The Happy Golfer Part 6

Among the "house rules," it is stated that the club-house generally will remain open until midnight, and the cafe, which is the British equivalent of the smoke-room with bar, until one o'clock in the morning, which is a lateness of hour almost unheard of in England, but then it has to be remembered that such club-houses in America are mostly residential. "Juniors" are not allowed in the cafe. The warning is given that smoking and the lighting of matches in the locker or dressing room are absolutely prohibited, and that a fine of ten dollars will be imposed on any member violating this rule. Fires in club-houses in America being so numerous is the cause of this rule, which is rigorously applied. Then it is perceived that no member makes any payment whatsoever in cash in the club-house. He signs a check or bill, an account of his expenditure is kept, and it is served to him fortnightly.

Payment must then be made within ten days, failing which the member is suspended. Some interesting items are to be found among the ground rules. One says that in medal play compet.i.tions new holes must be a.s.sumed to have been made on the morning of a compet.i.tion, unless otherwise stated by the Green Committee; and another that a member playing a round, and keeping score other than in club compet.i.tion must allow parties playing pure match-play to pa.s.s. The Americans are not content with merely requesting a player to replace the divots of turf that he cuts up in play. They say: "Divots of turf cut up by players must be carefully replaced and pressed down. A fine of one dollar will be imposed on any member violating this rule. All members are earnestly requested to report any member who violates this rule to the Green Committee." Caddies are paid "from the time of their employment until the time they are discharged, to be determined by an electric clock, at such rate per hour as may be determined by the Green Committee." There is nothing that is inexpensive about a club of this cla.s.s, and let it be understood that there are few second-cla.s.s golf clubs in the States where the fees are small. A day's golf at a good club is cheap indeed at five dollars. When one goes to stay there for a night or two one finds that the statutory price for breakfast is a dollar, for lunch 1.25, and for dinner 1.30 upwards. When I returned to England it appeared that golf and all pertaining to it was cheap, almost to the gift point.

The course at Wheaton is good, although there are some in America that are better. It is plain, its holes sometimes lack strength, but it is well tended and its putting greens are quite perfect. Its fairway is not perfect, any more than the fairways of other American courses are. The climate will hardly permit of their being so. It bakes them up and makes them hard, and the inevitable result is little k.n.o.bs and depressions which give cuppy lies, and turf which for all its greenness is not by any means comfortable to the feet in comparison with the yieldingness of our British turf. The Americans cannot help this; if it were practicable to treat every inch of their turf for climatic troubles all through the day and night they would perhaps do it. It is practicable to treat their putting greens thoroughly, and the result is that, taking them all round, they have undoubtedly got the best putting greens in the world.

I mean, without reservation, that the average of the best courses in America is higher than the average of the best in our own country, and I say it with some regret that they have a score of courses in the United States with greens far superior to those on the old course at St.

Andrews the last time the Amateur Champions.h.i.+p was played there, those greens being then not what they used to be. I think much of the credit for the high quality of the greens at Wheaton is due to the splendid work of David Foulis, the professional and greenkeeper there. Need I say that David is a Scot, and a very true Scot too, who still loves his old homeland better than any other, and is glad when the wandering golfer from it gets his way. Chicago may seem a strange place to visit for facts of old golf history, and yet here I added some details to the histories of the people and their golfing ways of fifty years and more agone, for Foulis has his father living with him out in Illinois, and Foulis the elder was at work with old Tom Morris in the great days when the Open Champions.h.i.+p was young, and stirring are the stories that he can tell you, as he did to me in David's shop, of old Tom and Allan Robertson, and the other giants of those times, carrying one in mind and spirit far away from the land round about the big lake of Michigan to the old grey city which was old more than a hundred years ago.

I took away with me as a memento from David Foulis a club that he has invented, and which for a special purpose I can commend. It is a kind of mas.h.i.+e niblick, David claiming to be the inventor of this type of club, but it is different from others in that it has a perfectly straight, flat sole and a concave face. I, like others, found that by the use of this club I saved some dollars, for it enabled me to pitch the ball from a hard lie on to the hard greens and make it stay close to the hole when nothing else would serve the purpose. The ordinary mas.h.i.+e niblick with curved sole is not perfect for baked and iron-hard courses, as it is not easy to get well hold of the ball when taking it cleanly as must often be done in such circ.u.mstances, and the margin for error is painfully small. The flat-soled club is essentially one for taking the ball cleanly, and somehow that hollow face does impart extra backspin to the ball. It lifts it up and drops it dead as no other club that I have handled will of itself ever do.

