The Happy Golfer Part 8

The middle-aged business-man golfer is an important individual in the general golfing scheme of things in the United States. He is that elsewhere, but he stands out most in America. Well enough does he know how the game is good for him. The early American golfers (those of from ten to twenty years ago) adopted the game enthusiastically, because it answered exactly to certain requirements they had in mind in regard to creating and preserving physical fitness. The American business man leads a quick life and a hard one and, in recent years particularly, his pursuit of this physical fitness has become something of a craze with him, for the reason that through it he seeks to bring the human machine to the highest point of working efficiency and, at the same time, enable the human man to derive more enjoyment and satisfaction from the pleasures of life. This is not a vague, subconscious idea in the American; it is a clear, definite scheme, adopted by thousands and thousands of those who have devoted themselves to the game. Hence their generous support and excellent enthusiasm. The country swarms with men, two-thirds way through an ordinary lifetime, who have only been playing the game for five or six summers and no winters--for in very few places in the northern parts of the United States is any play possible between the late fall and the spring--and who can play a good six-handicap game, British reckoning, for in America they have a system of handicapping according to which scratch is the lowest, and their six handicap is about equivalent to our two or three. The majority of our middle-aged men seem to resign themselves to the idea that in no circ.u.mstances can they ever become really good players, and they pretend they are satisfied to make their way round the links merely for the sake of the health and exercise that they obtain from so doing. Perhaps in a sense they are wise, but still it is certain that more than half of the joys and pleasures of golf are missed by those who never feel any improvement being made, who never rise above a steady mediocrity, and who never feel the thrills of playing above their ordinary form.

The business-man golfer is seen at his best at the country clubs near to the great cities. There is nothing elsewhere which for its healthy, honest pleasures and the satisfaction it yields is comparable to the American country club and the life that is pursued there. It gives to the busy man the ideal relaxation he could not obtain in any other way.

I spent several days at one of these country clubs, a railroad journey of an hour or so from Chicago, and the experience was illuminating. The American business-man golfer works in the city for part of the day in the summer and spends the rest of his time at the country club, where the predominating features of the life are golf, rest, and sociability.

These country clubs are provided with a large number of bedrooms, and are surrounded with cottages, nicely equipped, which generally belong to them and are let for periods to the members. The vitality of the man of whom we are thinking is enormous. He is out of his bed at the club at about six o'clock in the morning, and goes through a process of shower baths, with which the establishment is splendidly appointed. By seven o'clock he is dressed in the thinnest flannels, and sits down to breakfast with thirty or forty other members at 7.15. At this time he is jacketless, and all in white. A large gla.s.s of iced water is laid before him to begin with, and then the half of a grape fruit or a cantaloup, with a piece of ice stuck in the middle, is presented as the first course. These things, as we get them in America, are very delicious. At once an argument begins round the table about the qualities of different b.a.l.l.s and clubs, and I am closely questioned about the way we do things in England. Next, there is oatmeal porridge laid before us, with tea or coffee, and the men begin to match themselves for the afternoon round.

Mr. A says he will play Mr. B for a certain stake, but the latter finds he is already engaged to play Mr. C for a higher one. Eventually, Messrs. A, B, and C agree to play a three-ball match for still more dollars. Such extensive wagering is not the rule, but it is frequent.

After the porridge, bacon and eggs, calf's liver and bacon, or something of that kind, is served with a baked potato, a little more iced water may be called for, and there is marmalade with toast and sweet cakes, and, then at a quarter to eight, all get aboard the club motor-omnibuses and are whizzed away to the railroad station, light jackets very likely carried on their arms.

Before nine o'clock they are hard at work in the big city. Some early birds were even there by eight o'clock. They work very hard, no dawdling of any kind, and by one or two o'clock they have finished for the day and are off back to the golf club as fast as they can go. Frequently they are back in time to lunch there. Soup, some meat done in American fas.h.i.+on, an American salad, blueberry pie, iced water, and a gla.s.s of cold tea with a lump of ice in it and a piece of lemon, finis.h.i.+ng up with a large supply of ice cream, and then a big cigar, are what the American golfer goes out to play upon. The caddie whom he takes out to carry his clubs costs him tenpence an hour--always paid by the hour, during which he is in the golfer's service, and not by the round. By this time the player is in thinner and lighter clothes than ever, and he has been cooled down by more shower baths. His round is played very much as it might be done in England. He is very keen on his game. But he takes a little more time on the consideration of his stroke when once he has reached his ball than we do, and he is most deeply painstaking.

