The Happy Golfer
by Henry Leach · English · Gutenberg #37136 · 777,653 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Happy Golfer
Author: Henry Leach
Release date: August 19, 2011 [eBook #37136]
Most recently updated: January 8, 2021
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HAPPY GOLFER ***
Produced by Greg Bergquist, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
THE HAPPY GOLFER
_BEING SOME EXPERIENCES, REFLECTIONS, AND
A FEW DEDUCTIONS OF A WANDERING PLAYER_
BY HENRY LEACH
AUTHOR OF "THE SPIRIT OF THE LINKS," "LETTERS OF A MODERN GOLFER," ETC.
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1914
COPYRIGHT
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
THE SEVEN WONDERS OF GOLF, AND THE ABIDING MYSTERY OF THE GAME,
WITH A THOUGHT UPON TRADITIONS AND THEIR VALUE 1
CHAPTER II
THE UBIQUITY OF THE GAME: WITH AN ADVERTISEMENT FOR THE COMMUNITY
OF GOLFERS, AND A NOTE UPON THE EFFECT OF ST. ANDREWS SPIRITS 28
CHAPTER III
THE TRAGEDIES OF THE SHORT PUTT, AND A CONTRAST BETWEEN CHILDREN
AND CHAMPIONS, WITH THE VARIED COUNSEL OF THE WISEST MEN 56
CHAPTER IV
OLD CHAMPIONS AND NEW, AND SOME DIFFERENCES IN ACHIEVEMENT, WITH A
SUGGESTION THAT GOLF IS A CRUEL GAME 88
CHAPTER V
A FAMOUS CHAMPIONSHIP AT BROOKLINE, U.S.A., AND AN ACCOUNT OF HOW
MR. FRANCIS OUIMET WON IT, WITH SOME EXPLANATION OF SEEMING
MYSTERIES 110
CHAPTER VI
THE BEGINNINGS OF GOLF IN THE UNITED STATES, AND EXPERIENCES IN
TRAVELLING THERE, WITH AN EXAMPLE OF AMERICAN CLUB MANAGEMENT 140
CHAPTER VII
THE PERFECT COUNTRY CLUB AND THE GOLFERS' POW-WOW AT ONWENTSIA,
WITH A GLIMPSE OF THE NATIONAL LINKS 166
CHAPTER VIII
THE U.S.G.A. AND THE METHODS OF THE BUSINESS-MAN GOLFER, WITH A
REMARKABLE DEVELOPMENT OF MUNICIPAL GOLF 199
CHAPTER IX
CANADIAN COURSES, AND A GREAT ACHIEVEMENT AT TORONTO, WITH MATTERS
PERTAINING TO MAKING A NEW BEGINNING 226
CHAPTER X
GOLF DE PARIS, AND SOME REMARKABLE EVENTS AT VERSAILLES AND
CHANTILLY, WITH NEW THEORIES BY HIGH AUTHORITIES 251
CHAPTER XI
RIVIERA GOLF, AND WHAT MIGHT BE LEARNED FROM LADIES, WITH A
CONSIDERATION OF THE OVERLAPPING GRIP 277
CHAPTER XII
ABOUT THE PYRENEES, AND THE CHARMS OF GOLF AT BIARRITZ AND PAU,
WITH POSSIBILITIES FOR GREAT ADVENTURE 302
CHAPTER XIII
THE GAME IN ITALY, AND THE QUALITY OF THE COURSE AT ROME, WITH A
SHORT CONSIDERATION OF THE VALUE OF STYLE 324
CHAPTER XIV
THE AWAKENING OF SPAIN, AND SOME MARVELLOUS GOLFING ENTERPRISE IN
MADRID, WITH A STATEMENT OF GOLFERS' DISCOVERIES 339
CHAPTER XV
THE SUPERIORITY OF BRITISH LINKS, AND A MASTERPIECE OF KENT, WITH
SOME SYSTEMS AND MORALS FOR HOLIDAY GOLF 364
CHAPTER XVI
THE OLD DIGNITY OF LONDON GOLF, AND ITS NEW IMPORTANCE, WITH A WORD
FOR THE CHARM OF INLAND COURSES 392
CHAPTER I
THE SEVEN WONDERS OF GOLF, AND THE ABIDING MYSTERY OF THE GAME, WITH A
THOUGHT UPON TRADITIONS AND THEIR VALUE.
The first of the seven wonders of golf is a mysterious fascination that
it sets towards mankind, from which, overwhelming and enduring, no
people are immune. The game seizes men of all ages, of every
nationality, all occupations, dispositions, temperaments--all of them.
The charm acts upon men and women alike. Sometimes we have suspected
that males are more whole-hearted golfers; but there are circumstances
of quick recurrence to cause a doubt, and even were there none the
fancied difference would be capable of explanation. It has nearly become
an established rule that they golf the most who golf the last, for there
is no man of the links so keen, so simple and humble in his abandonment
to the game, as he who but lately held aloof and laughed, with many a
gibe upon the madness of the class. Savages have attempted golf and
found they liked it, and the finest intellects are constantly exercised
upon its difficulties. So this diversion, pastime, game has become a
thing of everywhere and everybody as no other sport of any kind has ever
done. The number of people who play no golf decreases daily, and events
of the last ten years have shown that its supremacy as the chief of
games is sure. It is clear, indeed, that, so far as the numbers attached
to it are concerned, it is still only at its beginning, in toddling
infancy. A few years hence its intimate part in general life will be
better realised; even now you do not so frequently ask a man of movement
and intelligence whether he plays golf or not as what his handicap may
be and what kind of ball he likes the best. No other game or sport
exercises anything like such power of fascination upon its people as
this. A tennis-player may leave tennis if he must; the cricketer often
voluntarily gives up cricket for no compelling reason; a man of the
hills and moors may cease to care for shooting; and one who has made an
automobile speed like the wind along the roads may sell his car and be
motorist nevermore. But the golfer will and must always golf, and never
less but more while strength permits. Men who go to the sea in ships
take golf clubs with them; I have known golfers carry their materials
into deserts, and one of the greatest and noblest explorers the world
has known took them with him to one far end of earth. Surely this is a
very remarkable thing, a feature of life that is strange as it is
strong, and it is not nonsense to suggest that this is no ordinary game
and cannot be considered as a game like others. Somewhere in a
mysterious way it touches the springs of life, makes emotions shake. It
grips; it twitches at the senses. Why?
No person has yet answered that question well and with decision, though
many have attempted to do so in written words, and ten thousand times
and more have players in their talk touched upon the lasting problem,
and then, with that natural human avoidance of the impossible, have
shuffled off to some topic more amenable. Here, it seemed, was one of
the mysteries of life, and these are such as it is better not to meddle
with. So through neglect and our timidity the problem has seemed to
deepen. It has become the Great Mystery. Wonder and awe are thick about
it. Men who were innocent and have turned to golf do not give a reason
why; they are silent to the questioner. They say that he too will see in
time, and then they golf exceedingly. Surely, then, this Great Mystery
of its fascination is the first of the seven wonders of golf; and it is
appropriate enough that a game that covers the world and embraces all
mankind should have special and well-separated wonders numbering seven
like the seven others of the earth at large: the traditions of the game,
its amazing ubiquity, St. Andrews, the short putt, the achievements of
golfers, and the rubber-cored ball are the other six. Each has its
well-established place, and between the seventh of the group and the
eighth, being chief of the thousand minor wonders, there is a wide
separation.
* * * * *
It is not for one poor atom in a great and complex golfing world to put
forward with any look of dogma a suggested solution to this subtle
mystery which the philosophers have probed so long and fruitlessly. He
will subscribe with others in a consoling renunciation to the view that
it is not for human mortals, who should be happy with delights that are
given them, to tear down veils from the faces of hidden gods. But as a
theory--shall we say?--he may advance an explanation which is
satisfying to one who has wondered as much as any others and inquired as
often during many years, while yet it still leaves a place for mystery
and a suggestion of eternal doubt. And the chief difference between this
theory and others that have preceded it is that this is what might be
called Collective while the others have commonly been theories of single
ideas. Philosophic research towards the solution of the mystery
hitherto has been almost exclusively based upon the supposition of there
being one peculiar unknown cause for the amazing fascination, a
magnificent _x_, something that in our present imperfect state of
knowledge could hardly be imagined, but which has been vaguely conceived
to be connected in some ways with the senses--and maybe the spirit. We
have known that in some mysterious and it has seemed almost supernatural
way the emotions have been stirred, most deeply shaken, by the pursuit
of golf, and the case has seemed so inexplicable that the existence of
an overwhelming unknown factor for the cause has been suspected. Here
investigation has naturally faltered. I myself for long enough was
inclined to the possibility of the single-cause theory being correct,
and with devotion was attached to that "Hope" suggestion which satisfied
most requirements and went far towards an explanation of all the
mysteries. That this doctrine, whose merits shall be considered, is
largely correct, that it does account for much of the mystery, I am well
convinced; but we who have studied in the latest schools of philosophy
are now unwilling to believe that it accounts completely for everything,
that, in fact, this hope, which the circumstances of the game cause to
flame continually in the golfer's mind like the great human passion that
it is, is the one and only Force of golf, though it is almost certainly
the major force of a group and dominates the others. Our new idea for a
solution to the grand mystery is that there is a number of forces or
causes of widely different character but associated in complete harmony
for the production of strong emotional effects in the mind of the
subject--emotions of the simplest and most natural character, but, like
others touching at the mainsprings of life, in their action most
intense. In a simple, unanalytical, and rather unphilosophical way, the
game of golf has often been compared to the game of life, just indeed as
other games and pursuits have been pointed for comparisons with the
process of human existence. So we have been exhibited as starting in
life at the teeing ground, abounding in hope and possibility. The
troubles, ills, and worries that have soon afflicted us have been found
their counterparts, all the analogies made to suit the careful people
who play short of hazards and enjoy a smooth existence, the bold
adventurers who brave long carries and like best the romantic road, the
deep bunkers of misfortune, the constant menace of the rough for those
who hesitate upon the straight and narrow way, the unexpected gifts of
Providence when long putts are holed, the erratic inclination of the
poor human when the little ones are missed. But now we find that in a
far deeper and more consequential way this sympathy between golf and
life exists, and that in this gentle play there is a repetition in
lighter tones of the throbbing theme of existence.
In the strong action upon the emotions which takes place during the
practice of the game there are effects which are purely physical and
others which are largely mental and spiritual. The physical thrills of
golf are above the comprehension of any man or woman who has not played
the game. We are certain that in the whole range of sport or human
exercise there is nothing that is quite so good as the sublime
sensation, the exquisite feeling of physical delight, that is gained in
the driving of a golf ball with a wooden club in the manner that it
ought to be driven. This last provision is emphasised, for this is a
matter of style and action, and the sensuous thrill is gained from the
exertion of physical strength in such a mechanically, scientifically,
and physically perfect manner as to produce an absolute harmony of
graceful movement. It is as the satisfaction and thanks of Nature.
Sometimes we hear sportsmen speak of certain sensations derived from
particular strokes at cricket, others of an occasional sudden ecstasy in
angling, and one may well believe that life runs strong in the blood
when a man shoots his first tiger or his first wild elephant. But the
feelings of golf are subtler, sweeter, and that we are not stupidly
prejudiced or exclusive for the game may be granted if it is suggested
that we reach some way to the golf sensations in two other human
exercises, the one being in the dancing of the waltz when done
thoroughly well and with a fine rhythmical swing, and the other when
skating on the ice with full and complete abandon. In each case it is a
matter of perfect poise, of the absolute perfection of co-ordination of
human movement, of the thousands of little muscular items of the system
working as one, and of the truest rhythm and harmony being thus
attained. We come near to it also in some forms of athletics; we have it
suggested in the figures of the Greek throwing the discus. In golf there
is an enormous concentration of this effect in the space of a couple of
seconds--not too long to permit of becoming accustomed to it, not too
short for proper appreciation. In this brief time, if the driving is
properly done as Nature would have it, the emotional sensation is
tremendous. Again one insists on the method and manner, for, especially
in late years, ways of driving have been cultivated as the result of the
agreeability of the rubber-cored ball, in which the physical movements
are restricted and changed, and nearly all of the thrills are lost. It
is still, even then, a fine thing to drive a good ball; there is
peculiar satisfaction and a sense of smooth pleasure felt in doing so;
but it is not that great whole-body thing that is enjoyed when there is
the long swing and the full finish. That is why, even if style be so
difficult to attain and there are ways of playing which are far easier
to cultivate and more certain of their good results, it is worth all the
pains and study expended in acquiring it, and a hundred times again, for
the pleasure that comes afterwards. In the winning of holes or in the
making of low scores the driving may be a comparatively unimportant part
of the play, as it is said to be, though a certain high standard of
efficiency is demanded continually; but it will always be the favourite
part of the game because it appeals so much to those physical emotions,
stirs them up so violently, rouses the life of the man, and lifts him
for a moment to a full appreciation of the perfection of the human
system. Some of these emotions are experienced in a minor key when
playing the short game, as we call it, particularly in finely-made
pitching strokes with iron clubs. Here there are restraint and
sweetness; it is as if we listen to the delicacy of Mendelssohn after
the strength and stateliness of Beethoven. Undoubtedly there are keen
physical sensations enjoyed in this part of the play. When it comes to
the last and shortest strokes, to the putting, only a faint trace of
action upon the physical emotions remains, and the pleasure and
satisfaction--if any--that are gained are purely mental. So in the short
space of five minutes, in playing one hole of fair length, we may run
along a full gamut of emotions, and herein is a great part of the joy of
golf.
* * * * *
This, however, would be insufficient. The strong, self-controllable man
would not, in their absence, crave for these emotions. But other
influences are at work to kindle and continue the golfing fever in him.
For the highest and deepest pleasure of civilised and cultivated man a
combination of the best physical and mental emotions--with a little
disappointment and grief--is essential; one without the other is always
unsatisfying. Here, foremost among the mental experiences, so powerful
as to have a certain physical influence, is our Hope. The major force of
all life is hope. It is life itself, for without it the scheme of human
existence would collapse. To look forward, to anticipate, to hope for
better things, and believe in them--that is the principle of life. It is
for that reason that the atheist comes so near to being an
impossibility. An incredible he is. He asserts himself not only as an
ignorer of gods but as a rejecter of Nature, and his position is
untenable, impossible. He endeavours to place himself outside the scheme
of creation. Without hope man could not and would not continue. He would
give up. Motive would have vanished, and motive is essential to action.
We strain analogy to no extravagance when we hold that it is the same in
golf. It is pervaded with hope, lives on it, is played with it, depends
upon it throughout in its every phase. At the beginning of the day's
play a man hopes for great achievement. He does not ignore the
possibilities, and rarely, whatever his temperament and disposition,
does he wait for events, content in a manner of perfect wisdom to take
things as they come. He anticipates, and in the human way he builds
castles made of thoughts, and in his calculations overlooks existing
facts and past experience. Thus are charm, eagerness, and romance given
to life and the game. Never yet was golfer who did not believe that now
his great day might come.
So on the first teeing ground there is hope in the highest. Should the
first stroke be successful the hope is stimulated; if the stroke is bad
the hope is intensified. In the one case something more of the human
power of man, the strong right arm and the fingers deft, is poured into
the physical and temperamental boiler where the forces are being
generated. The success has increased probability, the man can a little
the more stand by himself, his independence increases, and his hope has
a rock of fact beneath it. In the other event, the first drive having
been a failure--as, alas! with the wearinesses of waiting and the
anxieties they engender, first drives so often are--the hope is
intensified by the addition of highly concentrated faith. The element of
the practical indefatigable man is slightly reduced, and in its place
there is filled the sublimer, grander essence of spirituality that is so
far above the merely human. The hope is not the less. Providence is
brought into the schemes, and the heart lives well. If the second shot
is a good one there is more of the human given to the hope and the
spiritual is a little subdued again; if the stroke should fail there is
something like another mute appeal subconsciously made to Providence.
These are the hopes of strokes. There are the hopes for holes; the hopes
for days; the hopes for seasons, each series being units made of
collections as years are made of months and days are made of hours. One
who loses the first hole hopes to win the second, and is even insincere,
for the encouragement of his hope, in saying and trying to believe that
to lose the first hole does not matter and is often an advantage. If the
second is lost there is a coming equality in the match imagined for the
fourth or fifth. Three or four down at the turn, even five, and the man
still lives and hopes (he is no golfer if he does not), and there have
been magnificent struggles made when players have been six down with
seven to play, or have even been dormy five to the bad. He who has only
lost the first hole holds his hope in a state that is highly charged
with belief in his own human capacity; he who is dormy down when the
match is far from home still keeps hope, is buoyed well with it, but he
does his best in a half-cheerful, half-nervous way, knowing that the
time for supreme human endeavour has passed, and he gives the matter
over to kind Providence, submitting that his deserts are good. So one
who has played badly in the morning hopes for success in the afternoon;
and where is the man who, having made poor shots all the day and lost
holes and matches by them, does not fall to sleep at night consoled and
peaceful in reflecting upon a discovery that will make full amends upon
the morrow? After the failures of a summer season hopes arise for better
fare when cool autumn makes the play more pleasant; when there has been
one whole bad year there is hope enough that the game will mend in the
time that follows.
In this way it is hope all through, hope always, in the beginning and
the end and in the small things with the great. Hope is the most human,
most uplifting of all the emotions. Banish this emotional quality from
the human mind and the golf clubs would be disbanded, for the game would
cease to be golf for another day. The charm would have gone completely.
Only the nature of the hope sometimes varies as we have shown, and the
most wonderful feature of this wonder of golf is the sublimely simple
way in which the man of a match, when all seems lost, when the cause
seems wholly ruined, when by nothing human does it seem that a situation
hanging upon a thread so thin can possibly be saved, believes in the
future still. Providence still exists for him. Every human reckoning
would show that he approaches the impossible, and yet he sees it not,
but only the narrow way of escape to success beyond. And there is
infinite satisfaction to the soul, much that is splendidly destructive
of utter materialism, in realising that often the seeming human
impossibility is broken and Providence pulls us through. In golf we
often ask for miracles, and sometimes we obtain them. It seems to me
that the golfer has one satisfying motto, and only one, and it is _Spero
meliora_. What is the use of the "far and sure" that the ancients have
bequeathed to us? Nearly meaningless it is. And if those words of hope
are emblazoned on his coat of arms, the golfing man should have the
Watts picture of "Hope" in his private chamber, courageous Hope
straining for the faintest note that comes from the one lone string that
remains on the almost dismantled harp.
* * * * *
Such strong exercises of emotions, physical and soulful, accounting, as
we may believe, for much of the fascination of the game, are supported
by others, subtler but also of large effect. There are the aggravations
of the game. It suggests an object that no man has ever completely
achieved and never will do, since none has ever arisen to a state of
skill and consistency when he plays perfect golf and plays it always,
though such success may nearly be achieved at other pastimes. And it is
not given to the player to know why the skill he feels himself possessed
of does not bear its fruit. He is left in wonderment and aggravation.