But let me write that the Americans are not given to fancy and freak clubs as some people suppose they are. There is nothing freakish about this article of which I write, and for the most part the implements that the American players employ are the simplest. And just to complete my generalising remarks on American courses, which naturally vary greatly, let me say that commonly they are not so severely bunkered as are the best of ours, particularly from the tee. They do not demand either such long or such straight driving as our best courses do, and I think that the Americans realise now that this is the case and that they need stiffening up. They are doing that already. There are some very good holes at Wheaton, and the short hole at the ninth is about the most tantalising water hole I have encountered. It is all water from the teeing ground to the foot of a high plateau on which the green is situated, and it is about a hundred and ten yards across the pond.

CHAPTER VII

THE PERFECT COUNTRY CLUB AND THE GOLFERS' POW-WOW AT ONWENTSIA, WITH A GLIMPSE OF THE NATIONAL LINKS.

Round Chicago there is now a great belt of golf which is thickening rapidly. More hundreds of acres are being claimed for the game constantly, and one hears in these parts of the most splendidly equipped club-houses being built to replace others at the cost of very many thousands of dollars. Activity in the increase of golf is feverish. But even here maturity has its charm, as it always must have in golf, and the most delightful resorts in Illinois are those which are the oldest.

Such as Onwentsia, Exmoor, Midlothian, Glen View are excellent.

I am glad I went to Onwentsia. Most British golfers who have never been and will never go across the Atlantic have heard something, even if but the name, of the Onwentsia club. It seems to suggest American golf, and there is a look of some mystery about the name. Onwentsia is by no means like the others, and there are good reasons why. Here on a wall of mine are two feathers of eagles fastened crosswise; below them an Indian's pipe of peace with its silken ta.s.sel. They were sent to me across the sea from Onwentsia by some members a while after I had been there, and they are a reminder not only of happy days but of the characteristics of Onwentsia, for the name of the place is an Indian one. Here were the redskins before all others, and then the white men and golfers came, and still it is almost as if the soil were redolent of the Indian trail. The club perpetuates in a manner considered suitable the memory and legend of the braves; my eagles' feathers are such as a "Running Driver" or "Mighty Mas.h.i.+e" might have worn in their fighting days, and they adorned our modern Onwentsians on the day of their Indian feast! Let me explain.

Lake Forest, where is Onwentsia, is a very charming suburb of Chicago, at the side of Lake Michigan. Its name suggests its character; it is well wooded, and one of the kind friends that I made there, Mr. Slason Thompson, drove me in his car in the dusk of a balmy evening for miles through the beautiful public grounds. The Onwentsia Club, as it is called, is a close fraternity of the best people of these parts. It is a country club in a large sense. It is a hunt club, it is a polo club with a splendid ground, it is a tennis club, and it is a golf club, and it need hardly be said that the golf is a very strong feature, the predominator of the inst.i.tutions. Now the Onwentsian golfers, zealous and good, have their own manners and customs, and, particularly they have one custom which has a fame all over America, and it has spread even beyond the seas. If it be not sin to mention them together Onwentsia has one great day of celebration as the Royal and Ancient Club has one. Towards the end of September the Royal and Ancient Club calls its members together for the autumn gathering at St. Andrews, and there on that occasion, as has been related, many ancient and solemn ceremonies of great dignity are performed. The captain "plays himself in," guns are fired, in the evening at the banquet new members kiss the silver club and swear their loyalty, and much more in that splendid and time-honoured way is done. America is true to St. Andrews golf in its law, but Lake Forest, far out toward the west, is not the same as Fifes.h.i.+re, and the Onwentsia Club at Lake Forest is not like the Royal and Ancient. It is not a question of which is the better; they are different, and when I was in Illinois, at any rate, Onwentsia was to me a very entertaining place. And I do not say this merely because Onwentsia, near to Lake Michigan, is so charmingly situated; because the club is such a delightful place, perfect in equipment, with a luxurious club-house, and inside it a huge swimming pool and many shower-baths, making one sometimes a trifle regretful upon the bareness of our British golfing-houses. It is just because when I first reached there the great golfing gathering at St. Andrews was nearly due and the golfers at Onwentsia were having theirs. When I dined with Mr. Thompson that evening at his charming house overlooking the great lake, and we smoked cigars on the lawn overhanging it, he told me why on everything that concerned the club there was the same sign, the head of an Indian brave with the big feather in it, and why they were just going forward to the great annual pow-wow. If you would do it properly you should p.r.o.nounce Onwentsia in the soft, crooning Indian way. Murmur it slowly and gently, and mount the cadence high upon the second syllable; then, after a suspicion of a pause, lower the notes gradually to the end. If you said it in the right way an old Iroquois brave would know that you were referring to "a country gathering," for that is the meaning of the term.

In days of old the Iroquois trailed over all these parts where now the course is laid. Here were their wigwams; here lingered their squaws with the little papoose, while the red men hunted and fought. That is why the golfers of Onwentsia have their pow-wow once a year.

