the first morning afterwards it does really seem that all the people
who had stayed there had gone also, and not merely the three who had
come with you. You breakfast perhaps alone in a vast apartment. The head
waiter seems to mix a great sympathy with his attentions, suggesting
that he appreciates the loneliness and the misery of your bereavement.
Out of this wretched place to the clubhouse, and there is no one there,
and the obliging secretary or steward is unable to give any definite
information as to the prospects of a morning match. You take out a young
professional, and, well though he plays, a poor thing is this match with
him in comparison with those that were of the days before, when you knew
always the thoughts and fears that were passing through the mind of your
opponent, and knew almost as well as your own, the clubs with which he
played his shots, and exactly how they did their work. The ghosts of
your friends seem to walk in front of you down the fairway leading to
every hole, and as you leave the putting green and go forward moodily to
the next tee, there is the shadow form of one of them pointing with his
club to the exact spot where you remember his ball was teed yesterday,
and you feel momentarily a happier man as you think you can see his
characteristic swing and the glint of joy that comes into his eyes as he
finds he has made the carry that it needed a strong heart to attempt
with this wind blowing back from the green. You do not wish to appear
inconsiderate, and not to show yourself as a man of proper feeling and a
good sportsman in the presence of another who can hardly display any
open resentment at your attitude, but you cannot help this walking
moodily and listlessly to the tee, as if not caring anything for the
game that is in progress. There is no familiar talk on the old familiar
topics. It is a relief when the match is ended, and you feel less pain
at being beaten at the thirteenth hole than you have done for a long
time.

“I can get a good match for you this afternoon, sir,” says that
excellent steward when you go back into the clubhouse. “Oh, thanks very
much, Brown,” you say, “but it doesn’t matter. I think I shall go back
this afternoon.” And by the afternoon train you go, and as you are
whirled along the seashore and through the open country and the tunnels,
a first thought is that yesterday at the same time those three merry
fellows were running along the same course, and were perhaps seated in
that very carriage. They have gained a day on you in everything. Next
time, my friends, we will all go back together.


VI

The customary classification of our golf courses into the inland and
seaside groups is crude and inadequate. Apart from that there are many
inland courses, and still more seaside courses, that differ from each
other more than some in the one class differ from the others in the
second one. The golfer of experience comes subconsciously to put all the
courses that he knows well into different groups, those in each group
having some distinguishing characteristic that specially appeals to his
fancy or his style of play. The student of golfing architecture has no
difficulty in separating the links that we know best into four or five
clearly distinguished classes, or schools as we might call them. The
contour and peculiarities of the country over which the course is laid
are largely instrumental in determining the class to which each one
belongs, but the hand of man makes the final decision, and so it is that
on many good courses we have the quality exposed and the temperaments
suggested of the great golfing architects of dying and dead generations.
It may be that they had very unpliable materials with which to work; but
after all in the planning of most holes there are two or three
alternatives. One designer would determine that the golfers on his
course should play over a high sand hill, while another would have
inclined to avoiding it or fashioning another hole from another tee
which would take the player round it.

One of the foremost of these schools of golf architecture is the Heroic.
The name has only to be given, and every golfer of experience knows at
once what links he would select as belonging to it--links with a fine
length and needing a strong arm and a brave heart for successful play
upon them, links which are broad and bold in their characteristics,
never easy, and terribly difficult when Nature is in a tantrum mood.
There are not so many drive and pitch holes on such courses, and when
one is encountered the pitch calls for the most thoughtful golf. There
are long, bare, bunkered holes that chill the blood of the nervous
golfer as he goes forth from the tee with a glance at the brasseys in
his bag. It seems as if he wanders into a vast space, a wilderness
where the littleness of man is emphasised. As a leading example of
golfing architecture of the Heroic school, I would select the fine
course at Deal, and another noble specimen is Prestwick. There is a
disposition in these times to make some new inland courses on such
models so far as limited natural opportunities permit, and much the best
of those that have been created so far is Walton Heath, where it is
really Heroic golf all the way from the first tee to the home green.

A school which has yielded many fine courses is the Romantic. The lights
and shades of such courses are in high contrast, and their colouring is
rich. Hazards, big and full of character of their own, abound at almost
every hole; there are rocks or sandhills everywhere, and likely enough
the course is set in a frame of rich scenery surrounding. Some people
would describe such courses as being “very sporting.” When one thinks of
the Romantic school, and of the great days of adventure that one has
spent when paying homage to its dead masters, one thinks of Troon and of
North Berwick; and if of this type one must select one that is away from
the sea, there is Sunningdale which clearly belongs to it, though its
features are not so highly developed. The Braid Hills course is
certainly attached to the Romantic school. The architects who were of
this school, and the men who most admire their work, are warm-blooded,
human players, who like risks and the overcoming of them, and who would
have their pulses throb with the joy of life when they play on the
links. They like, as it is said, to be called upon to take their lives
in their hands at every stroke of their play. This is great golf.

As to which of all the schools provides the truest golf it is hard to
say, since few men would agree on what is the truest golf. But quite
likely the links of the Æsthetic school would be most frequently
mentioned in this connection. There has been a subtle art at work in the
planning of every hole. The architects have taken their patch of land,
and, scorning all convention, have been inspired by great impulses in
the selection and arrangement of the line of play. They have had moods
and caprices, but they have been men of great genius, born and bred in a
high atmosphere of the game. Like all other men of great independence of
thought and action, they court and receive severe criticism; but at the
end of it all the greatness, the superbness of the work is admitted, and
its fame will for ever endure. There is character in it at every glance,
but it is not such as is obtrusive, as at Troon. Here there is the
perfect art that conceals art, and it is a testimony to its perfection
that men go on discussing it for ever and ever, just as they still think
and worry over the emotions that passed through the mind of Hamlet, and
are not all agreed upon them. How many different readings, as it were,
can one not give to a hole at St. Andrews--almost any hole on the old
course. St. Andrews is the masterpiece of the Æsthetic school--profound,
ingenious, intricate. Here and there we see a little of the influence of
the Heroic school; the Romantic has had less. But always the Æsthetic
school is a law unto itself, and its finished work is not to be likened
to that of any other. Hoylake is of this school, though the example is
not so pure and unaffected by the two great rival branches of
architectural art as St. Andrews. Nevertheless it is distinctly
Æsthetic, and there is no other course that is worthy of inclusion in
this particular class.

We have another school, which should be called the Victorian. It has
many merits, and it is very prolific. It represents a sober and
industrious kind of golf, but it is utterly lacking in any inspiration.
It is as business like and exact as you please, a six-o’clock-sharp
morning-dress kind of golf. It conduces to good habits, and will make
some good golfers. But on the whole it is rather prim and dull, and one
never feels the blood running in the veins when contemplating it.
Muirfield is one of the Victorian school, and there are one or two of
the satellites of Hoylake, on its own seaboard, that are of it also.
Sandwich has much of the Victorian element in it; but it is redeemed by
the strong influence of other schools, as by the extreme romanticism of
the Maiden. The suburbs in their own small way went over to Victorianism
entirely at the outset, partly because their circumstances exerted such
an irresistible tendency in that direction. A drive over one bunker and
a pitch over the next one is Victorianism in its crudest form; but
perhaps after all the suburbs are lucky in being able to attach
themselves to any school. I am told that the Victorian school has had
paramount influence in America.


VII

Of the links we know, those by the sea, to which do we return for the
tenth or the twentieth time joyously as to a delightful friend in a
charming home? Instantly we murmur the name of dear North Berwick. The
old player has conviction in this immediate choice by instinct, though
the question is not one which he answers lightly. In his heart he has
corners for many old loves, and as he brings each one up for
contemplation and counts her many charms, he thinks that surely she is
the fairest of them all. But inevitably when they have all been passed
in review his fancy brings him back to one, and he clings to the
remembrance of her, confessing that she is not like the others. There is
a subtlety in her charm, a fascination in her manners, an “altogether”
which cannot be resisted. She is gentler than St. Andrews, a sweet
innocent maiden wading with bare feet among the rocks of the Haddington
coast, whom you love to tease and toy with; while my lady of Fifeshire
is colder and of great dignity and compelling attractions. It is a fine
sea at North Berwick, and though in the play one may think little enough
of the sea, it is good to have the wavelets kissing the pebbles hard by
an occasional green, and to hear their soothing lapping. The sound is
grateful to the hard-tried nerves. There are few parts of the North
Berwick course where one cannot see a little of the ocean, while here
and there, such as at Point Garry and Perfection, the greens are placed
in enchanting spots. Then the air is like wine. At North Berwick one is
in East Lothian, in the centre of the finest golfing country in the
world. In two or three weeks one may tire of the same links, the
monotony of the same round, the same bunkers, the same greens. Here
there are many others at hand, and all within the shortest of journeys.
Chiefly there is Gullane the grand. When you are at Gullane you may
think it is better than North Berwick as a place to stay and holiday in.
It is quieter, quainter, more old fashioned, a trifle more like the
country, and the golf is glorious. Such is the turf on old Gullane, that
one feels that one should never tread upon the greens save in stockinged
feet. And the man who has not captured the eighth and ninth up the hill
in 4’s, and then on the summit stood hard by the Roundell to survey the
finest panorama to be seen on a golf course, and taste the finest air,
has something yet to know of the utmost pleasures of a golfer’s
existence. Then there are Muirfield, and Archerfield, Kilspindie, and
all the rest of them, so near that strong men have played on the whole
collection in one day. But when you go back to North Berwick in the
evening you think you will stay there still. You like the comfort of the
place, and the green, and you want your Bass Rock.

It is the place to conjure up a mental picture of some great events of
days gone by, as:

It is nearly sixty years ago, and there is tense excitement on the
seven-hole course, as it was in those far-off days. A great foursome is
being played, and there is £400 at issue. Old Tom and Allan Robertson
are on one side, and the Dunns are against them on the other. They have
played over two other greens and are even, and now they are to decide.
The Dunns have had a great lead, but at the second last hole in the
fifth and last round the game is square. Then the Dunns’ ball lodges
behind a stone, and the brothers are in a frenzy, and lose their heads
in several vain endeavours to extricate it. Old Tom and Allan are dormy,
and the £400 goes to them at the last hole.

This picture fades away, and another framed in mournful black comes up
in its place. Old Tom and his boy, the great Young Tom, are on the
green, matched against old Willie Park and Mungo Park. Some news comes.
It is bad news. It is taken to the green, and the others bow their heads
for a moment but say nothing to the boy. But as soon as may be they take
him off the links, and put him in a sailing boat to sail across the
water with Old Tom, his father, to St. Andrews on the Fifeshire coast.
And there he reels as he looks upon the pallid face of his much-beloved
wife, her head laid upon a pillow, and the eyelids closed in death.
Young Tom’s own death-warrant was signed that moment. The golfing
history of North Berwick is full of the romance of the game.


VIII

In many sequestered places there are fine courses that the golfer in
general knows little of. Demand of him suddenly that he shall tell you
of a far-away seaside links where you may rest and play for a little
while until the city calls you back, and by force of habit he will begin
to murmur pleasantly about his Carnousties and his Gullanes and all the
rest. They are excellent, most excellent; but we call for change, and
where for the old wanderer is the change that is good enough? When he
appeals to you, send him down in a cab to Paddington, bidding him take a
ticket to Porthcawl, changing at Cardiff, for you may know that in the
evening he will be happy, and that upon the next day the joy of life
will have come again to a weary worker.

Porthcawl is a place that rests the man and gives balm to his troubled
spirit. There is a fine links and the open Atlantic, and the Cymric
spell is cast upon the sojourner--the feeling that one has relapsed from
the severity of complicated civilisation for a little while to the peace
and the simplicity of old Gwalia, the land of the real Briton. One day I
was turning the pages of a small guide-book to South Wales, when I
noticed that the topographer, in writing of Porthcawl, said somewhat
complainingly that the coast round about there was “extremely desolate.”
Beyond hinting that there were more rocks about it than were good for
any well-ordered coast, he preferred not to go into details. He was
describing things for the benefit of that curious person who is
generally called “the tourist,” and he seemed to feel this was no place
for him to linger with his charge. So in apologetic manner he gave his
reader a small assortment of the usual kind of facts as an excuse for
having mentioned Porthcawl at all. He told him, for example, that the
novelist, R. D. Blackmore, who was a word scene-painter of breadth and
effectiveness, placed the action of his “Maid of Sker” in this region of
Porthcawl, and if he had had consideration for the golfer he would have
added that there are landmarks of the story to be seen from all parts of
the links. The tourist was further informed as to a local church, was
acquainted with the curious fact that here there is a well of fresh
water which rises and falls in a puzzling manner according to the going
out and coming in respectively of the tide, and was supplied with some
useful and indispensable knowledge about the character of the shipping
with which the port had to deal. And then, as it was felt that the
tourist must not tarry longer in such a place, he was hurried on to
some other, where there were piers and bands, and a variety of historic
remains for contemplation and study in serious moments.

Generally the requirements of the golfer are in inverse ratio to those
of the tourist, and it is tolerably safe to predict that when a coast is
described as “extremely desolate,” it represents a fine piece of golfing
country. It is one of the good things of golf that it has come into our
civilisation to use up all utterly barren and waste tracts of coastwise
land, and that generally the more barren and waste the better they are
for golf. Are not some of the best links there are in Britain situated
on coasts that are to the non-golfing mind, uneducated to the beauty and
charm of testing, full-blooded and yet scrupulously fair holes, quite
naked of all attraction? And what an excellent arrangement of
circumstances it is! The neighbourhood of Prestwick is sometimes by way
of being “boomed” as a health resort, a place that affords a fine tonic
to the lungs, and I believe the claim is well justified; but not all
people would describe this spot in Ayrshire as being “interesting,” and
there is certainly no kind of relation between the quality of the coast
scenery and the inestimable grandeur, from the golfing point of view, of
the Cardinal, the Himalayas, and above all of the glorious seventeenth,
the Alps. And consider Sandwich. No tourist of discrimination has been
seen, or will be, on these reclaimed wastes that have already given us
one championship course, and lately a new links, which is of superlative
quality. And the “extremely desolate” coast at Porthcawl which did not
please our guide-book man, is found on acquaintance to be an excellent
example of Nature’s impressionist seascape work, with savage rocks
abounding. Even the name of Porthcawl smacks of coves and pirates, of
breezes and big seas. Porthcawl sticks out so that there is nothing in
the world between it and the United States of America except the
Atlantic Ocean. Its golf links are on the very margin of the sea,
contiguous to those black, sharp rocks--so near, indeed, that a really
badly-hit ball may sometimes be sent dancing at all kinds of fantastic
angles from one to another, until it comes to rest in an inaccessible
place whence it will never be disturbed. Sometimes in the severer
seasons, the sea, with the full, unbroken force of the Atlantic behind
it, will be sent smashing along over the rocks, and even over the golf
links too, until some of the bunkers are laden with salt water.
Porthcawl is fine, and it is a fine change, and there are holes on the
course that have a boldness and a vigour that stir the pulse of the
golfing man. We play over the wall and up the hill to the turn, and
there is South Wales and its ocean frame spread out at our feet, making
us linger upon a glorious scene and sigh a little as we drive down the
hillside to the first hole in.


IX

It is fine golf that is to be had now on Kent’s eastern seaboard, and
each time one comes down into this neighbourhood with one’s bag of
clubs, the more one is strengthened in the conviction as to its equal
excellence with any other golfing district in the world, and the
abundance of its fine prospects for the future. The magnificent
character of the golf, chiefly that which is enjoyed under the
authority of the Cinque Ports Club at Deal, is becoming better known and
appreciated year by year, and even now the feeling is general that here
is one of the finest links that were ever made for a championship to be
played upon. The sister course of the Royal St. George’s Club is
practically joined up to it, and now a little farther along the bay in
the direction of Ramsgate is the new course of the Prince’s Club, and a
very fine course too. So here we have stringed together along a small
stretch of coast three of the very best courses that are to be found in
the whole world of golf--one which is actually a championship course, a
second which is perhaps by way of being so, and a third which may soon
be mentioned in the same connection. There is enough good golfing land
left in Pegwell Bay to make a fourth course, and some day not very far
distant it may be made. Nature has here given to the golfer every
natural advantage that it is possible to afford him in the preparation
of those seaside links, the contemplation of which brings the light of
pleasure into his eyes. Golf is great in our modern scheme of things,
and some have said, without irreverence, that they see the shaping hand
of Providence in short holes of such sporting quality as the Maiden and
the Sandy Parlour, in those glorious last four holes at Deal, and in all
that bumpy ground to be covered in approach play which calls for such an
abundant exercise of the wits of the thoughtful golfer, and inevitably
recalls to him some of the best characteristics of St. Andrews. So much,
indeed, does all this place look as if it were made for golf, and
intended to be a capital of golf, that a man with whom I played there
once was led, while we were waiting at one of the tees, to the remark
that if golf had never been invented it would surely have come to be so
as soon as intelligent men had wandered hereabouts, so direct is the
suggestion that is made by the nature and the contour of the land. One
finds it difficult--nay, even impossible--to think of a better stretch
of golfing land in the whole of England or Scotland, or anywhere where
there are three links of this quality joined up to each other, so that,
if so whimsically disposed, a golfer might play on from one to the
other, and make a triple round of fifty-four holes.

Here, then, is a place which is eminently adapted to become a leader
among golfing centres, and it would surprise no one if, at an early
stage of the further evolution of golf and golfing matters, it came to
be regarded as the chief of all. It is not to be overlooked that it
enjoys the inestimable advantage of proximity to London. When London
takes a fancy to such a thing as golf she likes to be its master, and
will leave nothing undone to assert her supremacy. She has taken to
golf, and Scotland already knows with what masterful zeal she is
pursuing it. These seaside links of eastern Kent are to all intents and
purposes London links, in that they are nearer than any other to London,
and are fed almost exclusively from the capital. And a further advantage
that the place possesses is in the fine bracing air with which it is
enveloped, air which for its invigorating properties is hardly to be
excelled anywhere in Great Britain. When the wind comes from the
south-east with moderate strength, as it so often does down there, it is
a fine thing for the golfer, and a stimulant not only to himself but his
game.

The locality begins to feel, as one might say, like a great golfing
centre. You know how St. Andrews and Carnoustie and North Berwick “feel”
like that. The intelligent interest of the non-golfing people in the
towns and villages round about is being awakened in the game, and they
are all discovering in some way or other how they may make themselves to
benefit by it. Particularly is this the case with regard to a certain
good class of private hotels and boarding-houses catering specially, if
not exclusively, for golfers. In all the great centres of the game one
finds these places in abundance, and every player of experience knows
how, in many respects, they are often to be preferred to the big hotels.
Then we find a leading thoroughfare called Golf Road, houses called Golf
Villas, establishments named Golf Bakeries and Golf Laundries, all of
which little details are a sign that the game is coming to be regarded
in the district as an “industry,” and the district is wise in arriving
at such an understanding in good time. Moreover, one would be inclined
to say that the standard of play down here is at least as high, taking
it all round, as it is at any other big golfing centre. There are
foozlers on every links, but more men with very short handicaps, men who
have really come to grips with the game, are playing round Pegwell Bay
than in most parts, chiefly because, whether member or visitor, the
expense of playing is considerable, and the play itself is difficult,
and the long-handicap men have discovered that there is not much fun in
paying high rates for the privilege of spending week-ends in bunker
practice. And yet another attribute of the large and important golfing
centre does this neighbourhood possess, in the good quality of the
caddies which in the course of many seasons it has at last developed. A
man once said that if he saw the caddies beforehand he could tell what
kind of golf was played in a place, and though this may have been going
too far, there was a germ of truth in the idea. Mediocre links and
mediocre players never produce good caddies, and the reverse argument
generally holds good; and everybody knows that a good race of caddies is
not to be produced in a couple of seasons. Oftentimes it needs at least
a generation. But the caddies at Deal and Sandwich nowadays are
excellent, and this is not such an unimportant matter as some people
might imagine it to be.


X

When you think of it, there is no inconsiderable portion of our golfing
lives that is spent in travelling to and from the links that are far
from home, by railway and by motor-car, and if one falls into a
reflective mood there are many experiences, some curious and some
trying, that are to be called to mind in connection with these journeys.
On the whole, perhaps, the reflection does not make for much joy, except
in the knowledge that these are things of the past and are not likely to
be repeated. When the assemblies for the championships are being made,
there is less talk of current form than there is of adventures in
travelling. Oh, the horrors of a wait at Dumfries in the small hours of
a cold morning, when the mistake has been made of trying to get to
Prestwick that way! Turned out from the comfortable, warm, snug
sleeping-car at Carlisle, even the blanket and pillow that were
vouchsafed to you on parting from the express are begrudged you now at
this most icy, inhospitable Dumfries. With that curious, dirty, dazed
feeling as of being a boiled owl, you watch the men throw the mails into
the van that is to take them and you on to Ayr, and listen to them
joking about the events of the previous night as if it were now really
morning. You tell everybody what you think about Scottish common sense
in not having a fire in any waiting-room and no place available for any
refreshment, and the Scots themselves are too courteous to say what they
must think of your common sense for a golfer in making this journey in
this weird way. Then you get into a smelly, dirty carriage, and with
jerks and jolts the train drags itself out of the station and slowly
away along the line. Stop, stop, stop every two or three miles, but at
last it is Ayr, and the worn-out golfer, cursing himself for his folly
and others for their heathenism, gets out and steps forth into the land
of Burns. But it is yet only a little past five o’clock, and all Ayr is
fast asleep, and there are no fires, no refreshments, and no ways of
getting to Prestwick just yet. This is to be a golfer! But all things
end sometime except eternity, and at last you are at Prestwick, and the
finest thing you ever did in your life was then to keep your first ball
straight and uninfluenced by the gravestones in the churchyard, and to
squeeze a heartening if a little fluky 3 at this first hole. My reader,
be assured that the night train through Carlisle, and changing there and
at Dumfries, is not the way to go to the west coast of Scotland where
are Prestwick and Troon. Run through to Glasgow and down again, as
indeed everybody but those crazy people who are always finding new ways
of doing things, always do.

But generally night-travelling is an excellent thing when you get used
to it, and it spares a day to golf. It is a fine thing to pack your bag
of clubs away lovingly in your berth after a dinner at the London
terminus, and before you turn off the light you look at them and think a
“Good-night!” to them in a cheery way as of old and trusted
companionship. “Off again, my friends!” you seem to say. “We have done
this sort of thing before, eh? We know what we are going to do, you and
I, eh? Yes, you are the fellows. Bonny boys, you are! Where? Didn’t you
know? Why, North Berwick, of course! Now, bye-bye! Let’s sleep. Play in
the morning.” And then you switch off the light, and slip away into
dreamland where there are glorious holes on seaside courses, and
presently there is a big thump on the door and that dream is spoiled and
dispelled by a man’s gruff voice. But the next moment is one of those
most worth living. The dream is realised or is in the realisation, for
the caller brings you to your joyful senses by declaring that in fifteen
more minutes you will be wheeling into Edinburgh. In those dreams which
were helped by a soothing lullaby from the wheels below, the London was
slipping away four hundred miles from the tail of the train, and here is
Golf, its own rare land.

And what feats one can perform on a motor-car! And does. Just finished
our putts on the home green at St. Andrews, and the sun going down, and
up comes one of our impulsive party and says it is ordered that we go to
Gullane to-night by car! Goodness! But it has to be, and in half an hour
we are bowling along those Fifeshire roads, and we are ferried across
from Burntisland in the gloom and run into Edinburgh. Good supper, some
talk in a tone of suppressed excitement as if great adventures are
afoot--as they are--and history is being made, and then we hoot-hoot
away into the blackness of the night. And it is black farther on. And
the blacker it is the faster that dare-devil man at the wheel makes her
go. Running along roads the width of the car and stone walls on either
side, while branches of trees are almost scraping the tops of our heads,
and one might swear the speed-gauge has its finger on the fifty.
“Mrs. Forman’s!” you say to the man beside you, to show you are not
thinking of the awful risks as we dash by Musselburgh. Farther on a cap
is lost in the black and windy night, but nobody complains. It is enough
that all survived that terrible twist round the corner at Gosford.
Aberlady! That is a fine thing to hear. “Will you stop here to-night, or
come on to Gullane?” It is the end. You have indeed come through a great
ordeal, and it is a great thing to be standing there in the night with
your bag of clubs under your arm, and to be able to answer a greeting as
it ought to be, and to let your thoughts slip away soon to the golf of
the morning that is coming.


XI

But it is clear to me that the golfer who wishes to go golfing, and at
the same time to live the richest and most adventurous life of the
traveller, needs to take himself abroad and roam from course to course
in Eastern and Central America. He will encounter many incidents that
will interest and enliven him, as did the four eminent British
professionals who some time since made a golfing expedition from here in
the winter-time in search of Mexican treasure--dollars that were offered
in open competition at San Pedro. They told me a great tale of their
adventures on their return, and, as I have reason to believe, a strictly
accurate one. Andrew Kirkaldy, Alexander Herd, Jack White, and Rowland
Jones were the treasure-hunters, and dashing fellows they seemed as they
boarded a special express at New York. Having started thence at five
minutes to eleven one Wednesday morning, the train reached St. Louis at
1.30 on Thursday, having been much delayed by a wreck on the Wabash in
which fourteen persons were killed and injured. This news added greatly
to the discomfort of the four British golfers. They lunched at the
Planters’ Hotel, went round the city, saw a performance at the theatre,
and boarded the train again at half-past eight in the evening.
Thereafter Messrs. Kirkaldy, Herd, White, and Jones were brought to
realise some of the possibilities of travelling in through trains along
the American Continent. They were in the last car of the train, and
after the journey had been resumed about half an hour, there was a
negative kind of happening in the form of a gradual slowing down and
then a final stop of the train--or rather, as it proved, of the
carriage. After waiting a little while in patience the party put their
heads out of the window, and then they came to realise the horrible
truth. Their carriage had become uncoupled, and the train had gone on
and left them! Here was a state of things! There was no other train to
get them through in time. Hundreds of pounds were to be picked up at
San Pedro, and they would not be there to pick them up as they had
intended. The prizes would have been a gift for them, and either “Andra”
or Rowland Jones would have become an open champion of sorts at last.
When these thoughts had chased each other through the minds of the great
British quartette for half an hour, someone got up aloft, and, like the
widow Twankey--or Sister Anne was it?--in the pantomime, said that he
thought he saw something coming. Immediately afterwards he confessed he
was mistaken, but he had scarcely admitted the mistake when the original
statement was renewed with vigour. There _was_ something, and eventually
it was made out as a railway train. The four great British golfers were
saved for Mexico, and they would yet win championships and dollars--at
least they might do, as they might now prefer to put it. It seemed that
after the train had parted company with its last carriage, in about a
quarter of an hour somebody in the moving section happened to notice the
circumstance, and remarked that it was rather curious that a carriage
should be left down the line in that manner, and that there should be no
fuss made. The matter being reported to the officials on the train they
decided to put back and see if they could find the carriage containing,
among others, the party of four great British golfers. As we have
already seen, they did so. Then the whole train moved on again towards
Mexico, and “Andra” went to sleep in his berth dreaming, perhaps, of the
old course at home and of his doing the home hole in 2.

The four British golfers found things rather dull for the next two days,
for nothing in particular happened while they were running through
fifteen hundred miles of woods and prairie. On Saturday morning they got
out of the train at San Antonio, Texas, in time for breakfast, and the
same evening they reached Laredo, the Mexican border, where their
luggage was examined. Spanish being the prevailing language, this
process proved rather troublesome, especially as the officials had
varying and peculiar views as to the goods on which duty should be paid.
Some of the party had to pay it on their golf clubs, and others escaped.
The train had hardly got going again when it was pulled up on account of
an obstruction in front, and it was three hours before a further advance
was made, the impediment being a freight-train which had run off the
track. By this time Kirkaldy was sighing for a ride on the North
British, and White was hoping that he might be allowed the privilege of
making his last journey on earth on the beautiful South-Western. But
there was more adventure to come.

The four great British golfers had heard awful tales of Mexicans and
what they were capable of, but they understood the place was more
civilised now--must be, as there was golf there. In the dead of night,
while the famous quartette were wrapped in slumber, when White found
himself back on to his drive, when Herd had nothing but good luck for a
whole season, when Jones was pipping one Braid for the championship
nearly every time, and when the fourth of the party of British golfers
was doing a round on the links in Elysium in eighteen under par--there
were robbers going through the car! They were real robbers, such as are
commonly found on these trains in these parts. They went through the
train “in the most approved style,” as it was said of them, and before
the first streaks of the Mexican dawn had lit up the sky there were many
men in that golfing train who were much poorer than when they went to
sleep. One of the Boston amateurs going to the same tournament lost six
hundred dollars, his gold watch, and trunk checks, and several others
found that various sums of money belonging to them had disappeared. And
how fared the four British golfers? Was it for fear of him, for respect,
or for admiration, that the Mexican robber did not concern himself at
all with the great British golfer? In due course they landed at Mexico
City on Monday morning. The four British golfers were much impressed by
the peculiar dress of the Mexicans, which they even found to be affected
by the caddies. Andrew spoke a few preliminary words of greeting to the
boys, but they only smiled, not understanding Scotch. But they showed a
strong disposition to be good friends, an attitude which, as was
subsequently discovered, was not entirely because they were great
golfers. Caddies are much the same the wide world over. Of the further
pursuit of the treasure by the four great British golfers, and of their
many disappointments, the story has been already told.