The game goads, it taunts, it mocks unmercifully. Old Tom Morris
expressed the simplest overwhelming truth when he said it was "aye
fechtin' against us." It does so from the first hour, the first minute
of the golfer's existence as such, when he misses the ball which it had
seemed so easy to strike. Then, his vanity wounded, he attacks, and the
lifelong feud begins. What always seems so easy becomes the nearly
impossible. There is always something new to learn, always another scrap
of explanation of mystery to be gathered, and the player is always
groping and being taught. But he moves forward only to fall back again,
and the simple consolation he has from this ever-recurring process is
that the tide of discovery, when it rolls back, returns a little higher
up the beach with the next wave and in the long succession there is a
gain. But this process is not so regular as the running of the tide, not
so much a matter of calculable natural law, and therein is the
disappointment and the aggravation. A man retires to his rest at night
feeling himself a good and well-satisfied golfer with rapid advancement
certain, and lo! the morning will be little spent when he is shown to
himself as one of the poorest and most ineffectual players. The mystery
of this reaction is quite insoluble; only the cold fact is clear,
convincing. No more tantalising will-o'-the-wisp is there than form at
golf. It is a game that lures a man, it coquets with him, trifles with
his yearnings and his hopes, and flouts him. So does it excite him, and,
hurting his pride, stirs his ambition and his desire to obtain the
mastery. The spirit of adventure and conquest is aroused, and the strong
man who has failed in no undertaking before declares that he will not
fail in this. And so, with his everlasting hope, he perseveres and will
not give in. But it is the game that wins.
It appeals to the emotions of the primitive man in another way that may
often be unsuspected. In essence it is the simplest and the most natural
of games. It is indeed a game of Nature, and it is played not on the
smoothest surfaces with white lines drawn upon them, but upon plain
grass-covered earth, a little smoothed by man but still with abounding
natural roughness and simplicity. Here on the links are space and
freedom such as are afforded to people, especially those of towns and
cities, rarely in present times. The tendency in all life now is to
confine itself closely. We live in small spaces, with many walls and
low roofs; we move through thronged streets and by underground railways.
Things are not the same as when there was the Garden of Eden and the
open world outside it. His confinement is a wearing oppression to the
modern man, though he may not always suspect it. Because it emancipates
and gives us back a little of our lost freedom is the chief reason for
the popularity of motoring, and it was to attain more freedom still that
man made up his mind to fly and now flies accordingly. We cannot
entirely escape from this unnatural confinement which modern conditions
of life have forced upon us, but for a little while at intervals,
through the medium of this sport, we may experience the sense of space,
of freedom, of the something that comes near to infinity. Unconscious of
this cause, a golfer on the links is uplifted to a simpler freer self.
He has a great open space about him, the wilder the better, and the open
sky above. He takes Nature as he finds her, accepting her every mood,
and that is why this game is and must be one for all weathers. There is
the ball upon the tee. Hit it, golfer, anywhere you please! Hit it far,
no limit to the distance! Strike with all your strength! Until in the
game the time for wariness comes, as with the hunter upon his prey, see
no limitations, accept all consequences. The golfer's freedom has a
flavour that other people rarely taste.
Emotions serve the human system better than comforts and conveniences,
for these emotions are the pulse of life and the conveniences are mere
aids to existence. Golf, being complete, has its advantages of
convenience as well as its thrilling emotions, and when the players
reason to their relatives and their friends upon the good of the game,
shaping their excuses for a strange excess, they exhibit with a limited
sincerity the real advantages and conveniences. The game may be played
anywhere and everywhere. It is the same in principle, the same in rules,
the same in actions; but yet again it is like a new thing everywhere,
and it is always fresh. There is a golf course wherever a man may go;
and there is a new experience for him always. He needs only one man to
play with him; or indeed, if there is no such man available, he may play
with the game itself as his implacable opponent, fight it in the open
and without the medium of a human opponent to break the shocks for him.
If variety is the spice of life, then here is spice enough. Then it
gives us such companionship as can be gained by few other means, for it
brings us to inner intimacy with the man we play, bares his hidden
nature to us, strips from him all those trappings of manner and
suggestion by which in the ordinary social scheme every person plays a
part as on a stage and rarely is well discovered. No man plays a part in
golf; his individuality, in all its goodness and weakness, is unfolded
in the light. He is known entirely and for his own true self. The game
gives us fresh air and the most splendid exercise. These are enormous
advantages in golf, and we extol them in defence of our enthusiasm and
they are accepted; yet, honest to ourselves, we know that we do not play
golf because of fresh air and exercise, and indeed we only think of them
as gain when, in the slavery to which we have been subject, our emotions
for a day have been shivered and shocked by failure. It has the
advantage that we can play it when the period of life for other games
has passed, and we can play while life leaves to us but a flick of
vigour. Some of the meanest men, who are barely worthy of being in this
excellent community where the sense of brotherhood is so good, have been
gross enough to say that golf serves their professional and commercial
purposes thoroughly well--as indeed it may--by giving them intimacy with
valuable and helpful friends. These are men who would buy their idols
and sell them for a profit of five per cent. The advantages of golf are
there; but they are the accident of circumstances, or not perhaps the
accident but simply like the scheme of Nature in supporting what is good
with good itself; but they do not and cannot in any measure explain the
mystery of the fascination of the game, for that mystery lies in the
emotional, the spiritual, the psychological, and not in anything that is
just material. Golf is something of a passion, and passions are of the
blood and have nothing to do with conveniences and rules of life for
health and plain advantage.
* * * * *
The traditions of golf are the second of its wonders. All things that
are old have certain traditional sentiment clinging to them, and it
makes a good flavouring to life, for it is suggestive of age and time
and continuity and eternity. Had golf no traditions now, those emotional
effects in its subjects might be produced the same, but yet the sport
would not be the same rich colourful thing that we know it to be, but
something grosser. And again we could stand for golf and say that no
other sport can testify to its past and present worth and greatness with
such excellent tradition. Three only can rank in the same class, and
those are cricket, hunting, and the turf. Their traditions indeed are
rich, they uphold their sports to-day, and they abound in those rare
stories which, even if they have lost nothing with time, make fine
things for the listening now and have the tendency always to promote a
better sporting spirit. But three things are essential to good
traditions, the first being acts, the second persons, and the third
places, and the last of the three is far from being the least important,
because birds do not love their nests more than traditions do the plots
of earth where are their homes. They cannot live in space; there they
would lapse to a state of film and would fade away. Give them abiding
places, real solid ground upon which their delicate ghostly structures
may rest, and they have a substance which gives them a fine reality. If
a character of the past were invented, given a real name, all his
manners and customs, his feats and follies carefully described, even his
father and mother most properly identified, and a statement made of the
provisions in his will for those who followed after him, that would
still be likely to linger on as a character merely, a possibility of the
past but a thing of no account, not an influence. He could not be
placed. If we give ourselves a licence to roam the earth in search of
golf, we like to think of the good men of the old traditions as being
comfortably settled, as being at special places where, in our fireside
fancies on winter nights when the winds are moaning and the rains are
lashing against the window-panes, we can see them and sit down with
them. The wandering hero of tradition does not suit. And here is a great
virtue of the people of our golfing traditions: we can catch them tight,
nail them fast. We have special plots of land--the majestic links of
Scotland, the old course of Blackheath, almost every yard of which
might, if speechful, tell a story of some old golfer of the past. The
old golfers trod those links some time in their earthly days. We know
the shots they played, where balls pitched and how they ran, the bunkers
where they had disasters, their amazing recoveries and the putts that
they holed and missed--for even the golfers of tradition missed their
putts at times. We know where those golfers walked, and so the
traditions are of the links and the men with the links, and the links
are the same now as once. Let us then hope fervently that they may
remain the same, though a hundred kinds of new balls, each farther
flying than the one before it, should be invented, and such courses
should be declared to be weakened and out of date. It is easy enough to
invent a character, but it is not so easy to invent a links and then
declare that by sea encroachments on the coast it has been swallowed up
and has gone. The tale is weak and unconvincing. But invent your
character, and then produce your place, and say: "He was here; his feet
were on this teeing ground; here he took a divot; it was in this bunker
that he was caught," and there is nothing more that is needed for
complete conviction.
Having seen a little of the way in which certain potential and probable
traditions of the future are now being made, I have a suspicion about
some of the amazing histories of the past that have been reported to us.
Such suspicions are developed in the minds of those who have themselves
been parties to some exaggerations of things done on certain links, and
have lived to see those exaggerations improved upon by further tellers,
and of a rich story, with scarcely a base of fact, being thus
established in history and made ready for a monument. Having our plots
of land, with their permanent marks and milestones, it is easy to do it
so, and all golfers cannot be commended for complete veracity, though
their lies are tolerably honest of their kind, being, like their shots,
made subconsciously, and the cause, being companionable conduct, is a
good one. Listeners believe in them and so make them three-parts truth.
Cricket and racing have had their splendid men, and they have had
certain sorts of places, but nothing homelike, merely round patches of
smooth land with rails and grand stands, to which traditions can never
cling like ivy to the crumbling tower. The ghost men of these old
traditions were fine creatures; well did they do their work; they fought
and won; but they seem lonesome creatures. They lack location, and they
have no family histories and traditions of their own. They are mere
particles of the past. Nearly all the men of our great traditions are
heroes of fine countenance and rich character, brilliant in their
individuality, with that proper touch of pride and arrogance blended
with the finest old conservatism, which all good traditions should
enjoy. Only the ancients of the chase are good company for them.
* * * * *
It seems to me that our traditions and their associate legends might be
separated into five periods. There is the primeval, the prehistoric, the
most royal and ancient, the early Scottish, and the late gutty periods.
Of the primeval there is no more to be said than there is of primeval
man. We know the latter was born, that he did work of sorts, that he ate
and slept, that in his way he lived and perhaps he loved, while
certainly he died. Of the primeval golfers we are solid in the belief
that they had clubs and balls, for they must have had, and they had
holes or marks, for they could not have done without them. We suspect
them of stymies, for only the weight of tradition has held the stymie to
us still, and for its power this tradition must be far extended. Almost
certainly they made their first clubs from the branches of trees, but
there was nothing grand in that, for Harry Vardon and brother Tom,
Edward Ray as well, all three beginning their golf in their native
Jersey, did the same, and they played with stone marbles for their
balls, played in the moonlight too. There would seem here to have been a
tendency towards a throw-back in Jersey golf; but Vardon and his
associates have made an ample advance since then. Good Sir Walter
Simpson, in his deep researches, leaned to a more exact and defined
theory or tradition of the primeval golf, and he gaily marked for it a
beginning and a place. It is attractive and it is reasonable, and this,
with the theory of the spontaneous and inevitable origin of the game in
many places in the early times of man, theories with living detail
thickening on them, come near in quality to real tradition. Sir Walter,
you may remember, supposed a shepherd minding his sheep, who often
chanced upon a round pebble and, having his crook in his hand, he would
strike it away. In the ordinary way this led to nothing, but once on a
time, "probably," a shepherd feeding his sheep on the links, "which
might have been those of St. Andrews," rolled one of these stones into a
rabbit scrape, and then he exclaimed, "Marry! I could not do that if I
tried!"--a thought, so instinctive is ambition, as Sir Walter says,
which nerved him to the attempt. Enter the second shepherd, who watches
awhile and says then: "Forsooth, but that is easy!" He takes a crook in
his hand, swings violently, and misses. The first shepherd turns away
laughing. The two fellows then perceive that this is a serious business,
and together they enter the gorse and search for round stones wherewith
to play their new game. Sir Walter Simpson was a terrible man, and he
must needs work into this excellent romance the declaration that each
shepherd, to his surprise, found an old golf ball, every reader knowing
that they "are to be found there in considerable quantity even to this
day." Then these shepherd-golfers deepened the rabbit scrape so that the
balls might not jump out of it, and they set themselves to practising
putting. The stronger shepherd happened to be the less skilful, and he
found himself getting beaten at this diversion, whereupon he protested
that it was a fairer test of skill to play for the hole from a
considerable distance. When this was settled it was found that the game
was improved. The players, says the theorist, at first called it
"putty," because the immediate object was to putt or put the ball into
the hole or scrape, but at the longer distance the driving was the chief
interest, and therefore the name was changed to "go off" or "golf." In
the meantime the sheep, as sheep will do, had strayed, and the shepherds
had to go in chase of them. Naturally they found this a very troublesome
and annoying interruption, and so they hit upon the great idea of making
a circular course of holes which enabled them to play and herd at the
same time. By this arrangement there were many holes and they were far
apart, and it became necessary to mark their whereabouts, which was
easily done by means of a tag of wool from a sheep, fastened to a stick,
which, as is remarked, is a sort of flag still used on many Scottish
courses in much the same simplicity as by those early shepherds. And Sir
Walter wrote with reason that since those early days the essentials of
the game have altered but little.
After the time of these first shepherds there were doubtless more
shepherds, and the bucolics in general would be given to the game. Yet
it should never be understood that even in its origins this game was one
that was practised chiefly by persons of low intellectual strength.
Indeed it was not. In the ancient classics there are references to ball
games that bear close resemblance to primitive golf, and then when games
began to appear in Holland and France that had golf in them, even though
they were not golf, it was not the common people always who were most
attracted. And in passing, it must be said, that while golf as we have
it now is British--Scottish, if you like--and there is enough authority
and substance in the claim for the satisfaction of any pride seeing that
the laws of St. Andrews have been for ages back the laws of the world at
large, it is too much to believe that a game so simple in its
essentials, so obvious and so necessary and so desirable, should have
had an exclusive origin in any one country, to be copied by the others.
The elements of golf must have come up spontaneously in many different
parts of the world, although they were without rule, organisation, and
might not have been known as a game or anything like that by those who
employed them. But it was there, as eating and kissing were; and it fell
to the lot of those canny and most discerning Scots to regularise it, as
it were, to declare it a game and give it definiteness, and in due time
to set up laws and a government, all of which were just what they should
be and the best conceivable. It might not have been such a good game as
it is now had it not been nurtured at St. Andrews, Leith, and
Musselburgh, and in those other early cradles of the pastime; but I
cannot believe that if there had been no land north of Newcastle there
would have been no golf, and we should be moaning now in vague
discontent for a mysterious something lost to life.
* * * * *
I may adduce some circumstances from most ancient history and tradition
which have not been applied to this question hitherto, but should have
been, for they seem to be apposite and remarkable. In these days
Ireland, with a fine spirit, is struggling for better golfing
recognition, and should have it. When a game is for the world, what is
the Irish Channel? The country has some very splendid links, and has
produced some players--if few of them--of the finest quality; but a
people who exhibit frequently a fine appreciation of the spirit of the
golfing brotherhood, and to the wandering player extend a hospitality of
which it can only be said that it is Irish, are treated coldly in
championship dignity being withheld from their courses and their not
being admitted to the higher councils of the game. I remember with
gratitude a very early acquaintance with the golf of Newcastle in County
Down, that glorious course in the shadow of the Mourne Mountains, and
with Portrush in the north, while about Dublin there are links that fear
no comparison with the best of other lands. The ordinary records may
indicate that there was no golf in Ireland until 1881, when what is now
the Royal Belfast Club was formed; but listen to a story which is
brought to me in some spirit of triumph by a friend, Mr. Victor Collins,
a golfer, who practises his game, for the most part, not on any mainland
but out on the Arran Isles, west of the Irish coast, out on little
Inneshmor, where he lives when he is not in London, and where he has a
small course of just a few sporting holes for his own delight, one which
would have been as agreeable to the golfers of the prehistoric period as
it is now to a modern gentleman who occasionally becomes a little tired
of over-civilisation and likes to retreat to simplicity and Nature. It
is a considerable change from Stoke Poges to Inneshmor, but only a poor
soul would not like it for a period. In London one evening we talked of
golf and Inneshmor, and he told me a legendary story, the documentary
narrative of which he has since produced in the form of an extract from
"O'Looney's unpublished MS. translation of the 'Tain bo' Cuailgne' in
the Irish Royal Academy, Dublin." Knowing little of these matters, I
quote Mr. Collins direct in saying that this is the most famous of Irish
epics, and describes the war Queen Maeve of Connacht, assisted by her
vassal kings of the rest of Ireland, waged against Ulster to obtain a
bull which was reputed to be a finer animal than the one she herself
possessed. The central hero of Ulster was the famous Cuchullain, the
greatest of all Irish heroes, in truth an Irish Achilles. Fergus,
ex-king of Ulster, who had taken refuge with Maeve, tells her who are
the champions against whom her armies will have to contend, and these
lines occur in the course of his terrifying account of Cuchullain, whose
age at the time of this expedition was between six and seven: "The boy
set out then and he took his instruments of pleasure with him; he took
his hurly of creduma and his silver ball, and he took his massive
Clettini, and he took his playing Bunsach, with its fire-burned top, and
he began to shorten his way with them. He would give the ball a stroke
of his hurly and drive it a great distance before him; he would cast (?
swing) his hurly at it, and would give it a second stroke that would
drive it not a shorter distance than the first blow. He would cast his
Clettini, and he would hurl his Bunsach, and he would make a wild race
after them. He would then take up his hurly, and his ball, and his
Clettini, and his Bunsach, and he would cast his Bunsach up in the air
on before him, and the end of the Bunsach would not have reached the
ground before he would have caught it by the top while still flying, and
in this way he went on till he reached the Forad of the plain of Emain
where the youths were." This young Cuchullain does appear to have been
appreciably better than scratch. Apparently he was going to attend
something in the nature of a club gathering, and his way of getting
there was much in the nature of cross-country golf with a touch of trick
in it; for there are professionals to-day who make a show in their idle
moments of pitching up a ball and catching it with their hands. My
informer tells me that Cuchullain was not confining his attention to
golf alone, but doing feats of jugglery as well in order to while away
the journey. "The description of driving the ball before him," he
remarks, "evidently contains the germ of golf. Some years ago I saw in
an illustrated paper a reproduction of a picture of a tombstone from
some place in Ulster dating to the twelfth century. It was the tombstone
of a Norseman. On it were a double-headed sword, the sign of his
profession, and below it the perfect representation of a cleek and a
golf ball, his favourite amusement. It would be interesting to make a
serious search in old Irish records for further information on the game.
'Clettini' is from an Irish word for 'feather.' It was evidently a
feathered javelin he hurled. 'Creduma' means 'red metal,' that is brass.
Hurly of creduma therefore comes curiously near the quite modern
brassey. Bunsach is a very obscure word. In middle Irish there was such
a word, but it meant a kind of dagger." This discovery opens up an
excellent speculation.
* * * * *
The periods of the traditions of course impinge upon each other and
softly blend, so that the game some way or other seems to go back
continuously from now to the beginning. We have in the most royal and
ancient period the Stuart kings playing their golf, and Charles the
First hearing of mighty troubles to his throne perpending while he was
golfing on the links of Leith; of James the Second with his court
playing the golf at Blackheath and sowing seeds that were to bear
amazing fruit in the south at a far-off date; of Mary Queen of Scots
golfing with her favourite Chastelard at St. Andrews. There was
Archbishop Hamilton, who signed the authority that was given to the
Provost and magistrates of St. Andrews to put rabbits on the links,
which authority recognised the rights of the community to the links,
more especially for the purpose of playing at "golff, futball, schuteing
at all gamis, with all other manner of pastyme." This was a kind of
ratification of a Magna Charta of Golf. There was Duncan Forbes, of
Culloden, first captain of the Gentlemen Golfers, now known as the
Honourable Company, in 1744. A marvellous man was Duncan Forbes, Lord
President of the Council, and we know that he played for the Silver Club
in 1745--for the last time, probably, because just then the rising of
the clans obliged him to set out for the north, where he exerted himself
to the utmost to prevent them from joining the cause of the Young
Pretender. And here in passing let it be written that there is good
cause to think that Bonnie Prince Charlie himself was the first to play
real or Scottish golf on the continent of Europe, for he is believed to
have had a course made for himself when in Italy, and was once found
playing in the Borghese gardens, so Mr. Andrew Lang once told us. There
was the wonderful William St. Clair, of Roslin, so much skilled at golf
and archery that the common people believed he had a private arrangement
with the devil. Sir George Chalmers painted a picture of him, which is
possessed by the Honourable Company, and Sir Walter Scott wrote that he
was "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." And from there the tale passes on with life and colour to
the beginnings of the Royal and Ancient Club; to the activities of the
early members like Major Murray Belshes, and the interest of William
the Fourth, whose gift medal is played for at St. Andrews to this day;
to such fine gentlemen of the old school as the late Lord Moncrieff and
the Earl of Wemyss; to the professionals also like the Morrises and
Allan Robertson, and old Willie Park. So on along from the ages past to
such as Frederick Guthrie Tait, who gave to the modern history of golf
something that glows as well as the best of the old traditions.