The pow-wow is an invitation golf tournament lasting two days, and it is open only to those members who are of a certain age or over (it was thirty-nine when I was there) and their guests, one guest per member. In order to preserve complete the familiar friendliness of the gathering and to maintain its traditions undisturbed by new influences, the age limit is increased from year to year to keep the new and young men out.

The call to the pow-wow, which is written anew for every festival, gives us the key to the nature of the function, and I quote from one of them:

On the banks of Skokie water, By the water flecked with golf b.a.l.l.s, Stands the wigwam, the Onwentsia, The great wigwam of the Pow-wow.

Come ye forth, ye Jol-li-gol-fas, Come ye forth and come ye quickly To Onwentsia, the big wigwam, To Onwentsia, the big Pow-wow, In the Moon of Falling Leaflets, Ere the trees are red with autumn, Come in trains, the Puf-choo-choo-puf; Come in motors, Aw-to-bub-buls; In the 'bus, old Shuh-too-get-thah, To Onwentsia, to the Pow-wow.

Here's the bartend, Wil-lin-mix-ah, The head waitress, Goo-too-loo-kat, The great golfer, Hoo-beets-boh-ghee, And the caddy, Skip-an-fetch-it, Waiting all to do you honour.

Leave your war club, Tom-ah-haw-kus, Bring the peace sticks, Dri-vah-nib-lix; Leave your toilsome reservations And the dust of smoky cities For the Pow-wow in the wigwam; Bring the peace pipe, Swee-too-suk-kat, Taste the bowl, Hi-baw-laf-tah; Play the game, Roy-al-skoch-wun, All the morning in the sunlight, All the afternoon, till evening Spreads the feast of squab and chicken 'Mid the joy of good companions Gathered in the spreading wigwam Of Onwentsia for the Pow-wow.

Lasting for two days, with one great night in between them, it happens that the first session of play is conducted in a state of high antic.i.p.ation and with much joyful shaking of hands and exhibitions of brotherly attachment, and the second session with a feeling as of a slowly receding past. Only those who attend the feast in the big wigwam are eligible to play in the numerous compet.i.tions to which are attached such an abundance of prizes that it is difficult for the golfing brave to go empty-handed back to his gentle squaw. A law indeed has had to be made that he shall not take more than two of the trophies away with him.

At eight o'clock on the morning of the first day the play begins. There is a thirty-six holes medal compet.i.tion for the Sum-go-fah trophy (the "Indian" t.i.tles are changed from year to year), and at the end of eighteen holes the numerous compet.i.tors are grouped into sections of eight, according to the place in the returns--first eight, second eight, and so on for separate match-play compet.i.tions for the Sko-ki-ko-lah prizes. The prize for the first eight is the Mis-sa-sko-kih, for the second the O-ma-go-li, for the third the Hit-ta-sko-kih, for the fourth the Sti-mi-gosh, for the fifth the b.u.m-put-tah, for the sixth the Went-an-mis-t.i.t, for the seventh the Top-an-sli-sah, for the eighth the Let-mih-tel-you, and for the ninth the Dub-an-duf-fah. Then there is a compet.i.tion for the Bun-kah-bun-kah prize, which is embraced within the Sum-go-fah, being for the best eclectic score made in the two rounds, or "choice score" as they prefer to call it in the States. Two-thirds handicap is allowed. Likewise there is the Noh-bak-num-bah prize, which is by medal play with an age handicap, the handicap being determined by the years of the contestant above or below forty. By such play, whether it is successful or not, do the braves qualify for the feast, and at half-past seven there is the call to the big and happy wigwam. The great dining-room is indeed made by fitting and decoration to appear as one great wigwam, and there are some of the adjuncts of the life of the old Iroquois. The golfing braves stride eagerly, joyfully, chatteringly in. Reddened are the golfers' faces; wrapped around them are their blankets, from their hair stick big black feathers; long pipes of peace are held before them. Then there are strange but toothsome dishes; they taste the "Hi-baw-laf-ta-tah"; happiness and contentment increase; there are toasts and shouts and whoops. The successors of the Iroquois hold their pow-wow well. At the beginning of the morning, when the moon is riding through the fleecy heavens of Illinois, softly they steal away, and in the distance now and then there may be heard the same lone cry that once resounded through the forest when Iroquois were on the trail.

But at nine in the morning more compet.i.tions begin, and are most thoroughly attended. There are tournaments for the Bus-tis-tik-sah, the Boo-li-bus-tah, the Strok-a-hol-ah, the Heez-noh-mut-sah, the Ho-pu-get-it, the Get-sa-loo-kin, the He-za-pee-chah, the Wil-lin-loo-sah, the Oh-you-papoose, and other cups. Some of the prizes go to the players doing certain holes in the lowest gross score during the tournament, the Wil-lin-loo-sah is captured by the man who does the four rounds worst of all on the two days, and an Onwentsia medicine pouch, the nature of which may be guessed by golfers with little difficulty, remembering British practice, is awarded to the brave who does a particular hole in one stroke. It is all very remarkable, wonderful, interesting, and thoroughly American, and not the ragged corner of a paper dollar the worse for it either. Happy Onwentsia!