Towards the end of the match he may develop an idea for playing the enemy for a number of dollars a hole for the remainder of the round, and when it is all over, everybody is quite satisfied with everything. More shower baths, a lounge, and a cigar, and then a long American dinner, with vegetables very fancily done, corn cobs, sweet salads, plenty of iced water, ice creams, "horses' necks"--ginger ale with lemon and ice--and so forth. Long arguments on the verandah upon the respective merits of British and American golf, and at ten o'clock this busy golfer of the United States gets himself off to bed. He never sits up late. He sleeps, of course, with his windows wide open, with a wire netting arrangement to keep out the flies and mosquitoes, and as he falls away to his slumber he feels that golf is the best of games, that America is the chief of countries, and that this is the most agreeable of all possible worlds. Here I have been writing in general terms, but I should add that each and all of my details are taken from the life, from personal experience at one of the best of these country clubs.

There are some interesting characters in American golf as everywhere, and the very wealthy golfer in the States is often to be considered. Mr.

John D. Rockefeller, the "Oil King," is, as all of us know, an extremely rich man. He is also a business man, if ever there was one. And he is extremely fond of golf. His case may have as little to do with the matters just discussed as you may think, but I shall present it as I found it out. A few years gone Mr. Rockefeller, who has a capacity for giving advice of a very shrewd and worldly character, announced his intention of retiring from the presidency of the Oil Trust and of devoting a fair part of the remainder of his life to playing golf. Since then he has discovered that it is easier to make a million dollars than to hole a five-yard putt, for the Rockefeller millions now make themselves and the putts are as unholeable as ever. His methods of playing, and his moralisings on the game, are not like those of any other man. Readers must judge for themselves as to whether they have anything to learn from them; I think they may have something. Take this case for an instance. One day when playing the game he made a very good shot on to the green, and, ever ready to draw a moral from the game of golf which would apply to the greater game of life, turned to his companions and said: "Waste of energy I regard as one of the wanton extravagances of this age. Rational conservation of energy and temperance in all things are what the American nation must learn to appreciate." Mr. Rockefeller is now seventy-five years of age, and he was nearly sixty before he first began to play. He became an enthusiast at once, and, as with most other men, his golf aggravated him, goaded him, tantalised him, and made him ambitious and determined. He began to find things out and to invent new ideas as rapidly as any of us have ever done. He said the game changed his life. Made him happy. Brought back his youth to him. His friends when they played with him declared that he was not a cantankerous old man, but a really charming fellow.

Golf was doing him good. It was making a new man of him, as it does of all others. But he did not get on at it as quickly as he thought he ought to do. He found that there were rather more things to remember in a very short s.p.a.ce of time when making his shot than he had ever had to remember before, and that for the first time in his life he was liable to forgetfulness on the most important occasions. Then he acted on the business man's principle of getting others to do things for him. He got others to do the remembering. For a time whenever he went to play a match he had three caddies attending on him; even now he generally has two. He employed them for other purposes than carrying clubs. When he was about to make a stroke No. 1 Caddie stepped up to him and said respectfully but firmly: "Slow back, Mr. Rockefeller, slow back!" He might otherwise have forgotten to take his club slowly back from the ball at the start of the swing. This adviser having moved away, Caddie No. 2 went forward and said: "Keep your eye on the ball, Mr.

Rockefeller, keep your eye on the ball!" Then, in turn, Caddie No. 3 advanced and spoke warningly: "Do not press, Mr. Rockefeller, do not press!" So, reminded of the common faults, the Oil King made his stroke and did not commit them, but was guilty of several others, and realised a little sadly when the ball did not travel as it should that he needed a hundred caddies for warning, and not three. Still, there is some good sense in this method, and the man who made it a strict rule to say to himself always, just before a stroke, what Mr. Rockefeller hired the boys to say to him would make fewer bad shots than he does.

Mr. Rockefeller has a very nice course of his own on undulating land at Forest Hill, on the edge of Cleveland, Ohio, and there he has parties to play with him constantly. He is fond of cycling, and instead of walking after his ball when he has struck it, he takes his cycle on to the course with him, jumps on to it, and wheels himself along to the place from which the next shot must be made. By this means he not only saves much time, and gets more golf in an hour than we do, but considers that he derives more physical benefit from the combination than he would from golf and walking. More than this, he knows exactly how far he has. .h.i.t the ball every time, for he counts the number of turns of the pedals he has to make in cycling from point to point, and calculates accordingly.

He does not lose his temper when he makes a bad shot or a series of such, as some have suggested, but he is quite ecstatic when he makes a good one; and, despite his seventy-five years, has been known to leap high into the air when the result of his efforts has been specially good. He is a most thoughtful player, and takes the utmost care always to note effects and to try to attach causes to them. "Now gentlemen," he has said, "that was really a very good stroke that I made then. You observe that I am learning to make better use of my left arm. It was that Scotchman who told me of the trick, but somehow I have never been able to use it advantageously until now." He has a large number of clubs in his bag, including all the most usual implements, while two or three have been made according to his own special ideas. One of his caddies also carries a large sunshade to hold over him while playing when the weather is uncomfortably warm, and it is the duty of this boy also to give a hand at pus.h.i.+ng the bicycle when the line to the hole is uphill and Mr. Rockefeller finds the pedalling too much for him unaided. So you see that there is nothing that is conventional about Mr. John D.