Now it may be said that these traditions and all the others, like them
and unlike, make the game no better, and that they add nothing in yards
to our driving from the tee. After a consideration I will not agree
either that they make the game no better or that they add nothing to the
driving. The spirits of a romantic history are a continual influence.
They give a dignity to the game which is felt right through it. Only the
golfer knows how true this is. Men who look upon it lightly as a pastime
before they know anything of it, learn upon their initiation, and not
only learn but feel, that there is all that is mysterious, wonderful,
and awe-inspiring in the game and its past, a new and deep respect is
created, and there is no more beginner's lightness and nonsense. Age and
solemnity, and many ceremonies great and small, have given to golf some
of the attributes of a religion, and with membership of it there comes
responsibility. When a new Nonconformist chapel has the same exalting
influence upon the mind and sentiment of a person of intelligence and
sympathies as an ancient cathedral with all its tombs and relics, and
the dim pillars among which echoes seem to float and mingle with spirits
of the past and the great eternity, or when the dining-room of a flat in
Knightsbridge inspires and dignifies its company like the banqueting
hall of some ancient castle, I will perhaps agree that the traditions of
golf are of no practical effect beyond that of merely preserving the
game from vandalism and giving it a place above the others. Often when
reflecting thus one feels that in duty to the game one's policy in
matters should be "St. Andrews, right or wrong." But yet one could wish
that these mighty traditions were not at times invoked for improper
purposes. There is too much free and unintelligible talk about them in
these modern times. They are wantonly applied to base uses; a man will
urge the traditions in his favour and against his opponent when he
attempts some vile procedure. When a crafty person is beaten in
argument, he cries, "The traditions!" and people who speciously, and
with insincerity, condemn what we may call the modern advancements of
the game will murmur that the rubber-cored ball and clubs with steel
faces are not according to "the traditions." Truly they are not, and
those old traditions had nothing to do with gutties either; but Duncan
Forbes would have rejoiced in the possession of a modern driver and
mashie niblick. It is too often and absurdly assumed that the ancients
used the tools they had because they were the best conceivable and most
appropriate, just right in practical quality and proper sentiment. They
were merely the best that had been discovered up to then. The Stuart
kings might have had a happier time had they possessed some rubber
Haskells to coax and lead them on.
CHAPTER II
THE UBIQUITY OF THE GAME; WITH AN ADVERTISEMENT FOR THE COMMUNITY OF
GOLFERS, AND A NOTE UPON THE EFFECT OF ST. ANDREWS SPIRITS.
The ubiquity of this game--being the third of the seven wonders--is
remarkable, for it is played everywhere by everybody. No other sport has
ever achieved such universal favour, and we may be sure that none will
ever do so, because, apart from the fascination it exercises upon the
people of different countries and different races, it is so strong in
its simplicity--the stick, the ball, the mark, and, with them being
given, the object plainly suggested. It has already been suggested that,
in its essentials golf being obvious, it must have been practised from
the earliest times. Everywhere the simpler emotions of man are the same,
and so everywhere the game must make the same appeal when it is
understood. So here, strange as it is still, we have a nearly satisfying
explanation. What is yet wonderful beyond it is the fact that the
regulated game with the rules and restrictions that have been agreed
upon and codified by the high authorities at St. Andrews are everywhere
accepted, and even in such embellishments it is the same game
everywhere. Nothing can approach it in this universality. Yet that also
is nearly explicable.
By a process of continuous thought and deduction from observation the
people of St. Andrews, past and present, have gained a code of
regulations which seems most completely to satisfy the requirements of
the case. It has often been urged against the numerous and lengthy laws
we have that they suffer from too many niceties and too many
complications, and that they represent a remarkable evolution of
man-made intricacy from the one simple governing principle that the ball
shall be struck by the stick, and that if the object be not achieved by
the first blow it shall be struck again from the place where it then
lies. In that simple principle there is all golf, and by it the game
must surely have been played at the beginning. But it is the disposition
of man to depart from the most absolute simplicity in the direction of
what he regards as improvement upon it, and therefore bare principles
get covered up with fancy wrappings, while again there is in the human
species an immovable distrust of each other and a tendency towards the
setting up of safeguards and protections--laws. When this is done in
different places, and by different peoples, the results also are almost
certain to be widely different; and with the assistance of time and
further development two peoples might at length produce two games which,
originating in the same basic principle, might be in appearance,
materials, and actions quite dissimilar. Nearly all ball games, indeed,
must have had much the same original principle. Golf, as we know it, has
had its integrity preserved, and has established its amazing
universality because, despite the numerous and lengthy laws, the spirit
of the game has been so completely preserved in them. Between absolute
simplicity, the one natural law of golf, as we might call it, as just
enunciated, and a lengthy, confusing, and sometimes even contradictory
code there can be little compromise, and perfection and completeness in
golfing law are impossible, because no two courses are alike, no two
shots are quite the same, and there can be no end to new situations
until there is an end of the world and man. It sometimes seems that St.
Andrews, indefatigable, pursues an impossible finality, and thereby
makes difficulties for itself. That through ages and generations it has
produced a code of laws, and defined the principles of a game that is
accepted all over the world, and causes the same game to be played
wherever the sun may shine, is not merely an achievement in intelligence
and discernment, but something that suggests a grand inspiration. These
are times of change, when old systems of the world are being abandoned
and new ones being set in their places. It may happen, though it is as
unlikely as it is undesirable, that St. Andrews itself as a governing
body will fall; but nothing that ever happens to the game in the future
can equal the marvel of its foundation and establishment by this
authority and its associates.
* * * * *
It is not without good reason that they call golf the world game now. It
has alighted upon every country, and wherever it has touched it has
seized. The yellow man likes it; the black man in some places has to be
kept away from it, because it is found that he grows too fond of it. One
day when I was golfing at the Country Club, near Boston, they showed me
a most primitive kind of club that was kept with some other relics in a
glass case. It had been fashioned from the branch of a tree, and with
this crude implement a nigger boy in one of the southern states had not
long previously driven a ball over two hundred yards. Other games are
for their own countries, like the country's foods, and they would
neither be suitable nor adaptable elsewhere; but in its nature golf
will do for all, and it has the same subtle attraction for everybody, so
that what was once thought to be the "golf craze" of the British people
only became the craze of the Americans too, then of the French, now of
the Germans and others, and of really everybody. Its qualities and
conveniences make it the only possible world game. At present in some
countries it is confined to a few people of unusual distinction or
circumstances, but it has been found in old and recent history that,
following a beginning of this kind, the game in a new land has never
languished, but that presently it has extended from the pioneers, who
were probably from abroad, to the native people, and from the upper
classes to the middle, and then to the lower. In France at the present
time we see the game being started among the general French, and I have
news that the statesmen have begun to play; yet a little while since the
golf of Gaul was carried on by British only.
Recently some of us were looking over the map of the world for odd
countries that might be golfless, and it appeared then that there were
but four: one being the Balkan States, considering them in the piece,
another was Afghanistan, a third was Persia, and, scattering the
attention over the islands of the earth, one reflected that no golf in
Iceland had been heard of. But shortly afterwards this brief list of
lone golfless places was reduced to one. To a little gathering of
friends one night an adventurous gentleman was describing the
excitements of a day's rough golf that he had had one time when near to
Reykiavik, and, if the course was to some extent made for the occasion,
little enough did that matter then. There were some real holes, and the
pioneer declared one of them to be the longest and most sporting he had
ever played; and we knew he had played some good ones. So Iceland came
into the fold. It was discovered during the recent wars that there was
golf here and there in those worrying Balkans. Then lo! the land of the
Afghans was also delivered to the game, and it was the Ameer himself who
was chiefly responsible, thus emulating the rulers of many other lands.
He had heard of golf, had seen it, realised it, and had been fascinated.
Thereupon he had a short course prepared for him in the neighbourhood of
Kabul, and began to practise with royal assiduity at his driving,
pitching, and putting. Humble, doubtful, and yet loyal subjects observed
this done from a respectful distance, and they wondered. After a little
while they perceived that it was a game, and that the chief of Afghans
invariably sought with his little ball the holes that were placed upon
the course. Being practical people, they conceived that they might turn
the game and their royal master's fondness for it to their advantage,
and thereupon began to deposit in the holes at night such petitions as
they had difficulty in getting placed before the royal eyes by any other
means. They believed that by their new system the Ameer was sure to see
and read what was intended for him. Yet it proved that he was somewhat
angered by this manner of approach, and gave orders that all petitions
found in his golfing holes should be burned unread. The petitioning
parties had not understood how seriously the game he played was taken,
nor the deep effect it had upon the mind and the disposition of the
player, else they would surely have moved craftily and warily with their
prayers, and then they might have gained imperial favour. Had they seen
their ruler miss his drive, foozle his second, put his third into the
pond, slice among the trees with his fifth--even Ameers being penalised
a stroke for lifting from the water--and eventually reach the putting
green in nine, three more strokes then being needed, they would have
been stupid Afghans had they not at a convenient moment taken their
petitions from the holes, or withheld them if they had not placed them
there. But when an Ameer hits a good one from the tee, when his ball
flies fast and straight from his royal brassey (and rulers also laugh
when a topped ball runs a bunker!), when by enormous luck he lays an
approach quite close to the hole, and afterwards the putt is truly
played--why, many an Afghan might pray for the release of a brother from
prison in Kabul, and the brother, pardoned, might be raised to office in
the palace, perhaps to be an executioner. Now, if the petition had been
submitted when the sovereign had done his hole in twelve, the brother
might have died as arranged, perhaps the petitioner also, and who knows
but that the neglectful greenkeeper, for not having seen that all holes
for the day were free of pleas, would not have joined the departures for
another world. Wandering players may look forward now to some future
golf in Afghanistan. Have we not heard of the Shah at the game? If it
cannot be proved, Persia must be left in an Asiatic golfless solitude,
with the gibe against her that even celestial China has her courses, and
that they are everywhere save in the Persia where Omar was, and in fine
worldly philosophy bade us take good pleasures while we may.
Golf's vast ubiquity is illustrated in another case recalled by this
reference to kings who play. Miss Decima Moore of the theatres has a
love for roving far which has led her to many raw places of the earth
for hunting and shooting and adventurous exploration when she has tired
of the footlights and has longed for Nature with no mask at all. Then,
being golfer too, she has wandered with her bag of clubs into many
distant lands, and one morning in London, just back from Central Africa,
she told me of some strange experiences of a golfing woman. She has
played the game up in Uganda, and explained the quality of the play of
King Daudi Chwa, who is a ruler of those parts. Even once before, a
colonial bishop had informed me of the golf of this dusky king. He had
had some holes laid out for himself, so I was instructed, and when not
engaged in duties of his kingly office, which were seemingly not
onerous, he devoted himself earnestly to the reduction of his handicap
and to lowering his record for his private course--upon which strangers
in those parts are always welcome to a game. The bishop said that his
Majesty drove an excellent ball, played his irons well, and putted with
a good instinct for line and length, and the actress backed the bishop's
story. In the region of the Victoria Nyanza there are no Sunningdales to
be found, but the royal course of nine holes is considered a creditable
thing. The king, who was lately in England and played a little here,
will be glad to see any golfers who may go that way, and it may be his
pleasure to call one of his holes by a name of theirs as, with a good
African grace, he called one "Decima" when our English lady played it.
* * * * *
These wandering golfers do bring home great stories, and others send
them. A friend, poor Tom Browne, who is dead, the clever artist in black
and white, sat with me once at lunch in the Adelphi, and we talked of
golf in distant lands and many things concerning it, for in the morning
he was going eastwards to China and Japan. He said he should play as
much as possible, and he did. While at the table he drew a sketch on a
piece of paper and passed it to me with a smile. It was a picture of
himself leaving on a golfing holiday to those very foreign parts, with
numerous bags of clubs, cases of spare clubs guaranteed for all
climates, and innumerable large boxes piled up all round him, each one
labelled "One gross of best balls." Poor Tom always did take his clubs
with him to foreign lands, and on this occasion he made good, as one
might say, on that little sketch he drew at lunch by the places he
played at afterwards, and queer drawings he sent to me of the courses
and the people at them. He wrote from Tien-Tsin that the one they had
there was just outside the town and was a flat plain covered with
Chinese graves, the course being really nothing but one huge graveyard.
"The Chinamen," he said in his letter, "plant their graves anywhere that
suits them, and they consist of raised-up mounds which enclose the
coffins. Off the graves the ball will bounce at all kinds of angles.
Sometimes after heavy rains the mounds fall to pieces and expose the
coffins. The golf club can remove any of these graves by buying them at
four taels a coffin, and when a grave is bought in this way the native
takes the coffin away, buries it somewhere else, and the grave is then
flattened down. Fore-caddies are employed on this course. The 'greens'
consist of baked mud, as is usual in these eastern parts, and are
generally circular in shape. Chinese caddies do not understand the game
and think that the foreign devils who play it are surely mad. They
continually ask the players, 'When will you finish hitting and following
that ball about?' And they have a local rule at Tien-Tsin that 'a ball
lying in an open grave may be picked out and dropped without penalty.'"
This graveyard golf, as I know, is not at all peculiar to Tien-Tsin, for
not long ago I had a letter from a British official at Chiankiang on the
Yangtse River, in which he told me that they had just begun to play the
game out there on a course covered with crater-like excrescences, these
Chinese graves again, and he declared that they made the most excellent
hazards. It should be added for their credit's sake, golfers being
considerate people and mindful of others' feelings, that they carefully
ascertained in this case that no Chinese sentiment was injured by play
in these cemeteries, if they are to be called by such a name. Again, I
recall that a little while since the golfers who have a course in the
Malay peninsula went down to it one morning and found a Chinaman digging
up the remains of a deceased relative from one of the putting greens,
intending to remove them to China; because it is a common thing, as I am
told, when a Chinaman dies abroad, for his people to inter him
temporarily if they can and give him another burial in his native land
when opportunity chances. There has been a great move in things in this
country lately. The Government has changed; the people, according to
some trade returns that I have seen, are taking extensively to smoking
English cigarettes and wearing unlovely English clothes. So it is
inevitable that in their vast multitudes they will one day come into
golf, for a little advancement towards modern ways often leads to
strikes and golf. One fears to think that when China has a championship
her people may compete in such a costume as is favoured by some of the
oldest and best Scottish professionals (and if asked for a name we shall
mention good Sandy Herd as a captain of the class), who always wear dark
trousers and a light-grey jacket to their golf. There must be some
virtue in this unconventional arrangement of tints; for so many of the
great are attached to it.
In other parts of Asia there is golf that is peculiar, especially in
India where it flourishes to the extent of forty or fifty clubs,
including those of Calcutta and Bombay, which are not merely the oldest
in India but rank high in seniority among the golf clubs of the world.
Both were well established before 1860, at which time there were only
two or three in England, and the game was all but unknown in America.
Despite the fact that it was born in 1842 and was really an Indian
offshoot of the famous Royal Blackheath Club, the Royal Bombay remains a
little primitive in the matter of its course. It is a golf course for
one part of the day and something else for the remainder, and it is
perhaps the only course in the world which is dismantled daily. The fact
is that it is situated on what is called the "maidan," an open space
near to the European business quarter, and the golfers, having no
exclusive possession of it, are not allowed to play after half past ten
in the morning and are required, when they have done, to remove their
hazards. This obviously necessitates unconventional obstacles, and the
club has had to resort to movable screens, varying from four to ten feet
high, which are put up when play begins and taken away again when it is
finished. Having become accustomed to this sort of thing it ceases to
annoy, and in Bombay the course is considered good and sporting, and the
greens are well attended. Then up on the hills at Darjeeling there is
the highest golf course in the world, for it is situated at an elevation
of more than eight thousand feet above the level of the sea on the
abandoned cantonment of Seneshal. Scenery often does not count for very
much with golfers, and the better the golfer the keener he is on the
game and the less does he care at times about the surroundings of the
course. Yet, as I am told, it would be a dull poor soul that was not
moved by the views from the Darjeeling course, with Mounts Everest and
Kinchinjunga, both nearly thirty thousand feet high, in one direction
and the plains of Bengal in another. But perhaps the most curious of the
Indian courses is that of the Royal Western India Club, upon which is an
idgah, or kind of temple, some thirty feet in height and fifty long,
with bastions at either end and minarets in the middle. This idgah
serves the double duty of club-house and a hazard also, for it has to
be driven over from the tee on the way to the eleventh hole, and many
are the marks on its walls that were made by balls that were hit too
low. The course has another peculiarity in that it possesses seventeen
holes only, no amount of ingenuity being enough to scheme out an
eighteenth on the land available, so one of them has to be played twice
over to make up the usual eighteen. This club has its course at Nasik,
and mention of the idgah reminds one that the Royal Bangkok Club of Siam
used to have an old and very imposing Siamese temple for a club-house. A
little while since, when travelling northwards from Marseilles through
France, I met, in the restaurant car of my P.L.M. train, an officer just
going home on leave from India, and he assured me that he had found no
place in the country where there was no golf, and he gave me some good
examples of the ingenuity and enthusiasm of the golfers there. Thus at
Multam, for the betterment of their sanded putting "browns" they keep
them oiled all over, so that the ball runs evenly along them, and at a
reasonable pace. There is an attendant to each green, who smooths over
the track that is made by every ball when putted. And my companion told
me also that in the season at Gulmurg in Kashmir, where they have two
courses, there is such a crowd of golfers that it is difficult to
arrange starting times for all of them.
As one would expect, the game is played in Japan, and there is a highly
flourishing club at Kobe, whose course is on the top of a high mountain
at Rokkosan. It is a splendidly interesting course when reached, with
views that can only be second in magnificence to those of Darjeeling;
but for the occasional visitor the chief pleasure would seem to lie in
the reaching, rather, perhaps, than in golfing on it afterwards, for the
players have to 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 at last the tees and bunkers come to view.
Thus it is indicated what great work must have been done by the pioneers
of golf. They have been fine adventurers and explorers. In their
strength of purpose, their resourcefulness, their enterprise and daring,
and in their joy of doing beginnings, they have had some of the burning
zeal and the quick inspirations of the voyagers of Elizabethan time.