At the Glen View Country Club they have a special autumn festival also which has a character of its own. The motto of Glen View is "Laigh and lang"--low and long--which is a good variation on the monotonous "far and sure." And about Glen View there is a Scottish flavour; in manners and customs for a very brief season in the golden days of the fall there is wafted from the far distant Highlands a breath of Scotland. Here they call their festival the "Twa Days," and it is carried through with a fine spirit. There are compet.i.tions in number and kind to satisfy everybody, and the social side of the affair is excellent.

Glen View, again, is not like the others either. I spent some days there as the guest of the club, and nowhere have I had a more pleasurable time. It came after an exceedingly strenuous, rus.h.i.+ng period at other places, and towards the end of one of the hottest spells of weather that they had known for many summers in those burning parts. Glen View is a pretty name, but it is not prettier than the golf course there, which is one of the most charming I know. It reminded one in some ways of Sudbrook Park in the early summer, always, as I think, one of the most delightful inland courses in the south of England; but Glen View, with its sleepy streams, is nicer. It may not be up to "champions.h.i.+p standard" in its architectural features, but it might be made so. Yet if such a change would remove much of the character of Glen View, I, in my selfishness, knowing that on some future morning I shall again take the 9.35 from Chicago on the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railroad, and alight at the station which is called "Golf," hope for my high pleasure that there will be none such made. When a club once becomes infatuated with the champions.h.i.+p idea its contentment and happiness depart, and Glen View is best as it is. The holes have character. The greens are placed in the most beautiful nooks and corners, great belts of trees surround the course, and a stream winds snake-like through the grounds.

At about every third hole there is a large barrel which is filled every morning with fresh spring water, into which a large block of ice is placed. When you play in a shade temperature of nearly a hundred degrees, as I have done at this place, you appreciate these barrels.

They have a natty way of naming their holes at Glen View. The first is called "The Elm," the second "High Ball," the third "Sleepy Hollow," and the next in order are "Polo," "Lover's Lane," "Old Hickory," "The Round Up," "Trouble," "Reservoir," "Westward Ho!" "The Grove," "Sunset," "The Bridge," "The Roost," "Spookey," "The Orchard," "Log Cabin," and "Sweet Home." The course is 6279 yards long, and every one of these yards is a pleasure to play along. Visitors do like this place. In one year recently there were 3550 of them who paid a dollar a day for the privilege of playing. The members of the club pay one hundred dollars a year subscription, and nowadays it costs about five hundred dollars for admission. Every member must be the possessor of a hundred-dollar share in the club, and these shares are now at a premium of about five times their par value. At few other places in the golfing world is there such a nicely appointed club-house as there is here. One could put two or three of the largest dining-rooms that our golf clubs possess into the one of Glen View, and the furnis.h.i.+ng is finely and tastefully done in a Flemish style. Some of the golfing prints with which we are most familiar hang upon the walls. Other pictures of value keep them company, and there is a large crayon drawing done on the spot by my old friend, the late Tom Browne, who once came here with his bag of clubs.

The cafe at the Glen View club is an interesting inst.i.tution. The club has one of the cleverest c.o.c.ktail mixers in America, and the printed list of available liquid refreshments that is laid upon the tables suggests a little consideration. The American golfers, for the most part, do not drink very much, and what they do drink has little effect upon them, thanks to the heat and much perspiration; but they do like novelties and the variety. So on this list--which, mind you, includes no wines, which are quoted on a separate sheet--there are scheduled no fewer than 147 different kinds of refreshments. There are thirteen "soft drinks," eight different lemonade mixtures, eleven sorts of mineral waters, thirteen beers and ales, six rye whiskies, seven Bourbon whiskies, eleven Scotch and Irish whiskies, thirteen varieties of c.o.c.ktails, two "toddies," three "sours," three "rickies," three "cobblers," six "fizzes," two "flips," seven "punches," three "smashes,"

and thirty-six "miscellaneous." The last is a most interesting section.

It includes the "Prairie Oyster," the "Millionaire," the "Pousse l'Amour," the "Sam Ward," the "Russian Cooler," the "j.a.panese Cooler,"

the "Golfer's Delight," the "Angel's Dream," the "Ladies' Puff," and the "Glen View High Ball." Nearly all of these cost twenty or twenty-five cents each.