XII

A celebrated golfer, being in one of his lighter moods, discussed with
me the future association of aeroplanes and golf, and he observed that
when the flying machines came they would be such boons and blessings to
the golfing fraternity above all others as nobody imagined at the
present time. He opined that no sooner did the flying machine become
workable and reliable than every golfer who considered himself at all
thorough, and took any proper care of his game, would think it his
bounden duty to possess one. It would be as necessary to the playing of
his true game as the nails in the soles of his boots and shoes, and he
would be just as seriously handicapped without the one as the other.
This was a startling proposition; but though it was a great exaggeration
of an idea, the idea itself was sound, and was based on the wisest and
most generally-accepted philosophy. It was submitted that the aeroplane
would be very good for golf, inasmuch as it would do less towards
putting a man off his game at the beginning of the day than any other
form of locomotion from his place of residence to the golf course.

It is a disturbing reflection that practically everything that one does
in these days that is not golf tends to injure one’s golf. Nothing has
ever been discovered that with any consistency and regularity will
improve it, except golf; the effect is always adverse, and perhaps this
trying jealousy of the game adds something to its general fascination.
Usually a more or less lengthy journey has to be made from the golfer’s
home to the first tee, and it is this which is so much calculated to
disturb his playing temperament. No matter how you make this journey it
must be bad for your game, and the only difference between one way and
another is in the degree of badness.

When a man has risen from his bed in the morning, thoroughly roused
himself, and noticed that it is a fine day, he is at his best for
golfing. After that all things put him off. Some authorities are very
adverse to the cold bath, and others have even said that one’s breakfast
ought not to be regarded as an absolutely loyal friend. But it is the
journey to the links--with all its delays, irritations, inconveniences,
and joltings--that does the most damage. Frequently this journey is a
mixture of cabs, omnibuses, and trains. At one point or another you have
very likely to run for either the omnibus or the train, and this is
certain to do something towards putting you off. It may be only a
little, but it is this trifle added to other similar trifles that make
up a total sufficient to bring disaster to your driving and putting. If
you do not need to run anywhere, you have to wait, and this irritates
and does harm. Then the great vibration of the cab and the omnibus most
seriously affect the nervous system.

The golfer may not be conscious of it, but the effect is there. How true
this is may be judged by taking the extreme case of the motor-bicycle. A
year or two ago large numbers of golfers who could not afford motor-cars
went in for the cheaper kind of machine, but to a man they found them
quite fatal to golf, and particularly to their putting, the vibration
having reduced their nerves to such a state that delicacy of touch on
the putting green was next to impossible. Ordinary bicycles are nearly
as bad. In many respects motor-cars have great advantages, and have
become very popular with golfers, but they are far from being the ideal
form of locomotion. Here, again, there is vibration, and if you have
anything in the nature of a fright on the road you may generally reckon
that your game for the day is damaged to the extent of a number of
strokes that varies with the individual. Having all these things and
many more in mind, the superiority of the aeroplane, from the golfer’s
point of view, becomes evident. It will take you from your door to the
first tee, and, as there are no roads to jolt upon, one conceives that
in the perfect aeroplane there will be no vibration, and, barring the
effects of his breakfast, the golfer will be transported to the links in
as nearly as possible the ideal state in which he rose from his bed.


XIII

Some footpaths count for very much in the playing of a hole, and at
times call for and produce fine shots that would never be made if there
were no path there. So sometimes they are good to the game; but
generally they are merely an aggravation. You could hardly call a path
or a road famous, but if you were asked which were the most notable you
would probably call to mind first of all the path that goes across the
first and eighteenth holes at St. Andrews, which is distinguished from
others because of the devil-may-care spirit in which the general public
defy injury and death by the way they saunter along it when such men as
Edward Blackwell are standing on the first tee, and it is also a path
among paths, because it has led to the cultivation of the most
magnificent voice ever heard on any golf course. The man who has not
heard Starter Greig fire his blast of warning through the hole in his
box down the fairway--with a clap, and a bang against the horizon, for
all the world like a discharge from a small brass gun--is still ignorant
of one of the minor wonders of the golf world, and has a very inadequate
perception of the possibilities of calling “Fore!” Likewise, one would
say that of all roads--as superior to mere paths--that which skirts the
seventeenth green on the same old course is the most remembered by the
majority of good golfers--remembered sadly. How many golfers have had
their brightest hopes dashed by that road when within sight of home and
victory it would be a sorry task to count, but there lingers in my mind
a dreadful scene when J. H. Taylor’s ball went there in the course of
the 1905 championship meeting, from a not by any means unworthy shot,
and of his trying, time after time, to get it back to the green, until
when he had done so his nerves were tingling as would have been those of
any man.

The paths and roads of Blackheath are altogether probably responsible
for the making of a bigger and more enduring piece of golfing history
than any others. Other footways may have despoiled great players of
deserved honours, but thus their effects are chiefly destructive, and it
cannot be claimed for them that they have made anything for the game.
But the Blackheath paths and roads have been constructive in their
effect upon the game, for they made the brassey. There is a fair
consensus of opinion that this most necessary of modern clubs was first
introduced on this course as a consequence of these paths and roads that
had to be played from, and also partly on account of the gritty nature
of the turf. In those days of the use of the brassey, when a Blackheath
golfer appeared on a Scottish course, the caddies knew his headquarters
at once. “He comes frae Blackheath,” they would say with some
deprecation. “There’s naething but gravel pits and stones at
Blackheath.”


XIV

However humble its merits may be, it is well that a man should be
faithful always to his mother course, respectful of her, and that he
should not speak and very tardily admit to himself the blemishes of her
features. For it is always for him to remember that she, and she alone,
gave the game to him that has yielded him so much happiness, and he owes
to her a debt that he can never repay, save in constancy and gratitude.
Therefore it is to be reckoned as a good thing in a golfer that,
wherever the necessities and vicissitudes of life may take him to live,
and for whatever other courses he may in mature years find a fondness
and become attached to by membership, he should, if he can do it, always
remain an associate of his first club, and should from time to time
display some public attachment to its course, even though it be at some
inconvenience to himself. It is a little act of filial homage that
should not be neglected.

At such times he will be kind to her and will not chide her for her
weaknesses. He will humour her good-naturedly. The sixteenth may be a
better hole on another course, but do not say so now. Think how rich did
that sixteenth here seem in those far-off days when the teething to the
clubs was first being done. What terrors had its bunkers! What a big,
lusty, and not to say a brutal one, did it seem then; but now to the
time-worn golfer, if the truth must be whispered for once to himself,
that old sixteenth seems something of a milksop, and can be played in
ten different ways with a half-hearted drive and something of a mashie
or iron. How happy we were despite the constant troubles in those olden
days, when we were always with our mother links, and knew no others! The
old men of golf came and told us of the great courses that they had
encountered in their travels--such wonderful holes, such amazing
bunkers, such marvellous putting greens! These travellers’ tales were
pleasant to listen to, and they fired the imagination; but after all we
returned with some content to our mother links.

And then, what golfer does not remember the day, particularly if he was
then no longer a child in years, when he went away for the first time
from that course and paid a visit to one of those celebrated of which so
much is written in the books and on which so many fine matches and
championships are played? This is always an epoch, and a stirring one in
every golfing life. There are many wild emotions in the man when for the
first time he takes his club to play a shot on this foreign course of so
much renown. If he is an intelligent man, and an impartial one, he sees
the merit and the glory, and he admits it without reservation. He feels
that now he has gone out into the great world, and that there are more
wonders in it than even his utmost fancy had suspected. He is like the
Queen of Sheba who went to see the magnificence of Solomon, confessing
then that it was a true report that she had heard in her own land,
though she believed not until her eyes had seen, when she knew that the
half had not been told her. Out alone on this wonderful course the
feeling of loneliness and helplessness will come upon this immature
player. Truly the half had not been told to him, and in mortal agony in
some “Hell” or other, or in a Devil’s Kitchen or a Punchbowl, or it may
be in the sandy wastes of a Sahara or in a crevasse on the heights of
the Alps or the Himalayas--how, then, will he be reminded of the tender
indulgences of his mother links, of her constant kindness, and of the
way in which she humoured his youthful caprice and smiled patiently upon
him when he was fretful! Perhaps she was too indulgent, and the maternal
laxness did something towards the spoiling of the child for the manhood
that was to follow. But no matter, let the golfer always be kind and
well disposed to his mother links.




THE SUNNY SEASON


I

One hears it said sometimes by versatile and thorough-going sportsmen,
that of all the sweet sensations to be discovered and enjoyed
occasionally in the whole world of sport, the hitting of a perfect tee
shot is one of the best, one of the only two or three best. These men
are probably right, for the hitting of a really spanking ball from the
tee, when one feels the complete absence of a grating or a jerking
anywhere in the system, showing that the whole of the most complicated
movement has worked round the centre with the accuracy of a watch, and
that every ounce of available power has thus been put into the drive to
the greatest advantage--this is a fine thing to feel, and the pity is
that the joy of it is so fleeting, and that the memory of it has
entirely gone a few minutes later when some succeeding shot has not been
quite so good.

But is there not another feeling which comes to a man in the game
sometimes which is even more uplifting, much more so? It lasts longer,
and it is fuller, richer. The man is then transformed, etherealised; he
is no longer a thing of this crawling, walking world; and he is not a
mere man on the links as he used to be, happy, indeed, for the most
part, but very human, with many adversities to encounter, as generally
in this world. The man is raised for a while to the higher state, and
his golfing soul floats in Valhalla when he is suddenly permitted to
play many holes in succession better than he had ever played holes
before--everything perfect, and a little more than perfect, which means
fortunate all the way from the tee to the flag. It is one of those days
which have been dreamt about and regarded as impossible, when the
marvellous coincidence has occurred of the man being “on” everything at
the same time, and of everything going right when he was thus on them.
Aforetime it has been that when he was on six things a seventh has led
him astray, and there has always been a seventh at least, if not another
too. The factor of evil could never be cancelled. But this time it is,
and it is as if the gods, smiling benevolently on the lucky and
successful player, determine that he shall be happy to the utmost, and
therefore they allow him all the good fortune that is theirs to give.
The most perfect balls are driven from the tee, the most impossible
carries are accomplished; there is a delightful crispness about the
approaches, and the six-feet putts are holed with precision and
confidence; while here and there, to the utter demoralisation of the
arch enemy par, to say nothing of the poor man who is the human victim
of it all, the long putts go down as well.

It is, perhaps, given to most players to be stirred with this
indescribable joy once or twice in their lives--seldom more than that.
It is not until three or four holes have been played that the full
realisation of what is happening comes to the favoured player, and it is
then that he is rapidly etherealised. His joy may last for another four
or five holes; it will seldom endure a round. I have seen men when they
have been in this state and under this most extraordinary influence, and
they have not then been as they are at other times. Their inward ecstasy
shines outside them. There is a curious nervous smile on their faces,
and their eyes gleam. Their steps are short and hurried. They seldom
speak, and when they do there is a touch of incoherency in their
remarks. It is best that they should not be spoken to. They are
suffering from a curious dementia of exaltation. They have help from
Olympus, and history is being made. When I have seen it done I have once
or twice made a close study of the behaviour of the man, and I know that
it is as I have written. One of the most memorable occasions on which I
witnessed this super-exaltation was during an Open Championship at
Sandwich, when records were being made, and when at last a fine amateur
player seemed to set out towards the making of one more. Hole after hole
was played with that combination of perfection and fortune, and at last
the man fell under the influence, and you could see it in possession of
him as he went tripping along. You knew that, phlegmatic as a golfer
must be who aspires to the greatest achievements, and as this one often
was even in the hour of crisis, his heart was now beginning to beat.
Soon afterwards it was all over; there was an amazing catastrophe on a
fiery putting green and four or five putts were needed there. Three
years later I saw the same man with the exaltation in him again at
Muirfield, when he went through to a great achievement. I shall not
forget the look of that man when he was doing these things. It is a
chilly descent when the spell is broken, and it is all earth and clay
again, but in the reaction there is no suffering. A happy reason comes
to the rescue of the throbbing player, and he is reminded that such
things are not to be for always, lest golf should not be what it is.


II

When the sun shines the putting greens get keen. There is an old saying
that driving is an art, iron play a science, and putting is the devil.
Just that--the devil. I agree entirely, and I have ascertained that the
greatest exponents of the game are in sympathy with the suggestion.

Well may the writers of text-books of the game declare, when they come
to the chapter on putting, that there is really nothing to say, and that
they must leave the reader to find out the whole business by instinct
and practice, as there are no rules to be laid down for his guidance.
What would be the use of their pretending that they can really teach
putting when, if they had to hole an eight-feet putt for a championship,
the odds would be slightly against them? In June 1905, while I was
smoking my pipe on the top of the bank on the far side of the home green
at St. Andrews, I was being provided at intervals of no great length
with much food for reflection and philosophy, better than which no man
who ever talks or writes of golf could wish for. The Open Championship
was being played for, and there duly came along Vardon, Braid, Taylor,
and Herd, all more or less favourites for the event in progress, and it
is a real fact that of these four men three of them missed putts at
this home hole of less than a yard. I think the average length was about
eighteen inches; one of them was not more than a foot, and the way in
which the ball was worked round to the far side of the hole without
going in was wonderful--quite wonderful. It will be noticed that I give
four names and mention only three misses. This is because even the
greatest players are sometimes very tender on this subject of missing
short putts, and to spare them any annoyance I do not name the
particular individuals who failed. It is enough that one of them, and
one only, did not.

The history of every man’s golf is covered with metaphorical gravestones
as the result of all the short putts he has missed. Every season the
whole course, and the result of almost every event of importance, would
be changed if one or other of the parties did not miss some of these
apparently unmissable putts. One need go no farther back than last
year’s Amateur Championship meeting. I saw Mr. John Graham miss a
two-feet putt in his match with Mr. Robb on the fourteenth green. This
was the all-important match of the whole tournament, and in the light of
what happened afterwards it was made to appear that the missing of this
putt cost Mr. Graham the best chance he ever had in his hard and
deserving golfing lifetime of winning the blue ribbon of the game.
Mr. Robb himself fancied that Mr. Robert Andrew would be the ultimate
winner of the championship that time at Hoylake, but on the eighteenth
green in one of his rounds Mr. Andrew missed a putt of less than a foot
for the match, and then had to go on to the nineteenth hole, where he
was a well-beaten man. And in the final tie of all, if Mr. Lingen had
never missed a short putt, who knows but what he would have been the
champion of the year after all?

Therefore we may take it as established that the very greatest players
cannot do the very shortest putts with anything approaching to
certainty, when it is of the very greatest importance that they should
do so. They are no better at this game than quite moderate players, and
the chances of their holing such putts decrease according to the
importance of the occasion--that is to say, the more necessary it is to
hole the putt in order to promote one’s success in the encounter in
progress, the less likely is one to do so. This is one of the
fundamental principles of the thing. Anybody can hole a putt of four or
five feet when it doesn’t matter, and when there is no particular credit
in doing it. It is when it does matter that you cannot do it. The hole
is 4¼ in. wide, and the ball is about 1½ in. in diameter. You may use
anything from an umbrella to a lawn-roller in order to putt that little
ball into that huge pit, and yet at that distance of three or four feet
you cannot do it--that is, as often as you ought to do. Training and
practice are no use. Do not beginners always do these putts well? That
is because they do not know how difficult they are. They will by and by,
and then they will begin to miss them! At home I have a little baby
girl, and sometimes she gets one of my putters out of the corner, and
begs for the loan of a ball. Make a sort of hole on the carpet, or even
go out on to the lawn and play at a real hole in the real way, and that
little thing will hole the putts of a yard and two yards every time! She
never bothers about any particular stance or anything of that kind, and
takes no count of the blades of grass or where she ought to be looking
at the much-talked-of “moment of impact.” She just putts, and down goes
the ball every time! It is wonderful, one of the most wonderful things
in sport that I have ever seen! Here she does that, and we others who
know so much about these things, cannot do them--at least, not with the
same certainty.

Here is another point. It may need only an exceedingly delicate stroke
to putt a ball properly, yet if you take the clumsiest, horniest-handed
labouring man--say a road-mender or a railway navvy, who had never
either seen or heard of golf before--he would never miss those three to
five feet putts. Again it is because he does not know how really
difficult they are. It is said that a mighty hunter of great renown, a
man who had bagged all the big game of India in great variety, once
declared in an agony, “I have encountered all the manifold perils of the
jungle, I have tracked the huge elephant to his retreat, and I have
stood eye to eye with the man-eating tiger.” All of which was quite
true--he had. Then he added, “And never once have I trembled until I
came to a short putt.”

I have thought the matter out, and I suggest the reason. It is one of
the prettiest points in psychology that one will encounter in the whole
of a long lifetime of the most careful thought and study. You don’t
really want any mind at all for putting purposes. The whole thing is too
simple, and instead of a mind and brains being any use for the purpose
in hand, they are a positive disadvantage, and are continually getting
in the way.


III

Consciousness is often fatal in putting, and it is the conscience making
a coward of the man that makes him miss his putt. To hole a three-feet
putt over a flat piece of green is really one of the easiest things in
the world; there can be no doubt about it. But while there is one
ridiculously easy way of doing the putt, there are about a dozen more or
less difficult ways of missing it, and these dozen are uppermost in the
mind of the golfer when he comes to his effort. Thus the missing of the
short putt represents the greatest triumph of matter over mind that is
to be found in the whole range of sport, or, so far as I know, in any
other pursuit in life. But why should a man be given to these morbid
thoughts of the ways of missing, and why should he not be of hopeful,
courageous disposition, and attack the hole boldly and with confidence,
instead of remembering these dozen ways of missing? That is what
non-golfers ask.

It is an easy question to set; but there is another factor in the
situation that has to be mentioned. There is the sense of
responsibility, and this sense of responsibility is probably greater in
a man when he is making a putt of from three to five feet than it is in
the case of any other man at any time in any other sport, because he
will never, never have the chance again that he has got this time. If he
putts and misses, the deed is irrevocable, the stroke and the hole or
the half have been lost, and nothing that can happen afterwards can
remove the loss. If a man makes a bad drive, or if his approach play is
weak, he can atone for these faults by being unusually clever with the
subsequent stroke in the play to the hole, and he thinks he will. But
the short putt is the very last stroke in that play, and if it is missed
there is no possible atonement to be made. Thus there is something of
the awful, of the eternal, of the infinite about the putt; the man is
awe-stricken; he knows it is easy, but he is conscious of those dozen
ways of missing. So he misses. I have put the question to a number of
the best-known players of the day as to what were their precise
thoughts--if any--when they came to making the final putt of a great
match, which in many cases gave them a championship. Their answer almost
universally was that their thought was, “What a fool I shall look if I
miss this putt!” Thus they knew that they ought not to miss it, but they
were burning with consciousness of the fact that they were terribly
liable to do so. So matter triumphs over mind.


IV

Can anything in a mechanical sort of way be done to overcome this awful
difficulty? I fear not, though one or two new putters are invented every
week, and some of them are acclaimed as being the philosopher’s stone
for which we have been looking. The golf world began to buzz as if its
mainspring had got loose when Mr. Travis won the championship at
Sandwich with that Schenectady putter--the most epoch-making putter of
all. But where is it now? Very few people use it.

Putters have been made of every conceivable shape and of every possible
material. Counting all variations, there are thousands of kinds of
putters. They have been made with the heads bent back, forwards, and
sideways. Some of them have had very thin blades, and others have had
thick slabs instead of blades. They have been fashioned like knives,
hammers, spades, croquet mallets, spoons, and riddles, and some even
like putters; and they have been made of iron, gun-metal, steel,
aluminium, nickel, silver, brass, wood, bone, and glass. I have here
beside me a putter made in nickel, and consisting of a large roller,
running on ball bearings! It is no good. The simplest are the best. We
cannot obtain will-power by machinery or mechanical appliances.
Mr. James Robb tells me that the putter he always uses is an ordinary
cleek which he got when a boy. His sister won it in a penny raffle, and
having no use for it herself she gave it to him, and he has putted with
it ever since. Three times has he putted his way to the final of the
championship, and once has he won it. Again, Mr. J. E. Laidlay conveys
the information to me that when he was a boy at Loretto School he came
by the first golf clubs he ever had in his life in his second or third
term, these being a cleek and a brassey. That cleek-head has been his
putter ever since, and it is getting so light with wear that his friends
are beginning to tell him that it will soon do for him to shave with.
Harry Vardon won his first championship with a putter which was not a
putter at all, but a little cleek that he had picked up only the day
before in Ben Sayers’ shop at North Berwick. He fancied it as a putter,
and he has never putted better than on that day at Muirfield. He has
never used it since, and now he has taken to the aluminium putter. And
do you know that just before the famous championship at Sandwich,
Mr. Travis was using a putting cleek that he, too, had got at North
Berwick, and it was his intention to putt with it in the tournament? But
he was not putting very well in practice at St. Andrews, and one of his
compatriots then introduced to him for the first time in his life the
Schenectady, which, after one successful trial, was forthwith
commissioned for Sandwich. What a subject for a great historical
painting to be hung up in the Temple of Golf that we shall have some
day--“Emmett introducing the Schenectady to Travis, 1904.” I think it
was Emmett; if it wasn’t, then it was Byers. Anyhow, golf history was
changed in consequence of that introduction, for I am sure that
Mr. Travis would not have won at Sandwich with his North Berwick putting
cleek. It wasn’t the Schenectady that did it, but it was the player’s
then confidence in the Schenectady. He had, for the time being, got that
little devil of golf in chains, and putting had become a great joy.


V

Golf is a jealous sport, and often takes it ill when any of its patrons
devote their attention occasionally to other diversions of the open air,
and exacts from them such a penalty in failures and aggravation when
they come back to their true love as is calculated to make them hesitate
before committing further offences. Perhaps it is natural in a way that
golf, which has so much of wild nature about it, should be least
inclined to brook the rivalry of games of the namby-pamby order. Fine
field sports such as shooting and fishing do not put you off your golf,
in fact we have generally concluded that a few days’ fishing sandwiched
in a golfing holiday rather does good to your game. Perhaps it
stimulates your thinking qualities, and if you are not reflecting upon
the other and the better way in which you might have played the
seventeenth hole the day before, when you should be noticing the
significant manœuvres of something in the water, all is well. But a game
that golf cannot and will not tolerate acquaintanceship with upon any
consideration, is croquet. The royal and ancient one has decided
apparently that it will not recognise it in any way whatever, and that
it will give a bad time to any golfer who potters about on a lawn with
hoops and bells and wooden sledgehammers. And it does so. There is no
more sure way of disturbing your putting than an hour or two’s croquet.
This putting poison is most deadly efficacious, and its effects
sometimes last for a couple of days. The man has not yet been born who
can putt well after a game of croquet. Croquet is really putting, but
putting with a big heavy ball after the style of a cannon ball, and it
has to be putted on a woolly green of rough grass in which a golf ball
would do something towards burying itself. Your accommodating eye and
touch soon become accustomed to the big ball and the mallet, and you
begin to putt through the hoops exceeding well, feeling then that you
hold an advantage over others through usually having to manage a smaller
ball under more difficult circumstances. But the awkward part of the
business is that the eye and touch won’t go back again so readily to
their golfing adjustment, and while they are out of it some funny things
are likely to happen. At such times the golf ball looks impossibly
small, and, while one is overcome with the idea that it will need
remarkably delicate management, one finds it impossible to wield the
putter as it should be. Here is the story of a recent happening:

A and B are keen rivals on the links--so keen that there is always great
haggling when it comes to adjusting the odds for a match, B usually
giving A three strokes. On the present occasion A informed B that he
would be glad to play him a match on the afternoon of the following day.
B wanted to know why they could not make a full day of it and play in
the morning as well, but A pleaded that he had to take part in a
tom-fool croquet match to which he was committed at the house where he
was staying. They settled the terms of the next afternoon’s encounter at
the same time, and B said that as A would be playing croquet in the
morning he would be willing to give him five strokes. This was really
foolish of him; but no matter. A thought something, but said nothing.
The golf match was duly played on the following day, and, to the
mortification of B, the croquetter putted like an angel the whole way
round, won his match by 6 and 5, won the bye, and, holing a ten-yarder
to wind up with, took the bye-bye as well. B was naturally in a most
unhappy state of mind, and moaned that he had never before known a man
to be able to putt after playing croquet, and that it was because of
this that he had given A two extra strokes on that dismal day. “Croquet!
croquet!” exclaimed A, “but I _haven’t_ been playing croquet!” B stood
aghast. “You _haven’t_!” he shrieked; “then what the dickens were you
doing this morning?” “Oh,” said A, “I took the hint from what you said
yesterday, and cried off the croquet match. I spent an hour instead in
practising putting on the carpet, and stuffed the fire-irons underneath
to make undulations!” There are one or two very good morals in this
pathetic little story.

If you need to putt perfectly you should do nothing with your hands, and
as little as possible with the remaining parts of your physical
construction for a whole day beforehand. The fact is that everything
puts you off your putting, but some things more than others, which is
another reason for that old saying that putting is the devil. An old
golfer has said that the ideal preparation for really fine putting is to
lie in bed for twenty-four hours with your wife to feed you with a
spoon. A few hours’ penmanship is certainly fatal to one’s putting, and
typewriting is worse. A man may depend upon it that if he goes in for a
motor-car and drives it, he will henceforth be about three or four
strokes worse on the greens than he used to be, which accounts for the
anxiety of so many golfers to sell their new cars. And oh, that my best
golfing enemy would buy a motor-cycle! A player once told me that he
could not putt in the afternoon after having found it necessary to beat
his dog at lunch-time; and it has been observed to be quite a bad thing
for one’s putting to use a walking-stick in one’s ordinary
pedestrianism. The putting muscles and nerves are the most delicate,
subtle things in the whole of animal creation, and the pity is that
circumstances generally preclude their more careful preservation during
the periods in one’s life when they are not needed for holing-out
purposes.


VI

Now the society season is most alive. The golfing society--without a
course of its own and consisting generally of men who have some other
common interest, usually business or professional, apart from their love
for the game--is becoming an increasingly popular institution in the
south, and some people who have had to find fault with the constitution
and general scheme of such bodies, have now to confess that their
protests have been completely without avail, and that, for good or ill,
these combinations have settled permanently with us. Considering the
circumstances of the time and the great advance in the popularity of the
game, they must be regarded as a natural evolution. After all, those
people who regard the society as a kind of new-fangled notion and an
undesirable development, need to have it pointed out to them that it is
the oldest kind of golf community, and that nowhere does it flourish
more than in the great Scottish centres of the game. For example, a
great majority of the clubs of Edinburgh are not clubs at all, as the
term is understood in the south, but merely golfing societies, made up
often of men with another common interest, and the only difference
between them and the southern societies is that they have a public
course to play upon and are dependent upon the kind favour of nobody for
the playing of the game; whereas in the south there are no public
courses, and the societies have necessarily to crave the permission of
clubs for the courtesy of their greens on the days when they wish to go
out to play their matches and competitions.

Perhaps some day there will be public courses in the south on which the
societies may play. On the other hand, it has been suggested that the
societies combined are even now almost strong enough to obtain and keep
up a course of their own. In these days the societies’ subscriptions are
seldom more than five or ten shillings, but the majority of members
would be agreeable to pay a guinea for the pleasures that they receive,
and on such an increase it ought not to be a difficult matter to devise
some scheme for the establishment of a society course. Alternatively, it
is suggested that the societies might do something towards giving a
substantial financial backing to some club or other that is in a bad way
in this respect, on the condition that they had the use of that club’s
course on midweek days for all genuine competitions and matches. Against
this it has to be considered that one of the charms of society golf, as
it is conducted in the south at the present time, is the opportunities
that are given to members of visiting and playing over courses which are
unfamiliar to them and which are not generally accessible, and of
organising expeditions of members to these courses in the way of having
a good day out together. All those who have experienced this pleasure
know that it makes one of the most delightful variations from the
ordinary routine of a golfer’s life.