They too were discovering a world anew. When a golfer reaches a place
afar where there is no course, his first and most natural impulse is to
make one. Sir Edgar Vincent, keen player, told me once how he and that
most distinguished amateur and ex-champion Mr. J. E. Laidlay, had a
considerable hand in the starting of golf in Egypt, where it is now as
well established as the Pyramids and Sphinx. Sir Edgar went to Cairo,
and with him took his clubs, but on arrival found there was no course
whereon to play, and there was Laidlay disappointed in the same way. So
they twain obtained shovels and other implements of labour, enlisted the
service of native helpers, and went out into the desert, making there
the first golf course of Egypt. But theirs was not the distinction of
hitting the first golf ball in that ancient land. Long before then a
Scottish golfing minister did it. There is no better enthusiast than
these ministers, about whom the best stories are told, as of the worthy
who was left muttering the Athanasian creed in the lowest depths of
hell, being the bunker of that name on the old course at St. Andrews,
and the other who felt he would have to give it up because he played so
ill and was so much provoked--not give up the game but alas! his
ministry. And so the Rev. J. H. Tait, of Aberlady, went for a golfing
holiday to Egypt long before the two gallants who did the spade work
there, lumbered himself up to the top of the great Pyramid, and then,
feeling in his pocket, curiously enough discovered an old golf ball
there. To tee it up, to address it with the handle end of his umbrella,
and to despatch it earthwards to Egyptian sand with the thwack of an
honest east-coast swing, was the labour of no more time than would be
needed to recite a verse of Psalms.
A whole book having been written on Australian golf we may leave it
unconsidered here. Hardly an island but there is a links upon it. The
other day, when I had myself but just come back from foreign golfing
parts, I was mated for the game on a London course to one who told me he
had only then returned from Fiji, where his last game was at Suva and
was a foursome in which the local bishop, the attorney-general, the
chief trader, and himself were engaged. He explained the part that was
played by _mimosa pudica_, being the "sensitive plant," in the golf of
the Fiji islanders. When this herb is touched by anything, its leaves
droop and close upon the object, and, _mimosa pudica_ being all over the
fairway of the course, balls would be too often hidden and lost but for
the agile caddies who are sent in front to watch for them. In these days
one is hearing frequently of travellers' tales like this.
Spain having been captured by the game, as I shall relate in time, there
is little need to dwell upon the other conquests of golf in Europe. In
Germany it is fast advancing, and the German Golf Association, which
publishes a German Golf Year-Book, is an enterprising body. The Kaiser
has encouraged the game, and has given land for it. At Baden Baden they
have given the most valuable prizes to professionals; at Oberhof, in the
Thuringen Forest, there has been made under the guidance of the Duke of
Saxe-Coburg one of the nicest courses a German need wish to play upon,
and the girl caddies in pretty uniform are the most picturesque alive.
In Norway and Sweden, in Denmark, and nearly everywhere there is golf,
and much of it. It flourishes in Italy, as is to be shown in a later
chapter. Even in Russia you may golf. Both St. Petersburg and Moscow
have their clubs and courses, and the Mourino Club, belonging to the
former, has its place near a small village some dozen miles from the
capital. The golf is good for Russia, but one does not quickly forget
the roughness of the road in reaching it. And down at the bottom of that
side of the map there is golf at Constantinople too! The game is done on
the _yok maidan_ just outside the city, _yok_ being Persian for "arrow,"
and _maidan_ the word for "plain," the fact being that it was on this
land that the sultans and their suites in days gone by were accustomed
to practise archery, and there are still on the plain many stone pillars
erected to the memory of great shots that were made. The
English-speaking colony had some difficulty to gain permission to golf
on this ground, and, having no exclusive rights in the matter, are
harassed by many worries. It is used largely for drilling soldiers, and
is described as being "a favourite resort for Jews on Saturdays, for
Greeks on Sundays, and for Turks on Fridays." The golfer may need to
delay his stroke while a long string of camels passes through the
fairway, and again he may have difficulty in persuading a party of
Turkish ladies, closely veiled, taking the sun on one of the putting
greens, to retire therefrom for a little while. Yet the game is much
enjoyed by the officials of foreign Governments in Constantinople, and
the turf on the _yok maidan_ is good.
In the rich remembrances of the game there is little that is mournful;
but one sad moment comes when I read a letter reminding me that golf
was once played "farthest south," where man does not abide save briefly
for exploration and adventure, where there is eternal ice and snow.
Captain Robert Scott, the glorious British hero of the Southern Pole,
whose friendship I enjoyed, was a golfer too. One of many letters of a
personal kind I had from him, just before he set out on his last
magnificent but fatal expedition, was addressed from the Littlestone
Golf Club. He asked me to send to the ship a certain piece of golfing
literature, believing that "members of the expedition would read it with
interest and, I hope, with benefit to their handicaps!" He had taken
some clubs and balls up there into the Antarctic on his previous
expedition, when farthest south was reached. On one of the last days he
spent in London I had some talk with him on different matters, and we
joked about ways of playing Antarctic shots. We were in his office in
Victoria Street then. "Good-bye!" he said in parting, "And you must come
to meet me on my return!" And if none met him coming back, yet we know
the game he played.
* * * * *
The fact that there is golf nearly everywhere on earth will make it
appear to some minds, reasonably too, that here is a convenient
diversion for those travellers who like this sort of thing, something
with which they can fill up time when held up for a while in a distant
country and being impatient or weary. True, golf is good for that; but
the unsophisticated who imagine that this is the full relation between
travel and the game, and that this is the function of the courses
everywhere, suffer from a poor delusion, which is expensive.
It is a modern necessity to the traveller. In these days we are a people
of wanderers; railways offer cheap journeys, steamships carry us over
seas at little cost, hotels are good and comfortable; and why should
those who like and have the hours not be always roaming and seeing the
open world? But travelling sometimes has its inconveniences and its
tedious days. Some wanderers unconsciously exert themselves towards
loneliness, and they do not love it when they have it. The joy of
meeting with a friend when one is half a globe away from home! With all
the travelling that is done in these days there has come a great
increase of loneliness. Golf has been set to destroy it. There are still
people who travel and do not golf, but they are fewer daily, and as each
new travel-golfer is established he wonders how he lived and moved and
was moderately well contented and satisfied before. His travelling was a
plain occupation then; now it makes more emotion and thrill, and,
positively, it is more educative. There was a time, when I was very
young, when I did not golf as I travelled abroad, partly because there
were few courses to play upon and no golfers to play with, for it is
only in recent times that the game has been established in every country
in the world; and as I look back upon those days it is hard to realise
that they were in this present life. They should have belonged to some
other existence, which in the course of time and nature was given up, a
reincarnation having followed ages after.
The traveller who is golfless has often no friends at the places that he
visits. Some men and women have good capacity for making them at each
hotel they stay in; others have not. In any case these acquaintanceships
are exceedingly thin; the people do not really know each other;
oftentimes they say not what they think, and they have no common
interest. This kind of friendship with all its making of artificial
conversation is poor stuff at times. The golfless wanderer in his
travelling does one of two things; either he does hardly anything at all
or he goes to see the sights; and one suspects that much of the peering
through the gloom of dark cathedrals and the lounging in picture
galleries is done merely for the killing of time, and for the formal
recording of places that have been visited and sights that have been
seen. Some travellers are happiest when they have done their business
with the churches and the local castles and may leave by the next
train--one day nearer home and still working well!
The case of the golfing traveller is very different. He has friends in
every big town in every country, and all await his coming to make
pleasure and happiness for him. He needs to scheme nothing in advance;
they are prepared for him always. The automatic management of this real
society of friends is most marvellously perfect. The wanderer, let us
say, is advancing towards a new place--one that he knows nothing of.
From the people about him now he may make inquiry as to which is the
golf hotel at his destination, for often there is one to which golfers
most resort, and, with his golf directory containing the names of all
the golf clubs in the world, and with some particulars and the
secretaries' addresses, away he goes complete and well prepared. His
corny hands and his bag of clubs are his passport to every links. By the
perfect system that we have, every man who is a golfer and a member of a
golf club is _ipso facto_ a travelling member of nearly every other golf
club in the world, and is admitted to full playing and other privileges
without delay on paying the trifling fees of temporary membership,
sometimes with even less than that. And one golf club seems very much
like another--just a branch of it; the atmosphere is the same, and the
men are the same. The stranger reaches his new destination, in England
or in India, in France or in America; he registers at his hotel; and as
soon as may be he seeks direction from the manager or the hall porter
as to the whereabouts of the golf club. There he goes. At once, then, he
is admitted to the local community of players, and they make much of
him. They arrange games for him, surround him with the most hospitable
companions, discover that he and they have many mutual friendships in
different parts of the world, and linger upon other common ground in
their memories of the third hole at one and the seventeenth at some
other place. How the talk goes on! This golfer arrived among the unknown
at ten in the morning, and at four in the afternoon he is tied to as
many good friends as man could need. They invite him here and there;
they take him to their homes; they make much of him. Stranger indeed! A
thin voice of a petulant cynic may be heard again. "Yes," says he, "but
in travelling one does not wish to spend all one's time in playing games
and lounging about golf clubs!" True; and the golfing traveller, though
he likes to visit courses in other countries, and finds it well to have
an object always and something good with which to fill the daylight
hours and keep his health in a well-balanced state, uses the game and
its people to greater advantage than even that. The golf community of a
place is always the most active and the most useful. There are the local
dignitaries, the people of influence and consequence, men who know
everything about the town, and can do most things. They can open doors
that are locked, and take you to the most secret places. And so the
golfing traveller, the first desire for the best of games being
satisfied, always finds that his new friends wish to help him. Perhaps
the ambassador is here, and ambassadors are serviceable men. All wise
people golf a little at the present time. They give their guest letters
of introduction; they tell him how to go about. They do much more than
that, for they get out their cars and take him. Places which seem
unfriendly to others are always friendly to the golfer. There is no
particular community, no society, no association, no brotherhood in the
world that is so real in its effectiveness, so thoroughly practical as
this of golf. A quarter of a million British golfers know that this is
true, and they know the reason why.
* * * * *
From the consideration of this busy world of golf in general it is an
easy move in thought to the one wee spot of it from which it has to a
large extent developed, upon which the great scheme continually hangs,
being the fourth of our seven wonders of golf--ancient St. Andrews. In a
measure I developed this idea at the beginning of the consideration of
golf as the world game; but now for a moment regard the capital of golf,
not as the parliament place where the high statesmen do ponderously
deliberate and with stern visage that befits their lofty authority most
solemnly severally and jointly promulgate various laws and ordinances,
but as the wonder city of the golfing world where one gathers emotions
from a ghostly past, a city where golf is everything and nothing else is
anything, where golf is life. This is the aspect of St. Andrews, and the
only one, in which it is really great. We have much respect for our
rulers. They are wise men, and we believe that they maintain the spirit
of the game better than any other body of men could or would. They are
well born and trained in golf, and the atmosphere of St. Andrews keeps
them straight in the true golfing way. One who lived in an inland
manufacturing town or spent his days in the office of a colliery would
lose his golfing perspective early in middle age. But these excellents
of Fifeshire play a little, read a little, talk much and deliberate,
and the social and intellectual atmosphere keeps them strong in their
golfing sense always. The government of St. Andrews is really one to
respect and have faith in, but it is not the existing wonder of St.
Andrews. When you visit the place, such of these rulers as live there do
not impress you for anything save their good golf, their excellent and
pleasant manners, their keen wit, their fine sense in matters of
intellect, their tolerable aestheticism, their shrewd judgment in
political affairs, their sound advice on financial questions, their fine
epicurean taste, their kingly cellars, their magnificent hospitality,
and their charming women. In nothing else that I can think of do they
excel, and as minor deities, or as a college of cardinals with a captain
for pope, endowed with powers transmitted from a golfers' heaven, they
are failures. They are merely human, very good, and excellently
conservative.
No sort of people make St. Andrews. Only in two circumstances are the
living humans of the place specially interesting. One is on the occasion
of the autumn meeting of the Royal and Ancient Club, when the cannon on
the hill is fired, when the new captain plays himself in with ceremony,
and when all the ancient rites are properly observed until far on in the
night. The other is in the attitude of the people generally towards this
game as a thing of life, their seeming feeling that it is nearly the
beginning and end of all things in this world. This may not be a proper
view, and it is for something of the kind, but yet long distant from it,
that the golfers of the south are chided and ridiculed for their
enthusiasm. That, again, is why the real golfer, heart and soul for the
game, who, if he would confess it, does let it take a larger part of his
life sometimes than is very good for him (but who knows what this fellow
would be doing if not golfing?), feels happy when at St. Andrews, feels
that at last he has come to his real home. For here the people look upon
him just as merely right and normal because he is a golfer and nothing
but a golfer--and a man with a little money to spare. His chief
peculiarity is not that he stammers or is deaf or is a total abstainer,
that he is a peer of the realm or mayor of his town or a professor of
Greek, but that he addresses his ball with the heel of his club or pulls
a little always. The place is attuned to his feeling of life; it is in
sympathy with him. It is either a fine day for the game--as most days
are--or it is no day at all. If we lose our match it does not matter
what the papers say of politics or Germany; if we win it, the papers
matter less. The caddies know that you are a golfer and what is your
handicap; and if you are the real thing that is enough for them. Be not
a golfer at heart or a namby-pamby person hanging to the game, and their
contempt is rarely hidden. In the hotels they know what golf means to
people; the chambermaid on calling you in the morning may tell you the
direction the wind is blowing, knowing that it matters more than any hot
water. The men in the club-makers' shops are sorely concerned in your
domestic difficulties about the length of the shaft of your driver and
your quarrel with an iron. They know what it is; they are kindly,
worldly-wise doctors, who are the constant recipients of the confidences
of poor sufferers. They will try to put you right. All the
advertisements on the walls are of golf; the notices in the shop windows
are of golf matches and competitions. The streets are called after golf,
the taverns have golf names. Yes! golf is in all the air and all the
earth and all the people of this ancient city with its far-seen spires.
But yet even these things do not give to St. Andrews its ineffable
charm; if they are all that the wanderer notices he is not the real man
of the game after all, nor is the splendid quality of the holes on the
old course and on the new enough either, great as is that quality. The
wanderer missed St. Andrews if these things were all that were
discovered. He should understand that here we feel that the Swilcan Burn
is greater than the Dardanelles; Asia is a trifle when we survey the
vast extent of the fifth putting green, and little enough do we worry of
hell when with a fine long shot with the brassey we can carry "the
devil's kitchen" on the way to the fourteenth green. Here the game is in
the air; we breathe it, feel it. And the reason why is because the
spirits are in the air, the spirits of the ancients who at St. Andrews
laid the foundations of this game, served for its traditions, set it up
and shaped it to the good service of men, and gave their stamp to every
inch of this great old course. Do not misunderstand. These men, I do
believe, were often very ordinary simple human beings; they may have
been no better than we are. There is a possibility that they were worse.
They may not have been worthy to be canonised as they have been; but let
us not inquire upon these matters, for we should not peer too closely at
the gods. What matters is that in the first place undoubtedly they were
in at the game before we were, in at it the first of all, were evidently
uncommonly shrewd people, and for their discovery of golf and their
presentation of it to us their perpetual dignity was well won. It
matters also that we have many volumes of good stories about them, and
none that is in any serious sense against them. On legend and anecdote
they win well. And, third, whatever they were, we believe them to have
been these great men, we set them up in our imagination as such, we
recreate them to our fancies and desires, and they seem somehow to
respond.
So we imagine, believe, and are well satisfied, and therefore the
spirits of golf take advantage and seem always to hover in the air of
the old grey city, brooding upon the links, contented that things are
moving as well as they are, and that what they began prospers so finely,
though they wail a little, one would imagine, about what the
rubber-cored ball has done, and the wraith of old Allan Robertson turns
round to the ghost of the elder Morris, murmuring, "D'ye mind, Tammas,
the awfu' trouble that we bodies had wi' ane anither when the gutty ba'
kem hither to St. Andrews, and I caught ye, ma servin' man, ye ken,
playin' gowff, as ye wad say, wi' Campbell of Saddell and wi' the gutty,
and me a maker o' the featheries tae!"
"Aye, I ken weel eno'," croons the shade of Old Tom, "and I'm telling
ye, Allan, man, that I was fower up on Mr. Campbell at the eleventh
hole, and I was playin' ma very best, and wi' ma second shot at the
fourteenth, eh mon alive----"
"Na, na, Tammas, nane o' yer rantin' aboot the shots as ye played at St.
Andrews, when ye spent the best pairt o' yer time ower theer at
Prestwick, and ye never could mak' up a scoor from a' yer ither scoors
as wad come to 56 like mine. Ye ken that, Tom! And dinna forget, ma
laddie, as I was goin' to tell ye, that when I saw ye wi' that awfu' new
ba' as wad ruin every bit body o' us I tell't ye straight, ma man, as ye
must go, and never a bit o' wark did ye do in ma shop again."
And then Tom, good-natured old ghost as he is, and loving his Allan
still, just answers, "Puir Allan, ye always were a cunnin' body o' a
man, and a guid man tae, and fun aboot ye a' the time!"
And all this about ghosts and the times they have in the air over St.
Andrews old links may look like nonsense, but those who do not believe
it, or do not feel that they believe it by mental adoption, have not
been to St. Andrews properly, and do not understand her.
* * * * *
The most utterly non-golfing and sceptical person may be convinced in
another way, by matters not of ghosts and fancies but of laws and
prisons, that St. Andrews is all golf and is not as other places are.
There are laws of the town approved by Act of Parliament, by which it is
made illegal to practise putting on the eighteenth green or to play on
the course with iron clubs only, the penalty for offences in these
matters being a fine or imprisonment. Where else is there a place where
a golfer may get fourteen days for depending for all his long shots on
his driving iron or his cleek? Clearly, the law is made for the good of
the precious turf and the teeing grounds of the old course, and that it
is not law made to be looked and laughed at is proved by the fact that a
Prime Minister himself was once warned for infringing it. One time when
at St. Andrews I made an examination of the complete bye-laws in which
these prohibitions are included. They are embraced in the St. Andrews
Links Act, which was passed in 1894, and in the Burgh Police Act of
Scotland, which was made law two years earlier. The regulations for the
use of the old and new golf courses make up these bye-laws, and they are
twenty-one in number. Following them are four "general regulations for
the whole links as defined by Schedule I. of the Links Act," and at the
finish there is a clause about penalties, wherein it is said that "any
person who shall contravene any of the foregoing bye-laws shall be
liable, on conviction, in a penalty not exceeding one pound for each
offence, and, failing payment, to imprisonment for any period not
exceeding fourteen days." There it is, the law, and it is that last
clause with its sting that gives the point to the whole story.
Now let us look at these bye-laws and see how careful we must be when we
go to the great city of golf, and for what we may be fined a pound or
lodged in a Fifeshire gaol for a full fortnight, during which our game
might go to rack and ruin.