One may be most pleasurably lazy at Glen View. The club-house has some forty bedrooms, with a fine equipment of shower and other baths, and the usual telephone service to all the bedrooms with a complete telephone exchange downstairs. The service and comfort are as good as they can be.

I liked the lounges and the shady verandahs, with rocking-chairs to tip one away to a short dream on a hot afternoon of purling brooks on English hills and woods in Wales. Yet when I awake I am satisfied. There is no hurry here. In the mornings one would hear the men rising at six o'clock and splas.h.i.+ng themselves about in the bath department, and generally becoming very active all at once. Some time later I would join them at breakfast, and see them depart very early for their businesses at Chicago. When they had gone one could settle down, and there were ladies to chatter with or to play Chopin or something else on the piano.

It is necessary to take things a little easily during the early and hot part of the day, because soon in the afternoon the men come back from Chicago, and they are all energy and rush as if they had not spent a howling morning in the "Pit" or one of the other great business centres.

One has to fall in with their schemes of activity, which endure until the evening meal, taken in an easy way of _en famille_ in the restaurant of the club, luscious green corn to begin with and the most appetising dishes later, with laughter and gossip always. And later in the evening David Noyes and I might sit in the dark on the verandah, and under those stars of Illinois speak of the differences between English people and the Americans as we respectively saw them. We understood each other and could be frank. "The worst of America," said I, "is that it has no soul, and the Americans have none either." "Well," said he; "but we have big hearts." Agreed. He is a leading broker in the "Pit" at Chicago, the great wheat market of the world, and one morning he took me there and I met many golfers I knew round about those four screeching ma.s.ses of men who make of this place a babel and such an exhibition of raw fighting human nature as, with all its differences, I can only compare with the same brilliant and yet ugly show that is made in the rooms of the Casino at Monte Carlo. It is raw life on the strain at both places--hot seething life. The reposeful Glen View is needed for the people who barter there.

Ma.s.sachusetts is a fine golfing land, and it rose to the heights in 1913. After gaiety in New York, and amazement at Chicago, you should go to Boston. And really they who live there have reason for their pride.

There is no other town or city in the United States or Canada that has anything like such an English flavour as this in the New England. There are times when we wander along the great thoroughfare, Was.h.i.+ngton Street, or turn up one of the side avenues like Boylston, that the American idea for a moment ceases to press closely upon us, and when we pa.s.s the old churches, wander through historic chambers Georgian in their style, look into the Faneuil Hall, or into the old-fas.h.i.+oned market, or go down to the s.h.i.+pping in the docks where our Boston man will surely take us, that we may see the place of the "tea party," as they call it now, which had vast consequences to the States and England when taxes were made and were rejected--then in the New England we feel the old one there. And, of course, the wandering Englishman is taken out to Bunker Hill as well. Though with all Americans their spirit of independence is an obsession, and it seems sometimes that they like to think of themselves as a new race of people come up out of nothing or from heaven, owing nothing to any other race, yet at Boston I suspect they are a trifle glad that they and their city are not like the others, but are something more English in their way. There is a difference in the atmosphere. A certain ease is possible, a culture is apparent.

Streets and shops do not look as if they had been cut out by machinery at the same time that the streets and shops of a dozen other cities were being cut, and all life is not mathematically arranged and standardised.

If an American university is not at all like either Oxford or Cambridge, still Harvard is an influence, and Harvard is at Cambridge, a near suburb of Boston. The result of it all is that we feel something of the old atmosphere of home and are stimulated. Boston grows upon us very rapidly. The father of one of my good American friends, Mr. John G.

Anderson, who has gone on golfing expeditions with me in England, Scotland, France and the United States, is a Scot with a great love for his home country, and our rambles round old Boston have been of a peculiarly interesting kind. And when in Boston, and the car of a friend comes along to the Touraine in the morning, we throw the clubs in the back of it, and get up with just that feeling of having a sporting day ahead that one develops in the country at home and hardly anywhere else.

There are many courses round about Boston, and there are four of them, all quite different from each other, of which I shall have a clear recollection always. Two have very special places of their own in American golf, one being The Country Club of Brookline already described. Ma.s.sachusetts itself will not be called a "state" like other states, but is a "commonwealth," and The Country Club is not the Boston Country Club or the Brookline Country Club, but The Country Club, and visitors who would be appreciative and make no _faux pas_ are recommended to keep the point in mind, the reason being that this one, with its charter of incorporation away back in the eighteenth century, was the first of all the country clubs in America, and is dignified accordingly.