There is no reason to suppose that clubs generally, or any club in
particular, are hostile to the society idea and practice, and we have
not yet heard of any case in which a club has declined permission to a
society to play its match or competition on its course. So far from that
being the case, the most important clubs of all, with the best courses,
have shown a marked amiability in the matter. Still, from time to time
there have been people who have suggested future difficulties, and even
hinted at an abuse by societies in general of the good nature and
courtesy of the clubs; and in view of the fact that in two years from
now there will probably be ten societies for every two that are at
present in existence, just as even now there are about five times the
number that there was two years since, it will be as well if the clubs
think the matter out and decide upon their policy, and, so far as they
are able to do so, or regard it as politic, to announce it. When they do
come to consider the matter, they will do well to do so on the broad
basis of the common good, and to remember that an enormous factor in
bringing about the increase in the popularity of golf, and in affording
the great delights that golfers of the present day derive from the game,
has been the principle of the community of interests which is generally
agreed upon. When a man becomes a member of a “recognised golf club” in
these days, he becomes _ipso facto_ a kind of provisional member of all
other golf clubs, that is to say, upon the payment of certain small fees
and on a proper introduction--that of the secretary of his own club
being commonly regarded as sufficient--he has some claim upon the
courtesy of any other club whose green he may like to visit. The members
of a club that extends these privileges to strangers obtain those of a
like kind from other clubs, and thus to the individual player there is
opened up the entire variety of all the golf in the country. How much
would our pleasure in the game be reduced if this variety were not
available, and we were compelled to play exclusively upon the courses of
clubs of which we were full members!

In this matter we have the principle of the community of golfers’
interests in full play, and it seems that the proper recognition of the
society and its right to the privileges that it seeks will be only
another form of the same principle, and one scarcely less advanced than
that which obtains at present. For already a fair proportion of the
members of a club are members also of one or other societies, and the
time is coming when it will be the exception for the club golfer not to
be a member of a society. When this time arrives, it will evidently be
necessary to apply this principle referred to, partly for the general
good and enjoyment, and partly because any club that did not, and that
withheld privileges to societies that were granted them by other clubs,
would place all its own members who belonged to such societies in a very
unpleasant position. Two rules seem to be called for. The first is, that
in order that this principle shall always act fairly, and that no man
shall get what he is not in a sense entitled to, it shall be enacted
that each member of a society shall also be a member of a club in the
district in which the society chiefly carries on its operations. The
second is, that in all cases of society visits to clubs’ courses, full
green fees shall be paid, and that in no pecuniary sense shall the
society be under any obligation to the club. The whole question is
really one of very great importance, and those who are at the head of
club and society affairs would do well to be giving to it their serious
consideration, for nothing would be more unfortunate than the creation
of any misunderstanding which might lead to trouble in the future.


VII

The other day there was a little house-party of golfers for a week-end,
and it was a most delightful gathering in all respects--fine weather, a
rattling good seaside links, with putting greens that inspired the soul
of the player to fine flights of genius, and a host of the very best
golfing type, in whom is embodied all the best traditions and
sportsmanship of the game. Sternly contested singles in the morning of
the first day, with the yellow autumn sun shining and that pleasant nip
in the air that braces the golfer to great efforts when he takes the
wood out of his bag; a hard-fought foursome in the afternoon; and then
as they dressed to go down for dinner on the evening of the first day,
they reflected upon the magnificent opportunities of the golfing life
and the poor state of those who were not such as they were then. Dinner,
the glass of old port, piquant stories of the links and the recounting
of brave deeds in fine matches, and then by and by the testing of
various putting theories on the carpet--O! the happy, happy golfer.

Forty years upon the links had one by one only served to increase the
host’s enthusiasm for the game of games. In all things he was the golfer
first and the ordinary individual afterwards. Like all experienced
players, he was inclined to be dogmatic and, as some would say,
old-fashioned. But when you say that a golfer is old-fashioned you are
paying him a very high compliment; you are placing his portrait in an
exclusive gallery of the old masters of the game who built it up and
endowed it with traditions such as are the envy of all others. The
old-fashioned golfer nearly always belongs to the best type of the fine
old English or Scottish gentleman. But this host had still original
ideas of his own, and sometimes within the walls of his own house he
will tell of them, or let them slip by accident, which he might very
much fear to do when in the company of his colleagues of the Royal and
Ancient on the occasion of his bi-annual pilgrimages to St. Andrews. So
on the second morning, when the party was at breakfast and eager to
arrange the matches of the day, its curiosity was somewhat stirred by
the remark that he made to madame as she was lading the blue cups with
tea, that last night he “went round in 78.” The lady of the house nodded
and smiled, asked sympathetically if he had had any luck at the short
holes, and was assured that he had taken 3 to one and 4 to the other,
but had got his 78 by the aid of a grand--yes, by gad, a really corking
3 at the last hole! On the whole, it was gathered he was driving well,
but his iron play was not all that it might have been--putting splendid.
Now nothing had been heard before of any such fine performance as this,
as surely there would have been if, as it appeared, it was of such
recent date. The company was stirred with a desire for knowledge as to
the when and the how, so that they might not be laggard in their
compliments upon the making of such an evidently pretty piece of golf. A
3 at the eighteenth, too! If that was the same eighteenth the flag upon
whose putting green we could just see from the window now, it was a 3
to be spoken of with admiration and profound respect. And so one at the
table murmured that they had a desire for knowledge upon this 78, which
so evidently interested the chief, but he pooh-poohed the curiosity, and
said that the recounting of that particular round would do better for a
wet day than for a morning when all were so keen to be playing the real
golf. The “real” golf; so there was a qualification imparted to that
round of 78, and now they would not be denied. Come! come! And so they
had the secret out.

It appeared that though he looked so well and hale, the chief was not
one of those happy beings who after their days upon the links go to rest
at night and drop clean away into a dreamless sleep. There is usually a
preliminary period of insomnia, which is an unpleasant relic of some
hard times that he had abroad in the middle years of his life. It is an
effort with him to “drop off,” and many and various have been the
devices that in his time he has employed for wooing Morpheus to his
nightly service. For a long time he played the old game of shepherdry.
When the candle was extinguished and his head was laid upon the pillow,
he set up before him an imaginary hedge, a big thick hedge which divided
one large field from another, and in this hedge there was just one small
gap through which one sheep could pass at a time, or two by squeezing
when in a hurry. Why the sheep should be driven from one field into the
other no man can say; but on countless nights by many poor sufferers
from too much wakefulness, millions upon millions of sheep have been
driven through this same gap in the hedge. Through it they are hurried
in their ones and twos in a seemingly never-ending line. There is no
limit to this flock, and it is of the essence of the trick that is being
played against the enemy, insomnia, that the shepherd shall attend most
strictly to his duties, and never for a single moment shall let his
thoughts wander to other and more real affairs. And so at last the
active brain gives way, and as the tail-end of one big sheep is seen
disappearing through the gap a thick haze comes down upon the fields,
and the shepherd and his sheep are lost until the morning.

The chief was shepherd for some years, and it was only by the odd
accident of dwelling fondly for a few minutes, as he laid himself down
in bed, upon the fine things he had done in one great match that day
that he came by a change of nightly occupation. With the links laid out
before him on the inner side of his eyelids, he played every shot again,
and if the truth must be told, he played some of them twice, and in this
way he proved to his own immense satisfaction that, soul-satisfying as
had been his play that day, his round was morally at least three strokes
better than it had worked out. He played his round from the first tee to
the eighteenth green on the eyelid links once, and so pleasant was the
play that, like the gourmand golfer, he must needs play it again, shot
by shot; and a third time he set out with his clubs. But this time he
was tiring. The two mental rounds that had gone before had told their
tale, and he was constantly finding his wayward ball in the rough, and
making sometimes fine recoveries with his iron clubs, and sometimes
taking two to get clear again. You see he always played the game.
Perfection in golf is not given to any man, and even in the eyelid game
one must pull and slice at times, must now and again socket with the
irons, and take one’s eye off the little white ball. And so it happened
that at last the tired brain surrendered, and upon the fifteenth green,
with the match still unfinished--one up and three to go--he fell asleep.

Thenceforth the shepherdry was given up, and he took on the eyelid golf
instead. Two rounds he played every night, and every time he played the
game, refusing to allow himself things he had not clearly seen himself
do, and not taking unto himself the power of doing miracles or of always
playing the perfect golf. In that there would have been great monotony,
just as there would be if we always played perfect golf in our real life
upon the links. He never made a carry in this nightly imagination that
he had not made in daylight, never laid an iron shot dead, or holed a
putt the like of which he had not done with real club and ball. Some
nights he would be off his game, and his score would run far up into the
nineties, and he would be badly beaten. On those nights he might go to
sleep a little sooner than usual. On others he would be playing the best
game of his youth. In general he found the occupation much more pleasant
and agreeable to his tastes than the shepherdry, and it is a curious
thing, which one must believe since he said so, that these night rounds,
with all their thoughts and their minor anxieties, actually did
something towards the improvement of the real game that was played in
the daytime. The player now and then obtained new and good ideas, and
he was taught to be a little more thoughtful than perhaps he had been in
the past. By and by the secret of this play became too much for him to
keep, so he unfolded the story of his eyelid games to the lady partner
of his life, who, since the real service that they did to him was
evident to her sympathetic mind, treated it with becoming seriousness.
This was the explanation of the 78 that was spoken of at breakfast-time
that morning, and in it there is a hint that might sometime prove of
service to those who, like the host of that week-end, are sometimes
troubled for want of that ability to loose their thoughts to sleep.


VIII

One does not see St. Andrews at its best at a time of a championship, or
at any other time when there are great crowds in the streets and on the
courses, and swarming round about the clubhouse and outside the shops of
the clubmakers overlooking the eighteenth green. It is not its natural
self then; it is at its worst. I do not like it when the trippers pour
in from Glasgow. One cannot resist the suspicion that many of them are
not as good golfers as they ought to be, and that they love St. Andrews
for what they save by her, being the only course in the world on which a
man may play for nothing; with a kindly Corporation and a great club
spending large sums of money upon it. To keep those marvellous greens in
their fine state they employ a genius among greenkeepers, who is Hugh
Hamilton, who is the successor of Tom Morris, who was the successor of
Allan Robertson. It may seem strange to some that the play should be
made without any charge, but St. Andrews would not be the same, and
would lose rather than gain in dignity, if it were not free. The time to
see it at its best is in the spring, and it is fine again in the late
autumn, when the mere holiday-makers have gone back to their cities and
workshops.

The only time when a crowd is bearable at St. Andrews is on the autumn
medal day, and then, indeed, it is as if the tradition and the sanctity
of the place are intensified. This surely is the great Celebration Day
of golf. With its dignity, ceremony, tradition, crowds, and excitement,
it is really very much like a Lord Mayor’s Day. Old folks who may have
never played, wee bairns who are only just beginning to think they will
play when they can walk a little better, are all straining to excitement
because it is the club’s medal day, the day of the Royal Medal, and of
the captain’s playing himself in, and of the firing of the guns. From
north, south, east, and west--many of them from London--the members of
the Royal and Ancient Club foregather for the occasion. There is a
hushed solemnity overhanging the place. Something is about to be done
that used to be done in the days of the grandfathers and the
great-grandfathers, and the men on the links on this occasion feel
themselves to be the descendants--as often enough they are in blood--of
the great golfers of old who made the early chapters of the history of
the game.

The playing-in to the captaincy is a great ceremony, for this captaincy
of the Royal and Ancient Club is the highest honour to be achieved in
the game. No man who is not of the highest character and of the greatest
golfing integrity is ever chosen for this high office. To be captain of
the club is quite comparable to being Lord Mayor of London. Amateur
champions have been captains, but no man may be captain because he has
been amateur champion. It is an understanding that the captain shall win
the Silver Club, given by the club a century and a half ago, and the
Gold Medal, which was presented by Queen Adelaide in 1838, when she
expressed the wish that the captain would wear it on all public
occasions, as he does at the club meetings; and to make sure of the
coincidence of the captaincy and the winning of these trophies it is
ordained by custom that the captain-elect shall have no opponents in the
round that he is supposed to play; and, furthermore, to make his path to
victory as smooth and easy as possible, he is merely called upon to tee
up his ball on the first tee in front of the clubhouse, to drive it off,
and then he is supposed to have played his round and to have gained his
victory.

Thus this simple historic ceremony of teeing up and driving off for the
Silver Club and the Royal Adelaide Medal is a great function. Crowds
gather to witness it, and a line of men and boys is stretched out along
the course from the tee, often giving to the hero of the moment an all
too narrow margin for error in his stroke. It is ordained that this
ceremony shall be performed at the exact stroke of ten o’clock in the
morning, and when the hand of the clock on the clubhouse points to that
hour a military person fires a small cannon on the foreshore
and--crack!--the captain-elect drives his ball, and he thus advances to
the topmost height of honour. The boys rush for the ball, which, being
gained by one of them, becomes an heirloom in his family. And then the
real competition begins at once, and the new captain may take part in it
if he wishes. The prize now is the Gold Medal with the green riband,
which was given by King William IV. in 1837. The King himself decreed
that it should be challenged and played for annually, and, writing from
St. James’s Palace, he expressed “his satisfaction in availing himself
of this opportunity to evince his approbation of that ancient
institution.” Two by two the great golfers of the time go out to play
for it, and excitement is keen as the day wears on. The last couple
having holed out on the eighteenth green, the cannon is fired again to
indicate that for one more year the Royal Medal has been won and lost,
and all is over so far as the outdoor proceedings of the meeting are
concerned.

In the evening is the feast, when the new captain achieves the full
measure of his dignity. Hoary traditions surround his presidency at all
meetings. In days of old, in the century before last, captains were
fined pints and magnums of claret for certain delinquencies. At this
feast the captain and ex-captains sit at the high table, in red coats,
with all the ancient insignia of the club laid out on the table before
them. Silver clubs are set there, to one of which each of all the long
line of captains has fastened a silver ball, with his name and the date
of his captaincy engraved upon it. The winner of the King William IV.
Medal is toasted, and he is called up from his place that the captain
with solemn ceremony may invest him with the medal, hanging it round
his neck. Then, upon occasion, new members of this ancient club have
been called up before the captain, who, holding one of the silver clubs
before them, calls upon them to kiss it and to swear honour and
obedience to the laws and customs of the club and the game. And then
great golfers of the old school may sing old ballads, and an evening of
happiness goes on, and if there are no trains to be caught in the
morning, matches are made to-night. This is St. Andrews.


IX

The sowing of seed upon a course may seem a dull business, and the
average golfer leaves the consideration of all such matters to those
whose duty it is to attend to them, and contents himself with his play
on the resulting turf; but in this indifference he misses much that is
interesting, and occasionally some most pleasant humours, as witness the
true story of what happened on a suburban links. A very thorough club
manager had bought many bags of two different kinds of seed, which were
to be used by an intelligent workman for the benefit of the course,
according to a scheme already devised and discussed. One kind of seed
was that which would produce long, thick grass of a very coarse
character, and which would grow with big and almost indestructible roots
under the very worst of circumstances. It was intended that this should
be sown under the many trees that abounded on the course. It was not
only to be grass that would thrive under the most disadvantageous
circumstances, but it was meant also to be “rough,” which might some day
do something to stimulate the power of language among those golfers who
just now might play from underneath the branches of those trees with
their putters. The other seed was that which would make grass of the
very finest texture. It needed a delicate, well-groomed soil for its
sustenance, and its prime object was to produce putting greens that
would give great joy to golfers on their game.

So the contents of some bags were to be scattered underneath the trees,
and the contents of the others were to be spread over the putting
greens, and the manager rested and refreshed himself with tea while
this, as he thought, was being done, and he talked pleasantly to me of
the various excellences of the course and the way in which difficulties
of soil and situation had been conquered. And then there broke in upon
us an emissary from the man who had been sowing the seed, who came to
say, “Please, sir, there’s been a sort of accident happened, and it’s
like as William has been and mistaken and gone and planted the putting
green seed under them trees, and he’s planted the seed as’ll make the
long grass on some of the putting greens. And we want to know, sir, what
we must do!” What, indeed?


X

When October comes we bid her a very loyal and joyful welcome, for we
have come to regard her as the queen of months for golf. No soul so
serene as that of the golfer as he tees the ball on a bright October
morning. It sometimes seems to us of the links that we are glad of every
change in the seasons. When it is spring, we look forward to the coming
of summer, and then we sigh for the autumn, and in turn are glad even to
sink back to the adventures and trials of the heroic golf that we are
called upon to play in the winter-time. And yet it is seldom through
discontent that we thus anticipate the changing of the seasons, but
rather that we, as golfers, do so highly appreciate the glorious variety
which is afforded to us by the system of Nature. Constantly happy in our
game, while we are playing it, the season is for the moment forgotten,
and it is only in the intervals of holes or rounds that we are roused to
the eternal transformation that is proceeding.

   “With thee conversing I forget all time;
    All seasons and their change, all please alike.”

But there is nothing sweeter than the bright October morning on the
links. A fragrant smell of moist earth rises up, and it is as if that
very scent is a rare stimulant to the golfer after the heat of summer.
There is a fine spring in the turf as we tread upon it, and, quite
revelling in it, we find that we must needs go tripping light-heartedly
along the links until the problems of the play at a couple of holes have
sobered us down. We like even to see the dewdrops lingering on until
starting time, taking advantage of the laggard autumnal sun. The film of
mist that is hanging a few holes out, and the suspicion of a nip in the
air, are fine. And then there are the glorious tints of autumn, the
yellows and the crimsons and the browns, blended as only one Artist
knows how to blend them, and, amidst the happiness of it all, the
pathos of the scene comes in upon us as we listen to the faint crackle
of falling leaves. The heart of every golfer is touched by all these
changes, for whatever may have been his previous disposition and his
tastes in life, each one becomes in time something of a Nature lover,
and acquires a knowledge and interest in some of the simpler features of
her work. For, of all games, golf is the game which is most closely
allied with simple Nature. A little ball, a stick, a small hole, and the
open country at her wildest and roughest, and there you have your golf.
Then what is deeper than the soul’s content of the golfer when he
finishes the afternoon round just as the red sun is dipping away to
other lands, and by the time he and his clubs are cleaned, the twilight
is already changing into the evening gloom, and the thing that it seems
best to do is that which is one of the happiest in the golfer’s day,
which is to sit by a bright fire and talk with one’s enemy of the links
of all the good and the bad golf that has been played since the morning.
Come night, we have had our day, and this talk by the fire, while the
white mists gather again upon the links outside, is yet more cheering to
the heart of the golfer than all the evenings of summer.




THE PROFESSOR ON THE LINKS


I

“The problem of the golf ball’s flight is one of very serious
difficulty.” That is what was said to a gathering of savants by
Professor Peter Guthrie Tait, one of the most brilliant scientists of
the latter part of the last century, and the only man who has probed
deeply into the real science of the game of golf. He was a wonderful man
in many respects. He applied his marvellous scientific knowledge and
powers of investigation to everything that came his way. One day he
would be extracting cube roots from the most unsuspected quarters, and
another he would be analysing the character and formation of the ripples
on the surface of a viscous liquid. A few flourishes of the knife
of science, a sharp explosion with one of his specially prepared
_formulæ_--consisting of the most wonderful combinations of the ν’s, the
γ’s, the τ’s, and the φ’s--and the common but stubborn thing of everyday
life was made to yield up its innermost secrets, so that thenceforward
it was regarded in a quite different way from that which it had been in
the past.

Nothing was sacred from the application of the Professor’s science, and
golf was not; but to the credit of the game be it said that some of its
scientific problems baffled this great man of science as nothing else
that he had ever tackled before so seriously had done. He spent weeks,
months, and even years, in occasional periods, upon it; he employed the
most intelligent men of science with marvellous powers of reckoning as
his assistants, he bombarded the game with the most terrible _formulæ_
that even he had ever invented; but golf still held the upper hand and
retained some of its secrets, while it often smiled derisively at the
Professor when it had sent him a long way along a false path. The
Professor would not give up. He returned always to the attack, and golf
and he came to closer grips. He did, indeed, obtain many wonderful
secrets from its possession, and he found out more about it--all of it
very wonderful and very interesting--than any man had ever done before,
or possibly ever will do again. Now and again he told his learned
brethren of the difficult nature of the task that he had entered on.
Before he died he had found out most things, but golf still held some
secrets from him.

Many of the things that he knew, and the way in which he found them out,
were never published to the golfing world. He issued one or two papers
of a quite popular character, and very elementary; but they did not
contain a tithe of what he had discovered or say how he had discovered
it. Here we will try to tell the golfer a little of what the Professor
found out about the things that happen when the ball is driven from the
tee. They will interest him, and perhaps cause him some surprise. Only
those conclusions will be given which he proved beyond question, and the
truth of them must generally be taken for granted, as it may be safely,
since the professor’s lines of study would take a volume to expound
with any lucidity, and even then a considerable scientific knowledge on
the part of the reader would first of all be necessary.


II

It should be said that, while the Professor played a little golf
himself, and was much in love with St. Andrews as a resort, what led him
in the first place to make his investigations was watching the play of
his famous golfing son, Fred Tait. A few idle, fanciful conjectures on
the flight of the ball that was sent skimming through the air from
Freddie’s driver led to a more serious calculation, and then, like a
siren, the great mystery of golf drew him on. But early in his
investigations he committed himself to the statement that nobody could
drive a golf ball that would have a carry of more than 180 or 190 yards
without exerting at least three times the strength that is generally
exerted by a strong man when driving; that is to say, that a carry of
such distance was practically impossible. But this statement was no
sooner before the public than young Fred proved the fallacy of it, by
celebrating his twenty-third birthday by driving a record ball which had
considerably more carry than that.

“Stuff! Humbug!” said the Professor; but the fact was there, and when
the golf world came to know about it, they asked the Professor what was
the use of all his calculating--and to this day that error is chiefly
what is remembered by the general public about his investigations. This
incident may have been largely responsible for the fact that thereafter
he only once or twice let the golfers into the secrets of what he was
doing and had found out, reserving the story of his investigations for
learned bodies who were most closely concerned about them.

The mistake that he made, which was exposed to him by his son, set him
out on a new line of thought, and showed him vaguely where his error
was, though not the nature of it. And the discovery which he made at the
outset was a startling one, and it may cause some astonishment to the
player of to-day who will reflect upon it for a moment. The steadiest,
most constant, and most persistent force with which we are generally
acquainted is the force of gravity. It is always there; it acts
unceasingly upon everything. To defeat gravity, therefore, is almost for
a while to suspend the working of Nature. Suddenly it burst upon the
mind of the Professor that the golf ball was made as it were to defeat
gravity, and so in a sense it does. He found this out by observing the
time of flight of the ball, and discovering that it was nearly twice as
long as it ought to be, if gravity had free and unfettered play. This is
to say, that if gravity were allowed to act in the usual way on the ball
from start to finish, as it acts on other things, it was quite
inevitable by all the laws of nature and science that a drive of
200 yards would be completed in three and a half seconds. If a man threw
a ball so as to describe as nearly as possible the same trajectory as a
golf ball, and to stop at the same spot, it would only take three and a
half seconds. But the golf ball takes six and a half seconds! Somehow or
other it was clear that gravity was being beaten all the way. If it were
not so, it would be impossible for the golf ball to remain in the air
so long while it was accomplishing such a short flight. That was the
great mystery that the professor had to solve, and he solved it at last.
It may be said here, in passing, and will be more fully explained
another time, that he found out that it was due to the rotation given to
the ball by the club, and the nature of the stroke when it was struck
from the tee, a rotation which in many ways was responsible for some
most extraordinary happenings; all of which the golfer will be a much
wiser man for having knowledge of. But before he could go thoroughly
into the mystery of this rotation he had to make many other preliminary
investigations, and some of the results of these may be quoted.

One of the Professor’s first efforts was in the direction of finding out
the speed with which the ball left the club; and it was a long
time--years, in fact--before he came to any definite understanding on
the point; so difficult did he find the investigation, despite all the
experiments he made, the _formulæ_ that he applied to them, and the
scientific instruments that he brought to bear on the problem. He had a
very capable observer, Mr. T. Hodge, making examinations of the flight
of balls driven in actual play at St. Andrews, by the help of the
instrument known as the Bashforth Chronograph, with which the speed of
bullets is measured; and, what with the results arrived at in this way
and others, he came to the conclusion that the initial speed of the ball
was over 500 feet a second, which speed, of course, was lost very
quickly as the resistance of the air was encountered.

With this as his starting-point, he made many deductions; but
subsequently he found that he was wrong in the original assumption.

A vast number of calculations and experiments followed. In a cellar he
constructed a complicated pendulum arrangement, to the bob of which
there was attached a large screen with a thick clay surface, and against
this he got several well-known golfers to drive their hardest, and made
the most minute calculations as to the effect upon the pendulum. The
clay was scattered in all directions, damage was done, and the golfers
complained that under such circumstances they were not able to drive
their best. The pendulum and the strangeness of the whole arrangement
“put them off.” Some time afterwards he constructed an improved
pendulum, the clay screen being fixed on to lengths of clock spring, and
when this was placed in a doorway the golfers were again set to drive at
it.

What with one thing and another the Professor at last came to the final
and definite conclusion, that the ball started from the club at a speed,
in the case of a good drive, of about 240 feet a second, but that in the
case of exceptional balls it sometimes was as much as 300 or even
350 feet per second. This, of course, was with the gutta ball; and the
resiliency and initial speed of the rubber-cored ball being certainly
much greater, it is fair to believe that the average initial speed of a
well-driven ball in these days is quite 300 feet a second; or, to put it
in another way, over two hundred miles an hour. Great as this speed
appears, it might be mentioned incidentally that the muzzle velocity of
a bullet from a Maxim gun is generally about 2000 feet a second, or
about seven times as fast.


III

While he was at work on these reckonings he dispelled one fallacy,
which, notwithstanding, is commonly held by golfers to the present day.
Most players think that when driving and following through well the ball
hangs on the face of the club, as it were, for long enough for the club
to do something in the way of guiding it. How brief is the time in which
the actual stroke is made for good or ill was proved conclusively in a
very striking manner, and that time was set down--the whole time of
impact--as that in which the club, moving at 300 feet a second, passed
through about four times the linear space by which the side of the ball
was flattened. Putting this space down, nowadays, at about ⅛ in., and
reckoning the time that it would take the club going at the speed
indicated to cover that small distance, we have the fact that the
duration of impact is only about 1/7000th of a second, and that that is
the whole time that the golfer has for the guiding of the ball! As the
Professor said, “the ball has, in fact, left the club behind before it
has been moved through more than a fraction of its diameter”; and in the
case of the gutta, with the smaller extent to which it flattened on the
club, he came to the conclusion that the duration of impact was far less
than that which has just been mentioned.

Incidentally in this connection he took occasion to expose another of
the golfer’s fallacies as to the effect of wind on the flight of the
ball, in the following words: “It is well to call attention to a
singularly erroneous notion very prevalent among golfers, namely, that
a following wind carries a ball onwards! Such an idea is, of course,
altogether absurd, except in the extremely improbable case of wind
moving faster than the initial speed of the ball. The true way of
regarding matters of this kind is to remember that there is always
resistance while there is relative motion of the ball and the air, and
that it is less as that relative motion is smaller, so that it is
reduced throughout the path (of flight) when there is a following wind.
Another erroneous idea somewhat akin to this is that a ball rises
considerably higher when driven against the wind, and lower if with the
wind, than it would if there were no wind. The difference (whether it is
in excess or deficit will depend on the circumstances of projection,
notably on the spin) is in general very small; the often large apparent
rise or fall being due mainly to perspective as the vertex of the path
is brought considerably nearer to or farther from the player.”

And Professor Tait was led to make a definite pronouncement on the
particular kind of weather in which a ball will fly best and farthest.
What golfers do not generally realise is that the atmospheric resistance
to the flight of their ball is much greater than in simple proportion to
its speed; it is as the square of the speed. This is to say, that if one
ball is driven twice as fast as another to begin with, the resistance to
that ball is four times as great as it is to the slower one. It is this
fact which makes it so difficult to get extra length, beyond a good
length, on to a ball, no matter what improvements are made in the ball.
Therefore, on the weather question the Professor set it down that, “Of
course, other circumstances being the same, the only direct effect is on
the co-efficient of resistance. If this be taken as proportional
(roughly) to the density of the air, it may vary, in this climate, to
somewhere about 10 per cent. of its greatest value, and the drive is
accordingly shortest on a dry, cold winter day with an exceptionally
high barometer. The longest drive will, of course, be when the air is as
warm and moist as possible, and the barometer very low.”

But he probed most deeply into the mysteries of the flight of the golf
ball when he came suddenly to understand the rotation which was
subjected to it by the club, and it is of interest and importance to
every golfer that he should understand it also. The starting-point of
the wonderful investigations that he made is contained first in the
simple fact that when an object is poised in the air there is equal
atmospheric pressure upon it at all points; and second, that, as several
of the most eminent scientists before him, from Newton onwards, had
found out, when a sphere rotates in a current of air the side of the
sphere which is advancing to meet the current is subject to greater
pressure than is that which is moving in the direction of the current;
and a step further in this argument is that, as the result of this extra
pressure, if a spherical ball be rotating, and at the same time
advancing in still air, it will deviate from a straight path in the same
direction as that in which its front side is being carried by the
rotation.