In the first place it is set down that "no person shall play cricket,
football, or any game other than golf upon the golf courses." Surely
nobody who ever went to St. Andrews would wish to play any other game,
but here we have it plainly set forth that the golf of St. Andrews will
bear no rivals, and it must be remembered that the great putting green,
on which the fifth and thirteenth holes are made, is big enough for
several cricket pitches, and also that the large flat space along which
a fairway for the first and eighteenth is situated might be made into
various football grounds. But what sacrilege! It is well that men may be
sent to prison if they ever committed it. Then you may be punished by
law if you do not begin your match at the first teeing ground, but no
doubt some thousands of people in their time have risked chastisement
for this offence. "No player shall, in teeing his ball, raise the turf
of the teeing ground." There is sand there for him who wants it, and he
must not make his tee in the prehistoric way. After this there are some
points of etiquette which are made matters of law. Elsewhere, if we
disregard the etiquette of the game as set forth at the end of the
rules, we are merely told about it by other people and regarded as very
badly-mannered golfers, but at St. Andrews the sovereign or fourteen
days needs to be considered. Thus "no player shall play from the tee
until the party in front have played their second strokes and are out
of range, nor play to the putting green till the party in front have
holed out and moved away." And again, "players looking for a lost ball
must allow any other match coming up to pass them," and "every caddie,
and every player unaccompanied by a caddie, shall replace any turf that
may be accidentally removed by the player's club, and shall press it
firmly with the foot." Then we may be fined or sent to prison if, when
practising, we drive a ball off a putting green, that is, within twenty
yards of a hole, and the eighth clause is that which is known to all
men--"To prevent destruction of the turf of the golf courses, play or
practice with iron clubs alone is prohibited." Also, "no practice is
allowed over the first and eighteenth holes of the Old Course, nor shall
any practice be allowed over any part of the golf courses so as to
obstruct or delay players."
Upon all this, it is enacted that when playing with three or more balls
we must allow those who are only playing two, as in an ordinary single
match, to pass us on being requested to do so, that we must let a match
through if we do not play the whole round but cut in somewhere, that we
must not pierce the ground with any golf club support nor with the flags
from the holes, nor must we drive towards any person without calling out
"Fore!" and waiting until he gets out of range. No man when at St.
Andrews is allowed "to play the short game at the regular golf holes,
except when engaged in a regular game of golf," and, as said, "no
practising is allowed on the eighteenth putting green." There are five
other bye-laws, mostly long, but the only other one which is specially
interesting is that which is designed to preserve the integrity of the
Swilcan Burn, which has played its part so thoroughly and drastically at
times of great competitions. No other golf stream is protected by an
Act of Parliament in the way that this one is, and its high dignity is
unimpeachable. We are warned, under the usual penalty of a fine or
imprisonment, that "no one shall wade in the Swilcan Burn, so far as it
flows through the Old Course, nor shall any one, except players or
caddies in search of their ball, do anything to cause its waters to
become discoloured or muddy." There are surely times when we feel that
we could not do anything to make the Swilcan Burn appear uglier than it
does at those times.
Why a distinction should be made between the "bye-laws" and the "general
regulations," four in number, is not quite clear, but it would appear
that the penalties of fine and imprisonment may be inflicted if the
latter are disobeyed as well as the former. If that is so, we begin to
wonder when we see the warning that "no one shall use profane language
upon the links to the annoyance of the lieges." Let us then hope, for
the sake of the law and our respect for it, that the lieges are not
habitually in the neighbourhood of the putting green when putts are
being missed that should not be. But it is good to see that there is a
kind of general warning that "no one shall annoy or interfere with any
one exercising a legitimate use of the links," which means, of course,
playing golf. We golfers, according to these bye-laws and the Act of
Parliament which supports them, may be sent to prison for doing so many
things that it is excellent to know the common people may be cast there
also if they meddle with us when we play the game in our own good way,
and manage by thought and attention to avoid infringement of the many
cautions which the fathers of St. Andrews have prescribed for our
welfare and that of their dear old course. The Sheriff of Fife has set
it down that he "allows and confirms" these bye-laws, the Secretary of
Scotland has officially approved of them, and the staff employed by the
Green Committee are authorised to see that they are obeyed, especially
those about replacing turf, playing with irons only, and practising at
the first and eighteenth holes. Contemplating these enactments, we
conclude that St. Andrews is the best and proper place for the
upbringing of the golfer's son.
CHAPTER III
THE TRAGEDIES OF THE SHORT PUTT, AND A CONTRAST BETWEEN CHILDREN AND
CHAMPIONS, WITH THE VARIED COUNSEL OF THE WISEST MEN.
The case of an earth so well explored by golfing travellers having been
considered as the third of the wonders of the sphere, and the
peculiarity of St. Andrews as the fourth, there is a clear suggestion as
to which is the next or fifth wonder of the series. Inevitably one
recalls the tearful situation of the mighty hunter in a story which is
passed in company as fact. He declared he had encountered all the
manifold perils of the jungle, had tracked the huge elephant to its
retreat, and had stood eye to eye with the man-eating tiger. It is
believed that he had done all these things. Then he added, "And never
once have I trembled until I came to a short putt." For me one of the
most remarkable things I have seen in golf was at an Open Championship
meeting at St. Andrews when, watching and musing by the side of the
eighteenth green, I saw four of the greatest players of this or any
other time come up to it in the competition one by one and have putts of
less than eighteen inches at that hole. Three of the four missed! In the
old days, at all events, when the greens were not quite as they are now,
but became very glassy and slippery with much wind and constant play
upon them, I believe there were more short putts missed on the old
course at St. Andrews than on any other two courses in the world, and
the task of holing the little stupids on that home green was a most
tormenting ordeal.
So, with the broken-hearted explorer, and the tragedy of St. Andrews,
there is pointed to us for the next wonder of the game the missing of
the short putt. And I do believe, and so must others, that the missing
of such a short putt as it seems humanly impossible for any man, having
the control of his limbs and being _compos mentis_, to miss is one of
the most remarkable features of any game, and one that would be
completely and absolutely inexplicable did it not in itself offer a most
splendid illustration of the full effect of strain of mind on physical
action, of the pressure of great responsibility on an over-anxious man.
It embraces nearly the whole psychology of golf. The short putt largely
explains the game, and it is testimony to the soundness of this view,
and the rightful selection of this as a permanent wonder, that the
general public would never believe the truth as we know it, that it is
possible for the greatest players with what is to them, for the time
being, almost as much as their lives depending on it, to miss putts so
little that no walking baby properly fed would miss. The general public,
with its vast stores of common sense, would not believe the fact; it
would ridicule it and treat the whole suggestion with contempt, and it
might in a sense be right; but then the general public has not been
fighting its way round a golf course against another and very truculent
general public, driving, playing seconds and thirds, getting bunkered
and recovering, and encountering all manner of difficulties and dangers,
and then had its fate for the day depending on a short putt at the
eighteenth green! By psychology of the game, as just mentioned, we mean,
of course, the way in which the mind and the emotions act and react upon
the physical system and its capacity, how doubts and fears are
engendered, and things from not seeming what they are become really
different, so far as the attitude of the player to them is concerned.
Thus, as has been well said, a putt of ten inches on the first green is,
as one might feel, a putt of thirty inches--though still in fact of the
same length--when that green is not the first but the thirty-seventh,
and that on which a long-drawn-out match is being finished.
One summer's day, on a course in France, a little party of us were
discussing the slow and sure methods of certain Americans then in
Europe--if, really, they were quite so sure as they were slow. Indeed
they hustled not. The point was put forward by one of us that there is a
moment in waiting when inspiration and confidence come together, or at
least come then as well as ever they can or will, and that if the
hesitation is prolonged beyond that moment, the result is inevitably
loss of faith, increasing doubt and timidity, and a distorted view of
the situation arising from fear of fate. Half the difficulties of golf
are due to the fact that the player has an abundance of time to think
about what he is engaged to do and how it should be done. In that time
hopes and fears and many emotions race through his mind, and tasks which
were originally simple become every moment harder. In no other game has
the player such ample leisure in which to think, to be careful, to be
exact, and to decide upon the proper action, and thus responsibility is
heaped upon him for what he does as it is in no other sport or
recreation. He is oppressed with a mighty burden. That which he does he
is entirely responsible for, and it can never be undone. It follows that
this game has an extensive and peculiar psychology such as is possessed
by no other. I shall proceed to tell a little story, dramatic in its
circumstances, abounding in significance. It embraces the meanings and
mysteries of golf.
* * * * *
The strange case of Sir Archibald Strand is one that caused much excited
attention among the members of the golf community in general some months
ago, and it is still discussed in the club-houses. Sir Archibald Strand,
Bart., is a fair example of the thorough, enthusiastic, middle-aged
player, who treats golf as something rather more than a game, which is
as it should be. He is one of tolerably equable temperament, a good
sportsman, and a man of strong character and physique, who did a long
term of military service in India. Nowadays he spends an appreciable
portion of his time in golfing, and a fair part of the remainder in
contemplating the enduring mysteries and problems of the links. The game
worries him exceedingly, occasionally it leads him to unhappiness, but,
on the whole, he feels he likes it. He is a member of several London
clubs, including Sunningdale, Walton Heath, Mid-Surrey, Coombe Hill, and
Woking, and of his seaside clubs those he most frequents are the Royal
St. George's at Sandwich, and Rye. His handicap is 5, and generally he
is what we consider and call a good reliable 5.
He and his opponent, to whom, as a matter of discretion and confidence,
we must refer as Mr. A., had just ended their match at Mid-Surrey one
pleasant day, and Sir Archibald was trying his last putt over again as
golfers often do. It was a putt of two feet. He had missed it before;
but now, of course, he rolled the ball in every time. A question arose
about circumstances altering cases, as they so commonly do in golf, and
of responsibility weighing heavily on the mind that hesitates; and Sir
Archibald declared that nobody in good health could be such a fool as to
miss a two-feet putt like that, if he really examined the line
thoroughly, and took the proper pains. Just then the open champion of
the period was passing by the green, and they called him up and asked
his views upon the missing of two-feet putts. Taylor denied that a man
was a fool for missing them. He mentioned the psychology of the
business, and very forcibly argued that a two-feet putt was a very
difficult thing, that the more important it was the more difficult it
became, and that the longer one thought about it the more impossible did
it seem to hole it. "Ah!" said he, with the solemn countenance he
assumes when discussing the terrors of this game, and the deep emphasis
he makes when he admits the difficulties it creates for him, "Ah!" he
murmured, "if I had never missed any putts of one foot, let alone the
putts of two! I tell you, sir, the two-feet putt, when it has to be
done--mind you when it has got to be done--is one of the most difficult
things in the world to do, and never mind the fact that your babies can
do it all the time! Take that from me, sir!" This was a touch of the
real Taylor, the true philosopher, one who knows the game.
Mr. A., who is sometimes aggressive in manner, brought the matter in
discussion to a pretty point at once. "Look here, Strand," said he, "I
will tell you what I will do. I will place this ball here, so, exactly
two feet from the hole, and I will give you a fortnight, but not less
than a fortnight, to hole that putt. You are not to practise it here at
this hole on this green in the meantime; but you may place the ball in
position if you like, and look at it. And a fortnight to-day, at ten
o'clock in the morning, you must make the putt, and I will bet you
fourteen guineas, being a guinea a day for waiting, that you do not hole
it. We will have the position of the hole properly marked, so that a
fortnight hence it shall be in the same place."
The champion said he would tell Lees, the greenkeeper, and that should
be done. Strand, with a laugh, accepted the wager, and the matter was
settled.
The events that followed were curious. In the club-house there was then
little disposition to attend to the accounts of the proceedings that
were furnished by both parties. The men who had finished rounds were too
much occupied with their own troubles or joys.
At his club in town that evening, Sir Archibald, over dinner, related
the circumstances of the wager to a few friends, with an appearance of
considerable satisfaction with himself, and seemed a little surprised
that the other members of the party did not at once approve of his
proceeding as sound and businesslike.
"Of course, you know, Strand, my good man," said Mr. Ezekiel Martin, a
successful stockbroker, "these putts are missed sometimes, and I don't
suppose it makes it any easier for you by waiting a fortnight. It's like
carrying over in the House till one is a very tired bull."
"Nonsense!" exclaimed Sir Archibald, "I could go out now and hole that
putt nineteen times out of twenty in the dark!"
"I believe you could," answered Martin, "but doing it in the dark, when
you cannot see the hole and realise all the imaginary difficulties, is
very different from doing it in broad daylight; and putting now, on the
spur of the moment, as it were, is very different from putting when you
have a whole fortnight to think about what you are going to do."
"I don't see it," replied Sir Archibald, yet he began to feel a little
uneasy. On returning home that night, instead of going to bed at once he
went into his study, laid a tumbler on its side on the carpet, and
putted from a measured two feet for about half an hour. He holed most
of them, and tumbled into bed feeling that Martin had been "pulling his
leg," as people say. In the morning he engaged a gardener to smooth down
a piece of his lawn, planting in a little putting-green turf, and he had
a hole made in it, and a circle with two feet radius drawn round the
hole, so that he could putt from every point. When this work was done,
he spent an hour in practising there, and succeeded well. He only missed
about one in ten. He tried seven different putters, with approximately
equal results. In the afternoon he went down to Mid-Surrey, played a
match, and lost it by missing a short putt at the home hole. After tea,
he went out on to the eighteenth green, found the spot where the hole
was the day before, examined it carefully, and saw that there were
slight differences in the texture of the grass round about, and that
there was a little depression to the left side. He had not noticed this
before. However, said he to himself, it would be easy to make allowances
for these things, but he began now to doubt whether thirteen days ahead
he would use his wry-necked putting cleek or bolt the putt with an
aluminium putter. Where there are troubles of that kind it is often
better to make short work of the putt by the bolting way, and have an
end of it. At home that evening he did more putting practice on the
carpet, and did not hole them quite so well. Lady Strand, who
understands her husband thoroughly, and is the sweetest, gentlest
sympathiser, coaxed him to telling her the trouble, for she saw that one
existed. With perfect wisdom she suggested that he should wipe the
fourteen guineas from the current account as already lost, and face the
task as one who had all to gain and nothing to lose. Of course, her
husband said, it was not the money, but the frightful jackass he would
look if he missed the putt.
He went to his club in town the next day instead of going to golf, and
took with him a book containing a chapter on putting, by Willie Park. He
stretched himself out on a Chesterfield in a corner of the library, and
gazed at two spots on the carpet which he had measured as being two feet
from each other. Eventually, he decided that that was not good for him,
since equal distances in furnished rooms, as is well known, look longer
than they look outside. He lunched with a few friends, and brought up
the subject again.
"Give him the money and have done with it, Strand. You are sure to
lose!" said the brutish Martin.
"I wish I had not to wait for a fortnight," murmured Strand.
"Ah! He knew! The other man knew!" rejoined Martin. "He knows the game
of golf! What I cannot understand is why he did not give you a year and
make it 365 guineas. You would have sold out in six weeks at L200!"
Sir Archibald wrote a letter to Mr. A. that evening, intimating that he
would probably have to leave town the week after the next. He hinted
that it might be convenient if they got their wager out of the way
beforehand, and if he putted a week from then. Mr. A. replied that he
was sorry it would not be convenient for him to attend then, and that
the signed terms of the contract had better be abided by.
Sir Archibald bought two new putters on the following day, and in the
afternoon he had Taylor out for an hour, and they went practising on the
putting lawn just outside the garden gate. Sir Archibald was putting
very well then; but he insisted that it would be a good thing to change
the ball he was using, which was rather lively. After he had done with
Taylor, he went to look at the place on the eighteenth green where he
would have to putt, and it seemed that the coarse grass had fattened up
considerably with the rain that had fallen, and that the sand below it
was distinctly gritty. It began to seem that he would have to run the
ball in at the right side of the hole. He asked Lees some questions
about the grasses on that green, and was sorry he could not take a
little Mid-Surrey turf home with him. He was feeling a little tired when
he reached his home that night, and as it was Thursday he suggested to
Lady Strand that they should go to Folkestone for the week-end, and not
bother at all about golf, which they did accordingly. He found it
delightful to linger on the leas and not be worried with the game.
This kind of thing continued and became worse and worse again during the
days that followed. There was practice, thought, and purchase
continually, and unfortunately the proportion of missed putts at two
feet, both on the carpet, on the practice lawn, and on the greens at
Mid-Surrey, Coombe Hill, and Woking, began to increase. At putts of
three feet, four, and five, Sir Archibald was marvellous, and, of
course, he never missed the very little ones; but the two-feet putts
bothered him all the time. He attributed it to his liver; and he was
certainly looking worn. Matters were not improved by such inconsiderate
remarks as were made by Martin, Evans, and others, whenever he had a
two-feet putt to do, such as "Now, Strand, that's just your distance!"
It was only a joke; but in the circumstances it was not perhaps in good
taste.
On the evening of the twelfth day Strand, after deliberation, wrote a
letter to A. in which he said he feared he would not be able to go down
to the course at the appointed time, and intimated that, according to
the terms of the wager, he would hand over the fourteen guineas to him
when next they met. Before posting this letter he went and did a little
practice in the dusk on the lawn outside the house. He seemed to get
them down with some confidence on this occasion, and Lady S., watching
him, called out cheerily, "Silly boy! as if you could really miss! Now
what shall I buy with the fourteen guineas?"
So Strand tore up the letter and went to bed for rest.
On the night before the appointed day he slept badly. He was putting in
his mind until three o'clock in the morning. Then he rose, went in his
pyjamas into the study, made a line on the top of his aluminium putter
indicating the striking point, and went back to bed, but did not sleep.
For some time he tried an imaginary humming of the "Jewel Song" from
_Faust_, and repeated a few lines from Scott's "Lady of the Lake"--old
dodges of his for assisting distraction and sleep--but they did not
serve, nor did a fixed vision of millions of balls falling in an endless
stream from the mouth of a pump and disappearing instantly through a
golf hole in the ground.
At five-thirty he rose again and took his bath. He hesitated as to what
golfing suit he should wear. Finally, for the sake of complete ease, and
that there should be nothing to attract his eye from the ball, he put on
some dark-blue flannels.
He looked at his breakfast, pecked at a sole, and at nine-fifteen,
feeling distinctly unwell, he took a taxi for the course. He had one
great consolation upholding him. At five minutes past ten it would all
be over. He felt that he knew how glad a condemned criminal must be that
at five minutes past eight on a certain morning--or a minute or two
earlier with a little luck--a black flag would be hoisted on the prison
pole.
At seven minutes to ten he drank a large brandy and soda and went out to
the eighteenth green. Mr. A. and a few others were there to see the
business properly carried out. Taylor placed the ball exactly two feet
from the hole, which was cut in the proper place. He had his watch in
his hand.
Sir Archibald bent down and examined the putt with great care. He
essayed to pick up what seemed to be a "loose impediment" on his line,
but saw that it was not loose. The putt seemed very difficult now, and
he wished he had brought his plain putting cleek out with him, but it
was too late.
At ten o'clock exactly, Taylor said, "Now, Sir Archibald, will you
kindly putt?"
Sir Archibald Strand looked like a man who had been hunted down. He made
one swift glance around him, but saw no escape, so he pulled himself
together, smiled a little sadly, and said to himself, "Don't be a fool,
Archie!" Then he faced the putter to the ball; the club was trembling
slightly. He swung it back much too far, checked it in the return swing,
and came on to the ball in a nervous, stupid sort of way, doing little
more than touch it. The ball took a line to the right of the hole, and
did not run more than fourteen inches.
You may have thought that Sir Archibald used unfortunate words and was
dismayed. He did not. A look of established happiness and placid
contentment spread upon his countenance, as a streak of sunlight might
flash across a plain. "Ha!" he sighed in relief. He took from his pocket
a cheque for fourteen guineas already made out, and handed it to Mr. A.,
and then joyfully exclaimed: "Thank heaven, it is finished! Now, my
friends, we will honour this unusual occasion in a suitable manner at
your convenience, and this afternoon I leave for Sandwich for a week of
golf. And no letters are being forwarded."