They do blow the place up in America when they determine to make a golf course. Forest and rock are of no more hindrance to any idea or scheme than a few daisies might be. I was strongly impressed with this view of things when I was out one day at the Ess.e.x County Club at Manchester-by-the-Sea, another of the outer-Boston courses. "Come to golf at Ess.e.x in the morning; you will see something of the way in which we do our golf in America that you have never seen before." Such was the substance of an invitation from Mr. George F. Willett, one of the most ardent and admirable leaders of the golfing movement in the Eastern States. So in the morning golf at Ess.e.x, twenty miles out of Boston, was the programme of the day, and by half-past ten we were on the first tee preparing to drive from an eminence down towards low land in front. The terms of the invitation were amply justified. Towards noon, when we might be somewhere about the thirteenth or fourteenth hole, a great roar and cras.h.i.+ng sound came from the other side of the course in the locality of the fifth hole, and looking towards it there was to be seen a rising cloud of smoke, with ma.s.ses of earth and splintered rocks being hurled high into the air. A moment later and there was another deafening bang and more earth, more rocks, and various stumps of trees were shot up towards the sky. Bang! bang! bang!--ten times in the s.p.a.ce of a few seconds was this surprise repeated, and it began to seem that we must be on Olympian links and that Jove himself or Hercules was bunkered. "It's only Ross's men tinkering away at the new fourth," said my man unconcernedly, as he ran down a long putt. A couple of minutes afterwards we rounded a bend of the course, and as we did so some wild yells were heard and a number of the Italian workmen were seen running fast in our direction and then stopping suddenly to hide themselves behind trees. Three more big bangs, more smoke, flying earth, flying rocks and roots, and then as my partner played his bra.s.sey he soliloquised that he had added, unintentionally, a touch of slice to the stroke and was in the pot on the right. As to the noises, our part of the course, I was a.s.sured, was perfectly safe. The three explosions were made by Ross's Italians at the new fifth. Thirteen of them in five minutes was perhaps a little unusual, but they were all over now, and, as could be seen, the Italians, with sundry calls to each other, were moving back towards the place they had sprinted from. The object of this concentration of noise and disturbance in five minutes, it was explained, was to give the full body of workmen plenty to do as soon as they resumed after their midday meal.

The truth is, that golf at Ess.e.x, when I was first there, was undergoing a great and most wonderful transformation, regardless of cost, regardless of the magnitude and seeming impossibilities of the task, regardless of everything, but caused by the insatiable desire of the American golfer to have courses that are as good as they can be. To satisfy this desire he is everywhere pulling Nature to pieces and reconstructing her, doing his work deftly and skilfully, and with a good eye for pleasing effect. At the finish you might think that, save for the putting greens and bunkers, it was all the simple work of the mother of earth herself in her gentler moods, smooth swards for rocks, and chaste glades where forests were. This transformation and extension of American golf and the way it is being done is most amazing. All the old courses are being lengthened and greatly improved, and new ones of first-cla.s.s quality are being made in large numbers. When it is desired to make changes and extensions on a British course the work that has to be done is not generally of a very formidable character. Some tolerably smooth sort of land is frequently available, and alternatives to existing holes may be planned. But even so, the question of expense seems often to be a fearsome thing, and a year or more of thought and yet another year for action are commonly needed. A thousand pounds or two thousand seems to be a mighty sum to spend, but for all that we think that in the south, at all events, we are doing our golf on a very grand scale in these days. And when I think of St. George's Hill and Coombe Hill and others of their kind I know we are doing it on a very fine scale. But the case of America at present is most specially remarkable. In the Eastern States particularly, the courses have had for the most part to be carved out of virgin forests. Tens of thousands of tons of rocks have had to be blasted, and hundreds of acres of swamps drained before the fairways could be laid and sown with gra.s.s. Such work is having to be done now for the extensions and improvements, and it is wonderfully done. The committees appear to take about a week to think about it, a day to decide, and then in two or three months, with the help of dynamite, tree-fellers, and hundreds of foreign workmen, the new scheme is carried through. The cost is not considered till afterwards, and then it never worries, but it is enormous. Here at Ess.e.x, the chief work that was being done was the addition of a total of 175 yards only to the fourth and fifth holes, which were to be given new numbers, and this little bit of lengthening, with the tree-felling, the splendid draining of a swamp, and the use of 400 lbs. of dynamite on the rocks, was costing 10,000 dollars or 2000. Some other alterations and new constructions were being done, and the course, one of fine undulations, well-planned bunkering, magnificent putting greens, and glorious scenery, was being brought to perfection. The work was being carried out under the direction of Mr. Donald J. Ross, the chief superintendent of the club and course, who was once a Dornoch man. He thinks out his construction schemes in the grand way, and he is going about America blowing hundreds of acres of it up into the air and planting smooth courses upon the levelled remains. Shortly before this, they called him up to a mountainous place at Dixville Notch, in New Hamps.h.i.+re, to plan a new nine-holes course that had to be cut out of solid rock, at a cost of 10,000. No golfer had ever been to that place, and the first had yet to arrive when the promoters wrote hurriedly to Mr. Ross, not long back home, saying: "We are convinced that it will soon be necessary to have a longer course, and are very desirous that you will come at once to lay one out on Panorama Hill." It will cost 20,000, but that does not matter. Golf is demanded everywhere in America, and it must be supplied.