Therefore, when a ball is sliced, it is made to spin round so that its
front side moves round constantly to the right, and, in accordance with
the law just mentioned, there is a greater atmospheric pressure on the
left side than on the right, and, consequently, the ball is pushed away
to the right--as we see it. When it is pulled, the spin is in the
opposite direction, and the extra pressure is from the right, and so it
is sent away to the left. When the ball is topped the spin on the front
side is downwards, and the ball ducks--the extra pressure this time
being in the same direction as gravity; and when under-cut is applied,
and under-spin follows, the front side of the ball is spinning upwards,
and the extra pressure is from below and against gravity.

When this conclusion was first briefly stated, golfers resisted the
suggestion that when driving they imparted any under-spin to the ball;
but the Professor stuck to his point, and proved it beyond doubt, and it
is in this way that the ball takes six and a half seconds over its
flight instead of the three and a half that it would otherwise do; and
he proved, moreover, that if there was no under-spin imparted to it when
driving it would only travel about half the distance that it usually
does. The greater the under-spin the greater the upward pressure, and
this conclusion leads to others very interesting.


IV

Golfers are in the way of saying that this ball “flies well” or that the
other ball “does not fly well.” Sometimes it is imagination born of lack
of form; but when great players concur it is not imagination. Some balls
are obviously better than others--made of better material, better
elastic thread, and more carefully constructed. There is an evident
reason why such balls should fly better than others; that is to say,
why they should go off the club more quickly, keep their place in the
air longer, and travel farther. But then there are many balls of
absolutely first-rate quality--and maximum price--that vary considerably
in their flying properties, and it very commonly happens that even balls
out of the same box, made at the same time and in the same way and of
the same stuff, vary also. One frequently finds one or two “bad” balls
in a box, and one or two very good ones. The excellent player very soon
knows when he has come by the good ones and the bad ones. Now why, under
such circumstances, should these balls vary so? What is it that makes
them vary? Golfers in general do not know. Often enough they put it down
to “pure cussedness”; others, to an idea that it is due to some
accidental flaw in the manufacture. It is neither the one nor the other.

The scientific explanation is really a very simple one, and it was set
forth very lucidly by Professor Tait. The perfect ball--using the
adjective in its most absolute sense--is that which has its centre of
gravity, that is to say its centre of weight, dead in the centre of the
ball, the centre of measurement. It is by no means to be assumed that
these two centres must necessarily coincide. For them to do so exactly
is an ideal state, and while matter and man are what they are, and
subject to their constant, even though slight, deviations, it is
unattainable. But when a ball is properly cored and properly covered,
most carefully and by the most exact machinery, the two centres come
very near together, and generally, to all intents and purposes, do
coincide. That they do not always do so exactly is merely because the
greatest human effort is incapable of achieving the scientific ideal,
and it must constantly happen that, despite all that effort, the
distances between the two centres vary a little. Practically no effort
can prevent it, particularly when the exigencies of circumstances demand
that balls should be turned out weekly in tens of thousands, and at a
price of not more than two shillings each. Now and again the separation
of the centres will be greater than normal--accidental again--and then
you get a really bad ball, with much bias upon it. When the centre of
weight is not at centre of measurement, it means that the ball in effect
is heavier on one side than the other, biassed, and that is practically
equal to its being not round. Suppose you inserted a small piece of lead
just inside the cover of a ball and closed it up again, shaping it as
perfectly as it was before. The effect of this would be to remove the
centre of weight very far towards that side, and you would have a great
exaggeration of the difference between the two centres that commonly
exists. If you laid that ball on a table it would promptly roll round
until the weighted or biassed side were underneath. If you floated it in
water it would wobble about until eventually it did the same thing; and
if you floated it in air it would wobble again, and such wobbling would
obviously be detrimental to its straight and even flight. There you have
it. The farther the two centres are from each other--from the ideal
state of absolute coincidence--the greater must be the tendency towards
a wobbly or uneven flight, and diminished rotation, and consequently
towards a short flight. In the case of many balls other than golf
balls, these variations are very considerable. You have an extreme
example when a football is out of shape, and it can be seen to make
zigzags in the air. But the flight of footballs, or even cricket balls,
is not such a delicate and susceptible thing as the flight of a golf
ball at its far greater pace.

Professor Tait pointed out two very simple ways of finding out whether a
golf ball had its two centres approximately coincident, and whether in
consequence it ought to and would fly well. The first was by floating it
in a bath of brine or mercury and noticing whether it wobbled or turned
over. Many golfers are acquainted with this test, and employ it in a
cruder and less decisive form by floating the ball in water. While a
ball that had a fairly considerable separation between its two centres
might not show any wobbling movement when floated in water, and
consequently might not completely establish its claim to be properly
centered and of good flying capacity so far as this part of its
properties was concerned, the presumption would be greatly in its
favour. On the other hand, that which did show any perceptible wobble in
water would be self-condemned at once, and would undoubtedly be a bad
flyer and a danger to the game of the good golfer.

The second test is one of comparison, and is exceedingly simple. You
cannot compare the flying capacities of two or more balls by driving
them with golf clubs, for however near to exact similarity you may think
the strokes to have been, there is certain to have been an appreciable
scientific and mathematical difference, such as would make a proper
comparison impossible. But you may give practically exactly the same
initial impetus in exactly the same circumstances to two or more balls
by shooting them in the same direction from a crossbow, when the string
is always pulled out to exactly the same point. Here you will have the
balls flying under the simplest possible conditions, with no spin to
complicate the flight and interfere with the comparison, and anyone who
takes the trouble to make this experiment will find that some balls will
regularly fly farther than others when shot forward in this manner. If
the size and the weights are the same, these balls are better centered
and better flyers, and it is an easy matter for any player to establish
a standard by this test, and to judge of the perfection of any
particular ball at a moment’s notice. Of course such a test takes no
account of the resiliency of the ball; but then, as every player knows,
there is a clear difference between good resiliency and good flying
properties. In the old days of the gutta, when so much depended upon the
even quality of the material all through the ball--and these were, of
course, the days when Professor Tait made his investigations and
experiments, and drew his conclusions--the variations between centres
were greater than they are now, though not so great as in the early
period of the rubber-core, when the winding and covering machinery were
imperfect. Rubber-cored balls have lately begun to be covered by winding
very thin strips of the covering material round the core in just the
same way that the core itself is wound, and this should greatly conduce
towards more accurate centering. An understanding of the foregoing will
help the player towards an appreciation of some of the chief points of a
good ball, and he will see how extreme is the necessity for perfect
winding machinery and for the most careful supervision of the process.
Nobody calls for a hand-made ball in these days: he wouldn’t get it if
he did; and it wouldn’t be any good if he got it, for the chances would
be enormously against its being so well centered as one made by
machinery.


V

Now, however good the ball might be, the chances would be against a
perfect stillness upon any axis during flight; that is, of course, when
no initial spin was imparted to it by the way in which the stroke was
played. It would very likely turn just a little upon an axis, and that
little would unsteady and injure its flight, inasmuch as the wobble
would be from side to side alternately. This difficulty can be got over
by imparting an initial spin to the ball which will always be the same
all through its flight, and which will thus stop the wobbling. In a
word, rotation will steady the flight. This idea was originally at the
bottom of the rifling of the barrel through which a bullet is projected;
certainly it was the fundamental principle of the rifling of the old
32-pounders. Better to make the ball rotate on an axis that you know
about than that it should wobble on one you do not know about, they
said; and so the tubes were rifled inside, the balls were made to
rotate, and their flight was made steadier and therefore longer.

In the very earliest days of his investigations upon the flight of the
golf ball, Professor Tait thought of the application of this idea to the
game. A rotation should be given to the ball to steady its flight and
make it longer. A moment’s thought on the part of those whose
rudimentary scientific knowledge is a little rusty, will indicate that
there are three definite and clearly distinguished axes of rotation. One
is a vertical one, and it is chiefly upon that axis that the golf ball
rotates when it is pulled or sliced, or upon an axis that has something
of the vertical element in it. Then there is the horizontal axis, which
is at right angles to the line of flight; and this is the axis upon
which it rotates when either under-spin or top has been applied to it.
And, thirdly, there is the horizontal axis, which is parallel with the
line of flight. This is the axis upon which the rifle bullet spins. At
first Professor Tait was inclined to the idea that the last-named would
be the ideal axis for the rotation of the golf ball, but it happens to
be the one upon which it is impossible to make it rotate when struck by
a golf club. However, in this detail of his preliminary theorising he
was wrong, due entirely to his not having then investigated the virtues
of under-spin as always given to a ball when well driven, and not having
come by the great discovery that this under-spin helped the ball to
resist gravity and prolong its flight as nothing else could. How exactly
under-spin does this, we have just seen, and readers will now have a
very definite perception of the qualities of a ball and the importance
of rotation, and though the chief advantage of rotation is in resisting
gravity, it is an incidental advantage of it, as will now be understood,
that the flight of the ball is thereby steadied, and a very slight
inaccuracy in centering made of less consequence than it would otherwise
be. But remember that a considerable inaccuracy in centering will
interfere with the rotation, and therefore the bad flying ball can
still be distinguished, because it will fly badly.


VI

Now, in continuation of this brief and simple exposition of some of the
points of the Professor’s theorising--backed up by constant practical
experiment--upon the merits of under-spin in prolonging and lengthening
the flight of the ball which created excited comment in the world of
golf at the time, much smaller as that world was then than it is now, it
may be mentioned that it was his fair conclusion that good driving lay
not in powerful hitting, but in the proper apportionment of good hitting
with such a knack as would give the right amount of proper spin to the
ball. Thus, while a player who gave no spin to his ball might attain a
carry of 136 yards, another one who hit his ball with just the same
force, giving it the same initial speed, but also a moderate amount of
under-spin, would get a carry of 180 yards. Of course there would be a
great difference between the trajectories of the two flights. By an
experiment on a small scale he showed very conclusively what under-spin
did. By shooting a ball from a very weak bow, but with the string just
below the middle of the ball, so as to impart a slight spin, he made the
ball fly point blank to a mark thirty yards off. When he drew the string
to the same distance, but applied it to the middle of the ball, it fell
eight feet short. It had no under-spin the second time.

Another point is extremely interesting. Some golfers no doubt think
that in driving they have to cock their balls up in the air, so to
speak; that is to say, that they have to aim at an upward trajectory
from the beginning. As a matter of fact they have to do nothing of the
kind, and as a matter of common knowledge the best balls, as driven by a
Vardon or a Braid or any other first-class player, always “start low”
and keep a path quite close to the ground for some distance, after which
they begin to rise. If there were no under-spin the ball could not keep
this horizontal path for the time that it does; still less could it
begin to rise afterwards. It is the under-spin that does it, and the
theoretically perfect drive is the one that is hit straight forward with
practically no initial elevation or incline. The character of the stroke
gives to the ball the necessary under-spin and power to rise, and the
way in which the club comes on to the ball in a stroke so perfectly
executed makes any considerable initial elevation impossible, just as it
is not wanted. But mark, that if the golfer has not acquired the proper
knack of driving--_i.e._ the proper knack of imparting just the right
kind and right amount of underspin--then he will need some initial
elevation in order to keep his ball in the air; and so he has to depart
intentionally from the proper principles of driving, and deliberately
cock up his ball, even though slightly. How his driving suffers in
consequence may be gathered by taking the extreme case of no under-spin
at all, upon which Professor Tait says: “When there is no rotation there
must be initial elevation, and even if we make it as great as one in
four, the requisite speed of projection for a carry of 250 yards would
be 1120 feet per second, or about that of sound.” Now, as the actual
speed of projection in the case of a fine drive by a first-class player
is not more than 350 feet per second, the reader may have some idea as
to how hard he would have to hit if he were dispensing with rotation. Of
course “a carry of 250 yards” is extremely long, and is rarely if ever
done in the absence of a helping wind from behind, but the Professor had
just been speaking of the practicability of such a carry “in still air.”
Even though it be abnormal, the vast disparity between an initial speed
of the ball of 350 feet per second and one of 1120 feet will make the
point clear.


VII

The most interesting question arises, that if the well-driven ball
starts off almost horizontally and then begins to ascend, what is the
line of its flight or its trajectory? Golfers generally have the crudest
notions on this point. For the most part they seem to assume that the
trajectory is represented by an even segment of a circle, having its
vertex or highest point just about half-way along. This is absolutely
wrong. Even if there were no spin at all, this would not be the case,
the vertex being much nearer the end of the flight than the beginning of
it, as in the case of the rifle bullet. On the other hand, many players
on seeing a ball well driven constantly remark on what they think is
after all a fancy of theirs, that when the ball has gone a long way it
suddenly seems to take a new lease of life, and to rise up in the air
before moving down towards earth. They will be surprised to know that it
is not fancy, that the ball does rise. The fact is that the line of
flight of a well-driven ball with under-spin, from its starting to its
highest point, is partly concave upwards, and this fact is only evident
to the eye when it has travelled some distance. Such a ball is in effect
the pull or the slice turned round from the flat in an upward direction.
Eventually gravity gets the better of the ball and pulls it down.

With the help of the _formulæ_ that he prepared after several years’
study of the matter, and with the assistance of Mr. Wood, whom he
regarded as the quickest and most accurate reckoner of abstruse
scientific quantities that he had ever encountered, the professor
calculated exactly the trajectories of golf balls driven under many
different circumstances. Among them he showed the short line of the
flight of a ball to which no initial rotation or under-spin was
imparted. While the other balls were started off almost horizontally, it
was necessary in this case to give the ball an initial elevation of
15 degrees--that is to deliberately hit it upwards at that angle--in
order to make it rise at all. Regarding this trajectory Professor Tait
said most significantly that it is “characteristic of a well-known class
of drives, usually produced when a too high tee is employed, and the
player stands somewhat behind his ball. Notice particularly how much the
carry and time of flight are reduced, though the initial speed is the
same. The slight under-spin makes an extraordinary difference,
producing, as it were, an unbending of the path throughout its whole
length, and thus greatly increasing the portion above the horizon.” The
run of this ball on alighting is greater than in the other cases, owing
to there being no backspin, but it cannot make up for the short flight.

Concerning another short drive of the same class, Professor Tait
remarks: “In spite of its 50 per cent. greater angle of initial
elevation, the carry of the non-rotating projectile is little more than
half that of the other, and it takes only one-third of the time spent by
the other in the air. But the contrast shows how much more important (so
far as carry is concerned) is a moderate amount of under-spin than large
initial elevation. And we can easily see that initial elevation, always
undesirable (unless there is a hazard close to the tee), as it exposes
the ball too soon to the action of the wind where it is strongest, may
be entirely dispensed with.”

A question which may have been in the reader’s mind for some time is as
to whether, since the effect of under-spin is to make the trajectory
turn upwards as it were, excessive under-spin would not result in the
ball taking an absolutely upward trajectory and then curling over and
right round. In actual practice so much under-spin could not be put on
to a golf ball as would enable it to get the better of gravity and other
circumstances to this extent, but theoretically such an evolution would
be described if the conditions were equal to it. Professor Tait says:
“The kink can be obtained in a striking manner when we use as a
projectile one of the large balloons of thin rubber which are so common.
We have only to ‘slice’ the balloon sharply downwards in a nearly
vertical plane with the flat hand.” It must be remembered that in the
case of a very bad slice the ball sometimes does actually curl right
round towards the finish of its run.


VIII

There are many other incontrovertible and very interesting conclusions
arrived at as the result of the reckoning of this distinguished
scientist which one would like to discuss if there were room for it. It
is enough to say at the finish that while these reflections will serve
to give the golfer a more intelligent view of the scientific aspect of
the game and its mysteries, and very likely even tend to a change in his
policy in some departments, he will not be led towards any disbelief in
the standard methods of good driving or to any deliberate seeking or
regulation of under-spin, the fact being that more than a century of
play and groping about in unscientific darkness brought the player to
the discovery of the way in which the longest ball could be obtained,
_i.e._ to the way in which translatory force and rotation were blended
to the best effect. The stance and the swing, when properly performed
with a proper driver, bring about that blend, though generally the
player has been blissfully unconscious of the part they have played in
conveying rotation to the ball. A pregnant paragraph by the scientist
may be quoted at the end: “The pace which the player can give the
clubhead at the moment of impact depends to a very considerable extent
on the _relative_ motion of his two hands (to which is due the ‘nip’)
during the immediately preceding two-hundredth of a second, while the
amount of beneficial spin is seriously diminished by even a trifling
upward concavity of the path of the head during the ten-thousandth of a
second occupied by the blow. It is mainly in apparently trivial matters
like these, which are placidly spoken of by the mass of golfers under
the general title of knack, that lie the very great differences in
drives effected under precisely similar external conditions by players
equal in strength, agility, and (except to an extremely well-trained and
critical eye) even in style.”

I should explain that all these things were told by Professor Tait, not
in simple language to an assembly of golfers, but in complicated terms
to a learned body of scientists, and I have thus endeavoured to explain
his meaning in a manner that all can understand, and in some cases--as
in that of the question of the proper centering of the rubber-cored ball
to carry it forward to its application to the new conditions of play
that have been introduced since his life and studies came to an end.


IX

What is the longest possible drive by our best driver under the best
conditions? That is a question which it is impossible to answer, simply
because the best conditions cannot be defined. In practical golf they
are an impossible ideal, and one never knows how far in certain existing
circumstances that ideal is approached. This brings us to see the
futility of comparing one drive with another, or even of regarding any
particular drive as the best on record, in the sense that it was the
best that had ever been accomplished, just because it was the longest
that had been measured. The very slightest difference in the conditions,
or in the circumstances of the run of the ball, may cause one drive to
be what some people would call a record, and another, equally good in
execution and strength, to be comparatively poor. For example, think of
what enormous importance is the nature of the place on which the ball
gets its first pitch. Let it pitch against an incline ever so slight, or
against a knob in the ground no bigger than a pigeon’s egg, and the
sting of the shot is plucked. As in the case of so many other arguments,
this one as to the overwhelming influence of conditions in long driving,
and record driving, is best set forth by the _reductio ad absurdum_, and
it is sufficient to point out that if a child tapped a ball off a tee on
to a tolerably steep and smooth incline, the ball would run to the edge
of the world unless stopped by a change in the conditions.

It is more to the point--but not much more--to consider how far a ball
might be driven under conditions which might be described an nearly
ideal, but strictly fair in the sense that the force of gravity by means
of an incline, or wind, should not assist in the propulsion of the ball,
while on the other hand neither wind nor slope should be adverse to it.
To create such nearly ideal conditions, under which we would solve this
question as to the longest possible drive, we would need to enclose a
long shed or gallery, down which the ball was to travel, so that it
should be entirely protected from wind influence, and then we should
have to lay a special fairway of some smooth, hard substance that would
afford the least imaginable resistance and friction to the ball when
running. Asphalte would be good for this purpose, but polished marble or
granite would be better, and if some millionaire enthusiast desired to
solve this longest-possible-drive question these are the conditions
that I would recommend to him. Now, then, how long would that gallery
need to be? How far could that ball be driven? In the open, on perfectly
level and on smooth slippery turf, which after wind and warmth is at its
fastest, such as one gets often at St. Andrews, a drive that approached
320 yards would at the same time be approaching very near record for
fair conditions. We have this to work on. How many yards should we have
to put on for the perfect pitch and the perfectly level, hard, smooth,
and frictionless floor in our driving gallery? When you come to think it
over in this way, it is rather a pretty problem. Of course, in the
absence of the millionaire and the gallery, there is no satisfactory
answer, though Professor Tait would have made a close estimate possibly.
But put the question to the next party of golfers among whom you happen
to be included, and see what widely varying answers you will get. In the
meantime one may suggest 500 yards.




THE FABRIC OF THE GAME


I

We boast constantly of the traditions of our game of golf, and well may
we do so, for they are glorious, and they bring with them a great
responsibility for their perpetuation. Some day in the distant future a
far-off generation may be moved to build a Temple of Golf. There is the
nucleus of the idea already within the house of the Royal and Ancient
Club. In stone and on canvas it will tell the story of the great deeds
of the heroes of the past as it is told in the national palaces and
halls of England and of France.

In the path that will lead from the gates to the doors of the temple
there will be a giant monument of the fairest hero of them all. It will
show in white marble a lithe-limbed player at the finish of a
St. Andrews drive with his features alight with the full joy of the game
at the richest time of his youthful manhood--a fine, a happy, a lovable
face. On one side of the pedestal there will be depicted the trophies of
the links. On the other side there will be a terrier, of whom it shall
be indicated that his name was “Nails.” On the back of the pedestal
there will be a group of golfers, representing in them the golf world
far and wide, and they will be showing by their manner and their
actions that they are acclaiming their hero, and that they esteem him
for his golfing and manly worth and all his noble qualities. And on the
front of the pedestal there will be cut a scene of war, with the Riet
River flowing by, and in the shade of the trees on the bank there will
lie a prostrate figure with a smile still left on the happy face. It
will tell that a great soldier-golfer has done his duty, and that from
the African veldt his soul has gone forward to the consummation of its
greatness. No words will need to be carved on this monument of glory. It
will bear the simple inscription, “F. G. Tait. Died 1900,” and the men
who gaze upon it in the far-off time will bare and bow their heads, and
will walk silently into the temple.

There will be things to wonder at within. There will be the Hall of
Kings. Giant canvases will show Charleses and Jameses playing their game
of golf on the links of Leith, and there will be Mary Queen of Scots
with clubs in her hand on St. Andrews course. Further on there will be
King William IV. and his consort Adelaide, giving their countenance to
the game on historic occasions; and then there will surely be another
picture with the simple title “1863,” upon which will be recognised the
Prince of Wales, who became King Edward VII., being then in office as
captain of the premier club. Paintings of more modern date will show
Kaiser Wilhelm giving some encouragement to the golfers of the
Fatherland, and the King of Spain first wooing a British princess on the
course of Biarritz, and then paying his royal respects, but still humble
and sincere, to the game itself at San Sebastian. Kings and queens,
princes and princesses, golfers all, and earnest ones, players of a
right royal and ancient game.

There will be a Hall of Founders, in which will be immortalised the
great men who in the early times laid the foundations of the game, and
of its most historic institutions. The largest frame in the room will
hold a painting bearing the title “Magna Charta, 1553,” and the picture
will depict a scene in which the Provost and Magistrates of St. Andrews
are granting leave to Archbishop Hamilton to place rabbits on the links
at St. Andrews. The Archbishop is writing his signature to the parchment
which, with the authority of the chapter, ratifies and approves the
rights of the community to the links, more especially for the purpose of
“playing at golff, futball, schuteing at all gamis, with all uther maner
of pastyme.” There will be a fine picture of a man of noble countenance,
a wig upon his head and robes around him, as he is seated in his chair
with his hand upon a table where rests a mace. This is Duncan Forbes of
Culloden, Lord President of the Court of Session, and first captain of
the Gentlemen Golfers--now going by the name of the Honourable
Company--in 1744. A great man was Duncan Forbes, and he played for the
Silver Club. A poet of his own time sung of him:

   “Yea, here great Forbes, patron of the just,
    The dread of villains, and the good man’s trust,
    When spent with toils in serving humankind,
    His body recreates, and unbends his mind.”

There is evidence that he played for the club in 1745, and it is
believed that this must have been his last round, for the rising of the
clans just at that time compelled him to set out for the north, where
he exerted the utmost of his influence to prevent them from joining the
cause of the Young Pretender. There will be a picture of Francis, fifth
Earl of Wemyss, ancestor of great players, himself playing the game at
Gosford, and there will surely be recovered for that Temple the canvas
that we know, showing one of the most famous and the most worthy of the
fathers of golf, and another captain of the Company, William St. Clair
of Roslin, of whom it was said that his skill at golf and archery were
such that the common people thought that he must be in league with
Satan. “A man considerably above six feet, with dark-grey locks, a form
upright, but gracefully so, thin-flanked and broad-shouldered, built it
would seem for the business of war or the chase, a noble eye, of
chastened pride and undoubted authority, and features handsome and
striking in their general effect. As schoolboys we crowded to see him
perform feats of strength and skill in the old Scottish games of golf
and archery.” That is what was written of William St. Clair of Roslin by
Sir Walter Scott, and Sir George Chalmers painted the picture of him
addressing a golf ball, the picture that they must have in the Temple.
And there will be many others, all telling of the excellence and the
dignity and even the skill of those great golfers of the first age of
the game.

Then there will be a Hall of Science, and there will be a fresco on the
wall showing the great Professor Tait with compasses and instruments
calculating strange curves, many golf balls strewn about the ground.

And there will be one main Gallery of Masters, and there will be
perpetuated the names and forms and feats of the men who went farthest
in their skill at the noble game. There will be Allan Robertson and old
Tom Morris in a great foursome, and there will be a young man with a
wild look of fear on his face, stepping into a boat at North Berwick to
be sailed across the water to St. Andrews, where a loved one lay dying.
There will be Jamie Anderson and Bob Ferguson, triple Champions, and
there will be John Ball, Open and Amateur Champion at once and six times
Amateur Champion. He will be painted mounted on a charger going to the
war. There will be many masters besides.

In the centre there will be three statues grouped together. One of them
will be sculptured on an Athenian model. It will show a fine player at
the finish of his drive, and there will be on the base the simple
inscription “Style.” That will be Harry Vardon. Another will show a man
of stern countenance with thick wrists tightened upon a mashie, and that
will be named “Accuracy.” The man is Taylor. And the third of these
figures will show a man of solemn look, like that upon some ancient
busts. That will be “Perseverance,” and surely the people will know that
it is James Braid that is meant. The famous Triumvirate! Those future
golfers will walk their way through these halls and through the gallery
of the Temple of Golf that will be raised, and a great awe of the game
will come upon them. It is as if generations, ages of great golfers will
look hard but not unkindly at these passers-by, and will seem to cry
aloud, “We made it! We made it! Preserve it! Preserve it!” Not the game
alone, but its glory--its tradition.


II

There are many full-blooded golfers who, if in the light of knowledge
and experience they could have their choice to live their golfing lives
over again, with the special advantage of picking their own period and
place for play, would hold up their hands for Leith and the closing
years of the seventeenth century. They could be greatly earnest about
their golf in those days, and there was colour and richness about it.
Here it was that King Charles was playing his game when the news came to
him, according to famous tradition, of the insurrection and rebellion in
Ireland. And another future King of England is generally believed to
have played great games on Leith links, and perhaps the most interesting
monument of ancient golf that remains to us to-day is still to be found
in Edinburgh, commemorating a great game that was once played, in which
James, Duke of York, afterwards James II., had a hand. This house is
that old one in Canongate which is numbered 77, on the north side a
little above Queensberry House. On the wall above what at one time was
the doorway of this house there is a stone bearing this inscription in
Latin: “Cum victor ludo scotis qui proprius esset ter tres victores post
redimitus avos patersonus humo tunc educebat in altum hanc quae victores
tot tulit una domum”; and, separately, there is the line in English, “I
hate no person,” which effectually settles the name of the man most
concerned, as the letters of these words are nothing more than an
anagrammatical transposition of the letters of the name of John
Patersone, who is the hero of the story of the great game. High up, near
the top of this five-storey building, is another tablet bearing a coat
of arms, on which there are three pelicans and three mullets, while for
crest there is a dexter hand grasping a golf club, and the motto is “Far
and sure.” The point of the story is that this house was built by a poor
cobbler out of a share of the proceeds of a wager won by the Duke on a
foursome, in which he, the cobbler, was his partner.

The generally accepted story, in which there is no hole to be picked, is
that one day, during their attendance at the Scottish Court, two English
noblemen, who had played a little golf in their time, had a discussion,
in which the Duke of York joined, as to whether it were more of an
English or a Scottish game. Eventually it was determined that the
question, so far as their own satisfaction was concerned, should be
decided by an appeal to the game itself, that is to say, the Englishmen,
who affected to be of mind that it was an English game, agreed that they
would play the Duke and any other Scotsman that he would choose to
partner him for a large stake of money. The Duke conceived that he could
do himself a little good in the affair, since his acceptance of such a
challenge and his standing forward in the name of Scotland would be good
for the sustenance of his claim to the character of a Scot, and would
please the people of the country. So the match being made, the Duke sent
out agents to scour the town in search of the best partner for him that
they could find, and when found he was to be brought forward,
irrespective of his circumstances or his station in life. Eventually the
man whom they selected for this onerous task was the poor shoemaker who
went by the name of John Patersone. He was very fearful as to how he
should perform with so much responsibility depending upon him; but the
Duke was evidently a good golfer, to the extent that he encouraged his
partner and did his utmost to make him feel comfortable, whereupon
Patersone braced himself for the struggle and said that he would do his
best. The Duke and the cobbler were easily victorious, whereupon the
former gave his partner the half of the stake that he had won, and with
this money the house in Canongate was built, the Duke himself causing
the escutcheon, bearing the arms of the family of Patersone, to be fixed
in the wall.