* * * * *
Let us now enter consideration of this matter in a proper frame of mind,
seriously and not looking contemptuously upon the problem of holing
even the very shortest of putts as no problem at all after the affected
manner of the inexperienced and uninformed general public. Let us
approach it cautiously and in an analytical spirit. We should take the
evidence of expert witnesses upon happenings in their careers, in our
endeavour to discover the real truth. We have already remarked upon the
case of the hunter who shot tigers and cringed at putts, and of the
great champions who all missed them on the eighteenth green at St.
Andrews, when they were playing for nothing less than the championship.
We have also contemplated the circumstances of the distressed baronet
who was given a fortnight in which to hole a two-feet putt, suffered
intolerable agonies during the period, and was only restored to
happiness when he had failed at the stroke. Now let us pay regard to the
experience of a little child only six years old, who was completely
successful at many putts in succession, at distances of from one to six
feet, all the most perilous situations. This remarkable demonstration
was witnessed by the proud parents, by a great professional, and by
myself.
The child is a boy, and not, as has been stated, a winsome little girl.
There is, if I may say it without offence, nothing remarkable about his
parents. They are excellent kindly-mannered people, of tolerable
middle-class education, simple in their manner of life, and of no
pronounced tastes in any direction. The father is in a large timber
business in the Midlands, and has probably an income of about six
hundred pounds a year. His handicap is 14. He is not a very keen golfer,
and seems to spend a fair amount of his time in his garden. A total
abstainer, he smokes little, and has no strong tastes in art and
literature; but he once told me that in addition to much Scott and a
sufficiency of Dickens he had read one of my books on golf. That is the
father. As to the mother, she is just one who might be called in the
north a nice little body. She is a thoroughly good housewife,
domesticated, affectionate, and if she does not play golf she
sympathises with it. These are people who are tolerably satisfied with
their state. They live in a pleasant house, employ two maidservants, and
have no motor-car. Here, surely, is nothing to suggest the creation of
genius. Yet they are the parents of this remarkable child who did, with
no hesitation, with confidence, certainty, and frequency, what the
mighty hunter, the champions, the bold but misguided baronet, and you
and I have failed to accomplish.
There is a man of wit and wisdom, Andrew Kirkaldy, who, when you inquire
of him what is the most difficult thing in golf, responds with no
hesitation that it is to hole "a wee bit divvle of a putt that long!"
and so saying he will hold his hands four feet apart. Occasionally he
may vary the phraseology, not to its advantage, but the meaning and
effect remain the same. Andrew is solid on four feet. But authorities
differ a little in this matter of measurement. Some will reduce the
distance to thirty inches; others have it that the yard putt is the most
trying; I have heard eighteen inches put forward. But it all amounts to
much the same thing, that what looks ridiculously easy is very, very
difficult. Now this tender little child, who knew nothing of the fears
and dangers of this awful game, placed the ball at a distance of two
feet from the hole on a curly and slippery green, and with a sublime
aplomb hit it straight to the middle of the hole--the first putt of his
life and a good one. Then he putted from a yard and holed it again, then
from Kirkaldy's distance and played the stroke just as surely and
successfully, and then repeated them many times, never faltering, never
failing. We who watched were a trifle sad, and perhaps ashamed. We knew
that with all our thought and skill and golfing learning, all our
strength and manhood, we could not do the same when at our games, and
that, the more we needed to do it by the importance of the golf that was
being played, the more difficult it was. Our selfish consolation was
that in time the little child would grow up and then he would not be
able to hole those putts, for then he would know that it was a difficult
thing to do, and would be embarrassed and defeated accordingly. For it
is the golfer's consciousness of imaginary difficulties that makes him
such a strange coward when this putting business is being done. He knows
that really the putting is easy, but he knows also that he must not
miss, that an inch lost here is as much of a loss as two hundred yards
in the driving--and he fears his fate. It is consciousness of the
stupidity of missing, nerves, fears, imagination, that make this missing
of short putts by the cleverest players, champions as much as any
others, the most remarkable thing that happens constantly in any game.
There is nothing like it. If it were not so easy, if there were good
excuse for failure, those putts would not be missed so frequently. In
putting, said Sir Walter Simpson, there is much to think about and much
more not to be thought of. "When a putter," he reflected, "is waiting
his turn to hole out a putt of one or two feet in length, on which the
match hangs at the last hole, it is of vital importance that he think of
nothing. At this supreme moment he ought studiously to fill his mind
with vacancy. He must not even allow himself the consolations of
religion. He must not prepare himself to accept the gloomy face of his
partner and the derisive delight of his adversaries with Christian
resignation should he miss. He must not think that it is a putt he would
not dream of missing at the beginning of the match, or, worse still,
that he missed one like it in the middle. He ought to wait, calm and
stupid, till it is his turn to play, wave back the inevitable boy who is
sure to be standing behind his arm, and putt as I have told him
how--neither with undue haste nor with exaggerated care. When the ball
is down, and the putter handed to the caddy, it is not well to say, 'I
couldn't have missed it.' Silence is best. The pallid cheek and
trembling lip belie such braggadocio."
* * * * *
The truth is that the man who golfs will unceasingly think of the things
he should not think of, and that is what makes this easy putting so
difficult, and it explains why the innocent child, unthinking, finds the
business as simple and pleasant as swinging under the boughs of a tree
on a sunny day in June. While there is one quite easy way of doing
nearly every putt, there are perhaps a dozen more or less difficult ways
of missing it, and it is these that are uppermost in the golfer's mind
when the time of his trial comes, and so once more is vice triumphant
while angels are depressed. There is the hole, a pit that is deep and
wide, four and a quarter inches in diameter, and there is the little
ball, only an inch and a half through the middle, and the intervening
space between the two is smooth and even. It would seem to be the
easiest thing in theory and practice to knock the ball into the large
hole; but how very small does the hole then appear to be and how much
too big for it is the ball! But the golfer knows that he should hole
that putt, and that if he fails he will never, never have the chance
again. Should he putt and miss the act is irrevocable; the stroke and
the hole, or the half of it, are lost, and nothing that can happen
afterwards can remove that loss. Should he at the beginning of the play
to a hole make a faulty drive, or should his approach play be very
inaccurate, he knows that he may atone for these mistakes by special
cleverness displayed in subsequent strokes, and with the buoyant hope
that constantly characterises him he thinks he will. But the hope seems
often to desert him at the end; confidence lapses. The short putt is the
very last stroke in the play to that hole, and if it is missed there is
no further opportunity for recovery. In this way it does seem sometimes
that there is a little of the awful, the eternal, the infinite about
that putt. The player is stricken with fear and awe. He knows it is an
easy thing to do in the one proper way of doing it, but raging through
his mind are hideous pictures of a dozen ways of missing. Once upon a
time I put the question to a number of the greatest players of the age
as to what were their thoughts, if any, when they came to making one of
these little putts on which championships or other great affairs almost
entirely depended, and almost invariably their answer was that at the
last supreme moment a thought came into their minds and was expressed to
themselves in these words: "What a fool I shall look if I miss this
putt!" Those words exactly did Willie Park, the younger, say quietly to
himself just as he was about to make the last short putt of a round at
Musselburgh, which would or would not give him a tie for the
championship with Andrew Kirkaldy. He did not say that if he missed the
putt he would lose the championship. He said he would look a fool.
The other day in a quiet corner of London, away from the game but, as it
happened, not from the thought of it, I had Harry Vardon with me engaged
in some serious talk in a broad and general way upon golfing men and
things. Ten years ago, when we were doing some kind of collaboration in
the production of a new book, he said to me very impressively and as one
who wonders exceedingly, "It is a funny game; let us impress that upon
them all, it is a very funny game," and now, having played perhaps five
thousand more rounds and won another Open Championship, he went forward
to the admission, "It is an awful game." He meant it, and one reason why
we like our Harry Vardon is because he too has always been awe-stricken
by this so-called game, and because there is no other man in golf who
sympathises better with the trials and tortures of the moderate player.
On this morning of spring he was telling me of another new and great
discovery he had made in putting methods, and in giving to me an account
of his pains, his sufferings in missing all the short putts he had
failed at in recent times--how dearly have they cost him!--he said it
was the two-feet putt that frightened him most of all, and declared
solemnly and seriously that he would rather have a three-yarder than
such a putt, and that he would hole the former oftener than the latter.
He said the two-feet putts frighten him, that as soon as he settles
himself down to the business of putting in such a case the hole seems to
become less and less. "I am overcome," says he, "with the idea that in a
moment it will be gone altogether. Then I am in a state of panic, and I
snatch at my putter and hit the ball quickly so that with a little luck
it may reach the hole before it goes away altogether and there is
nothing to putt at. When I have missed I see that the hole is there, and
as big as ever or bigger!" Vardon once tried putting left-handed, a
doctor having advised him to do so, and he found that the idea worked
splendidly, but he did not like the look of it. He believes after all
his sorrows that one of the greatest and best secrets of good putting is
to keep more absolutely still than do most golfers, who seem to think
it matters less in putting when it matters so much more.
* * * * *
Now the golfer in his wisdom, ingenuity, and resource has tried every
way he can think of to solve this problem of nerves and doubts by
mechanical and other means. Those who would be successful in
competitions have retired to bed at nine o'clock in the evening for a
month, and some of them have sipped from bottles of tonics hoping that
physic would serve to give them strong nerve, steady hands and courage,
but such methods have not availed. For no part of this or any other game
have so many different kinds of instruments been invented, though the
little child could do the putts with the head of a walking-stick or a
common poker. Scarcely a week goes by in the season but some new kind of
putter is introduced to the expectant multitude of harassed players, and
now and then a thrill runs through the world as they receive a clear
assurance that at last some special device has been discovered which
will make their putting ever afterwards easy and certain. There is a
thrill as if a secret of long life had been found. But the chill of
disappointment follows quickly. Golfers have now tried all things known,
and more short putts are missed than ever. Hundreds of different kinds
of putters have been invented. They have been made with very thin
blades, and with thick slabs of metal or other substance instead of mere
blades. They have been made like spades, like knives, like hammers, and
like croquet mallets. They have even been made like putters. They have
been made of wood, iron, aluminium, brass, gun-metal, silver, bone, and
glass. Here in my room I have the sad gift of the creator of a forlorn
and foolish hope. It is a so-called putter made in the shape of a roller
on ball bearings which is meant to be wheeled along the green up to the
ball. Like some others it was illegal according to the rules. To such
extravagances of fancy the desperate golfers have been led in their
desire to succeed in this putting that the authorities have had to step
in for the defence of the dignity of the game to declare a limit to the
scope of invention in this matter. And yet I once knew a man who for a
long period did some of the best putting that you would ever fear to
play against with a little block of wood that had once served to keep
the door of his study ajar, to which had been attached a stick that was
made from a broom handle. This improvised putter was a freak of his
fancy at a time when he thought there might be some virtue in a return
to prime simplicity. Then Mr. James Robb, who has won the Amateur
Championship once and been in the final on two other occasions, has
putted all his life with a cleek that his sister won in a penny raffle
when he was a boy and gave to him. Likewise Mr. John Laidlay has also
putted uninterruptedly since he was a boy with a cleek that is now so
thin with much cleaning that his friends tell him he may soon be able to
shave himself with it. But these are the grand exceptions after all.
Such fine settlement and constancy are unknown to the average player. It
was but the other day that I learned that a friend of mine, one most
distinguished in the game and of the very highest skill, had used
fifteen different putters on the day of an important competition--three
in the morning's play, nine others in noonday practice, and three quite
fresh ones in the afternoon game. The same good man carried a choice
assortment of his own putters to a recent amateur championship meeting,
but at the beginning of the tournament made love to one of mine,
borrowed it, and used it until he was beaten--not a long way from the
end of the competition. Sometimes it seems that what is rudest in
design, almost savage, is now best liked when in our frenzy we have
ransacked art, science, and all imagination in search of the putter with
which we can putt as we would. There is the spirit of reaction; we would
return to the primitive. Putters that look as if they might be for
dolls, some of those stumpy little things made of iron on a miniature
aluminium-putter model, which some of the great champions have been
using, have hardly become popular. The crude and the bizarre, suggestive
of inspiration, please well. I shall not forget Jean Gassiat, good
golfer of France, coming up to me one championship day at Hoylake,
holding forward in his right hand, and with its head in the air, what
was evidently meant for a golf club, but which was as much unlike one as
anything we had ever seen. On the face of the player was spread the grin
of pleasure; wordlessly he suggested that at last he had found it, the
strangest, the most wonderful. In principle this new club, as it has to
be called for courtesy, is akin to the affair of the door-stopper and
the broomstick. It consists of a plain flat rectangular piece of wood
about four inches long, two inches wide, and three-quarters of an inch
deep, and its two-inch nose is cut quite square, while for a couple of
inches at the end of the shaft the grip is thickened to twice its usual
size. It is weighted and balanced by large and small lead bullets in the
sole. It is possible to frame a good argument in favour of a putter made
of anything; nothing is without some advantage. It could be said for a
ginger-beer bottle that it would insist on the ball being most truly hit
from the middle of the vessel as the ball ought to be hit, and, given
notice, one could prepare a statement of claim on behalf of an old boot
seeking to be raised to the putterage. So there are good things to be
said for this putter from France, and one of the best is that after
smiling upon it Jean Gassiat began to wonder, then thought,
experimented, and fell in love with this putter completely. Some weeks
later I saw him doing those marvels on the green as are only done when
man and putter have become thoroughly joined together, and Gassiat has
always to be taken seriously in these matters, for, like Massy, he is a
Basque, and, like the old champion, he is one of the most beautiful
putters, with an instinct for holing. This most remarkable invention,
without desiring its extinction in the least, one would say, surely
departs a whole world of fancy farther from the traditional idea of what
a golf club should be than the poor Schenectady of the Americans which
St. Andrews proscribed. It was not the idea of Gassiat, nor of any other
than the Marquis de Chasseloup-Laubat, a French sportsman of
thoroughness and a very keen golfer. Seeing what Gassiat was doing,
James Sherlock obtained one of these barbaric tools, and at this the
public came in.
* * * * *
Every thinkable variety of putting method has been adopted. Bodies,
hands, feet have been placed in all positions, and the stroke has been
made in every conceivable way. Are there any two players who do it just
the same, or have the same advice to give? For a violent contrast take
two of the most able amateurs of the time, both of them long since
distinguished in the foremost competitions, Mr. John Low and Mr. H. S.
Colt. The former favours the wooden putter, and he has one of that kind
to which he is keenly attached, but he putts with all sorts of things as
the spirit moves him on consideration of special circumstances. He was
one of the early members of the thoughtful school of golf which has made
such a strong advance in recent times. Nearly always, however, you will
find him standing nearly upright when doing his putting, grasping a club
with a tolerably long shaft somewhere quite near to the top of the
handle. This erect attitude is that which our fore-fathers of the
traditions mostly favoured. Those splendid gentlemen, as we have agreed,
were fine golfers who conducted their game nobly, but it has always
seemed to me that they were an unimaginative lot. It never appears to
have occurred to them that because the club has a handle at the top was
no reason why they should grasp it up there instead of nearly at the
opposite end, as do a large body of the most enterprising and inquiring
amateurs these days. Of this advanced party the eminent architect is a
shining example, for he holds his putting cleek so far down, so near to
the ironwork, that the shaft seems useless, and in addition to this he
defies all teaching in putting by planting the heel of the club down on
the green and holding the hands so low that the toe of the putter is
cocked up, and with this toe he hits the ball, and, as it looks, he tops
it. But that putting of his is too much for most of the men who have to
play against it. When those who do not understand see men putting in
this way, or something like it, they say to themselves, and perhaps to
others, that they cannot see why the men do not have the unused part of
the shaft cut off so that it may not be in the way. But there they show
their deficiencies of knowledge, though one is not sure that all the men
who putt with a low grip quite know why they do so. They only know that
the method suits them, but the truth is often that in these cases the
balancing piece of the shaft above the hands acts as a steadier for the
piece below. A few students have carried this idea a point further by
having a piece of lead attached to the top of the handle to increase the
weight and the balancing influence of that part. Mr. Hammond Chambers is
one of them. The amateurs are the most original and peculiar in their
putting methods. For the most part the professionals, although adopting
widely different stances, hold themselves fairly well up when doing
their work on the green, and putt with an easy following-through stroke
as is recommended by the old masters. Strange that we should realise
that quite the most impressive, stylish, and beautiful putter of the
erect school is M'Dermott, the brilliant young American champion, who
stands straight up with his legs and heels touching, grips his putter at
the very end, and moving nothing but his club and hands, makes the most
delightfully smooth swing. The low-grip method is not at all conducive
to the gentle swinging, following-through putt, but encourages a sharp
little tap.
All the old original philosophy and instruction in putting can be
summarised in a very few words, but hundreds of thousands would be
needed for discussion of the variations, most of which have been used
successfully at some time. The majority of advisers make a point of it
that the ball must be hit truly, but they would not all be agreed on
what that "truly" was except that it was hitting it as they meant to do.
What most of them have in mind is that there is on the face of the
putter a proper hitting point, from which the ball will run more
accurately and with less disposition to slide off the right line than
when hit with any other part, that being the point of balance or the
sweet spot which every iron club possesses, and this point should be
brought to the ball by an even swing from the back, and the swing should
be continued after impact by the steady smooth advance of the head of
the club along the line that it was making at the moment of striking.
Absolute steadiness of the body is quite essential, and lack of it--just
the most trifling and almost undiscernible lack--is responsible for more
putting failures than almost any other cause. Most of those who tell us
what to do in golf advise that we should keep the arms and forearms
quite still also, and putt entirely from the wrist. And yet even these
canons, as they are considered, are defied by large bodies of players.
There are thousands of golfers who putt from the toes of their clubs,
and believe in the method. They say they can feel the ball better and
direct it more surely.
I quote again one of the first preceptors, Sir Walter Simpson, because I
think in most matters of feeling and practice he stands so well for the
old solid school of golf that has nearly died away. He insists on the
wooden putter, to begin with, and maintains that no good thing upon the
green can come out of iron, but therein he was mistaken and time has
cried him down. And then he writes: "I have just said there are, at
most, two or three attitudes in which good putting is possible. We are
nowadays inclined to be more dogmatic, and to assert that there is but
one. The player must stand open, half facing the hole, the weight on the
right leg, the right arm close to the side, the ball nearly opposite the
right foot. To putt standing square, the arms reached out, is as
difficult as to write without laying a finger on the desk." Had he lived
on to these more modern days he would not have been nearly so dogmatic
as that. Some of the very best putters do not play with the open stance,
but putt entirely from the left leg, that leg thrown forward and in
front and bearing all the weight, the right being merely hanging on
behind. Then they have the ball right opposite the left toe, and they
putt with a sense of strain which they believe in such circumstances is
conducive to delicacy. Tens of thousands of others could not putt in
this way, but those who can are very successful, and this is just
another indication of the danger of dogma in golf. As to the right arm
at the side, it may be said that there is now a fast increasing practice
on the part of those who bend down somewhat to their putting to rest the
right elbow or forearm on the right knee. J. H. Taylor experimented with
this idea on the very eve of the 1913 championship at Hoylake, his
putting for some time having been bad. He adopted it, won the
championship, and gave the new way of putting all the credit.