A little extra s.p.a.ce was required for play by the Rhode Island Country Club at Narragansett, so, with Ross's help they took forty acres from the sea, and are now playing the game where a year previously the waves were rolling. Again, this remarkable golf engineer a little while since finished his work on the very first course that has been laid out in Cuba. I do not know what the future of American golf will be, but its present is a bewildering, astonis.h.i.+ng thing.

"Yes, but wait until you see Myopia!" I was not glad to leave Ess.e.x, but I was happy to go from there to the Myopia Hunt Club a few miles distant (and may I never forget that glorious ride in Mr. Willett's big car, along the winding road fringed with silver birches and autumn-tinted foliage, past placid little lakes, through some of the country of chastest charm in New England!), for Myopia is America's golfing pride.

Besides, it is one of the few American courses that have a wide international reputation. Remember the astonishment when Andrew Kirkaldy, a St. Andrews golfer, if ever there was one, a man believing in the old course of Fifes.h.i.+re as a Mussulman believes in Mecca, came back from an American tour and declared to British people that Myopia was the best course in the world! So we approach one American golf course with wonder and a certain awe. There are other reasons for doing so if we only knew them beforehand. Traditions and old dignity are strongly attached to it, and this Myopia is such a club for high feeling and exclusiveness as would do credit to any inst.i.tution we have at home, golf or otherwise. It is, at the very least, as difficult to become a member of Myopia as of the Royal and Ancient. If I dared I would say it is more so. Myopia, I am told, will use the black ball with joy when there is a candidate at the doors. It might be easier in some circ.u.mstances for a man to become the President of the United States than to become a member of the Myopia Hunt Club. The dignity of Myopia exudes from the timbers of its long, quaint club-house. The ceilings are low, while the walls are panelled and are really old, for in quite early days of New England this, or part of it, was a farm-house.

The name of the club in this case has nothing to do with golf, nor with the name of a place, for the place is Hamilton. Myopia is a technical term for near-sight. The original members despised the game, and as for letting it influence them in their choice of name of the club, such a thing is inconceivable. Originally, and for long afterwards, and primarily even now, Myopia is a hunt club; it prides itself on being so, and when anybody asks one of the old hunting members if they do not possess a good golf course there, he might say he supposed they did play some game with that name there sometimes. In the early days, I believe that many of the members wore coloured gla.s.ses for some reasons connected with their sight, and it was through this that the name of the club was given. Golf was a very late addition, and some of the old hunting-men, whom you will see moving about the club-house in real and unaffected riding costume as hardly anywhere else in America, feel a little sore about it still, and it is even now the fact that the hunting section keep to themselves in one part of the club and the golfers to themselves in their part, with such as Mr. Herbert Leeds and one or two others in both. Mr. Leeds showed me some of the old prints on the walls ill.u.s.trating the race meetings that had taken place there in almost prehistoric times, and some mementoes of the early days of the golf club, together with the score card of George Duncan's record round on the course. I hope you realise that Myopia is not an ordinary golf club; I did so within a minute of my arrival there.

The course is not like others in America. It is almost more of the open heathland sort of course than any other I have tramped over while in the country. It is a little barer, seemingly a little wilder than most of the others, and none the worse for that. Its putting-greens are capital, and at some of the holes, if not all, I have certainly trodden on turf that is better than anything else that my feet have touched on that side of the Atlantic. I remember that I nearly shouted with delight to my partner when I came upon the first stretch of it--green and soft and velvety. But it was not all like that, and in some respects I do think that, splendid as the course is, praise of it has been a little overdone. Yet on the other hand it is certainly a course that grows on the constant player there, and reveals new subtleties to him every time of playing. That after all is the test of a great course.

Architecturally many of the holes are splendid. I do not quite like the idea of the man having to drive uphill at the first hole, but the tee-shot has most decidedly to be placed--to the left--or the player has the most fearful approach that he might ever dream of after the most indigestible dinner. The fourth hole is a splendid one of the dog-leg kind, a drive and an iron with the green very well bunkered, and some very low land to the left which is a constant attraction to the weak-minded ball. Then for my own part I liked the tenth very much, for a big drive has to be done over some high ground with a bunker away to the right that draws hard at sliced b.a.l.l.s, while the green is one of the nicest and most prettily guarded. I lingered about it for some time in an admiring way. The last hole also has infinitely more in it than appears at the first glance, for here again a big bunker jutting into the edge of the green and to the right is a strong factor, especially when the pin is behind it; and if the hero does not place his tee-shot to the left, and within a very little s.p.a.ce there, too, he will be sorry. It is 6335 yards round the course. In the club-house over the tea-cups, on the occasion of my first visit, I pondered upon the marvellous excellence of Duncan's record round, and paid some most sincere compliments to Mr. Leeds for the quality of the golf architecture of Myopia, for it is he, after close study of the best British models, who has been chiefly responsible for it.