III

It must be seen to that the canker of commercialism is never permitted
to eat its way into the game, for if it were the game would be ruined,
as other games and sports have been ruined in that way. It is not that
there is any serious danger of golf coming by such a fate, for its
people are too well imbued with what might be called the moral sporting
sense, and have too much discrimination to permit themselves to be
deceived by the insidiousness of the temptations of the commercial
adventurer. But it is well that the situation and its weaknesses should
be fully realised, so that all players and lovers of the game, of high
and low degree, and of long experience and short, may be fully alive to
them, and so on their guard. And it must be considered, at the outset of
any reflection upon such matters as this, as the most simple and
elementary principle, and that which is most indisputable, that there
is money in everything in which masses of people take an interest, and
the greater the interest the more money is there in it--money for the
adventurers who come forward to feed that interest in whatsoever guise
they may come. Golf has become a passion with a large section of
mankind, and therefore there is much money in it for those who will
humour this passion, and there are many evidences that the outside world
is not unappreciative of this circumstance.

It is said by some of the best judges of golf, that the rubber-cored
ball has spoiled the game. That is a matter upon which opinions to some
extent differ; but at all events it can hardly be held that the new ball
has improved the game, that is to say, that it has made it any better
game than it used to be, though it may be admitted that, by making it
easier to play, it has resulted in greater enjoyment being given to a
vast number of people than would have been if it had never been
introduced. But, in any case, why have we the rubber-cored ball in
practically exclusive use at the present time, when the feeling of the
golf world on its first introduction was overwhelmingly against it? It
is due entirely to commercialism, to that and to nothing else. If
enterprising business men who cared for their bank accounts first and
their golf afterwards, had not seen that there were fortunes in the
rubber-cored ball if it were forced on the players, there would have
been no rubber-cored ball to-day. The golfing public was quite compelled
to use it, though it may not have been realised at the time, and one
result was that the game had to pass through a period of unrest and
inconvenience lasting for three or four seasons, while courses were
being altered and lengthened, the new ball was being improved, and its
various manufacturers were engaged in the attempt to exterminate each
other, and there was a foolish interest generated in the breaking day by
day of the record scores of courses. All this upheaval was due entirely
to the introduction of an alien element into the spirit of the links,
the element of commercialism. Of course one must admit that it is this
commercialism that brings about many of the greatest aids to our
completer civilisation and comfort, and it has not to be regarded as an
enemy to all things. It is the moving spirit of progress and
improvement; but it is not generally welcome to golf, because we want
neither progress nor improvement in the actual game of golf, but simply
the game as it has been handed down to us. In this matter we are
entirely and wisely conservative. With the rubber ball in vogue, the
case now is that a great industry has been built up, in which there are
hundreds of thousands of pounds of capital involved, and in the outer
zone of golf there is a desperate war being waged by rival
manufacturers. The golf world has to take care that this war is kept
where it is, and perhaps all the better if it goes on.

Generally such a thing is to the benefit of the golfer; but all the time
there are guerilla raids into the inner zone, and while the amateur
player has not been in any way affected by this commercialism, that can
hardly be said of all others associated with the game. Business is not
sport, and sport is not business, and to a certain extent the
legitimate interests of the golfer and the ball manufacturer are opposed
in this matter. Just as it was with bicycles in their “boom” days, and
as it is with motors now, it is to the interests of manufacturers to get
their specialities used on important occasions, and when successes are
likely to be made with them. The certificate of merit which is thus
given is very valuable and is talked about. The less thoughtful public
says to itself, “Surely, then, this thing is better than others,” and
buys it accordingly. Such a conclusion is not logical, and, of course,
is quite unwarranted. Successes achieved with it certainly indicate that
there cannot be anything wrong with an article, but they do not prove
superiority. They could only do that if it were established beforehand
that the human element in the equation were either inferior or not more
than equal to the human elements in opposition. It is the same as if
they were to advertise and make a great point of the fact that the
winner of the Derby was saddled with a particular make of saddle. But in
the racing world they believe primarily in their horses. The case with
golf at present is not in the least serious. One may feel sure there is
no danger of amateur players giving way to money temptations of any
sort, or temptations in kind either. The sporting sentiment of the game
is too strong for that. If it were not for that the fear for the safe
future of golf would be great. Every sport that has been attacked in
this way has been killed from the point of view of good health and
purity.

There is another possible contingency, though as yet a remote one, in
which commercialism may infringe injuriously upon the game, and that is
in exploiting it as a spectacle and charging “gate money” to the public.
Some people say that golf is not a game that can be used as a spectacle
like football and cricket; but that is not entirely true. The interest
that is created in cricket and football matches is largely of an
artificial and manufactured character. A good drive at golf is quite as
fine a thing to look at as a snick to the boundary on the cricket field.
Where the difference comes in from the public point of view at present
is in the fact that in the case of an important cricket match the public
are brought to understand that an enhanced value is attached to each
stroke, and therefore there is the more interest in watching it played.
Would there not be at least as much public interest in watching a great
player attempt to hole a curly two-yard putt if a championship or a side
wager of a couple of hundred pounds were depending on it? The
temperament of the spectator counts for something in this question of
what is a good game for a spectacle, and it has to be remembered that
the temperaments of the British sporting crowds have been trained
towards cricket and football. Fifteen years ago there was not more than
a tenth of the number of spectators at the big football matches as there
are in these days, though there were practically as many of them played.
And that golf has an attraction, which might very easily become an
overpowering one for the spectator, was proved when the international
foursome between the leading professionals for £400 was played in 1905,
when, on three courses in different parts of the country, there was an
average attendance of spectators of about ten thousand each day. That
was simply because the match had been talked about and a special
interest had become attached to it.

On one of these courses “gate money” was charged, and again in 1906, on
the occasion of another professional foursome, a charge for admission to
the course to see the play was made by the local club. It has been
mutely understood as a principle that no such charges should ever be
made, being a violation of the spirit in which golf is played--the
spirit that suggests that the game is for the men who play it, and for
nobody else--and it can be fancied that the success of the “gate” on
these occasions may have put ideas into the minds of enterprising
commercial people, as indeed it is known it did. There is the danger,
then, that some time an attempt may be made to hold golf matches as a
show. If it were successful it would mean a complete upheaval of the
game. If the professionals found that they “drew” to the extent of
hundreds of pounds at a time, they would naturally be discontented with
moderate fees for playing. They would demand shares of the gate; they
would receive perhaps hundreds for playing on important occasions, and
the modest, unassuming working professional, as we know him now, would
exist no longer, the cohesion between the two sections in our little
state of golf would be loosened, amateurism might suffer if only by the
sense of mediocrity that would be thrust upon it, and the game would not
be the same. All the tricks of trades would come into golf at
once--“signing on,” bartering, bluffing, and even cheating. Considering
the enormous “boom” in golf that is going on at present, and the
millions of money that are spent on it in one way and another, it is
wonderful that it has retained its purity,--not wonderful, perhaps,
when you take the moral sporting quality of the golfer into
consideration,--but still wonderful on an ordinary reckoning. Its
continued purity may have given rise to an exaggerated sense of
security. Certainly none of us can believe in the possibility of its
sinking to the state which has just been suggested; but it is better to
realise that the facts are as stated, and that there is the chance of
such a thing happening at some future time, so that at the first sign of
the enemy’s advance the golf world may be armed and ready to attack and
kill it. It is one of those evils that will come insidiously when it
does come, and will have gained a hold before we are aware of its
presence.

Another feature of this increase of commercialism in relation to golf is
in the realisation of the magnetic power of the game by promoters of
building estates, and private persons who exploit the game in one way or
another, chiefly through the medium of new courses. In these cases there
is no great harm done, but they are an infringement in some sense of the
principle that the game should not be played for the benefit of other
people. Everywhere speculators in estates are making golf courses first
and building houses afterwards; and the other day, when such a course,
made with this object, was established not far from London, there were
“press views” and all the other accompaniments of the launching of a
commercial undertaking, while it was announced that to promote its
future success matches would be arranged between leading professionals,
and efforts would be made to enlist the sympathy of the public in
them--to the advantage of the speculators who were sinking their money
in the development of this estate. We do not like the look of this. Here
the game is to be played not for the sake of the game altogether, but
for these proprietors of land and houses. It is most obvious
commercialism. And it is certainly not golf.

Some golfers may say that after all they are not very much affected by
this sort of thing so far, and are not likely to be. Is it worth while
bothering about? they may ask. A man who has the true spirit of the
links within him will not ask the question, nor will he think that this
writer has laboured the warning that is hereby conveyed. Of all the
things in golf that matter the most for its future welfare, this is the
most important, for it might conceivably be a question of life and death
with the game, and it is time that the whole of the golf world
understood and appreciated, and then at every opportunity henceforth, in
small matters as well as in large ones, set itself against all
influences that are not for the good of the game. It is right and proper
that the makers of golfing goods should practise their commercialism to
the utmost extent of their capacity outside the area of the game, but
not inside our doors. It is ultimately to the advantage of the players
that they should do so. But except those who make these goods, we deny
that others who do not play have the right to make money out of our
game, if they might spoil it for ourselves in so doing.


IV

Just lately certain desperadoes, whom one need hardly say had no
connection with the premier club, held a bogey competition over the new
course at St. Andrews. A while previously some others were reported to
have held a similar contest over the old course itself, which was worse.
Here in St. Andrews it is almost held as a sin merely to mention the
name of bogey, or even to refer to it somewhat indefinitely as “the
Colonel.” All know that the Royal and Ancient Club will have nothing
whatever to do with the idea of bogey competitions, and though they are
common enough in these days, you generally find the best class of
golfers of the old school fighting shy of the idea, and to the best
clubs, quite apart from the R. and A., the idea is still taboo. The
standpoint which these clubs and these men take is that ordinary
match-play is the true golf, and when it comes to needing a variation
from it for special purposes, there is the score game in reserve. These
two, they say, are ample for all purposes, and any other forms of golf
that may be invented are not real golf; they are more or less of
travesties, they are needless complications, and for the most part they
are the inventions of faddists, which, if universally sanctioned by the
community, would lead to the production of other fads even worse, so
that innumerable fantastic changes would be rung on this fine, simple
game of golf to its undoing, since it cannot possibly be better than, or
even so good as, in its simplest form. Already in some parts of the
country there are four-ball foursomes against bogey being played, and
some wild ideas for new-fangled competitions have been sent across the
Atlantic to us from America. That is why bogey is never so much as
mentioned at St. Andrews, and why the surest way that the Southron, on
making his first visit to the classic headquarters of the game, may be
made to feel uncommonly small and to wish that he had not been so
inquisitive, is to ask on playing the first hole--which often enough
leaves you a pretty stiff carry over the Swilcan Burn from your tee
shot,--whether it is a bogey 4 or 5. The town authorities notify you by
printed placard that they have the power by by-law to fine you for
playing on the old course with iron clubs only, and also for practising
putting on the eighteenth green, and one would never be much surprised
if it were made a matter of ten shillings and costs, or a week in
default, for playing there against old bogey. Certain it is that there
are many good golfers there who would be glad to hear of such a penalty.

The experienced man who tries to take a broad view of this minor
question of golfing politics generally comes to the conclusion that the
anti-bogeyists are quite right, and that we do not want any
complications in the game, and he takes it particularly in mind that the
bogey system is entirely the result of the modern craze for pot and
medal hunting, since it was designed solely and exclusively as a new
form of competition. One would not dream nowadays of going out to play a
game with a friend, each man playing his holes against bogey. Therefore
there is nothing friendly and nothing sociable in the idea, and it is
not golf, and it is condemned all the more inasmuch as its special
object is to release erring players from the penalties of their errors,
such as they would have to pay for in stroke play. It is therefore an
encouragement to mediocrity. At the same time our broad-minded critic
would agree that this bogey has been in for a good many years now, has
outlived the attacks that have been made upon it, and has certainly
established a place for itself in the golfing scheme of things which
nothing seems likely to disturb. You generally find that as a golfer
gets on in experience he cares less and less for bogey play, if he ever
cared for it at all; but the new generation like it apparently, and will
have it. Therefore we must tolerate it. It is a matter of some
satisfaction to notice that more and more do clubs begin to make a
standard reckoning of the value of their holes on the par system instead
of the bogey. There is no sort of sense in saying that the bogey of a
particular hole is 4 or 5, or anything else that it may be put down at.
The majority of “bogey 5’s” are real 4’s, and it is difficult to see
what is the object of placing a standard value on a hole unless that
standard represents faultless play by a good man, as the par figure
does, and not such play as may include two half-spoiled shots or one
completely foozled one, as the bogey figure frequently allows. It is
often the case that at a “bogey 5” on a suburban course a good player
can make a complete bungle of his second shot and still do the 5 with
some ease. What, then, is the use of this sort of valuation of the holes
on various courses?

So what with his somewhat surreptitious appearance at St. Andrews, and
many violent attacks that have been made upon him, some men saying with
withering sarcasm that they think they have heard of him before
somewhere, the poor old Colonel has been having a rather exciting and
not entirely happy time of it in recent seasons, and one feels a certain
amount of pity for him, recognising that he really has given much
pleasure to many players. In this sympathetic mood one may listen
patiently to the story of his career. He has seen considerable service
now, for he became attached to golf at the beginning of its boom days.
The origin of the association was curious. Although some have it that
bogey was born at Elie, a Coventry gentleman, Mr. Hugh Rotherham, is
more generally believed to have been the first to come by the germ of
the idea. This was in December 1890, when what was called the scratch
score of the Coventry course was taken, and there was given to each hole
a figure which was supposed to represent the scratch value. This was
called the “ground score,” and some six months later, when the idea had
become well assimilated, Mr. Rotherham offered a prize for a competition
in which the players would play against this ground score; while in the
autumn of the same year the club put up a challenge cup for annual
competition on the same lines. Thus already the idea was established,
but not the name.

About this time some of the members of the Coventry club went as a party
to Great Yarmouth, where the idea was explained to Dr. Thos. Browne,
R.N., honorary secretary of the club. He thought well of its
possibilities and advantages, and, taking considerable interest in it,
wrote to various prominent golfers asking them their views of the
advisability or otherwise of introducing this “ground score” into the
general routine of competition golf. For the most part the replies were
favourable.

Now one day Dr. Browne went out to play against a friend of his, Major
Charles A. Wellman, on this system, and that winter the “bogey man” song
was the hit of the pantomimes in the music-halls.

   “Hush! Hush! Hush!
      Here comes the Bogey man!
    So hide your head beneath the clothes,
      He’ll catch you if he can!”

were the words of the refrain that gave a creepy feeling to the little
children of the day. “He’ll catch you if he can!” There was the idea of
bogey in golf, and it flashed across the mind of Major Wellman when he
was playing this game and getting caught by bogey. “Why,” said he to
Dr. Browne, “this player of yours is a regular bogey man.” In that
chance remark a considerable piece of golfing history was made, for
bogey was made for golf. Dr. Browne thought this name was excellent, and
should be adopted, as it was by the Great Yarmouth Club.

A little while afterwards he went on a golfing holiday to the south
coast, and playing one day at the course of the United Service Club at
Alverstoke in Hampshire, he informed his hosts that he had brought with
him a friend who was a very modest, quiet fellow and a steady golfer,
who played a uniformly good but never a brilliant game. He prayed that
he might be permitted to introduce him to the United Service Club as an
honorary member, and accordingly, in the continuance of his little
pleasantry, he presented him, in the way of an explanation of the “bogey
man game,” to the late Captain Seely Vidal, R.E., who was honorary
secretary of the club, and to Dr. Walter Reid, R.N.

“Capital!” they said; they would certainly have the bogey man as a
golfer, and after working out a score for him for that course they went
out to play with him.

“Stay!” said Captain Vidal at the moment of starting. “We must proceed
in a proper service way. Every member of this club has a proper service
rank. Our new invisible member, who never makes a mistake, surely ought
to be a commanding officer. He must be a colonel.” And then saluting, he
added, “Colonel Bogey! We are delighted to find you on the links, sir. I
couldn’t well say see you.”

After that, wherever Dr. Browne went in the course of his golfing
pilgrimages, he introduced “his friend” in the name of Colonel Bogey.
Several bogey matches were played at the United Service Club, and they
were reported in the papers, with some explanation of the new system. So
the Coventry, Great Yarmouth, and United Service Clubs had all a hand in
the establishment of the idea, and Dr. Browne, Major Charles Wellman,
and Captain Seely Vidal were Bogey’s godfathers in his baptism. Is is
quite likely that the golfers of Elie worked out a bogey of their own
independently.


V

   “Ever let the Fancy roam,
    Pleasure never is at home.”

So Keats did sing. And, alas! there are even strange golfers who are
sighing always for newfanglements, feeling that the things they cannot
or must not have, are much better than the things they are blessed with.
Yet are the things that are in golf better than the things that might be
if out-and-out Progressives had their way, and in this matter we shall
sing a hymn of praise to the old school and its famous traditions, being
something of a brake on these Progressives. Consider what were otherwise
the possibilities of the game if it fell into the hands of innovators.

Lately a story was printed and spread all about, that in some secret
fields a great champion was practising with a new ball of extraordinary
manufacture, with which he was constantly getting at least fifty yards
farther with his drive than he could with the ordinary rubber-cored
affair, that is to say, he was regularly driving from 250 to 300 yards!
Now, some of us have heard of that ball before, but shall believe in it
only when we see it, and shall then cry aloud for its extinction, even
if that dreaded Golf Union has to be established for the purpose, as
probably it would need to be. But some people ask why it is wrong to
sigh for more and more length in the drive; why should not our old men
drive all the long holes in two, and our young men do them with a drive
and a pitch, and play the short holes with their putters? They say
there is enormous pleasure in length, and that the rubber-core has given
increased enjoyment to scores of thousands of players. Which is true,
the last. But the more length you get the less golf there is in your
play. If length is all that is wanted, why not go shooting instead of
golfing? You can shoot a bullet a whole mile, and are not bothered to
trudge after it. Fatal points against the 300-yard ball are, that a
large proportion of golfers would lose sight of it before it came to
rest--and where would be their pleasure then?--and that it would upset
the construction of all our courses, since all the bunkers would be in
the wrong places, and the links would all be too short. More land and
huge sums of money would be needed by every club. The clubs had one
experience of this when the rubber-core came in; depend on it they will
not have another. By all means improve our present sort of balls, which
is what makers are doing, and incidentally they are making them go a
little farther, which is excusable. But no more revolutions. As it
happened, the story of the professional and the new ball was untrue.

The news of something that took place recently in golfing India came
over the sea, and the committees and members of very small clubs were
fired with a new idea. They are rather whimsical with their golf in our
colonies and dependencies at times, and it has been said facetiously
that the ships that come home from there ought to be put in quarantine
near St. Andrews for a while, to make certain that there are none of
these ideas on board. The Royal Bombay Club, thinking possibly that
bunkers in the same places always are monotonous, and moreover that,
being in the same place, they upset one’s calculations so much when the
wind changes, went in, according to report, for movable bunkers! They
made them from hurdles, and they could move them about the course
according to the weather and the committee’s fancy.

In some places, as already hinted, they have been trying a strange kind
of game called “a four-ball foursome against bogey,” being a blend of
many things most objectionable to the old spirit. This is the kind of
golf that would be exceedingly popular if people generally went mad with
the revolutionary idea and held executions in Trafalgar Square. In the
meantime it does not “take on.” And a new kind of multi-match lately
came over from America. They play, say, six a side, but only one ball to
each side, the whole dozen players starting off together. They do not
play alternately, but each man is chosen for the team according to his
special abilities. One man is a specialist in long driving, another in
his brassey play, a third with his irons, a fourth with the short
approaches, a fifth with his niblick, and a sixth with his putter. When
within fifty yards of the green the captain sings out for No. 4, and
No. 5 is wanted when the ball is in a gutter. A man might not have a
shot to play the whole way round. Great skill would be needed in the
selection of the team. For a match on a short course the wise captain
might leave out his brassey man and put in, say, a fisherman, if there
were many water hazards on that course. But it is not golf, and never
will be.

From the same source there emanates another idea in competitions. This
is for stroke play, and all the men who enter play the first hole, one
after the other. Those men who take most strokes to it retire from the
competition. The others proceed, and there is the same weeding out
process at the second hole, and so on until there are only two players
left, and then the first man who wins a hole from the other wins the
competition.

A possibility, which is none the less dreadful because there is some
good common sense in the idea from which it springs, is that there will
be examinations in the rules, which all must pass either before being
elected to full membership of a golf club or before being allowed to
take part in competitions. It is a certain fact that two golfers out of
every three--at least--are hazy on many important points in the rules.
Three British clubs have already held such examinations, with startling
results. Scratch men were plucked! How curious it would be if the
favourite for a championship were disqualified in this way. Of course
the examiners would trip up the candidates by tricky riders to the
rules, and as my artist friend, Mr. E. W. Mitchell, suggested, good
questions will be: “A is your ball, B is your banker’s ball, and C is
the hole (all being within a circle ten inches in diameter). Play one
off two and lose!” Also, “What happens when a bull sits on your
ball--(1) in match; (2) in medal play?”

As it is said, there is no telling what we may have next, particularly
as a patent was recently applied for on behalf of a new club which had a
sliding lid bottom, covering a receptacle in the head of the club, in
which the golfer might keep his matches and his money!


VI

Now and then a section of the golfing community has the appearance of
fretting for a new government of the game. The freedom that it has
always enjoyed, and in which it is superior to any other game that has a
right to be compared to it for quality, interest, and popularity, has
become irksome. It is felt that there can be disadvantages in too much
freedom, and so these people sigh to be placed under a yoke--a yoke of
their own choosing, but none the less stern and powerful and, above all,
active. These agitations, if they are to be dignified with such a name,
commonly begin in the dullest days of winter, when both links and livers
are abnormally heavy, and they flicker out again in the spring. Usually
the establishment of a new county golfing union is the signal for the
commencement of the argument in favour of the deposition of St. Andrews
and the establishment of a new parliament of golf. By this time county
unions are no novelty. The Yorkshire and the Nottinghamshire Unions--and
particularly the former--are now old-established and flourishing
institutions; but latterly this movement towards unions has much
increased, and Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Gloucestershire, and others
have joined in it and settled their constitutions. Then there are in
existence the Welsh Union, the Sussex Union, and various others of
smaller activity. The formation of these unions has been in itself a
proceeding of some significance; but the establishment of the new
Midland Association is greater, for here you have three or four unions
making common cause for the furtherance of their own ideas and
projects, and becoming a compact, circumscribed, and very nearly
autonomous community, taking a considerable piece of the golfing map to
themselves, and embracing no small or unimportant section of the golfing
population. First you had the county unions; now the grouping of these
unions into associations. Obviously, the next and easy step will be a
combination of associations. Yorkshire and Wales might come to an
understanding with the Midlands, and before one could shout “Fore!”
there might be the whole country under the guidance, not to say
domination, of a union of associations. Members of clubs would _per se_
be affiliated to it, and would give tacit allegiance to it. That is
simply a possibility of evolution.

So far the programmes of the unions and associations are simple and
unpretentious. They will start country competitions, inter-county
tournaments, standardise handicaps, regulate local rules, and so forth.
Unpretentious in a sense these matters are; but yet they will make for
much in the whole sum of golf procedure. Then there are no authoritative
rules for bogey play which many people want; the associations may make
them for themselves, and make them binding upon their members, and give
rulings upon points of dispute or difficulty that may arise in regard to
them, since St. Andrews will have nothing to do with bogey. They will do
all the many things that St. Andrews is too indifferent to do.

There you have it! How about the coming of the day when,
old-established, firm, and powerful, the combined associations find that
they are doing nearly everything, and that St. Andrews is doing almost
nothing? Will it not be an easy thing, and one which will suggest
itself, to cut the knot that ties them to the old and respected guardian
of our golf, and to go forth with a new and revolutionary programme of
government, which shall include even the very championships and the
rules themselves? This is not a fanciful speculation; it is logical
and--as some who have brought themselves to the serious study of the
future would say--almost inevitable. It would be according to the
natural processes of history.

Let them disclaim as they please, be as loyal to the existing order of
things as possible, it is still the fact that these unions and
associations are a menace to St. Andrews. By evolution from them rather
than by direct establishment is a British Golfing Union likely to come
about, if one ever does. This is essentially a democratic movement. With
the vast influx of new players the feeling in golf is infinitely more
democratic than it was five years ago, and the people are now chafing at
the indifference of St. Andrews and the championship group of clubs, and
are calling for a ruling body that will give them new and simpler laws,
that will regulate the championships better, and hold them on a greater
variety of courses, organise inter-county competitions, and so on.
St. Andrews--by which is meant the Royal and Ancient Club--is the old
and self-established, almost hereditary House of Lords that dozes and
does not mind, with no second chamber between it and the people. The
people say they want a representative and active House of Commons. This
allegory works out perfectly to the point that Ireland is fuming and
fretting at the neglect with which she is treated.

Shall the golfers’ House of Lords be mended or ended? There are three
parties in the great state of golf--the old Tories, who want things to
remain as they are, and who regard the St. Andrews House of Lords as the
finest form of government imaginable, chiefly because it does not
govern; the reformers, who want St. Andrews to become more active and to
seek the co-operation of some of the leading clubs in the country; and
the democratic revolutionaries, who want a new governing body elected by
the people and the clubs. The first party is in a hopeless minority, and
will always remain so. The present state of affairs may go on for some
time yet; but the golf world is too big and important, and the questions
pressing upon it are too weighty, for it to be regarded as permanent.

The Royal and Ancient Club of St. Andrews is a most worthy,
distinguished, and conscientious institution, full of all the most
blue-blooded traditions. One may disagree with the idea that the Club
entertains of the duty and responsibility towards the great world of
golf which time and circumstances have cast upon it; but no golfer of
understanding would speak disrespectfully of this Club, which in many
respects is the finest institution of its kind in existence, and is
entitled to the very utmost veneration. Chiefly by its efforts there has
been given a dignity to the game of golf which has had much to do with
its established greatness. Every golfer everywhere owes a debt to the
Royal and Ancient Club.

Yet as an authority nobody ever sanctioned it; like Topsy, it simply
grew. Of course, it was wanted; somebody had to make laws. It is almost
equally certain that the club never aspired to an active command over
such an extensive golf world as there is at present, and that its
present disposition is that it “cannot be bothered,” that the British
golfers must take it as they find it, or--do as they please.

To some extent allied with St. Andrews in the government of the game are
the clubs who regulate the championship. To some minds the Royal and
Ancient and these other clubs that rule the championships, have
sometimes seemed to be in league with each other against the new spirit
and new tendencies in golf, and it is not surprising that the worm is
turning. The “common people” of the golfing world say that they have had
enough of this sort of thing, and all these airs and graces, that they
are in the majority--which is perfectly true--and that they will act.

Now what shall be done? Shall the golfers’ House of Lords be mended or
ended? In course of time some change is inevitable, democracy will have
its way, and all those who have the interests of the game most at heart
must, on reflection, come to the conclusion that for the time being, at
any rate, it will be for good if the House of Lords is reconstituted on
slightly more popular lines. Therefore it would seem to be desirable
that the Royal and Ancient and its associates, the golfing House of
Lords, should recognise the feeling that is undoubtedly abroad in the
country, and should take the initiative now, when it would lose nothing
in dignity and gain everything in influence, in establishing the
government of golf on a firmer and more satisfactory basis than that on
which it at present exists. The rules need remodelling, the system of
the championships needs rearranging, the question of county tournaments,
standardisation of handicaps, and so forth, call for some
consideration, and the interference of the commercial side of the game
needs to be looked into. St. Andrews alone and without a mandate has
neither the will nor the power to grapple with all these difficulties.
On the other hand, a democratically elected governing body would almost
certainly be given far too much to something in the nature of vandalism,
and for a certainty golf under its authority would lose much of the
dignity that is at present one of its very greatest charms. What one has
seen of the ways of even some big provincial clubs, such as might have
loud voices in a new democratic government, and the tone that animates
their game, gives one no confidence that they would preserve its best
traditions intact. There would be a tendency towards unnecessary
innovations and vulgarism. Nobody who has any adequate knowledge of the
manner and system of golf as practised by the good old-fashioned clubs
would care to risk placing the future of the game entirely in the hands
of the revolutionaries.

The world of golf is not ready for a great revolution. The fact is that
we want as little legislation as possible, but what there is should be
good and adequate, and the tendencies and needs of the times should be
systematically considered. The best solution to the difficulty, perhaps,
would be for St. Andrews to relax a little from its aloofness, recognise
that circumstances impose a moral duty upon it, and seek the assistance
of a few of the chief clubs, seaside and inland, throughout the country,
who among them would form a kind of joint board to which all other clubs
would declare their allegiance. We should expect to find such inland
clubs in the south as Sunningdale, Woking, Mid-Surrey, and Walton Heath
represented on this board, and it would approach all the questions of
the time in a progressive spirit and do its best to remove existing
grievances. If the Royal and Ancient took the initiative in this matter,
it would gain in dignity and respect, and would have the knowledge that
it had done its duty. If no such step is taken, if matters are allowed
to drift on as at present, then a revolution of some kind is likely. A
point too frequently overlooked in these discussions is, that the Royal
and Ancient club is in its membership and constitution very fairly
representative of golf throughout the country, as is no other club. The
rights of its position at the head of the game are, of course,
indisputable.