Now see how high and deeply thinking authorities can differ about the
ways and means of doing this thing that the little child does so
thoroughly and well. "A great secret of steady putting is to make a
point of always 'sclaffing' along the ground," said the baronet. "The
best putters do this, although it is not evident to an onlooker, the
noise of the scrape being inaudible. To be sure of the exact spot on the
putter face which is invariably to come in contact with the ball, is, of
course, essential to the acquirement of accuracy. If you play to hit
clean, your putter must pass above the ground at varying heights, as it
is impossible to note how much air there is between it and the turf. In
the other way you feel your road. But the greatest gain from treating
putting as a sclaffing process is the less delicate manipulation
required when short putts are in question. At a foot and a half from the
hole the clean putter often fails, from incapacity to graduate inches of
weakness, whilst the sclaffer succeeds because he is dealing with
coarser weight sensitiveness."
Now time and experience have showed us all that we cannot be dogmatic
about anything in golf except that the ball must be struck somehow, and
least of all may we venture to dogmatise in the matter of putting, and
we will only say now that the late Sir Walter has a heavy majority
against him on this suggestion that in doing the short putts it is well
to let the putter scrape along the grass when going forward to the ball.
It seems a small matter (that little man child never thought of it, but
I noticed he did not sclaff), yet a whole world of good and ill upon the
links is bound up with it. We shall set this happy golfer as he was, and
friend of Robert Louis Stevenson, against one of the great champions and
one of the finest putters who have ever handled clubs, and that is
Willie Park, the younger, who says, "One of the secrets of putting is to
hit the ball, and the ball only--a sclaffy style of putting is fatal;
and, with the object of making absolutely certain of avoiding it, rather
aim to strike the globe just the least thing above the ground. The ball
should be smartly tapped with the putter, the stroke being played
entirely from the wrists; and it should be neither struck a slow, heavy
blow, nor shoved, nor should it be jerked."
Most golfers will be with Willie in this matter, and those who have not
tried already that way of putting, the sole of the club being kept clear
from the turf when the stroke is being made, might do so to their very
likely advantage. It is a point that a player of limited experience
might never think about, and I know many who have been converted from
bad putters to good ones by it. Some of the leading players of the
Hoylake school have long been addicted to a slight elaboration or
variation of this method. As they bring the club on to the ball they
lift it slightly so that at the moment of impact a peculiar running spin
is given to the ball, one that is not quite the same thing as is
imparted by merely topping it. The way appears to help the hole to
gather the ball when it arrives, but it is a method that needs natural
aptitude and much practice to make it quite safe in application. And
then again, right away to the contrary, I have witnessed in recent
weeks a way of putting by one or two of the best players in the country,
which is new, and which they declare to be most effective when dealing
with the small heavy balls that are now in vogue and which are so
difficult to manage, especially on very keen greens. We have all heard
of the push shot, generally done with cleeks and the more powerful
irons--and many of us have tried to play it as Harry Vardon does, and
the things that I have seen done and described as push shots by ordinary
amateurs have been very dreadful. But, no matter; the idea of the push
shot is to hit the ball a kind of downward glancing blow, the club
coming to ground after impact, the result being that the ball starts off
quickly and pulls up suddenly. The players to whom I have referred have
applied this stroke to their putting, coming on to the ball above the
centre and gently pushing the club through it, and in the circumstances
I have indicated there can be no doubt they have succeeded. Balls being
so tricky now, these matters are worth considering.
You would perceive how boldly dogmatic was the writer of the early
classic on the question of stance. On that point there is just one more
word to say. The tendency seems to be increasing in these days towards
holding the feet closely together. It is a stance to which Harry Vardon,
after all his putting troubles, has nearly settled down, and many of the
best men on the green, Tom Ball for one, are given to it. But there is
no law, no recommendation even, only the most timid suggestion to be
made to any man in this matter. That way which suits him and gives him
confidence is the best, and one may find men putting marvellously well
when their stance and attitude seem to be so ungainly and difficult as
to cause them pain.
* * * * *
The method of holding the club has, at least, as much to do with good
putting as anything else, and in this matter one may almost dare to
dogmatise. The majority of players hold their putters with the two hands
close together but detached from each other, in much the same way as
they hold their other clubs. All of them have heard of what they call
the Vardon grip, or the overlapping grip, by which, when the club is
held, the left thumb is brought into the palm of the right hand, and the
little finger of that right hand is made generally to ride upon the
first of the left hand. Many try this grip for their long shots, but few
persist with it, as they become convinced either that their hands and
fingers are not strong enough for it, or that before they could master
the method they would need to suffer too much in loss of the game that
they already possess. Therefore they renounce the overlapping grip
entirely. But if they would try it in putting they would experience none
of the difficulties with which they are troubled when applying it to
their wooden club shots, no sort of force having to be given to the
stroke, and almost from the first attempt they would enjoy an advantage.
It is a matter of the most vital importance in putting that the two
hands should not interfere with each other to the very slightest extent.
One of them should have the general management of the putting, and the
other, if detached from it, should do little save act in a very
subordinate capacity as a steadying influence. Everybody is agreed upon
that; it is absolute. But when we have the two hands separate, as with
the ordinary grip, there is always a danger of the subordinate asserting
itself too much, or at all events varying in the amount of work that it
does. It cannot be avoided; it is inevitable. This, we may be sure, is
the cause of much bad and uncertain putting.
Join the two hands together, as with the overlapping grip, and we have
them working as one completely, and the risk of undue interference by
the subordinate vanishes. This is the best hint on putting that all our
counsellors have to give, and they one and all declare it will do more
than anything else to raise a man to the high level of excellence of the
innocent child. Sometimes we see men putting one-handed, and one may
believe that for medium and short putts this way is more certain than
the separate hands. Mr. Hilton once putted that way in the Amateur
International match, and I have seen many other good putters do well
with it. But it savours of freakishness, and, as a famous professional
said to the distinguished player who adopted the method, "God did not
give us two hands for one to be kept in a pocket while the putting was
being done." The simple truth is that the one-hand way approximates very
closely to the two-hand overlapping method. It is nearly the same thing,
the same principle--all the work being done from one point. Upon
thought, we often come to realise that what appear to be some of the
most freakish methods of putting have the same fundamental principle at
their base. Thus, take the case of Sherlock, who putts extremely well
and consistently. He almost alone, among players of the game, holds his
two hands wide apart on the handle of the putter, the left one
uppermost, of course. This looks very strange, and at the first
consideration it might seem that surely one hand will upset all the good
work and reckoning that is done by the other. But the simple fact is
that the left is so far away that it cannot interfere, and that is the
secret of the quality of this method. When the left is close up to the
right we cannot prevent it from meddling; we are unconscious of it when
it is doing so; but get it far away and we have it in subjection, and
all that it does in Sherlock's case is just to steady things up a little
while the right hand does the business of the time.
Mr. Walter Travis, the most eminent American, than whose putting in the
Amateur Championship he won at Sandwich nothing better has ever been
seen since time and the game began, long since adopted a slight
variation of this overlapping grip, specially for his putting, which, I
think, has something to commend it. Instead of letting the little finger
of the right hand rest on the forefinger of the left, he reverses the
situation, and puts the forefinger of the left hand on the little one of
the right, thus leaving the right hand in full possession of the grip,
both thumbs being down the shaft. In the other way it is the left hand
that has hold of the club with all its fingers, and it will now be
remembered that while the left hand is the chief worker in driving and
playing through the green, the right is the one that most frequently
does the putting.
Having thus mentioned Mr. Travis, one can hardly refrain from quoting
some of his instruction in this matter as he once conveyed it to me. "I
believe," said he, "that putting should always be done with one
hand--with one hand actively at work, that is. The left should be used
only for the purpose of swinging the club backwards preparatory to
making the stroke. When it has done that its work is ended and the right
hand should then be sole master of the situation, the left being merely
kept in attachment to it for steadying purposes. When only one hand is
thus employed the gain in accuracy is very great. Two hands at work on a
short putt or a long one tend to distraction. When the stroke is being
made the grip of the right hand should be firm, but not tight, and after
the impact the club-head should be allowed to pass clean through with an
easy following stroke. The follow-through should indeed be as long as it
is possible to make it comfortably, and, with this object in view, at
the moment of touching the ball the grip of the fingers of the left hand
should be considerably relaxed, so that the right hand may go on doing
its work without interruption. Never hit or jerk the ball as so many
players do. There is nothing that pays so well as the easy
follow-through stroke."
Yet we find that there is less than ever of that easy follow-through
being done in these days, and putting may be no better for the fact,
almost certainly is not. These are days when old maxims are being
abandoned and new systems are being proclaimed season by season. Jack
White, a splendid putter and a magnificent heretic, lately declared that
it is time to get rid of what has been regarded as the most inviolable
of maxims, "Never up, never in," asserting that the determination to be
past the hole in putting, if not in it, leads with these lively balls we
now play with to far too many of them running out of holing distance on
the other side. His counsel, therefore, is that the ball should be
coaxed gently up to the hole with as much drag applied to it as can be.
Then for years past it has been recommended that one of the best ways of
managing the putting with these speedy balls is to have much loft on the
putter, and so in that way do something to create the drag; but lately a
change of opinion began to be made, and I am finding some of the best
players using putters that are perfectly straight in the face, believing
that by their agency they can putt more delicately and with a surer
judgment of strength.
It is a little bewildering. Arnaud Massy, the French player who once
won the Open Championship, and who is better at the putts of from six to
ten or twelve feet than any man I know, says that he has come to believe
that Nature has planted deep down in us a sixth sense, and it is that of
putting. In the development of that sense lies the way to success. But
after all such meditations as this, I go back to the remembrance of that
wonderful little child who could never miss, and then from it all there
emerges the only real secret of success in putting. The child has a
quality which we elders do not enjoy, and never shall have it for any
length of time. He knows not the hardness of the world. Having innocence
and faith he looks trustingly upon it, and the old world and its four
and a quarter inch hole is a little ashamed, perhaps. The child has
Confidence.
CHAPTER IV
OLD CHAMPIONS AND NEW, AND SOME DIFFERENCES IN ACHIEVEMENT, WITH A
SUGGESTION THAT GOLF IS A CRUEL GAME.
If men who play games are not proud of their champions, of what then
shall they be proud? If we advance the proposition--which is done here
and now--that no other game or sport that was ever conceived and played
has produced such remarkable strength and mastery in its champions as
golf has done, the cynics will find that with the resources of the world
and history at their disposal this position of ours can be well
maintained, even though we have less than sixty years of championships
for our support. And let it be said also at the beginning that we of
golf declare to win, not with the Morrises or Parks, as might be
supposed--good men they were too--but with the moderns, and especially
with our Harry Vardon, our Taylor, our Braid, and the amateurs, John
Ball, Harold Hilton, and the Frederick Guthrie Tait of immortal and
beloved memory. I have long since grown accustomed to the mysterious and
the inexplicable in golf, and pass them by on their fresh occurrences in
these days as like the commonplace, something for which indeed there may
be some explanation and a simple one, but one which the gods, with their
humour and their teasing, are hiding from us. We who in this game have
fed so long on wonders are now disposed to overlook phenomena. We tire
of sensations and the extraordinary, and would revert to a smooth
placidity of plain occurrence. It is in such mood that we often
contemplate the records of the past, and then we dismiss them quickly
with the comfortable judgment that the Morrises were themselves, and,
being fixed on a permanent pinnacle, must not be disturbed. They have
become a creed. One might imagine little plaster figures of old Tom, his
left hand in his trousers pocket, thumb outside, and young Tom in
Glengarry bonnet all complete, to have been placed in some over-zealous
golfers' homes along with representations of Homer, Julius Caesar,
Shakespeare, Gladstone, and Cecil Rhodes, and no questions are to be
asked about them. It may be right to place them there, those early
champions of the game, but when sometimes steeled to sacrilege and
careless of all risk, I set myself to analyse the conditions and
circumstances in which they gained their immortal glory, I can give
reasons, ordinary worldly reasons, why they gained it; and can thereupon
pass them as satisfying every reasonable requirement of human champions
of the first degree. But with the others it is not at all like that.
Golf being the game it is, the repeated successes of those three great
players we call the "triumvirate," Taylor, Vardon, and Braid, at a time
when competition is so enormously severe, and when--this point being of
towering importance--the luck of the game, always considerable, is,
through a variety of circumstances, greater than ever, appear to me,
having seen most of them accomplished, and now looking upon the plain
printed records of indisputable fact, to have still some elements of
impossibility. One has a fear that three or four hundred years from now
the golfers of the period may not believe that these things did happen;
they may decide that we of this imaginative and progressive age, a
little fearful perhaps of greater wonders that might be accomplished in
the future, had prepared a little trick for posterity and had set forth
false records of what we had done, so absurd that their falsity was
self-evident, and so we were to be pitied for our simplicity. In our
humble way, and by stating the records of achievement in the coldest
way, admitting moreover that even to us of the time they appear
incredible, we do our best to gain favour and acceptance with our
descendants. Fifteen Open Championships to the triumvirate, and eight
Amateur Championships to Mr. John Ball himself. It is indeed impossible;
but it is one of those things in golf that are to be described in the
terms that Ben Sayers (who might have been given a championship by the
fates for services rendered and skill displayed before the era to which
he chiefly belonged was closed, as men are made lords when governments
give up) applied to the victory over him by Fred Tait on his own course
at North Berwick once by something like seven and six--"It's no
possible, but it's a fact!" All of us know one man--perhaps more than
one, but we do know one for certain--who nearly all the time that Mr.
Ball has been winning those championships might have been winning them
himself, has been almost good enough to do so. But he has won nothing,
and after all it may not be a matter of much surprise if we consider the
enormous odds against victory in a championship because of the luck of
the game, the fact that it is not like running or rowing, billiards or
chess, where strength and stamina, knowledge and skill, work out almost
exactly every time, but a game in which skill has this element of luck
blended so largely with it. But Mr. Ball, Amateur Champion eight times
over, and the triumvirate as well!--when "the truth stands out as gross
as black from white," with my eyes I can scarcely see it. These persons
have forbidden the caprice of chance that was set to worry them, they
have overthrown the laws of averages, they have annihilated the
weaknesses of flesh and blood, and they have laughed at fortune and at
fate which, defeated, have joined up with them. Then clearly they, with
the collection of champions in general for their garnishment, are to be
regarded as the sixth wonder of the game.
It is now too late--as it always was too late--to make any fair
comparison between the great players of our own time and those who were
members in the early years of the Open Championship. There is not so
much argument now as to whether Harry Vardon is better than young Tom
Morris was, though such argument was common only ten or a dozen years
ago. How may you compare these men? Young Tommy won four championships
in succession, but there was only a handful of competitors each time,
and the opposition was feeble almost to nothing in comparison with what
it became a very few years later. Vardon, Taylor, and Braid have each
won the championship five times, and many of these victories were gained
against their own fellow-champions and the strongest opposition
conceivable. Yet though such as Vardon produce what are in a sense more
astonishing results in the way of scores, we are reminded that they have
far smoother courses to play upon and much improved clubs and balls.
Also they have better rivals to sharpen their game. From this one might
argue that it would be strange indeed if they were not better than young
Tommy was, that it is quite inevitable they should be. But our modern
champions have done more than fulfil the obligations laid upon them.
They have established an amazing supremacy at a period when golfers are
reckoned in the hundreds of thousands; young Tom was champion when there
were the hundreds without the thousands. His championship, at all
events, did not mean so much. The championships gained by our
triumvirate are proof beyond all possibility of doubt or question that
these men are the most exalted geniuses, that they have such a clear
superiority over all other golfers of their time as is, seeing the
circumstances of the case and knowing the waywardness of golf, almost
incredible. The success of the younger Morris proved, as some will hold,
only that he was quite the best golfer of a few eligible to compete for
the championship.
* * * * *
After all, if comparison is fruitless and not properly practicable, this
speculation as to the merits of the geniuses of nearly fifty years ago
and now becomes enticing. One would like to reach some conclusion upon
it, but cannot. It would be fine material for a golfers' debating
society. Were I to regard myself as advocate for the moderns I should in
an agreeable and inoffensive way suggest that time has done nothing to
hurt the fame of young Tommy's skill. When what they call the golf boom
began and the great game percolated through the mass of ignorant
English, there was babble all at once about St. Andrews, and men of
southern towns just discovering that the right hand on the driver should
be the lower one whispered of the ancient city in a hypocritical manner
of respect and awe as if it were high up above the blue instead of a
day's journey up the northern lines from Euston or King's Cross. The
name of the place was taken in vain, and to this day there are neophytes
who lisp of "the Mecca of golf," as they say it, and its eleventh and
seventeenth holes, though they have never been in Fifeshire and maybe
never will. At the same time and by the same people there was
established the vogue of young Tommy Morris, as one might call it. It
was nearly sacrilege in the circumstances, for more people were living
then than are living now who had known young Tommy, and fervently
believed he was the best golfer who ever played the game. But what we
may call the Morrisian traditions were established in this way, and they
have laid a shoddy veneer on the really sound reputation of the young
champion that it never needed. So the proposition is advanced that
through ignorance and affectation and carelessness we posterity are
being abundantly generous to young Tom and his father--forgetting Allan
Robertson, such is the effect of championships, who was before them, and
of whom it was said when he died that they might toll their bells and
shut up their shops at St. Andrews, for their greatest was gone. We
posterity are of another golfing world completely from that in which
those early champions of St. Andrews lived and golfed. I have here in my
room a driver with which old Tom played, and I see that the other day
some rash fellows, unafraid of ghosts, took out from their receptacles
some clubs which had belonged to him and others and played a game with
them. But the handling of the old clubs and the looking on the picture
of Tom which he once signed for me cannot bring the feeling of his time
to ours, and I pass it on as a suggestion to our own posterity that our
judgment in this matter, as it has been made, is nearly worthless.
It has been coldly stated that lies are told by golfers. That allegation
may be dismissed with no consideration, but it is certain that fancy
traditions of flimsy origin gather about golfing history and soon
establish themselves in the most remarkable manner. I know many
incidents of the past ten or fifteen years, things I myself have
witnessed, the truth of which has become completely obscured by masses
of imagined stuff that has gathered on them. To take a good example,
more than half the golfers in the world will tell you that Lieutenant
Fred Tait won a championship at Prestwick after wading into water at the
Alps to play a shot from there in the final; if they will look at the
records they will find that splendid Tait did not win that championship
at all, and they should be told that the shot that Mr. Ball made from
the wet sand in that same bunker was nearly as difficult and, in the
circumstances, more trying. Again, the victory gained by Mr. Travis at
Sandwich, so recently as 1904, is now already described in many
different ways, but one feature common to all of them is that the
American holed a putt of twenty yards on nearly every green, that his
driving was childlike in its shortness, and that he was smoking himself
to death at the time. Still later, the very next year, there was an
Amateur Championship at Prestwick, and I remember that Mr. Robert
Maxwell, after a hard struggle against young Barry--who won the
championship--had to loft over a stymie on the eighteenth green to keep
the match alive, and then at the nineteenth the student was left with a
short putt to win that hole and the match. I saw the play in that match
and saw the putt, and I believe it was one of about a couple of feet. It
was certainly too much to give in the circumstances, far too much, but
Mr. Maxwell, great lover of golf as he is, had even by that time begun
to tire of the strenuousness and the officialdom and the graspingness of
championship tournaments, and he waved his club in token of presentation
of the putt to his young opponent and generously shook hands with him.