A day and night at the Brae Burn Country Club at West Newton, near Boston, left a warm glow lingering in my mind. Here if anywhere in America there is country charm and social delight. Nowhere is the idea of the complete and happy social community of the country club better developed. The course is a fine one, and here also, at the time of my first visit, extensive works were being carried out, and some splendid new holes over heaving land were in the process of formation. They have since been completed and the course has now risen to the highest standard. The putting-greens are in the nicest and most beautiful places, belts of trees line the fairway at several of the holes; there are others in open country, and the short ones are uncommonly good. A new one that they were making then, calling for a drive from a height down to a pocket-handkerchief kind of green is one that I hope to be puzzled at in the play within a few weeks of the moment when I write. I had the happiness then to nominate the situation of a new bunker at one of the new holes, and sure I am that a momentary vexation will be the result when I play that hole, for I, too, in America, have found that I develop the American hook, which seems to be in the climate and the soil. It was on this course that Harry Vardon in his all-conquering tour in America in 1900 sustained his only defeat. Our dinner-party in the club-house in the evening is an unforgettable reminiscence. It was a good-fellows.h.i.+p golfing party such as this game only can bring about.

Mr. Harry L. Ayer, Mr. E. A. Wilkie, Mr. George Gilbert, Mr. C. I.

Travelli, good Anderson and self talked our golf, British and American, to the full extent of a good ability. One of the topics was club captaincy, and the discussion we had may lead to the creation of the office at Brae Burn and elsewhere, for it is a curious thing that the American clubs have never thought of creating captains, and this community was rather pleased with the idea. It is an office that a golf club needs. If the captain is the right man, if he is chosen for his past service, for his present strength, and for his tact and quality as man and golfer, he can do much for a club, and his appointment is a recognition that a club needs for its best and most faithful men.

The country round about New York abounds in interesting golfing places, and if inclination were followed there should be descriptions given of Na.s.sau, of Apawamis (not forgetting the rock to the right of the first green there which an English ball most usefully struck when the thirty-seventh hole was being played in the final of the American champions.h.i.+p, Mr. Fred Herreshoff, finalist, being loser thereby), of Garden City, Baltusrol, and many other good golfing places in these parts. Garden City is a name familiar to golfers in Britain, because it is the place where Mr. Walter J. Travis came from when he won the champions.h.i.+p at Sandwich. If it lacks some of the boldness of feature of some of the later American courses, yet this is a fine testing course, thoroughly--and so deeply!--bunkered, and with splendid putting-greens, and all the place round about is very pleasant. And now I am very anxious to see Piping Rock, as I soon expect to do.

There are good reasons for making a journey by the Pennsylvania railroad from New York to Was.h.i.+ngton. One must pay the visitor's homage to the seat of American government and experience the feeling of being at the heart of the States, with its magnificent buildings and its historical remembrances. It is an intensely interesting place. At the White House there is Mr. President Wilson who is a golfer, as ex-President Taft was, and remains one of the keenest in the land. Mr. Taft will write enthusiastically about the game, and make speeches about it when he thinks it proper. "My advice to the middle-aged and older men who have never played golf," he says, "is to take it up. It will be a rest and recreation from business cares, out of which they will get an immense amount of pleasure, and at the same time increase their physical vigour and capacity for work as well as improve their health." And he also says, "Preceding the election campaign in which I was successful, there were many of my sympathisers and supporters who deprecated its becoming known that I was addicted to golf, as an evidence of aristocratic tendencies and a desire to play only a rich man's game. You know, and I know, that there is nothing more democratic than golf, and there is nothing which furnishes a greater test of character and self-restraint, nothing which puts one more on an equality with one's fellows--or, I may say, puts one lower than one's fellows--than the game of golf. If there is any game that will instil in one's heart a more intense feeling of self-abas.e.m.e.nt and humiliation than the game of golf, I should like to know what it is." One who was in office there told me something of his enthusiasm for the game. I asked him how often Mr. Taft had played when he was there in the golfing season. The answer was that Mr. Taft used to play every day, positively every day, and some of those who played with him indicated to me what a very thorough and determined golfer he was.

It might be said of the ex-President that he has spent more time in bunkers than most citizens, because he has generally insisted on playing out, no matter how many strokes have been needed. He has been playing now for sixteen years, and is quite one of the oldest American golfers in point of service to the game. Nothing can take away from him the distinction of having been the first President of the United States to play what they have determined shall be their national game.