WINTER


I

When the winds blow and the rains pour down, we discover the true worth
of the golfer. The game has no season; it allows no right of control to
any weather. It is for all places and for all times, and in the law of
the links it is clearly set down that he who is playing by strokes for a
prize shall on no account whatsoever delay in the course of his round,
nor take any shelter, though Pluvius should pour out upon him from the
heavens their entire holding of the most drenching rain. If, in defiance
of the stern law of St. Andrews, he does so take shelter, though it be
but for a minute under the scanty protection of leafless boughs, he is
to be visited with the extreme penalty. Whatever his score, whatever the
perfection of his golf, he shall take no prize, his card must be tossed
aside as worthless, and he is branded among his fellows as he who was
afraid, and as more fitted to putt on the hearthrug by the fireside at
home in rivalry with his baby boy or girl, than to take part in this now
fierce game of men. What is the law for medal competitions is, in
scarcely less measure, the custom and tradition in matches. Once he has
begun, the golfer with the great heart must finish his game, and
generally he does so. Scotland sometimes turns up its nose at the
English golf of the towns; but round about London, among all its “effete
civilisation,” there is seen in golf, as in perhaps no other game, that
some fine British sporting hearts beat beneath starched linen and silken
waistcoats; and it is a thing to think about, that the city man who on
’Change at eleven o’clock in the morning was arrayed most spotlessly and
was dealing in his thousands, at three o’clock was driving his little
golf ball through wind and blinding rain, drenched to the skin, cold,
miserable, despondent with his 8’s and 9’s, but still doing his duty as
a golfer to his game.

So the authorities of St. Andrews will in no case countenance the mere
fairweather golfer. He must “face the music.” But they do say--they said
it when appealed to on one occasion--that the brave player is, after
all, entitled to have a hole to putt at, and if the green is under water
it is better that there should be no competition. It was the club of
St. Duthus that made the appeal, and the experiences of the members of
that club on the day concerned were varied and curious. One golfer
played his ball on to a “floating green,” and after vainly trying to
dodge the sphere along the waters into the neighbourhood of the place
where the hole was, he picked it out and claimed the right to play again
some other day. But when that same day was far spent and the flood had
to some extent subsided, another player came along with his card to that
green, and, having worked his ball to within three feet of the place
where the hole was, he deftly pitched it up into the air with his mashie
and down it came on the water immediately covering the hole, sank for a
moment, and came up again floating. Had he holed out? St. Andrews
declined to say. They took shelter from this trying problem by observing
that that green should not have been played on.

In very similar circumstances a player coaxed his ball to the place
where the hole was, and then debated within himself as to how he should
hole out. No club that he had would sink the ball, but the law does not
prescribe that golf must be played with standard clubs. This resourceful
fellow, after due consideration, took his bag from his caddie, held it
for a moment above the ball, and then dumped it, end on, down on the
floating sphere, sinking it for a second. But was not that a push? And,
again, when another man had played on to a floating green he discovered
that the wind made a current, and that it--O generous current!--was
slowly taking his ball towards the hole. So he waited until it should do
so, but it was a slow process, and somebody protested. He claimed that
his last stroke was still in progress all the time, and that neither he
nor anyone else had any more right to interfere with it than with a ball
in flight. However, he was utterly cried down, and his point was not
settled.

Thus some curious shots have been played on water; and, have a mind,
some great ones too. One of the most classic shots of golf, perhaps the
most classic of them all, was that which Fred Tait played in the
championship from the water-logged bunker on the far side of the Alps,
guarding the seventeenth green at Prestwick. At a moment of crisis he
waded in with a forlorn hope, and with a shot that will still be spoken
of in a hundred years he saved a point that had seemed gone for ever.

The brave golfer is placed in a difficult position, when his partner is
smitten with craven fears of pneumonia and inflammation of the lungs
supervening on the soaking that he is getting on the links. What is he
to do if in medal competition this fearing one says that he will go no
farther, but will hasten back to the clubhouse, with its drying-room and
its fire and warm refreshment? The law says that no man shall delay in
his round; but how shall the card be marked if the marker goes off for
his dry clothes and hot drinks? Ever generous to the brave, St. Andrews
has said that he whose heart is thus willing shall not be disqualified,
but shall be permitted to scour the links and the clubhouse in search of
a new marker, and if haply in the meantime the storm shall have ceased,
good luck to him, and may his be the winning card.

But no false excuses. Did you hear of the historic case of the Bury
golfers who appealed to St. Andrews for a ruling after one fateful medal
day on their rain-swept course? The storm raged, the winds blew, and the
rain drove through the players’ garments to the most vulnerable parts of
their body. And then one man lost his ball. The other espied a friendly
hut and sought shelter there until his unhappy friend should find that
which was lost. When it was discovered its owner likewise went to the
hut and stayed there for a little while. Why did that golfer seek that
hut so? He told St. Andrews that he went there because he had dirtied
his face, and his partner had a cloth wherewith it might be wiped! They
pleaded for qualification in their competition. “Out upon you for
golfers!” said St. Andrews angrily, and so it was decreed.


II

On a frosty day one is apt to damage clubs. The clubmaker does not mind
his patrons playing on steely courses. The chances are that one man in a
few will need something doing to his shafts or his wooden heads as the
result of a day’s play. The list of casualties at sunset is
considerable, and somewhat reminds one of the early days when a golf
club was a much less lasting thing than it is at present. Old golfers
are agreed that the breakage of a club by any kind of player is a thing
of infinitely rare happening in comparison with what it used to be only
a very few years ago. How is this? It cannot be that beginners are any
better or more careful than they used to be, and one is very doubtful as
to whether the clubs are made any better (although, perhaps, a trifle
more elegant), or are endowed with any more strength than they were in
the olden days when there were fewer of them to be made, and when so
much time was spent upon their individual perfection. Some people think
that the socketed shafts that have become firmly established are less
reliable than others, and are more likely to give way under severe
strain from misuse, and yet how seldom do we really see a wooden club
give way at the socket? On the whole there can be no doubt that our
modern clubs are thoroughly well made, but that the real cause why we so
seldom see breakages is the lighter work that the clubs have to do with
the rubber ball than they were set to in the old days of the gutta. In
those old days the jar of impact was harder, severer, harsher, and it
sent a shiver through the wrapping of the club that, often repeated,
made for an eventual snap. Certainly the decrease in the breakages seems
to date exactly from the beginning of the use of the rubber ball.

I have just said that it cannot be that beginners are any better or more
careful than they used to be, but this is a statement that needs a
trifle of qualification. Your modern beginner has heard from many and
diverse authorities of the enormous difficulty of this game, and of the
necessity of treating it from the outset with the utmost possible
respect; but the neophyte of the olden days was often more of a
slapdash, full-blooded fellow, who needed to have two or three strenuous
rounds before the spirit in him was fairly broken and he became amenable
to the reason of the links. A wonderful story of a wild opening to a
golfing career is that of Lord Stormont, when he was initiated at
Blackheath some fifty years ago. His lordship had taken too much weight
to himself, and Sir William Ferguson, his doctor, being consulted,
suggested that he ought to have more exercise, and thought that this
might best be administered in the form of golf. Sir William played golf
himself, and, like all good doctors, he recommended the game to lazy
pale-faced people whenever he thought the occasion opportune. He said to
Lord Stormont, “Go down to Blackheath and put yourself in Willie Dunn’s
hands,” Dunn then being professional at this historic course.

Lord Stormont had never seen a golf ball driven in his life, but he took
kindly to the idea and repaired to Blackheath. Unfortunately he went
there for the first time on a club day, and on this day it was
impossible for Dunn to give him his services. But he did as well as he
could in the circumstances, and selected his very best caddie, one
Weever, quite a capable teacher, and intrusted him with the onerous duty
of teaching the game of golf to Lord Stormont. Dunn sold his lordship a
full set of good clubs by way of outfit, and away the two went. When the
first round had been played, the round at Blackheath then, as now,
consisting of only seven holes, Weever returned alone to the
professional’s shop, with his pockets full of heads and his arms full of
broken shafts. My Lord Stormont had broken every one of his clubs, and
had sent his mentor back for a new complete set.

In the second round nearly all of these were broken also; and when,
after so many trials and tribulations, Dunn espied the noble beginner
returning from the seventh green, he was in some anxious doubt as to how
he should best make reference to the events of the day. It was at least
encouraging that Lord Stormont was smiling, and so Dunn ventured to
observe, “I am very sorry, my lord, that such disasters have befallen
you to-day in breaking so many clubs.” For answer the new golfer tapped
Dunn on the shoulder, and said, “My dear fellow, don’t mention it. I
feel this game has done me already a great deal of good, and it is going
to do me still more. Have another set of clubs ready for me by Thursday.
I shall be down then.” How many sets of clubs went to the making of the
game of Lord Stormont no man knows.


III

Sometimes, in the long and dark evenings, golfers like to play their
games in thought by the fireside, and one may suggest to them a new
kind of reflection and study which may prove at the same time
interesting and not without educational profit, particularly if such
reflections are uttered in company and comparisons of views are made. A
golfer has no sooner come by some sort of a working knowledge of the
different strokes of the game than he longs for adventures on strange
courses, to play at holes that are new and strange to him, and--if it
must be--to niblick his way out of bunkers that are more fearful than
anything he ever encountered on his mother links. This spirit is in
every way commendable, and the experience that results from it is one of
the best means of gaining skill and steadiness at the game. Thus it
happens that every player of two or three years’ practice is acquainted
more or less with several different courses in various parts of the
country, and it will generally happen that he has the kindest memories
of certain holes on each, and that, in fact, there are some of these
holes which are his special favourites for their particular length and
character. Now if by some impossible grant of nature it were to be
ordained that a special course should be made up, consisting of eighteen
of his favourite holes, due regard being paid to the proper requirements
of a golf course as to variety of length, which eighteen would he select
for the purpose, and why? Thoughts on these lines will help him towards
an understanding of the points of a good course; for the average player,
while he knows a good course when he sees it--or thinks he does--rarely
troubles to dissect his general appreciation. Even those players whose
game has been almost restricted to play on a few courses in the London
or some other district, may entertain themselves by piecing up a new
and better course than any they know from the materials with which they
are supplied in all the holes they have ever played over.

With the idea thus presented, you may go on to making your own ideal
course, and that some basis of necessary requirements may be afforded,
it may be added that in the opinion of Mr. Harold Hilton such a course
should include three short holes, eleven holes requiring two shots to
reach the green under ordinary conditions, and four holes which require
three shots to reach the green. Mr. Hilton adds that the short holes
ought not to be more than 200 yards long, and that in the case of the
four very extended holes the minimum of length should be 470 yards. The
other holes he thinks should vary from 380 yards to 430 yards. In this
connection it is noteworthy that Mr. Hilton’s selections are the Redan
at North Berwick and the Himalayas at Prestwick for short holes; the
Alps and the eighth at Prestwick, the sixth at Hoylake, the second at
St. Anne’s, and the sixth at Sunningdale for two-shot holes; and the
fourteenth at Sandwich, the seventeenth at St. Andrews, and the Cardinal
at Prestwick for long holes.

In another part of the world there is something now happening that gives
a special point to these fancies. It is nothing less than the attempt,
backed up by enormous energy and practically unlimited capital, to make
“an ideal course,” combining all the best features of the particular
holes that it is resolved to copy. A club called the National Golf Club,
including among its members many of the best players and many of the
richest men in the United States, has been established, and they have
taken a big piece of territory on Long Island for the prosecution of
their most ambitious scheme. One of the moving spirits, Mr. Charles B.
Macdonald, well known to St. Andrews golfers, and the first American
amateur champion, spent a long time in this country about a year or two
back, making a most exhaustive study of the best holes on our best
courses, and he went home to America with large parcels of most minute
plans and photographs. The land chosen on Long Island is a fine piece of
country for golf, and this is going to be--is being--so pulled about,
built up, and given the general appearance of having been acted upon by
several earthquakes, to the end that the best possible copies of these
holes shall be made. Although anything in the nature of an exact copy is
manifestly impossible in a large proportion of cases, despite all the
powers of money and energy, it is declared that at least the underlying
principles which account for the superlative excellence of the holes
chosen as models shall be faithfully and accurately represented. It is
prophesied that on these two hundred acres of land which have been
bought at Peconic Bay, there will be combined in one eighteen-hole round
the best features of the most celebrated courses in the world; in other
words, “a course that shall be the best in the world.” This is a vast
ambition, and one which only Americans would find it easy to entertain.

Let me mention what conditions Mr. Macdonald made for the selection of
these eighteen holes. He decreed that there should be two short holes
for iron shots, between 130 and 160 yards in length; two 500-yard holes;
two of the “drive and pitch” order, 300 to 320 yards; eight good
two-shot holes, 350 to 470 yards; and four long one-shot holes varying
from 190 to 250 yards, according to the contour of the ground, the
longer holes having the fair green falling towards the putting green.
These together would make up a course of about 6000 yards in length.


IV

Once a year there is a great foursome played between a Colonel and a
Parson on the one side and an Author and an M.P. on the other, and they
always look forward to it with great keenness. It is a compact among
them that the match shall be played every year that all four are alive
and within the United Kingdom. This is one of the most delightful kinds
of matches, and no pleasure of reminiscence is so rich as that of
golfers such as these in looking back over ten or twenty years of
matches and comparing their recollections of them. All earnest golfers
should have some arrangement of the kind with their best friends.

It happened the other morning when this match was to be played, that a
great disappointment was in store for the little party, as they took
train from Charing Cross bound for that fine inland course some twenty
miles away to which they were all most devoted. Heavy clouds of ominous
complexion were above at nine o’clock, and there was a suspicious look
and feel about the atmosphere; but, like all good golfers, these men
were optimists all, and would not mention to one another the fear that
was in their hearts.

“I daresay we shall have a very nice day after all,” murmured the
Parson, and the Colonel stated that he was nearly certain that the glass
was rising when he last looked at it. A fine fellow is your golfing
optimist. But when London had been left some ten miles behind, the
hideous truth was exposed beyond any denial. It was snowing, and the
chill of it went to the hearts of the golfers.

“Oh, this won’t be much,” said the M.P., “and it is certain to melt
quickly, anyhow; see how watery are the flakes.”

But when they arrived at the course it was snowing more than ever, and
big dry flakes were whirling in eddies all about, while the course
already lay an inch beneath a white covering. It was a bad case. Unless
there was a great change in an hour or so there could be no golf that
day, and indeed the idea of it was already almost given up. The four sat
in the smoke-room looking exceeding glum. Attempts to make congenial
conversation failed. The Parson felt that it was incumbent on him to
cheer up his friends, and after other kind efforts he bethought himself
of what he considered to be an excellent story.

“Upon my word, you fellows,” he said, “I nearly forgot to tell you of
the most extraordinary occurrence that I have ever heard of, and one in
which a strange point of golfing law is involved. The case must be sent
to St. Andrews.”

Everybody was alert at this announcement. It is an excellent thing to
know that a poser of sorts is going to be put to that autocratic
assembly in Fifeshire.

“Splendid!” ejaculated the Colonel, “we must hear this story of yours,
Septimus; but I hope you are not going to pitch us that yarn you once
told me about your wife’s brother having once played a low push shot
across a river, and a salmon leaping at the ball as it skimmed across
and being carried with it on to the bank! We have heard that, you know.”

“As I told you at the time,” responded the Parson, “I only repeated what
my wife’s brother told me, and I certainly did not say that I had seen
the fish dragged on to the bank in that manner. But this story was told
me by my son Richard, when he was down from Oxford last time, and he
declares the incident happened on the course at Radley. One of the men
was engaged in a match, and going to the tenth he played a beautiful run
up from forty yards off the putting green, that actually made the ball
hit the pin and then it rolled into the hole; but it had no sooner got
into the hole than out it flew again, and after it came a large frog! It
was clear that the ball had rolled on the back of the frog in the hole,
and that this frog, startled, no doubt, jumped up and out of the hole,
ejecting the ball at the same time. The ball came to rest on the green,
and my son’s friend thereupon claimed that he had holed out.”

For a few seconds there was a stony silence, and then the Colonel burst
out with a loud guffaw.

“My dear old boy,” he exclaimed, “I am sure that you will find that
story, or one very like it, in the Old Testament somewhere if you look
sufficiently. It is as old as the hills! You really should not tell us
these things. You know what the American did when he was told that
story? He put a recommendation in the suggestion book that the club
should urge upon the St. Andrews authorities that they should make an
addition to the rules to something like this effect:

“‘If any frog, toad, snake, or other reptile, or a mouse, rat, weasel,
mole, gopher, or other vermin (or in the case of casual water, a pike,
pickerel, perch, pompano, or other fish) be in or near the hole, its
presence being established to the satisfaction of two independent
witnesses, such reptile, vermin, or fish must be removed before the next
stroke is played, under penalty of the loss of the hole. Should a player
unwittingly play at the hole when such reptile, vermin, or fish is in
it, its presence being subsequently attested by the aforesaid
independent witnesses, and such reptile, vermin, or fish either hinder
the ball from entering the hole or eject it therefrom, the ball shall
nevertheless be considered to have been duly holed, and no penalty shall
be incurred.’

“Still,” went on the Colonel, after this little pleasantry, “you have
given us a most excellent idea, Septimus. Now let each one of us think
awhile, and let us see who can present to our little company the
stiffest poser in golf law. Each of us, I suggest, shall be allowed to
look at the rules for the space of ten minutes, no more and no less, and
shall then have ten more minutes for consideration of his problem. What
do you say, boys?”

All agreed that the idea was a most excellent one for the purpose of
killing time and gathering knowledge about the rules. It was decided
that the company should vote, if necessary, on the answers, and that
while the Parson should be at liberty to choose his own position in the
recital in virtue of what he had done already, the others should draw
lots. The reverend gentleman decided that he would go last, and, on lots
being drawn, the Colonel was settled to present the first problem, the
Author the second, and the M.P. the third. When the twenty minutes had
expired the four assembled at the table, and the Colonel was called upon
to present his queer case. It was suggested to him that he should make
it look as real as possible.

He submitted it as follows:

“Here is a nice point, which I think an Imperial Conference might be
called upon to determine. General Botha, let us say, has a little dog,
which takes some intelligent interest in the game of golf, as do many
other dogs. He goes out to play a match with Dr. Jameson, and despite
all rule and custom, ‘Bobs,’ as the little dog is called, is permitted
to accompany them. When approaching the fourth hole the Doctor plays a
lovely wrist shot with his iron which sends the ball on to the green,
trickling close up to the pin. In one of his frisky moments that
wretched dog scampers after it, picks it up in his mouth before it (the
ball) had stopped running, and then begins playing about with it. The
dog drops the ball on to the green two or three times, paws at it and
plays with it, and then, seemingly struck by an inspiration, rolls it
into the hole. ‘By Jove! That’s my hole, then, Botha!’ exclaims the
Doctor, although the General has laid his ball dead with his mashie with
the like. ‘How do you make that out? Let us be fair, now that we are
such good friends,’ says Botha. ‘Most certainly,’ replies the Doctor,
‘but you must see that as the ball went into the hole from that last
shot of mine I holed from that shot. Of course it was a pity that your
dog got up to his tricks, but he is an outside agency, and I don’t see
that it makes any difference to the result.’ Botha thinks awhile. Then
he asks, ‘Did you watch “Bobs” closely while he had the ball?’
Dr. Jameson assented. ‘Then,’ Botha says, ‘there may be one
circumstance in which you do not win that hole, my friend, and when we
go to England we will discuss it with the authorities.’ Now what was
passing through Botha’s mind, and is his point a good one anyway?”

“Excellent for you, Colonel,” said the M.P. after a moment’s pause.
“Now, gentlemen, what must we do with Botha, for it is clear that we are
the authority to whom he refers. But then we have a right to know what
it was that Botha had in his mind at the finish of his little argument
with Dr. Jim. You will tell us that, Colonel?”

“Botha urges that he saw ‘Bobs’ let the ball come to rest when pawing it
about.”

“And what does Jameson say to that?” inquired the Author.

“Oh, Jameson does not deny it. He says that he did not see it, but he
thinks it very probable, and he will certainly yield that point if it is
material, as he desires that the case should be settled strictly on its
merits, neither side taking any unfair advantage of the other.”

“It is a pity that they could not settle it on terms of equity,” said
the Parson.

“I don’t agree that equity has anything to do with the case,” observed
the Colonel at length. “It seems to me that Botha’s point settles it,
and that the ball must be played from the place where the dog allowed it
to come to rest. I don’t think Dr. Jim wins the hole at all. Rule 22
governs the case partly but not entirely. By the way, Septimus, when we
turn up rules to settle these cases, I think you should only look at
those affecting the one in hand, and not at other rules which have a
bearing on the case you are to present. You have had your ten minutes’
study, you know. Now it is clear that the ball was in motion when the
dog seized it, and if the dog then took it direct to the hole it all
counted in the stroke. This case does not come within the clause about
the ball lodging in anything moving, because the dog was not moving when
it seized the ball. Once the dog let the ball stop on the green the
stroke was ended. Therefore it is evidently a question as to whether it
allowed it to come to rest or not, and Botha’s evidence settles the
matter. What do you say, William?”

“I entirely agree,” responded the M.P.

“And you, Jim?”

“I agree,” said the Author.

“I trust we can count on your support, Septimus?” said the Colonel,
looking across towards the Parson.

“Oh, certainly,” he replied.

“Gentlemen,” said the Colonel in his most official manner, “it is
determined that Dr. Jameson did not hole out with that stroke. I am
informed that they putted out afterwards, each in one more, and
therefore the hole was halved. Now, my literary friend, will you kindly
present your case?”

The Author thereupon advanced his queer case as follows:

“A very awkward point has arisen in the course of play on the links at
Valhalla. Shakespeare and Bacon, who are staying there at the present
time, got up very early one morning, when the other golfers were asleep,
and went out for a match, without caddies. Going to the seventh hole,
which is both a short one and a blind one--a thoroughly bad hole--the
players were not aware that the greenkeeper was on the putting-green
cutting a new hole. They played their tee shots and then went forward to
the green, when they were surprised to find that the ball of each lay
dead to a different hole. The greenkeeper had taken the flag and the
metal lining out of the old hole, and had cut the slab of turf out of
the new one, but had not at that time placed the metal cup or the flag
into the new one, nor put the turf into the old one to fill it up.
Bacon’s ball lay dead to the new hole, and Shakespeare’s to the old one.
Each insisted on holing out at the hole to which his ball lay dead (the
holes were many yards apart), and then the dispute began, each claiming
the hole. Shakespeare said that as the new hole was not finished the old
one was still in commission. ‘No,’ said Bacon, ‘not satisfied with
cheating me out of my plays, you now try to take my holes. We have
evidently been playing at new holes all the way out so far, and we must
continue to do so. It is the new holes that count.’ ‘But,’ expostulated
Shakespeare, ‘there are more old holes on the course at the present time
than new ones. And this wretched greenkeeper will take two hours to
finish his job. Must we dawdle behind him the whole way round? Let us
ask the greenkeeper which hole was most like a hole at the time the
balls came on to the green.’ The greenkeeper, however, was very
ill-tempered, having been nearly hit by one of the balls, and he
declined to answer the question. He said that people had no business to
be playing on the course while holes were being cut, _no matter who they
were_. Eventually the parties gave up their match and went back to the
clubhouse, when they agreed to submit the point to some carefully
constituted authority that would do its best to settle this most
unfortunate and undignified quarrel between two eminently respectable
persons of considerable standing.”

The Author looked about him after this deliverance.

“H’m!” muttered the Colonel, “not bad for you, Jim.”

“It seems to me,” said the Reverend Septimus, “that Bacon certainly won
if the new hole was full size, despite its not having had the tin put
into it.”

“Oh yes, it was full size,” interposed the Author.

“The old hole,” pursued the Parson, “was ground under repair, but if the
new hole was not full size Shakespeare won.”

“Of course,” remarked the Author, “the tin is only mentioned to indicate
the state of transition.”

“I don’t agree with Septimus,” said the M.P. “The rules do not provide
for this contingency, and it must be settled under the equity clause of
Rule 36. Regarding it in this way, it seems exactly six of one and half
a dozen of the other, and the best--indeed, the only thing--to do is to
regard the green as under repair, and the hole as temporarily closed.
Shakespeare and Bacon should therefore call it a half and pass on. If
they had seen the flag before playing their tee shots it might have made
a difference.”

“I am in entire accord with you, William,” the Colonel declared.

“Ditto,” said the Author. “That was the ruling I had in my mind.”

“I think we ought to have another opinion,” persisted the Parson, “but
for the present I desire to go with the majority.”

“Now let us hear the character of the problem that our friend the hon.
member for North-East Fife has to present to this tribunal,” said the
Colonel, with an expectant look to the quarter indicated.

“My case is a somewhat singular one, gentlemen,” the M.P. responded. “It
is this:

“A public road leading to the clubhouse crosses the line to the second
hole, and when John Smith and Isaac Rosenstein were playing this hole it
happened that Isaac’s bad slice landed his ball under the back seat of a
motor-car standing still in the road, said car, curiously enough, being
the new one which Rosenstein himself has bought this season, and which,
it is suggested, he likes to ‘show off’ with. Seeing where the ball had
gone to, and having the price of ten balls on the match, a thought
passed through his mind. Hailing the chauffeur in the car, he exclaimed,
‘You mitherable vellow! Did I not tell you to geep that car in the
garage at the back of the clubhouse, where it vould not be damaged. Be
off vith you this very instant, or I vill sack you! Quick!’ And before
John Smith could speak the chauffeur was doing his forty miles an hour
back to the clubhouse--with the ball still in the car. Smith and
Rosenstein then wrangled for hours, the latter being greatly astonished
because his opponent objected to his dropping a ball, and that without
penalty, at the spot where he played his last stroke. The points
presented for argument are these: (1) Shall Rosenstein drop without
losing a stroke? (2) Shall he drop and lose stroke and distance?
(3) Shall he not drop at all, but lose the hole? (4) Shall he play the
ball from where it lies under the seat of the motor-car in the club
garage, as, if he loses on the first two counts, he wants to do?
(5) What ought to have been done?”

“I trust that your friend Rosenstein will not offer himself as a
candidate for membership of this club,” observed the Colonel with a
smile, “because you might tell him if he thinks of doing so that I have
heard of this incident, and I happen to be on the committee.”

“He is no friend of mine,” said the M.P.

“Well then, gentlemen,” the man of arms demanded, “what is your pleasure
that we should do in the _affaire_ Rosenstein?”

“I don’t think there is very much doubt about that,” observed the
Parson, “We must be unanimous in this matter. I think we may safely
leave it to you, Colonel, to make the award.”

The M.P. and the Author assented, but it was understood that the former
should have the privilege of sending the case back for re-trial if he
disagreed.

“Then, gentlemen,” said the Colonel, “I give judgment as follows:

“Rosenstein loses the hole. It was his duty to have played the ball from
the place where it lodged in the car, and there is a strong suspicion
that he knew it! He is not entitled to regard the car as an agency
outside the match, since he controlled the car and ordered it away. By
his own act he made it impossible for him to obey the rules. He loses
under Rule 7, and it may be mentioned that the Rules of Golf Committee
has already decided that a ball played into a motor-car must be played
out of it, or the hole given up. Clearly the ball lying in the car in
the club garage does not lie where it did before.”

“I quite agree,” said the M.P.

“But should not something be done with Rosenstein?” the Parson asked.

“That is for his own committee to determine,” the Colonel replied. “We
have no jurisdiction. And now, Septimus, I am sure that the tit-bit of
this sitting of the court will be submitted by you. We are anticipating
that. I beg to move that if your case is not so pointed and interesting
as those already presented, you shall be condemned to give such an order
to the steward as will do something to stifle our disappointment, and
take the chill from our blood on this wretched day. What do you think,
my colleagues?”

“It is an excellent and a most proper idea,” the Author said, and the
M.P. concurred.

“As you will,” the clergyman assented. “Now the little problem that has
arisen in my mind runs this way:--

“Dives said to Lazarus, ‘These are days of charity, my poor friend, but
the cases must be deserving. The par of this course is 74. If you can
get round in 68 I will give you one twentieth of what I have got.’
Lazarus wept tears of gratitude, and forthwith began to take lessons and
to practise exceedingly, three rounds a day, for his handicap was 24.
And years passed by and he did not go round even in par; but one day,
having great luck, a sensation was caused about the links, and the word
was passed about that old Lazarus had got a 4 at the last hole to do 68.
And he had. But he took 3 to get on the green, and then had a 10-yard
putt for the 4 and 68, which was not an easy matter, particularly as
the putt was downhill and there was a big slope from the left as well.
Dives was watching and he smiled, but Lazarus was in sore trouble. Then
he bethought himself of an idea, and he placed a ball to the left of his
own and he tried to putt it to a point exactly a foot to the left of the
hole. First he found that he borrowed too much, and then too little, and
next that he was too strong, but eventually he got it right exactly, and
his ball just got to a foot to the left of the hole. ‘Now, I know,’ he
said, and then he putted his proper ball, and with great confidence, and
it went into the hole! Whereupon Dives was much wroth, and said, ‘Surely
I will not give you a twentieth of what I have got, for you have
offended against the law and the spirit of the game, and you did not go
round in 68, but are disqualified.’ Lazarus said, ‘Master, I have not
offended against the law of the game, and as for the spirit thereof I
care not, for having gained the twentieth of what you have got I shall
never play it more.’ And when they heard what Lazarus said they were
amazed, and they said they must have some proper judgment upon it. Does
Lazarus come into his fortune after finding the line and strength of his
putt in that fashion?”

