The Happy Golfer Part 1

The Happy Golfer.

by Henry Leach.

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 circ.u.mstances 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 cla.s.s. 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 s.h.i.+ps take golf clubs with them; I have known golfers carry their materials into deserts, and one of the greatest and n.o.blest 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 G.o.ds. 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 circ.u.mstances of the game cause to flame continually in the golfer's mind like the great human pa.s.sion 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 a.s.sociated 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, una.n.a.lytical, 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 a.n.a.logies 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 repet.i.tion 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 s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.ce 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 antic.i.p.ate, 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 a.s.serts himself not only as an ignorer of G.o.ds 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 a.n.a.logy 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 antic.i.p.ates, 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 pa.s.sed, 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 sc.r.a.p 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 gra.s.s-covered earth, a little smoothed by man but still with abounding natural roughness and simplicity. Here on the links are s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.ces, 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 emanc.i.p.ates 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 s.p.a.ce 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 companions.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+vered and shocked by failure. It has the advantage that we can play it when the period of life for other games has pa.s.sed, 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 pa.s.sion, and pa.s.sions 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 cla.s.s, 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 s.p.a.ce; 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 las.h.i.+ng 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 b.a.l.l.s 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 b.a.l.l.s, 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 a.s.sociate 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 b.a.l.l.s, 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 b.a.l.l.s, 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 a.s.sociates 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 sc.r.a.pe, 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 quant.i.ty even to this day." Then these shepherd-golfers deepened the rabbit sc.r.a.pe so that the b.a.l.l.s 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 sc.r.a.pe, 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 cla.s.sics 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 pa.s.sing, 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 circ.u.mstances 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 champions.h.i.+p dignity being withheld from their courses and their not being admitted to the higher councils of the game. I remember with grat.i.tude 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 doc.u.mentary 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, a.s.sisted by her va.s.sal 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 ma.s.sive 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 ill.u.s.trated 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 amus.e.m.e.nt. 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 bra.s.s.

Hurly of creduma therefore comes curiously near the quite modern bra.s.sey. 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 pa.s.sing 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 n.o.ble 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 pa.s.ses 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 members.h.i.+p 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 mas.h.i.+e niblick. It is too often and absurdly a.s.sumed 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 ADVERTIs.e.m.e.nT 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 a.s.sistance 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 s.h.i.+ne, 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 a.s.sociates.