The Scottish spectators did not like it at the time, because "oor
Bobbie" was their best and greatest hope, and it seemed like feeding the
devil with chocolates to give putts like this to English golfers. By the
time that we had returned to the club-house, only three hundred yards
away, it was being said that that putt was three feet long, by the
morning it had gone up to three feet six, and increasing gradually it
even touched the five-feet mark within the next few years. At that point
there was a reaction and, from what I can gather, the putt has settled
down in history at four feet. It was half as long.
So I think that golf posterities are fickle bodies, and even the best of
them are not nearly so responsible and accurate in their judgments as is
believed by those people who trustingly say that they will await the
verdict of posterity. I remember that M. Anatole France urged that
posterity was not infallible, because he himself and all human beings
are posterity in regard to a long succession of works with which they
are imperfectly acquainted, and he quotes the case of Macbeth whose
reputation posterity has murdered, though Macbeth himself did no crime
at all. Macbeth was really an excellent king. He enriched Scotland by
favouring her commerce and industry. The chronicler depicts him as a
pacific prince, the king of the towns, the friend of the citizens. The
clans hated him because he administered justice well. He assassinated
nobody. And as M. France remarks, we know what legend and genius have
made of his memory. It is that way reversed with all our golfing
traditions, and so we must handle them carefully. It is a principle of
this game that no man can be a good golfer and a bad man, that those who
are bad at heart have not the human qualities necessary for being
golfers at all, cannot associate happily with the rest of the community,
and so they get themselves properly out of it betimes. Hence it happens
that of no golfer is there anything that is bad to be told. We have no
Macbeths in this sport of ours, though it embraces some pensive Hamlets,
and a number of the moderns would be golfing Romeos if their swings were
finished in the old free style. But if tradition had indeed given us a
foul Macbeth who improved his lie we should surely purify the
remembrance of him, believing that his immediate posterity had almost
certainly judged him wrong.
This case which the advocate has set up against young Tom, with all this
blame cast on posterity, will seem a weak thing yet to some. If we were
counsel for the boy, who made a fine and a lovable figure in his day,
should we bandy with words like that, or put evidence direct and plain
before the tribunal, the evidence of those who saw? There are still a
few of them left, and for myself I should not have far to send to gain a
willing witness. I have a good and valued friend, Mr. Charles Chambers
of Edinburgh, member of a distinguished golfing family of many
generations, and a fine player himself, who was in the semi-final of the
first Amateur Championship. He saw young Tommy at the game, and played
it with him. And Mr. Chambers, once answering my plea for some of his
remembrances, said, "As a youngster at St. Andrews, I was a great friend
of young Tom, the champion, and on a summer evening often accompanied
him alone, when, with a club and a cleek, he played out as far as the
second hole. He was, I believe, the greatest golfer the world has ever
seen, those giants of the present day not excepted. His driving, which I
remember so well, was of the long, low, wind-cheating style so seldom
seen now, with great distance and carry. He never struck a ball anywhere
except on the centre of the club, and this was reflected in the faces of
his driving-clubs, which had a clear and distinct impression in the
centre, the wood above and below being clean and fresh as when last
filed. His putting was perhaps even more deadly, and in ordinary matches
I recollect he was seldom or never asked to hole out a yard putt. In
driving from the tee, his style may be described as an absolutely
correct circular sweep, with great accuracy and follow-through, and
this applied equally to his iron play. It was his custom to wear a broad
Glengarry bonnet, which very frequently left his head on the delivery of
the stroke.... Without doubt he succumbed to his private sorrows and a
broken heart." That is strong testimony, and the abiding conviction is
that young Morris was great indeed, but in the nature of things
comparisons cannot well be made between then and now, and are better
left undone.
* * * * *
I am glad that we have thus condemned posterity, for we strengthen the
positions of our triumvirate and Mr. Ball at their only point of
weakness, which is that their successes have been so marvellous as to be
incredible to those heirs of ours who, not being of this period, will
not have witnessed them. Posterity may suggest that such persons could
not have lived, since none of us will hesitate to say that such
posterity will not itself produce a man to win three championships. Even
to win one twice is to make a proof of superiority such as in existing
circumstances seems nearly impossible. Any man, as one might say, may
win a championship; that would prove nothing save that he is as good a
golfer as any other, or nearly so; but to win two championships is to
prove that he is appreciably better than the others, that he is so much
better as to balance with his skill the chances of the game--the putts
he missed and the long ones that his opponents holed--that were flung
against him. During a period of nearly twenty years the success of
Taylor, Vardon, and Braid has been so complete, so overwhelming, so
dazzling, that among them they seem almost to have solved the problem of
perpetual victory. Each of these men is a genius, a great master of the
game; each of them, had he lived in an age apart from the others, would
alone have been enough to make a separate era in competitive golf; and
it is a strange freak of fate that they should have been pitchforked
into the arena at the same time. It is as if three Ormondes had been in
the same Derby, or three Graces at the crease, when at their best;
indeed, it is more wonderful than those things would have been. They
were born within thirteen months of each other; Vardon and Braid within
three months. The last-named is the eldest of the group; he was born at
Earlsferry, in Fifeshire, on 6th February 1870; Harry Vardon was born in
Jersey on 7th May 1870; and Taylor was born at Northam, in Devonshire,
within a mile of where Mr. Ball won his eighth championship, on 19th
March 1871. They are of different race; for Braid is a pure Scot, Taylor
is pure English, and Vardon, while, of course, we are proud to regard
him as belonging to us, is really half-French and half-English. They are
of different build, different temperament, and of very different style
in golf; but there they are. Among them they have won the Open
Championship fifteen times, and when one of them has succeeded it has
generally happened that the other two have been his most dangerous
rivals. There must be a limit to the period of success as there is to
human life, and for years people have murmured that these three are not
like the little brook that purls down the hill, and they cannot go on
for ever. And yet at the beginning of each new championship an instinct
settles in the public mind that they cannot be beaten. Considering what
the Open Championship is, what a fearful strain it exerts on
temperament, mind, body, and muscle, how a single slip may mean failure,
and then how many really magnificent golfers are in the lists, some of
them old champions themselves, this is a strange state of things. I
recall that when a championship was played at Muirfield in 1906 the
sceptics were then loud in their prophecies that a "new man" would
arise, and that the triumvirate would be cast down. And then? James
Braid was first, John Henry Taylor was second, and Harry Vardon was
third, though a hundred and eighty other players had done their best to
beat them! Taylor, the Englishman, although the youngest of the three,
was the first to score success. He and Vardon both made their initial
appearances in the Open Championship at Prestwick in 1893, and on that
occasion the 75 that Taylor did in his first round stood as the lowest
made in the competition, although he did not win. At his second and
third attempts in the championship he took first place each time, and on
the second of these occasions an Englishman's victory was at last
accomplished at St. Andrews, the Scottish headquarters of the game. He
won there again in 1900, and is the only Englishman who has ever won the
Open Championship on this hallowed piece of golfing ground. A year after
the others began, James Braid entered the lists, and very quickly then
did these three establish their triple supremacy. An injured hand kept
Braid out of the great event in 1895, but since then each of the men has
played in every championship, and among them have won fifteen times out
of twenty-one. At the "coming of age" of the triumvirate in 1913, when
it was twenty-one years after Taylor and Vardon started in the event,
Taylor, the first to score in it, won his fifth and became "all square"
with his friends. That was a remarkable occurrence. Since 1894, when
Taylor won his first championship, there have only been five years when
one or other of the triumvirate has not won the cup. In 1897 Mr. Hilton
got it; in 1902 Sandy Herd, playing with the rubber-cored ball on its
introduction, scored; in 1904 Jack White was the winner, both Braid and
Taylor having a putt to tie with him on the last green; in 1907 Massy,
the Frenchman, triumphed; and in 1912 the hope of Edward Ray was
realised. And in each of these years one of the triumvirate was second.
* * * * *
But if each of the triumvirate is a phenomenon and collectively they are
super-phenomena, in what terms then are we to describe Mr. John Ball,
and how shall we account for his eight amazing championships? Mr. Harold
Hilton, as all the world understands very well, is a great master of the
game, a magnificent golfer who knows it through and through, and a
tremendous fighting man. There has hardly been anything in all golf's
history so splendid as his coming again and winning two more Amateur
Championships when he had seemed almost done for ever, and very nearly
winning an Open Championship as well. But if after considering the
professionals at their stroke game, we are now to think of the amateurs
in their match-play championship, it is John Ball who is the wonder man.
The luck of the game that was emphasised in the consideration of score
play is surely greater in the match. At all events, the professionals
themselves to a man declare that the score play makes the better test,
and therefore is the fairer. If that is so, there is, inferentially,
more luck to be conquered by a good man in the amateur event, and Mr.
Ball has eight times beaten his fields and beaten all the luck against
him. Twenty-four years after winning his first Amateur Championship at
Prestwick he wins his eighth at Westward Ho! and, for all the great
players that the game has yielded, no other man has gained more than
half those wins, and only Hilton has done that. Surely it is a mystery
very profound as to how he has won so often. And yet it is less of
mystery if we accept the proposition that he who plays golf for the sake
of golf and fears not to be beaten is the most dangerous of opponents.
Mr. Ball's early championships were won by his own skill and his perfect
temperament; undoubtedly some of the later ones, which through
increasing numbers of opponents have or should have been harder to win,
have been gained because he cared little whether he won or not, and
because his opponents feared to lose, and feared the more as they felt
their impending fate when they had the master of Hoylake laid against
them. To a little extent they have beaten themselves, and Mr. Ball has
done all the rest. Has there been more than one of his championships in
recent times that he has keenly desired to win, that being the one he
gained at St. Andrews in 1907, because he wished to be victor at the
headquarters where he lost long years before, after a tie with Mr.
Balfour Melville? At eight o'clock on the morning after he won his
seventh at Hoylake I saw him in the garden at the back of his house
giving his chickens their morning meal. It was as if nothing had
happened. How many other men would have been feeding chickens so early
in the morning after winning an Amateur Championship? Has he finished
winning, I wonder? There is a cause to suggest that he has not. He won
for his seventh the only championship ever played in Devonshire, and he
has won the event on all the regular amateur championship courses on
which it is played but one, and that is Muirfield, which has been
something of a _bete noire_ among courses so far as he is concerned.
Once there he suffered one of the biggest defeats of his career, in the
international match, and then in the championship he went down in a
surprising way to a youngster of Dornoch. Shall he not add Muirfield to
his list?
Despite a certain beauty of his style and the ease and elegance with
which he plays the game, Mr. Ball's golf is strongly individual to
himself. There are many pronounced mannerisms in it, and they are of a
kind that if any one tried to copy them, he might find his game being
injured rather than improved. They are the ways of the genius who cares
nothing for convention. Few can drive a better ball. At the outset of
his career he was a long driver. His first big match away from his
native Hoylake was one against Douglas Rolland. It was a home-and-home
affair in England and Scotland, and Rolland was greatly celebrated in
those days for the length he gained with wooden clubs. Yet he outdrove
Mr. Ball but little in that engagement. He obtains his length not to a
large extent from run, as most men get it now, but by a ball that starts
on a beautiful line, makes a very long carry, and leaves it at that,
with a little pull to finish with. It has seemed that he has had more
control over his wooden club play than almost any amateur except another
of fame who was bred in the same great school. An outstanding
peculiarity of his method is the way in which he grips his club, which
is done not in the fingers and lightly as by other men, but by a good
firm grip in the palms of his hands with the fingers facing up. He makes
small use of the thumb and the first two fingers of his right hand. His
stance is an open one. His play with his iron clubs again is
unconventional. Even for his shortest shots he swings his clubs, meaning
that he makes less of a jerky hit at the ball than others do, and he
resorts less to cutting the stroke than other great men. But what a
master of judging of heights and distance he is! To see him just plop
the ball over a bunker in the way and then watch it run the necessary
distance afterwards is to understand what marvellous properties of
control can be invested in such perfect human golfing machinery.
Another of his peculiarities is that he carries no niblick in his bag,
and I think he never has carried one. He has certainly not had one in
any of his recent championships. And among many other of his
characteristics is that peculiar gait with the bent knees that, because
of their climbing over the hilly links, golf seems to develop in men
(Harry Vardon has it), his extreme modesty in manner, and the splendid
excellence of his sportsmanship. Some one once set forward a curious
theory that children born in the winter-time are likely to become better
golfers than others; their temperaments are supposed to be favourably
affected by the prevailing rigour of the weather conditions! It is,
anyhow, a curious fact that a very large proportion of our best players
were born in mid-winter months, and of them all John Ball is the
greatest, and he, if you please, was born on a day so far removed from
midsummer as Christmas Eve.
* * * * *
There has been lately a sort of revival of the game of attempting to
punch another man so very hard that he can stand up no longer to make
the smallest punch in answer. He has to be battered and pounded until he
is made practically lifeless for a period of ten seconds, and then the
other man is given the money. This is what we call the "noble art of
self-defence," but, obviously, it is nine parts of such defence to
reduce the other man to such a jellified condition that no more defence
is needed. When well played it is a good game. Now golf never has been
called a "noble" game at all. It is "royal" and it is "ancient," and it
leaves its qualities to speak for themselves, as most eloquently they
do. The boast has indeed been made for golf that, while in so many other
English sports something flying or running has to be killed or injured,
golf never calls for a drop of blood from any living creature. It is
then inferred that it is a gentle game, as in some ways it really is.
Also it has been demonstrated that it is a game at which elderly men may
play and play quite well, as was proved in a recent year when golfers
who are becoming older than they like to think of won so many of the
trophies. But the result of this boom in the noble art of squashing
another man for a prize of a few thousand pounds and the brave words
that some of the lovers of this sport sometimes use, telling us that
things like this made English hearts so strong, nearly giving us to
understand that Sayers and his like had some influence on the fortunes
of the British Empire, is that a kind of reflection is cast upon some
other sports for their mildness and their timidity. Girls do not fight
in rings and nearly kill each other, but girls can play golf and do, and
they even play with men.
Let us consider the proposition that golf is a game that needs a greater
and a stronger heart than any other game. It demands fine manliness,
such determination as strong Englishmen are made of, and courage of the
best. The strain of a severe golf competition on the men who win, or
nearly, is enormous. No weakling has ever won success at golf, and never
will. The truth is that it is such a game that if the charge is made
that it is a brutal sport we can barely stand for its defence. For there
is cruelty in golf, cold hurting cruelty in this game. If now you
hesitate, consider. The difference between the effect of boxing and the
effect of golf on the human system is that golf hurts more and the pain
is more enduring, for it is psychological. That may seem like an
attempted escape from the proposition, because it may be suggested that
maiden aunts can and do bear such psychological pain at golf, and bear
it well. But we discuss real golf of the championship kind, and match
play wherein two good and keen players are really playing against each
other, parry and thrust as it is in championship golf, with the issue in
even balance most of the time, not taking sevens and eights and so being
nearly indifferent to what the other may do until the clerking takes
place on the putting green and the state of things is calculated.
Golf, as we know, is a game for the emotions. We agree that it plays
upon them continually, and chiefly through the medium of the supreme
emotion, hope. While this hope is the most uplifting of emotions, it is
also, with the strain it makes, by far the most exhausting. Now every
golfer knows that in the real game if a good stroke is made by one party
the gain is not only in the extra nearness to the hole that his own ball
obtains, but also by the "moral effect" the shot has on the other man.
This other may have been in a good state of hope before; now he receives
a sudden shock--and it is indeed a shock sometimes when in a second, as
the result of the other's effort, his hope is reduced to fear or
complete dejection. Do you think the man who made the shot does not know
that? He knows it well. There! he knew! The dejected man has foozled,
and the hole has gone. This bout is ended. There is a rest of a few
seconds, and then the contestants start again and smash each other on
the mind, just as they did the other time. Some may suggest that the
effect of these mental hurts is small, that they draw no blood, and that
they are not to be compared with a left hook on the jaw which sends a
boxer toppling. To that there are replies to make. In the first place it
has to be remembered that a match at golf between two good players (we
do not now write of habitual foozlers in whom the golfing emotions
cannot, in the nature of things, be well developed) is taken very
seriously indeed, and therefore the emotional effect is greater than
might be supposed by one who does not play. Second, the effect is
cumulative, and every golfer knows again how intensely depressing is the
continual fight against a relentless opponent who scores with nearly
every stroke and never lets one's hope burn bright again. Bang goes
every shot of his on the sensitive temperament of his foe, and that is
exactly why temperament has all to do with success at golf. It is the
man who can stand punishment who wins; no other sort ever has won in
greater golf, or ever will. And then again, if it is suggested that
mental pain is after all not such a hard thing to bear with courage as
pain of body, let us ask which has the longer effect, remembering also
that, with full respect to boxing people, the golfer is a man of keener
feelings. In championships how often has a man who has had a punishing
match in a morning round, one that has gone to the nineteenth hole or
after before victory has come to him, won again in the afternoon? Not
frequently. If you had merely with a fist blow knocked that man
senseless for a little while before his lunch, he might have been
readier for his golfer opponent in the afternoon. It is notorious that
some of the finest play in championships has been accomplished by men
who were enduring much physical suffering at the time. And again, how
exactly is the effect of the winning putt on the defeated man like that
of the knock-out blow. His last hope is extinguished with the suddenness
of vanished consciousness. So this psychological pain is a very
discomforting thing. The law recognises it, and herein the law is surely
not an ass. We have the legal cruelty of the divorce court. Husband who
tells his wife he dislikes her new hat or gown is held to have been
cruel as though he had smacked her pretty face, or something worse than
that. He could kiss away a red mark from a dimpled cheek, and surely if
permitted he would do so, but nothing could change the judgment on the
hat. And in golf the mental injury is more real than that.
Never was more absurdly untrue suggestion made against this game than
that it is not like others where men play directly against each other
and foil each other's shots, that it is a game in which each man plays
his own ball independent of the other. Each stroke we make has effect on
the stroke made by the opponent. That effect may be discounted by the
opponent's own strength and resource, but yet it is produced. In no
other game does a man play right and hard on to his opponent as in
match-play golf, for it is a game in which the whole temperamental
strength of one side is hurled against the strength of the other, and
the two human natures are pressing bitterly and relentlessly against
each other from the first moment of the game to the last. It is the
whole man, mind and body. That is the meaning of the temperamental
factor in golf, and that is why a great match at golf is great indeed.
Yes, it is a cruel game, one in which the primitive instincts of man are
given full play, and the difference between golf and fisticuffs is that
in the one the pain is of the mind and in the other it is of the body.
* * * * *
A climax in our wonderment has been reached, and though a volume could
be written on the romance of the rubber-cored ball, the seventh of the
wonders of the game and the most modern, the story after all is known.
Golf would have gained on its old degree of popularity if there had been
no such invention and men had continued to play with gutties; but that
the golf boom as we know it would have been created, that the game
would have risen to be the enormous thing it is, giving pleasure to
hundreds of thousands of people all the world over, there is much reason
to doubt. One night in the early summer of 1898 Mr. Coburn Haskell sat
at dinner with a magnate of the American rubber industry, at the house
of the latter in Cleveland, Ohio. They were both golfers, and naturally
they talked golf during their meal. They agreed that a kindlier ball
than the harsh and severe gutty was needed, and they thought that surely
it might come through rubber. Eventually they settled on the idea of
rubber thread wound under tension to give the necessary hardness, and an
experimental ball was made accordingly. With the very first shot that
was made with that first of rubber-cored balls a professional player to
whom it had been given to try carried a bunker that had never been
carried before! From that moment the great revolution was begun, the
most extraordinary that has ever taken place in any game. There were
set-back
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