The Parson seemed pleased with himself when he had finished his
statement.

“I believe the beggar’s got off--Septimus, I mean!” the M.P. ejaculated.

“I am sure he has,” agreed the Colonel.

“Now, you see,” put in the Author, “the wretched Lazarus did not tamper
with the line of the putt. He practised along what was to all intents
and purposes that line; but it was not the line, or else he might have
been caught. He placed no mark and drew no line.”

“That is so,” muttered the Colonel thoughtfully.

“He clearly offended against the spirit of the game,” the M.P. observed.
“You or I would not have done such a thing in any circumstances, eh,
Colonel?”

“Of course not,” the Colonel replied, “but it has to be remembered that
this was really almost a matter of life and death to the old man, and in
such a case he was perhaps not to be blamed for sticking to the strict
letter of the law. From our point of view the spirit is above the law;
but when it comes to a case of this kind, with goodness knows how many
thousands at stake, a merciless fellow on the other side who is himself
inclined to stick to the law exactly, and when Lazarus, as he says,
intends to have done with the game, why I am not sure that from his
point of view--his, mind you--he is to be condemned for throwing the
spirit overboard. His opponent would do so--in fact, to all intents and
purposes he does. This has become a strictly business transaction. The
question is, did he break the law?”

“You remember the Rules Committee’s decision in the famous Selkirk case
in 1906?” the M.P. asked. “It showed the Committee’s very proper anxiety
to preserve the true spirit even to the extent of straining the
interpretation of the rule about touching the line of the putt. I
believe some of them privately admitted that they were conscious of
straining it; but they were doing so in a very good cause, and to my
mind they were to be applauded rather than blamed. In this case a
foursome was being played, and while one man was preparing to putt, his
partner stood two yards beyond the hole on the other side, and from
there pointed out the line of the putt, incidentally letting his putter
rest on the turf to do so--two yards beyond the hole. The opponents
claimed the hole on the ground that the line of the putt had been
touched, meaning that the line from the ball to the hole, continued
beyond the hole, was still the line of the putt. The case was sent to
St. Andrews, and the Rules Committee upheld the claim and gave the hole
to the opponents--a remarkable decision!”

“H’m!” the Colonel grunted. “Of course, give some golfers an inch and
they will take a yard; and supposing the putter had been laid on that
line only two inches beyond the hole, the green had been very keen, and
had sloped down to the hole from the back side. If the ball had got to
the point where the putter had rested it might conceivably have rolled
back into the hole. There would be splendid justification for the Rules
Committee in a case of that kind, and it would prove the wisdom of the
Selkirk decision. Of course every day of our lives we see golfers, when
studying their putts from the back side of the hole, allowing their
putters to rest on the green in the continuation of the line. However,
Lazarus seems to have been quite clear of any decision of this kind. By
no stretch of imagination can you call a line which is a foot to one
side of the real line, although parallel to it, ‘the line of the putt.’”

“The Americans have been tinkering with a proposed new set of rules,”
the Author said, “and one of their suggested rules prohibits a practice
swing anywhere except on the tee. That would govern this case.”

“Ah yes, but what about our own code?” the Colonel said.

“The practice stroke is not forbidden,” the M.P. observed after careful
reference to the rules, “but I remember that on one occasion a very
similar point was submitted to the Rules Committee, and they said that
such a thing was so obviously contrary to the spirit of the game that
they had not thought it necessary to legislate upon the point. And they
have not done so, and”--

“That is so, and they were quite right,” the Colonel interrupted
hurriedly, “because this is golf, and we cannot have rules in our code
to say that men must not cheat, and the penalties for doing so. It would
be too much of a reflection on us as gentlemen and golfers. But here is
a most exceptional case, where advantage is taken of the omission, and
Lazarus appeals to the law and the law only. He will stand by the
law--the strict letter of it.”

“I believe he must have his money,” the Author said.

“It is the law,” said the M.P.

“I think so,” put in the Parson.

“Then, Septimus,” the Colonel concluded, “will you kindly tell your
friend Lazarus that he may send a chartered accountant round to Dives’
headquarters to examine his financial position, with a view to a proper
apportionment of his estate on the basis of nineteen parts to Dives and
one part to Lazarus? And you had better tell the new record-holder at
the same time that we don’t like this sort of thing, and we expect him
to keep to his statement that he will not play the game again. He will
have the fever on him after that 68, and with a few thousands a year at
his disposal he will be after getting into all the clubs. I know these
renunciations of golf. I have renounced myself--hundreds of times!”

At this moment the door opened and the steward entered to say that
luncheon was ready. “Splendid!” exclaimed the Colonel. “Gentlemen, the
court is closed!”


V

Golf remained impossible in the afternoon, and the M.P. filled up his
time by working out some golf statistics with a view to indicating to
the ignorant public what was comprised in a year of golf.

“You see,” he said, “sooner or later some of the very high authorities
will find it to be necessary to take very serious notice of this game,
of the number of people whose time it claims, of the land it engages, of
the capital sunk in it, and of the enormous current expenditure upon it.
Golf has really become a considerable factor in the social scheme of
this country, and this must be recognised by legislators. I see that the
Union authorities at Wirral have been giving some attention to the
matter, with the result that they have jumped on the Royal Liverpool
Club with an enormously increased assessment. The process of milking the
golfer will begin soon.”

“Well,” said the Colonel indulgently, “if our little game is to become a
matter of national importance, you will be having questions asked about
it in the House before long; eh, William?”

“It is odd that you should make that suggestion,” the Parliamentarian
responded, as he began to rummage in the inside pocket of his coat,
“because I have a rather curious document here which amplifies it
somewhat. Let me see--I am sure I had it in my letter-case--well,
well!--Ah yes, here it is! I was going to say that one of the keenest
golf youngsters we have got in this Parliament is young Norris, whose
constant object in life seems to be to pair off with one of the
Opposition down to Sunningdale. I believe he would rather win the
Parliamentary Handicap next year than get a small Government job. Well,
in the House he is always filling up his spare time with the development
of some golfing idea or other. The other night there was quite an angry
discussion between him and another of his kidney upon the question as to
whether, if a ball were teed alongside the Beaconsfield statue, a Massey
or a Braid could loft it over the Houses of Parliament and into the
river, and eventually the pair of them went out to see what sort of a
shot it really would be. The next night, when somebody whispered to him
that there would be a lot more sense in discussing a Bill for the
Regulation of the Rubber Core than the measure that just then was
occupying the attention of the House, he got out some paper and
concocted what he called a ‘Forecast of a Report of the Parliamentary
Proceedings in 1950,’ and that is what I have got here. Just listen to
this for question time:

“‘HOUSE OF COMMONS--_Thursday_

“‘The Speaker took the chair at 3.5.


“‘UNREST IN MOROCCO

“‘In answer to Mr. R. Kore (+1), the SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN
AFFAIRS stated that no more rubber-cored balls would be shipped to
Morocco until some kind of guarantee had been given by the Maghzen that
British golfers would be treated with respect and every consideration
extended to them in the pursuit of their game. Latest advices were to
the effect that parties of Moors had constantly collected round the
ninth green at Tangier and the third at Mogador and had made faces at
the players while they were putting, causing them the most intense
annoyance and completely ruining their play. His Majesty’s ships _Baffy_
and _Niblick_ had been instructed to proceed to Mogador without delay,
and left Gibraltar on Friday. (Loud cheers from both Government and
Opposition benches.)

“‘MR. A. GUTTA (10): Is it a fact that Germany has encouraged the Moors
in these acts of rebellion? (Loud cries of “Order.”)

“‘THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS: The hon. member must
perceive that public considerations make it undesirable that any answer
should be given to his question.

“‘MR. WILL LABOR (40): Will the right hon. gentleman inform the House
what are the handicaps of the British officials at present in Morocco,
and will he state whether in his opinion the rebellious attitude of the
Moors has been caused to some extent by the inferior playing capacity of
these servants, which has been such as to excite the derision of the
native population? (Loud cries of “Order” and “Withdraw.”)

“‘THE SPEAKER: The hon. member must not cast aspersions on the handicaps
of the public servants of His Majesty’s Government.

“‘MR. LABOR: I could give them all a stroke a hole! (“Oh, oh.”)

“‘THE SPEAKER: I must ask the hon. member not to persist in these
reflections on the playing quality of the Government servants in
Morocco, and to withdraw what he has already said.

“‘MR. LABOR: I withdraw. No doubt they are all Vardons. (“Order,
order.”)

“‘THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS: It may interest the hon.
gentleman the member for Woolwich, to know that a cable received at the
Foreign Office this morning stated that the British Consul at Mogador
had just holed out with a mashie shot. (Loud and prolonged cheering.)


“‘GREAT BRITAIN AND RUSSIA

“‘In answer to Mr. T. Box (+4), the PRIME MINISTER (+7) said that there
was no development to report in the negotiations which were at present
proceeding with the Government of Russia. The British Government had
suggested that under clause 563B of the Hague Convention the differences
existing between the two Governments should be decided by one
professional foursome, but Russia had replied that this suggestion was
obviously unfair, unless the British Government gave an undertaking not
to select Taylor and Braid as their representatives. In the absence of a
friendly understanding on such lines as these, there would be nothing
for it but for the British Government to pour golfers into Russia with a
view to winning all their monthly medals and cups, and with such a
possibility in view detachments of our best players had been mobilised
and were now doing two practice rounds a day at Sandwich and Prestwick.
The transports _Stymie_ and _Bunker_ were in readiness, each stored with
ten thousand boxes of the best balls. (Loud Government and Opposition
cheers.)


“‘THE BOOM IN THE BALL TRADE

“‘MR. R. TISAN (20) asked whether it was true that the ballmakers of
Glasgow had been working twenty-four hours a day for the last six weeks,
and in some cases more.

“‘THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (scratch): In no case have these
ballmakers been working more than twenty-three hours a day, and they
have been paid at the full twenty-four rate, and are quite satisfied. If
Great Britain did not make and sell the balls, America would.

“‘MR. R. TISAN: But they have no time left for play.

“‘THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE: They play nine holes in the
dinner hour instead of utilising it in the customary manner. (“Hear,
hear.”)


“‘NO STYMIES

“‘In answer to Mr. Foozleum (42), the MINISTER OF EDUCATION (2) stated
that it was not true that the children in the schools at Hoylake and
Westward Ho! were being taught to play no stymies, or that they were
systematically encouraged to play the score game to the neglect of true
match play. What had happened was simply this, that there had been
complaints that the last lot of mashies that had been received from
Taylor and Forgan had not sufficient loft for very young players, and
that all attempts to loft over stymies with them had failed, though the
senior players experienced no such difficulties. In the circumstances
the teachers, acting under authority of the Board of Education, had
thought it best to suspend stymies until more mashies came to hand. As
to score play, the simple fact was that one or two of the senior
students were going in for the Open Championship, and had been doing a
little practising in view of it. It might interest the House to know
that one of them, Smith by name, had done a round of 75 at Hoylake with
a wind blowing straight upwards from the turf. This was a splendid
performance, and showed the efficacy of the new Education Act which the
Government brought into force last year, which made the use of the
_Complete Golfer_ compulsory in all elementary schools. (Loud
Ministerial cheers.)


“‘BILLS

“‘The Bogey Amendment Bill was read a third time and passed.

“‘The Women’s Handicaps Bill was read a first time.


“‘CHAMPIONSHIP COURSES

“‘The House then went into Committee on the Championship Courses Bill.

“‘MR. JOHN BLUMOND (scratch) asked how much longer the just claims of
Ireland were to be ignored. Irish golfers were in such a state of
irritation, due to the way in which they were neglected, that it was
impossible for them to settle down to the improvement of their game,
with the result that Irish driving was never so bad as at present, and
his suffering compatriots could not putt for nuts or potatoes.
[LEFT SITTING].’”

“Rather good,” commented the Author at the end of this recital. “Wasn’t
it that young Norris who circulated the jest that if he could play his
mashie pitches properly he would be down to scratch and in the running
for a small kind of office, and that if he could get to plus 7 he would
be the President of the British Republic?”

“That’s the man,” the M.P. answered. “Very nice sort of chap, too. We
must bring him down here one day. Richardson took him down to Rye for a
week-end once, but had to go back to town again without him at the end
of a whole week.”

“Ha!” said the Colonel, “but that’s nothing in comparison with the true
story of the non-golfer who went to Sandwich for a week-end nine years
ago, and at the invitation of his friend experimented with the game, and
has been down there ever since, playing it!”

“Good man!” exclaimed the Author.

“But what about these statistics, William?” the Colonel inquired.

“Well,” said the M.P., “I have calculated that at the present time there
are over a million acres under golf in Great Britain, and that a
sum-total of about £4,700,000 a year is now spent on the game in this
country. But you get the queerest results when you come to consider the
balls that are used in a year, and what happens to them.”

“Proceed,” said the Colonel.


VI

“Now, just consider the ball,” the M.P. responded. “Pretty little
pimpled thing, isn’t it? Stuffed full of delight! Full of promise for at
least two hours’ fine health-giving enjoyment! We used to think a
half-pound tin of our favourite tobacco was the most heartening sight to
see; but a box of new balls has it now. One ball is such a tiny little
thing. You can hold sixteen of them in one hand! I have seen a man hold
eighteen, and possibly that is the record. Giving a ball four rounds of
life, two men could play together morning and afternoon for more than a
fortnight with the balls that are held in this hand. But just see how
many are needed by the great world of golf!

“To begin with, there are said to be 300,000 golfers in this country. It
has been reckoned that at the height of the summer golfing season, when
the players are busy everywhere, not less than 500,000 balls are used up
every week. This, indeed, seems to be a most reasonable estimate--less
than two balls per man per week, with an enormous percentage of players
out on the links four or five days a week. It was semi-officially stated
last June that one firm of makers, and that not by any means the
biggest, was working night and day, and turning out 100,000 balls a
week. Decidedly half a million is well within the mark. Taking the whole
year round, if you say one ball per golfer per week, that is surely a
very modest reckoning. It is practically a certainty that it is an
underestimate. At that rate we have a grand total of 15,000,000 balls
used up every year by the British golfers on British links. Fifteen
millions!”

“Good gracious!” the Parson exclaimed. “One would hardly believe it!”

“Yes, let us see what we can do with these 15,000,000 besides play
6,000,000,000 shots with them, which is what may be done, allowing four
rounds to each ball and a hundred strokes to each round, and what with
foozlers, women, and children, you will find that a hundred is a very
fair average, even if it is only the medal-winning score of the
20-handicap man.

“Seven balls go to the lineal foot, and thus there are forty-nine of
them in the square foot. It seems hard to believe that all the balls of
a year could, if packed nicely together after the fashion of eggs, be
laid out in a fair-sized field of seven acres. But stay! I can give you
some fancy idea of what this annual ball crop really means after all.
There are seven to the foot--in one little lineal foot you have
sufficient balls to last a careful week-end player for a couple of
months. Now, bring out the army of caddies that there are in the country
and set them to work teeing the balls up right against and touching each
other in a line, beginning with the first at Charing Cross, or, to be
more appropriate, on the Mid-Surrey course at Richmond. Then proceed
northwards. There will still be a few balls left in the pockets of the
caddies when they have continued that long line of one year’s balls
right away through Rugby, Stafford, Carlisle, and over the Border range
to Edinburgh, and on to the Braid Hills course. We can join the premier
courses of two capitals with the balls of one year, for the line we make
is 405 miles long, and at 11_s._ or 12_s._ a foot it would be
considerably more expensive than the ordinary permanent way. It is a
wonderful line. Nine yards of it will last a busy golfer a whole year,
and he need never be reproached for putting down a dirty ball.”

The Hon. Member for North-East Fife was fairly warmed to his theme by
this, and he pursued enthusiastically: “There is some food for
reflection in the incidental mention that I have just made that the
British golfers play 6,000,000,000 shots every year. _Puck_ boasted some
time ago that he could ‘put a girdle round about the earth in forty
minutes.’ It might surprise this sprite to know that the British golfers
could do the job in ten minutes, which is the time we might give them to
drive a dozen balls each from the tee. If those were fair drives, and
were put end to end, they would easily go round the world, with a little
to spare. Evidently, then, the British golfers go the distance of the
circumference of the world many times over in the course of the year.
You may take it that the average player, what with going off the line,
waddling about on the putting greens, walking from green to tee, and so
on, does a tramp of four miles in every round of eighteen holes that he
makes. At four rounds a week, that is sixteen miles a week, or eight
hundred in the golfing year of fifty weeks, a fortnight’s holiday for
illness, dissipation, and foreign travel, being allowed in all these
annual calculations. So our 300,000 British golfers in the course of the
year walk and tool their balls for a matter of 240,000,000 miles. Most
of this abundant exercise would not be taken if there were no golf.

“This 240,000,000 of miles means that if the British golfers had a
links round the middle of the earth they would collectively play 60,000
times round it in the course of the year. They would be almost jostling
and continually driving into each other. There would be a shriek of
‘Fore!’ from the Gulf of Guinea to Borneo, and it would be wailed across
the wide Pacific. It would prevent overcrowding and blocking at the
short holes if a course were laid out to the sun and back, and the
British golfers were started off at five minutes intervals. It would be
nearly 93,000,000 miles to the turn, and the same back, and if the
British golfers then did a short round to Venus and home again, putting
on another 50,000,000, they would nearly have done their usual year’s
golf.

“But this little glimpse into the fairyland of golf,” said the Hon.
Member in a tone of conclusion, “has all come about through the
contemplation of that simple-looking pimply little ball, and it is time
we wound up our consideration of it. It has been said that there are
15,000,000 used in Britain in the year. Suppose the average cost is
1_s._ 6_d._, which it probably is. That means that the nice little sum
of £1,125,000 is spent by the British golfer in the course of the year
in golf balls.”

“Prodigious!” exclaimed the Parson.

“Well, I don’t know what you think, William,” put in the Colonel, “but
my recommendation is that all facts which indicate the extensiveness of
this game, and the enthusiasm of its followers, such as some of those
you have quoted, had better be kept to ourselves. On one day in April we
shall be having a Chancellor of the Exchequer coming along with a fine
scheme for paying the National Debt off by means of golf. And now, boys,
we’d better be off. Next Thursday, we said, didn’t we? And it’s to be
red balls then, if necessary!”


VII

When the short days, wet and cold, come on, some golfers speak of the
virtues of close seasons for games. There never can be any regularly
ordained close season in golf; such is neither needed nor desired. But
now and then some men will try the imposition of such a season on
themselves.

They oil and put away their clubs, give away their stock of balls, put
everything connected with golf away into the box-room, and settle down
to a course of winter reading, study, and attention to those domestic
and social matters which have for so long been sadly neglected. All goes
well for a week, and then they think there will be no harm in getting
out an aluminium putter and practising on the hearthrug for five minutes
or so in the evening. This is found to be a wonderfully interesting
occupation, and presently they unstore the mashie or well-lofted iron in
order to practise negotiating stymies--a form of practice which cannot
fail to be useful in the forthcoming season. Ten days later they ask
themselves what is the use of being strong-minded and miserable, they
ring up somebody on the telephone, and they catch the next train down to
the course.

In the majority of cases the particular way in which the cold affects
the members of the close-season party and crabs their shots, is in
reducing their wrists and hands to a state of numbness in which it is
certainly difficult for anybody to play the game as it ought to be
played. Such people may be recommended to adopt a very simple device,
which is in favour among the best and sturdiest players, namely, that of
wearing knitted cuffs or mittens over those wrists and coming some way
up on the hands. Mr. Hilton carries this idea to the extent of wearing a
special kind of thick, warm cuffs made of fur, and the effect is to keep
warm those important and much exposed veins in the wrists which feed the
hands with blood. The difference is wonderful; but if it is still
insufficient to enable the man to do what he considers justice to his
game, and if he is still miserable, there is no harm in his imposing a
close season upon himself. But he must not talk like the fox who lost
his tail, and try to induce others to stop the game as well. It is no
use pretending that the game generally would be any the better for it.

But let us take the question as to whether a man’s golf, supposing it is
normally good golf, ever can be any better for a more or less lengthy
stoppage, and upon it I have taken the opinions of several different
authorities, with the result that, though they do not all agree, there
is a strong balance in favour of keeping your golf going all the time if
you want to improve or even maintain it at its best standard. You will
generally find that it is only the amateurs who ever get really stale.
The professionals rarely do. Mr. Horace Hutchinson is apparently one of
those who do not believe in giving up one’s golf for any length of time.
He thinks the results are generally disastrous, and he tells how on one
occasion in his earlier days, when he was reading for the Bar, he did
not look at a golf club for some months, with the result that when he
resumed the game he found that he had forgotten a great deal of it, had
to relearn it, and found even then that it was not the same good game
that he had been bred up with. He now counsels all who are going
anywhere for a long holiday or anything of that kind, on no account to
go near a place where there is no golf course, for the result will be
that life will never be the same again as regards its golf. “You never
play again,” he says, “with the same confidence, the same fearlessness,
the same certainty that you can control the ball and make it do what you
tell it to do. You may make something of the game afterwards, but I am
sure that you will lose immensely. You do not play in the same
instinctive way as before.” Men like Braid and Vardon would not say
“Thank you” for a month’s holiday in which they could not play golf
regularly, despite the fact that they are always playing. One recent
winter Harry Vardon was sent to Bournemouth for his health, and they
took good care to see that his clubs did not go with him, and solemnly
warned him that he must not play there, for he might have been equal to
borrowing somebody else’s clubs. Then he would write to London in a most
pathetic manner, saying, “They won’t let me have my clubs and play,” as
if he were being deprived of food and the necessaries of life.

There are some exceptions to this rule of continual play that may be
taken as proving it. There is the case of Andrew Kirkaldy, who, after
being second for the Open Championship in 1879, went for to be a
soldier, was sent to Egypt, fought at Tel-el-Kebir and other places,
came back in 1886, and soon afterwards tied for the Open Championship.
Mr. Edward Blackwell had two separate spells of farming in California,
each lasting about five years, during which periods he never saw a golf
club or ball, but each time he came home he regained his best form
almost immediately, and captured Royal and Ancient Club medals. But,
after all, in golf every man must be to a large extent a law unto
himself; and the fact that he is so is one of the glories of the game.


VIII

It is a glorious thing to play a game that one need never give up,
however long one may live. And what is more, the game can be played well
by the veteran, and he enjoys it almost as much as ever, and does not
merely take part in it for the sake of the fresh air and the exercise.
Possibly if he had not been a golfer in his middle age, and perhaps in
his youth as well, he would not be able to play any game, even a
fireside game, by the time he was due to become an octogenarian. For
some years previously his pleasures would have been with the angels. One
cannot discover who is the oldest golfer, but there are many still
active on the links who are nearing ninety, including a celebrated
peer-patron of the game. Considering the matter from the other point of
view, we have the remarkable fact that nearly every professional golfer
of note in these days (and a large though decreasing proportion of
amateurs) began to play golf of some sort as soon as his baby
intelligence had developed sufficiently to make him understand that if
he hit a ball with a stick it would move. They began to play as soon as
they could walk, and almost to a man they declare that the very first
memories they have of anything in life are associated with playing some
kind of childish golf, and aping their elders in every possible way.

It is to the fact of their having done so that they attribute most of
their success in their after life at the game. As children they
developed a free, easy, natural swing that has stood them in good stead
ever since, and it has become so rooted into their system that they are
far less liable than other golfers who began much later, to be
constantly going off their game and dropping out of their proper swing.
Harry Vardon, James Braid, J. H. Taylor, Alexander Herd, Willie Park,
Jack White, and all the rest of them played golf as the very smallest
children. The two last-named both declare that they developed their
extraordinary putting faculties when they were mere babies. Park, a king
of putters, it is certain, gained his extraordinary delicacy of touch,
and fine discrimination in selecting the line to the hole, through
practising as a very small boy with marbles on the stone or brick floor
of his father’s workshop at Musselburgh, a slight hollow in the floor
being regarded as the hole. He got a passion for such putting practice,
and at nights would surreptitiously borrow the key to the shop and hie
there with some other boys for putting practice. He says that he has
never had such hard putting to do since, and that when in due course he
went out on the links to play the real game, putting seemed very easy to
him. The first clubs that Alexander Herd ever used were glued together
for him by his mother, and his first golf was obtained in the streets of
St. Andrews. It was much the same with several of the best amateurs,
though from the evidence that one can obtain they do not appear to have
been such keen golfers when babies as were the professionals.
Mr. Hilton, one of the most skilful amateurs of any time, thinks he was
about six when he first went forth to try to play with a full set of his
father’s clubs.

Then, practising all through their childhood and youth, at what age did
these men first begin to play first-class golf, and to give signs of
their future greatness? From an analysis I have made of their own
statements, and the events of their careers, I find that in nearly every
case it was at about seventeen--just when their stature and physical
powers had fairly fully developed. In practically all cases men who were
subsequent champions were good scratch players at this age. But you will
always find that it takes them many more years after this to make their
game perfect--many years of the hardest and most persistent practice
conceivable. Mr. Hilton came on very quickly, being in championship form
when he was twenty-two, and Taylor had fully matured by the time he was
twenty-three. But Harry Vardon was twenty-six, and Braid was thirty-one.
Generally a man who is destined to play the great golf, and who has been
at it all his life, does not begin to settle down to the steady
brilliant game until he has passed twenty-five, and from that point he
usually improves a little until he is thirty, at which he is at his very
best. Thirty is the golden age for golf. Look back through history, and
see how formidable have been the great men at that age. The fact may be
useful evidence against those who sneer about the “old man’s game,” as
showing how long it takes to attain perfect golf when everything is in
your favour. Mr. Barry’s victory in the amateur event when he was
nineteen, and those of Mr. Travis and Mr. Hutchings when these
gentlemen were quite middle-aged (anyhow, Mr. Travis, the younger, was
forty-three), have to be regarded simply as phenomena, and as the
exceptions which prove the rule. The tale of the ages, as gathered from
all experience, seems to be that the ideal golfer begins as a baby, is
scratch at seventeen, a champion at twenty-five or twenty-six, and
perhaps again at thirty-two, and that thenceforth he plays serenely on
until at eighty-five or thereabouts he engages in a great foursome with
other old warriors. And, taking it all round, a very good time he has
had.


IX

In the dampest and gloomiest days of the British winter, the golfer’s
fancy often flies to Riviera and Egyptian courses; and a while later the
golfer follows his fancy, so that he may have a dry game in the sunshine
again. Golf in Egypt is a thing to itself. “Through the green” it is
mere sandy desert, for bunkers there are chiefly mud walls, and the
putting “greens,” which vary a little on the different courses, are
generally made of rolled mud. Yet this golf is eagerly participated in
and most thoroughly enjoyed by the large British population. They would
not be without it for a thousand Pyramids. They have their competitions
and they have a championship of their own. Egyptian golf has a curious
history. It is nineteen years since the game was first played in the
Land of Pyramids--that is to say, since two players drove from a tee and
holed out on what they called a “green”; but some time before that a
ball was hit by a golfer. The circumstances are remarkable and are
worthy of the baptism of an ancient country like Egypt to a Royal and
Ancient game. Rameses II. and Cleopatra would have approved.

This is the true story. A full-blooded Scottish golfer, imbued with all
the best traditions, and all the better for being a clergyman, none
other than the well-known Rev. J. H. Tait of Aberlady, went for a
holiday to Egypt, and duly climbed to the top of the Great Pyramid.
Arrived there he rested, and to do so the more effectually he put his
hands into his pockets, when, curiously enough, he felt a golf ball in
one of them. In a moment the golfer was ablaze in the parson, and he
determined that right there on the summit of the Great Pyramid of Cheops
he would play the game for the first time in Egypt. So he teed up the
ball and addressed it most elaborately and conscientiously with his
umbrella, for, of course, he had no clubs with him. There were none in
Egypt. Then he made a bonny St. Andrews swing: the ball went spinning
away through the fine desert atmosphere and was never seen again--by the
man who hit it, at all events. There were some great jokes about this
shot afterwards. They said that in future days some old antiquary would
find this ball in the desert sand, and would try to make out the
hieroglyphics (the name of the maker, Tom Morris) upon it. As they would
then be indistinct it would be suggested that they stood for Moses, and
the inference would be that the lawgiver of Israel was a golfer.

Some years after that a course was laid out near Cairo. The men who made
that course and played the first golf were none other than Mr. J. E.
Laidlay, twice Amateur Champion, and Sir Edgar Vincent, who won the
Parliamentary handicap in 1905. This was in 1888, and Sir Edgar had
only had one taste of golf previously, that being in the previous
summer, but he thought it would be as well to take his clubs with him to
Egypt. Mr. Laidlay, going to Egypt also, thought the same thing; but
when they got there they found there was no golf at all. They did not
know each other; but Sir Edgar knew Mr. Laidlay by reputation, sought
him out, and they conferred together on the miserable character of the
situation. Mr. Laidlay was famishing for some golf, and stirred up a
great enthusiasm in the other, so they agreed that they would go out
into the desert together and make a course.

“We made a survey of the outskirts,” said Sir Edgar, “and found the
material to be of the most unpromising description--seven parts sand and
one part scrub everywhere. There was one comforting fact, and that was
that our bunkers were ready made, for there were bunkers everywhere.
Mr. Laidlay’s enthusiasm overcame everything, and by dint of hard labour
and perseverance we soon had a nine-hole course laid out. In this way we
were certainly the pioneers of golf in Egypt, and, as I believe, in
Africa.” When Mr. Laidlay went home again he entered for the Amateur
Championship and won it for the first time. One of the first converts to
golf in Egypt was Lord Cromer.

There are now nine clubs and courses in Egypt. At Cairo the round
usually consists of twelve holes, although there are two more which are
very seldom played. It is desert golf, and the “greens” are brown
patches of puddled earth, over which sand is sprinkled daily to true
them up and slow them down a bit. Some say that the golf at Helouan is
the best in Egypt, and others prefer the Assouan course, in the making
of which Mr. John Low had much say and which he has visited since. Here
the greens are made of rolled Nile mud. But most prefer the Mena House
course, which is laid out on a bit of the very small area of grass there
is in Egypt, which is so precious that players are requested to play
only in rubber-soled shoes for fear of breaking it. For part of each
year the course is under water. Not only is there grass here, but the
course is laid out alongside the Great Pyramid, the shadow of which is
thrown across it. This Great Pyramid--2,000,000 cubic feet of
stone--gives golfers a queer feeling if they catch sight of it when
swinging for their drive. When Napoleon was beginning the battle of the
Pyramids hereabouts, he said to his men, “Soldiers! from the summit of
yonder Pyramid forty ages behold you.” That is so, and the golfers may
wish they did not. They may think it is no game for spectators of this
kind.


X

Many golfers, like others who are not golfers, have come to the
conclusion that in the twentieth century it were better for them and
their game to think and grow thin. One of the most enthusiastic and
determined says that success in the game depends chiefly on the stomach,
and one is half inclined to think that he is right. He is, to this
extent, that it is hard to play fine golf when the interior mechanism is
in bad working order. And it is quite apparent that we modern golfers,
like other people who are outside the pale of our noble game, are not
the possessors of such strong heads and tough digestive apparatus as
our ancestors of the links used to be. The man in the street dare not
for his life walk into the Cock Tavern and call the “plump head waiter”
to bring him a pint of port just because it is five o’clock, as Tennyson
used to do as regularly and deliberately when he was Fleet Street way,
as if it were nothing more fortifying than tea that he demanded. The
modern man would be too much afraid, lest perchance he should not know
when it was six o’clock. We are not like our forefathers, and we can
never be like them. There is a queer tale of a comparatively modern
golfer who drank deeply overnight, so that his path to his bedchamber
was one of tortuous difficulty, but who, nevertheless, got up in the
morning to win a championship; and it is not many years since a picture
was drawn for a text-book on golf in which it was suggested that “the
man to back” was he who was sitting down to something in the nature of a
Porterhouse steak with a not very small bottle of wine at the side of
his plate.

From a high moral point of view those ancestors of ours who bred
inferior stomachs for us were, of course, wrong, and yet they did many
fine things on their pints of port. They wrote great prose and verse,
they painted fine pictures, their taste and skill in handicrafts were
superb, they won the battle of Waterloo and the battle of Trafalgar, and
they could--most undoubtedly they could--play golf. Having regard to the
quality of their tools and the state of the upkeep of their links, they
made many fine rounds, which showed that they had great skill, that they
had a fine steadiness of hand and eye, and even that they upon occasion
went in for thinking golf!

And of all the types of the modern Britishers’ ancestors, give us for
great courage at the board and for a capacity for high enjoyment
according to his lights, the golfing ancestor! He was a rare fellow. He
went out to play his round by day, and he foregathered the same evening
with the others of his golfing society and celebrated the day as many
persons say that a good day should be celebrated. And it was a matter of
duty with him too, not merely inclination. On the morning of the play
and dinner days of some of the fine old Scottish golfing societies, it
was the custom to send the boy of the club round to each member’s house
summoning him to the meeting, and taking his name if he promised to be
present at the evening meal.

The old golfers saw to it that the quality of all the fine things of
which they partook was of the very best, for leading features of their
dinners were the gifts of various members of their own company, and it
was the common custom before each gathering was ended to make large
provision for the next one in the way of promises of food and drink, and
these promises once made were exacted to the last ounce and drop, under
penalty of fines of dozens and cases of wines and spirits.

No club has richer traditions in this respect than the old North
Berwick. The viands that its own company sent to its table for its
constant meetings were fine things. One time Mr. Hay of Rockville sent
along a round of beef stewed in hock. Sir D. Kinloch sent Shetland beef,
the Duke of Buccleuch contributed large quantities of venison and
venison pasty, while the Earl of Eglinton, as an apology for his absence
from one meeting when captain, sent a fine buck. As for liquids,
Sir David Blair presented the club at the start with three dozens of
champagne, and thereafter it became the custom to fine a member exactly
that for any delinquency or omission on his part. Thus we have a minute
on the books for 23rd September 1835, which reads: “At dinner it was
voted unanimously, on the motion of the captain, that Mr. John Sligo be
fined in a case of three dozen champagne for not sending a cook as
proposed by himself, by which means the turtle, venison, and other
delicacies were entirely destroyed.” Judging by the temper of these old
North Berwickers, and of the importance that they attached to these
things prandial, one would have been inclined to congratulate Mr. Sligo
on the leniency with which his grave offence was treated. Whisky by the
dozen and half-dozen came from Campbell of Glensaddell and Macdonald of
Clanranald, shrub from Mr. Whyte-Melville, rum from Major Pringle, casks
of beer and porter from various other members, and so on; claret,
withal, which was presented in large quantities, being the favourite
drink.

Even if one be but a drinker of tea and ginger ale, there is some
interest in reading of the exploits of the old-time golfers of Edinburgh
and Musselburgh. In the “bett book” of the Honourable Company, under
date of 4th January 1766, there is the rule entered: “Each person who
lays a Bett in the Company of the Golfers, and shall fail to play it on
the day appointed, shall forfeit to the Company a pint of wine for each
guinea, unless he give a sufficient excuse to their satisfaction”; and a
most interesting entry in the minutes of 16th November 1776 tells us
that “this day Lieutenant James Dalrymple, of the 43rd Regiment, being
convicted of playing five different times at Golf without his uniform,
was fined only in Six Pints, having confessed the heinousness of his
crime.” To this minute, signed by the captain, there is appended a
codicil, stating, “at his own request he was fined of Three Pints more.”
Always pints, and never pounds or guineas. The Company even thought that
it was a proper thing for it to pass a formal resolution adopting
certain liquors as the club drink, just in the same way as they would
adopt a uniform. Thus, on 11th December 1779, the sentiment of Christmas
being already abroad, it was resolved and duly entered on the minutes,
that “Port and Punch shall be the ordinary Drink of the Society, unless
upon these days when the Silver Club and Cups are played for. At those
meetings Claret or any other Liquor more agreeable will be permitted.”

O, say some, for the days of famous Jamie Balfour, secretary and
treasurer of the Company in 1793! Never was jollier golfer. And never a
man more honest, more deservedly popular, and loved by all his
contemporaries than he, as witness the fact that when, alas! he went to
the links of Valhalla before he reached the age of sixty, the company
mourned for him as golfers had never mourned before. They met at a
special meeting and dinner in the most solemn mourning, with the Captain
in the chair and Sir James Stirling, Baronet, Lord Provost of the City
of Edinburgh, beside him, and drank to Balfour’s memory in the most
solemn of toasts.

Jamie looked upon the wine when it was red; he could see no virtue in
self-denial. He liked the sound of the drawn cork. When he heard one
drawn in any house that he happened to be in, which gave an unusually
sharp report, he would call out, “Lassie, gie me a glass o’ that!” not
troubling to ask what the wine was, but taking it for granted that for
such a report it must needs be good of its class.

A story is told that a lady who lived in Parliament Close, Edinburgh,
was wakened from her sleep one summer morning by a noise as of singing,
when, going to the window to learn what was the matter, guess her
surprise at seeing Jamie Balfour and some of his boon companions,
evidently fresh from an orgie, singing “The King shall enjoy his own
again” on their knees around King Charles’s statue. It used to be said
that Balfour could run when he could not stand still, and the story is
told that on one occasion, going home late from a festive night, he
happened to tumble into the pit formed for the foundation of a house in
St. James’s Square. A gentleman passing heard his wailing, and, going up
to the spot, was entreated by Balfour to help him out. “What would be
the use helping you out when you could not stand though you were out?”
said the passer-by. Whereupon Jamie retorted, “Very true, perhaps, yet
if you help me up I’ll run you to the Tron Kirk for a bottle of claret.”
And he did; and having won the first bottle, Jamie exclaimed, “Well,
’nother race to Fortune’s for another bottle of claret,” and he won that
one also.

In its ancient days the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews was
great on fines in wine. It promoted conviviality on every possible
occasion, and, indeed, one of the first of its minutes that are now
discoverable says, under date 4th May 1766, “We, the Noblemen and
Gentlemen subscribing, did this day agree to meet once every fortnight,
by Eleven of the clock, at the Golf House, and to play a round of the
links; to dine together at Bailie Glass’, and to pay each a shilling for
his dinner--the absent as well as the present.” It was some two or three
years after this that means were devised for augmenting the dinner wine
through the various social delinquencies of members. Thus, on
4th September 1779, a resolution is passed as follows: “It is enacted
that whoever shall be Captain of the Golf, and does not attend all the
meetings to be appointed throughout the year, shall pay Two Pints of
Claret for each meeting he shall be absent at, to be drunk at such
meeting; but this regulation is not to take place if the Captain be not
in Fife at the time.” Many years later, in 1818, the wine tax on
absentees was applied to members generally, under interesting
circumstances, as indicated in the terms of the resolution that was
passed, which read: “The Club, taking into consideration that the
meetings have of late been thinly attended by the Members residing in
town, in consequence of several members giving parties on the ordinary
days of meeting, and thereby preventing those who would otherwise give
their presence at the Club, from attending them, Do Resolve, that in
future such Members as shall invite any of their friends, Members of
this Club, to dinner on the days of meeting, shall forfeit to the Club a
Magnum of Claret for himself, and one bottle for each Member so detained
by them, for each offence, and the Captain and Council appoint this
Resolution to be immediately communicated to General Campbell.” On
16th September 1825 a minute is entered, “Which day the present Captain,
having imposed on himself a fine of a Magnum of Claret for failure in
public duty, imposed a similar fine on the old Captains present.” It is
quite evident that in these rich old days the social side of golf was
cultivated in a manner that makes the worthiest efforts in this
direction in the twentieth century look mean in comparison.

The men of the old Musselburgh Club were great in conviviality. Here is
a remarkable entry taken from their minute-book: “Musselburgh,
11th January 1793.--The Club met according to adjournment. The meeting
was so merry that it was agreed that matching and every other business
should be delayed till next month.”

On 11th May 1798, when the Club held its meeting, the question was put
as to whether the funds should be disposed of by the members present or
delayed till the December meeting, when it was resolved by a majority
that the company then present should determine it. Thereupon it was put
to the vote as to whether the funds should be drunk, or part of them
taken to “give their Myte to the Voluntary Subscription in aid of the
Government,” and it was carried unanimously that Five Guineas should be
sent to this fund in the name of the Club, and that the remainder of the
funds should be disposed of at the December meeting. Meeting at Moir’s
on 16th February 1810, the members “Resolve, That an annual subscription
of One Guinea be paid by each member, from which fund the expense of the
dinners is to be in future defrayed, but all the expenses of liquors to
be defrayed by the company present. And any overplus at the end of each
season to be sunk in a General _Gaudeamus_.”

The old records of the Bruntsfield Links Golf Club are similarly
entertaining. On 27th April 1822, “Captain Kilgour informed the meeting
that Mr. Williamson had sent a small cask of spirits of his own
manufacture as a present to the Club. The Secretary was ordered to
transmit the thanks of the Society to Mr. Williamson, and to inform him
that he was unanimously elected an Honorary Member.” On 29th June 1842
we are told that “a very large party dined at Cork’s, and the evening
was spent with more than stereotyped happiness, harmony, and hilarity. A
number of matches were made. Mr. S. Aitken (not, of course, when madness
ruled the hour) pledged himself if, and when, Deacon Scott married, to
present to the Club half a dozen of wine, and the like quantity to the
object (lovely, of course) of his choice! This happy evening ‘through
many a bout of linked sweetness long drawn out,’ partook of the
transitory nature of all earthly things, and, as one of our poets
says, broke up!”

After the meeting of the Bruntsfield members on 17th December 1842, “A
large party dined at Goodman’s, and spent a very happy evening, not the
less so that some member, to the company unknown, made the handsome
present of half a dozen of Champagne. Mr. Brown, after some very
apposite remarks, read an interesting paragraph from the _Bombay Times_
of the 19th October last, noticing certain proceedings of a Golf Club
formed in the East Indies, which gave rise to much felicitous
discussion, and the appointment of a deputation, consisting of the
Captain and Mr. Paterson, to meet and compete with the like, or any
number of the Indian Club, the deputation to travel at the Club’s
expense and by the new Aerial Transit, which is expected to start early
in February next.” They were in a happy mood that evening.

The minutes record that on 18th October 1845, “The Club dined in the
Musselburgh Arms Inn, and spent a very happy evening; but the meeting
having been prolonged beyond the period at which the omnibus (in which
seats had been taken) started, the members found it necessary to walk
the greater part of the way to town.”

Rich, indeed, were those ancient days of golf!


XI

And so, heigho! another full year of golf has run to its end, and we
come to pause for a little while to reflect upon the new chapter that
has been added to the long happy story of our play; for, indeed, it is
true of us golfers, as it is of others, that “we spend our years as a
tale that is told.” For some days now the links which have served us so
faithfully and so well during all this year, have been at rest, asleep.
Nature, the gentle considerate nurse, sometimes comes to the help of
these precious acres of green turf in that season when their lot is the
least happy, fending away us tyrant masters while she lays them to
repose and wraps up each teeing ground and putting green and all the way
between in the thick mantle that she weaves herself. Perhaps the players
do not always know that the grass welcomes this snow, and is not, as
they might imagine, stifled with it and reduced to such unconsciousness
as to be near the point of death. The snow both nourishes and warms the
worn-out turf--collects and holds down for its sustenance all the
available nitrogen in the atmosphere, and then covers it with that thick
cloak which generates only warmth beneath. Presently, when the frosts
cease and the snow melts and the grass lies bare again, those who have
recollection enough for the comparison will see that it is greener and
stronger than it was before. When there is a championship in prospect on
St. Andrews links, the wise and good greenkeeper there beseeches kind
Nature that of her infinite variety she will vouchsafe to his little
patch of earth for some several days of winter a heavy fall of snow,
that in due course he may better serve up to his master golfers a links
of such perfection of order as will please them to the utmost. What
shall he care if the old grey place is beleaguered by these storms of
snow, if the Swilcan Burn is almost covered up, and if it would be as
much as the life of the captain of the Royal and Ancient Club were worth
to try to find the line to the Long Hole? Hush, you grumbling golfers!
The old course, weary, is at rest; and patiently will the happy
greenkeeper wait for its awakening. There is something of pathos in the
time and the scene, as:

   “Full knee-deep lies the winter snow,
    And the winter winds are wearily sighing;
    Toll ye the church-bell sad and slow,
    And tread softly and speak low,
    For the old year lies a-dying.”

How much does it mean to us, does a year of golf! In the last few
moments of the year that you give up to golfing thought and reverie as
you sit by the cheerful fire, and perhaps, according to the old fancy,
toy on the hearthrug for a while with the putter that you hold at
convenience in the corner, and the memento ball that you preserve upon
the mantelpiece--at such time make a pleasant reflection upon all the
joy and the gladness, and the health and the adventure, and the glorious
rivalry and close comradeship that have been crowded into this short
space of time! Above all, think how much nearer in most blessed
friendship has this year of golf drawn you to those who are most after
your own heart! There is no habit of man that can do more than golf
towards such an end as this, and it is in his abundance of the best
friends that a man lives most happily and to the best purpose.

And the golfer has seen more of the year, of the real year of Nature so
complex and so complete in its variety and balance, than the other men
who live in towns. He braved it in the open lands through the bitter
weeks of January and February, and he was cheerful through the winds and
rains that followed, for as the rainbows spread across the sky he knew
that the glorious spring had come, most heartening time of all the
golfing year. Then would he stamp his feet on turf grown firm, and
acclaim his ball with affection for its constant cleanliness. The
golfer, even he of the town, hears the change in the song of the birds,
he notices the newcomers among them; he has interest in the leafing of
the trees, and lo! the big sun of summer shines upon him. And when can
golfer be happier than when, after droning lazily through a hot
afternoon, he plays an evening round upon the links in those most
perfect conditions for pure delight? Surely it is hard to say which of
those rounds is the best, that of the spring morning, the autumn
morning, or the one in the balmy evening of June. And the golfer, bold
and lucky, who once in a way makes his ripest play on some wild day in
December when the wind from the sea comes like a blast across the links
and all above is dripping scud, would in his pride not grant that the
golfer lived his life at the full on any of those other days of peace
and calm. So, from the play in the long summer twilight, we wander down
the year, through brown October to the greys that follow, and the white
curtain falls at last upon the exhausted season.




INDEX


  Aden Golf Club, 10
  African coast, golf on the, 12
  Age for golf, best, 293
  America, golf in, 12
  American ladies’ golf, 100
  Anderson, Jamie, 89
  Antarctic, golf in the, 11
  Arabia, golf in, 10
  Archerfield golf course, 140
  Architecture, different classes of golf, 134
  Argentine Republic, golf in the, 10
  Asia, golf in, 10
  Australia, golf in, 10
  Austria, golf in, 9
  Autumn meeting at St. Andrews, 186
  Axes of rotation, 209


  Bagdad, golf at, 10
  Balfour, Jamie, 301
  ---- The Rt. Hon. A. J., as a golfer, 37, 90
  Ball, Mr. John, 124
  Balls, different kinds of, etc., 54, 58;
    price and quality of, 59;
    rival manufacturers, 112;
    points of good, 203;
    too far-driving, 240;
    used in a year, 285
  Barry, Mr. A. G., 293
  Belgium, golf in, 9
  Biassed balls, 205
  Bicycles and golf, 158
  Blackheath golf course, 159
  ---- golfers, 160, 256
  Bogey, 234;
    origin of, 237
  Boulogne, golf at, 8
  Braid, J., 26, 27, 293
  Brassey, an ideal, 44
  Briars hole at Hoylake, 125
  Broughton, Capt., 53
  Bruntsfield links, 77
  ---- ---- Golf Club, 304
  Buccleuch, Duke of, 299
  Building estates and golf, 232
  Bunkers, movable, 241


  Caddies, 148
  Cæsar’s pits on golf courses, 11
  Cairo, golf at, 296
  Calabar, golf at, 12
  Campbell, Mr., of Saddell, 55
  Canada, golf in, 10
  Canary Islands, golf at the, 8
  Carnoustie golf links, 141
  Carry from drive, 196
  Chaplains to golf clubs, 64
  Charm of the game, 1
  China, golf in, 8
  Cinque Ports Golf Club, 145
  Classification of courses, 134
  Clergymen and golf, 61
  Close seasons, 288
  Clubs, names for, 41;
    ideal, 42;
    favourite, 114, 115
  Cold weather, 289
  Colonies, golf in, 10
  Commercialism, 226
  Community of interests, 179
  Companion for golfing holiday, 125
  Companions of old players, 47
  Competitions, new, 242
  County unions, 244
  Courses, altering to suit new balls, 241
  Crawford, “Big,” 40, 61
  Croquet and golf, 174
  Cruickshank, Mr., of Langley Park, 97


  Deal golf links, 116, 136, 145
  Dinners, golfing, 297, 299
  Diplomacy and golf, 13
  Disappointments, 33
  Dog dropping ball in hole, 265
  Drive, longest possible, 216
  Driving, Prof. Tait on, 215
  Dunn, the brothers, 50


  East Indies, golf in the, 10
  Ecstasy, greatest, in golf, 163
  Eglinton, Earl of, 299
  Egypt, golf in, 12, 294
  Enthusiasm, greatest, 76
  Errors, popular, 201
  Examinations in rules, 243


  Favourite holes and courses, 258
  Feats of golf, 91, 111
  Ferguson, Robert, 48
  Flight of golf ball, 194
  Footpaths and roads, 158
  Forbes, Duncan, 221
  Foursome, a famous, 140
  France, golf in, 8
  Frog in the hole, 263
  Frosty days, 255
  Future, concerning the, 30


  Gate-money and golf, 230
  Germany, golf in, 9
  Gourlay, Douglas, 80
  Government of the game, 244
  Graham, Mr. John, junr., 124
  Gravity and the golf ball, 197
  Great Pyramid, 297
  Gullane, golf at, 139


  Haskell ball, invention of, 57;
    success of, 58
  ---- Mr. Coburn, 57
  Health and golf, 291
  Helouan, golf at, 296
  Herd, A., 26, 152
  Hilton, Mr. H. H., 29, 115, 259, 293
  Holes, in process of changing, 267
  Holidays, golfing companions on, 125;
    advice on, 127;
    returning from, 132
  Holland, golf in, 9
  Honourable Company of Edinburgh golfers, 64, 221, 300
  Hope in golf, 3
  Hoylake, golf links, 122, 137
  Huntercombe course, 11
  Hutchings, Mr. Chas., 293


  Ideal clubs, 42
  ---- course, 259
  Imaginary golf, 181
  Impact, duration of, 200
  International aspect of golf, 14
  Italy, golf in, 9


  Jones, Rowland, 26, 152


  Kaiser William and golf, 9, 220
  Kennedy, Lord, 97
  Kent, golf in coast of, 144
  Kilspindie golf course, 140
  Kimberley, putting greens at, 10
  King Edward VII. as captain of the Royal and Ancient Club, 220
  ---- James II., 224
  ---- of Spain as golfer, 220
  ---- William IV. medal, 190
  Kinloch, Sir D., 299
  Kirkaldy, Andrew, 27, 152, 290


  Ladies’ golf, 85, 98
  Laidlay, Mr. J. E., 92, 172, 295
  Leith, golf at, 79, 224
  Line of the putt, 272
  London, as centre of game, 146
  Long grass, 85


  Macdonald, Mr. C. B., 260
  MʻKellar, Alexander, 76
  March, 24
  Match-book, on keeping a, 17
  Maxwell, Mr. Robert, 25
  Medal play, 84
  Mexico, golf in, 12;
    travelling in, 152
  Midland Association, 244
  Morris, Tom, junr., 47
  ---- Tom, senr., 50, 55, 140
  Mother course, a golfer’s, 160
  Motor-bicycles, 157
  Motor-car, ball in, 270
  Motoring and golf, 150
  Mud, questions to Rules Committee about, 81
  Muirfield golf links, 140


  Names for clubs, 41
  Napoleon’s camp, golf on, 8
  National Golf Club, U.S.A., 259
  Nature lover, golfer as, 193, 308
  New Zealand, golf in, 10, 80
  Night, match at, for £500, 96
  North Berwick links, 25, 136, 139
  ---- ---- old club, 299


  October, 191
  Old age, golf in, 291
  Old-time golfers, 297
  One, holing in, 86


  Park, Mungo, 141
  ---- W., senr., 25, 141
  Parliament, golf in, 278
  Patersone, John, 226
  Pegwell Bay, 147
  Picture, valuable, hit by golf ball, 110
  Polar golf, 11
  Politics of the game, 244
  Porthcawl golf links, 141
  Practice stroke on putting green, 272
  Prestwick golf links, 25, 136, 143
  Pretoria, putting greens at, 10
  Primitive instincts, 5
  Prince’s Club, Sandwich, 145
  Professional matches, 26
  Put off, being, 157
  Putting, in medal play, 83;
    hesitation in, 107;
    difficulties of, 166;
    psychology of, 169;
    thoughts during, 171;
    things hurtful to, 176;
    line in, 272
  Putting green, curious, 10


  Queen Adelaide Medal, 188


  Rain on the links, 16
  Resting from golf, 289
  Rhodesia, golf in, 94
  Risks of golf, 93
  Riviera, golf on the, 294
  Roads and footpaths, 158
  Robb, Mr. James, 167, 172
  Robertson, Allan, 47;
    fine play at St. Andrews, 49, 55, 140
  Royal and Ancient Club, 41, 186, 247, 302
  ---- Liverpool Golf Club, 123, 277
  ---- Musselburgh Golf Club, 99, 304
  ---- St. George’s Golf Club, 145
  Rules, points on the, 261
  Rules Committee, 80
  Russia, golf in, 9


  St. Andrews, charm of, 118;
    by-laws at, 120;
    bunkers at, 121;
    class of links, 137;
    holes at, 158;
    autumn meeting at, 186;
    early times at, 221
  St. Clair, Wm., of Roslin, 222
  St. Petersburg, golf near, 9
  Sandwich golf links, 138
  ---- Islands, golf in the, 10
  Scientific investigations, 194
  Score, keeping, in match play, 102
  Seasons, changing, 192
  Secret of the charm of the game, 1
  Seed, sowing, 190
  Selkirk decision, 274
  September, 46
  Shafts, socketed and scared, 255
  Shakespeare and golf, 31, 34
  Sheltering from bad weather, 254
  Siam, Royal Bangkok Golf Club, 10
  Snow, 306
  Societies, golfing, 177
  South Africa, golf in, 10, 95
  ---- America, golf in, 10
  Spin of golf ball during flight, 198, 202, 208, 213, 214
  Spring, 1, 15, 35
  Statistics, 284
  Stormont, Lord, 256
  Sun on the links, 16
  Sunningdale golf course, 136
  Superstitions of golf, 114
  Sussex Union, 244


  Tait, F. G., his match-book, 21, 196, 220
  ---- Rev. J. H., 295
  ---- P. G., Professor, experiments and investigations in flight
    of golf ball, 194, 222
  Tangier, golf at, 8
  Taylor, J. H., 26, 27, 293
  Tee shot, pleasure of hitting good, 163
  Temple of golf, 219
  Tests of balls, 206
  Thibet, golf in, 10
  Thoughtful study of the game, value of, 67
  Trajectories of balls, 210, 212
  Travelling for golf, 148, 156
  Travis, Mr. W. J., 115, 171, 173
  Triumvirate, the, 27, 28, 29
  Troon golf links, 25, 136
  Turkey, golf in, 10


  Unions, golfing, 244


  Vardon, H., 26, 27, 293
  ---- T., 27
  Victoria Falls, ball driven over, 111
  Vincent, Sir Edgar, 295


  Walton Heath golf course, 11, 136
  Wandering player, 118
  Warwickshire County Union, 244
  Water shots, 253
  Weather, bad, 251
  Wei-hai-wei, golf at, 8
  Welsh Union, 244
  White, Jack, 26, 29, 152
  Wind in golf, 24
  Winter, 251, 306
  Worcestershire County Union, 244


  Yorkshire Union, 244




_Printed by MORRISON & GIBB LIMITED, Edinburgh_




  [Transcriber’s Notes:

  Inconsistent hyphenation retained.
  Errors in punctuation repaired.
  Pages 22 and 128, “slightest” changed from “slighest” (without the
    slightest chance; the slightest provocation).
  Page 29, “popular” changed from “populer” (great and popular player).
  Page 34, “a” inserted (Could a golfer).
  Page 45, “a” inserted (a good human).
  Page 90, “Point Garry” changed from “Pointgarry” (It was Point Garry).
  Page 94, “court” changed from “courts” (may a man court).
  Page 115, “have” inserted (Other golfers have).
  Page 224, “seventeenth” changed from “seventeeth” (of the seventeenth
    century).
  Page 242, “They” changed from “Then” (They play, say,).
  Page 262, “occurrence” changed from “occurence” (the most
    extraordinary occurrence).
  Page 305, duplicated “of” deleted (one of our poets).
  Page 313, “Sandwich” changed from “Sandwick” (Prince’s Club,
    Sandwich).
  Page 314, “Wei-hai-wei” changed from “Wei-hai-Wei” (Wei-hai-wei, golf
    at).]