Rockefeller and his golf. You would hardly expect it.

Now for the public or munic.i.p.al golf in America; it is one of the strong features of the game in the United States that impressed me most. The average player in Britain, where the munic.i.p.al golf movement is making slow headway, may be surprised to know that there is such a thing across the Atlantic; let him understand, then, that public golf in America is far ahead of public golf in Britain. Some Americans of great golfing experience, not confined to their own country, have not hesitated to say that they will "make America the greatest golfing country in the world."

If we disregard such a challenge, there are yet circ.u.mstances and forces in operation in America of which serious notice must be taken, and the first of them is this great movement that is progressing in favour of munic.i.p.al golf. The whole vast country is taking to it. The leaders of the people are appreciating the necessity of it and preaching it. They say that the times are desperately strenuous, that an antidote is needed, an ideal relaxation for body and nerves, a perfect recreation and diversion, and that, having tried everything and thought of other possibilities, they have come firmly and decisively to the conclusion that golf is the only recreation that meets the requirements of the times. Therefore they say that it must be provided for everybody, for the "common people," and given to them absolutely free with every inducement put forward for them to play it. The result is that public golf in America is already advanced to such a state as is almost incredible to those who have not seen it there. I have seen it. In New York, Boston, Chicago, Kansas, Louisville, Milwaukee, Elgin, Toledo, and a host of the smaller places, there are good public courses. In the large cities there are often two or three. Chicago has now three and a fourth was being made when I was there last, a fine long course in the Marquette Park. Two of the existing courses are in the Jackson Park, one being eighteen holes and the other nine. The third is in Garfield Park.

The full-sized course in Jackson Park is quite an excellent thing. The turf and the putting greens are well tended, the views are pleasant, and the play is absolutely free to all who obtain the necessary permit from the Parks Commissioners. The regular player may have the use of locker and dressing-rooms in the pavilion, and good meals may be obtained at a reasonable cost. How shall we wonder then that the Americans take kindly to this game and are becoming overwhelmingly enthusiastic at it, or that more than a hundred thousand games are played on one single course at Jackson Park alone in the course of a year? Though for the best part of the winter there is snow on the ground and play is impossible 105,000 games were played on the long course at Jackson Park during 1912 up to the beginning of October, and the news just reaches me that on one day at the very beginning of this season of 1914 nearly 900 tickets were given out! On a fine morning in the summer there will often be a little crowd of players waiting at the first tee for their turn to start at the dawn of day, and as many as two hundred have been counted there at seven o'clock in the morning. Having finished their game on ordinary mornings these people go off to their work, and they "hustle" all the more for the shots that they have played and hope to play again before the falling of the night. It is the same in the Franklin Park at Boston, in Van Cortlandt Park in New York, and everywhere. In this matter these Americans have sense. If public golf in England is ever to be a good and useful thing we must do as the Americans do, and if we do not the people will be the poorer, and we shall be sorry. Corporations must provide free golf, and they must be satisfied with the good done to the people, and not take the narrow view that the balance-sheet must show a direct profit apart from the indirect one that is certain. They must also put their courses in central and convenient places where people will be attracted to them, and which will not take the greater part of the time available to reach them. The game must be played in central parks which will then become more useful than they have ever been so far, and for the first time will be a real joy to the people who pay for them. I may be an enthusiast in golf, but I have gone deeply into this matter and studied it in its every bearing, and I know that I am right.

And the Americans are gaining in another matter--they are bringing their young boys into the game. I have been to preparatory schools where they have their own little courses and their school champions.h.i.+ps. The boys like it, the masters encourage it, and the grown-up players admire the youngsters' enthusiasm. This is the way that "prodigies" are produced.

In England we do not encourage the boys to play golf. The head-masters of schools say that it is a selfish game and that it is bad for them. I wonder how much these princ.i.p.als have thought of the moral qualities that must exist in the good golfer who knows how to play a losing match and perhaps save it, and how long in real argument before an impartial tribunal the contention would hold that it would be better for the young boy to stand for hours in the deep field at cricket on a hot summer's day than for him to learn to play golf and learn to keep a tight hold of himself when the whole scheme of things might seem to be breaking up.

Cricket and football are great games, and they are splendid things for boys, but that golf is inferior to them in what it does for character I deny, and if the comparison is pressed the golfers with me can put forward an invincible case. Anyhow the fact is there that young America is getting golf and young England is not, and that will make a difference some time some way.

CHAPTER IX

CANADIAN COURSES, AND A GREAT ACHIEVEMENT AT TORONTO, WITH MATTERS PERTAINING TO MAKING A NEW BEGINNING.

Towards the end of an afternoon in September, rounds being done, I stood with Mr. George Lyon (who is a kind of John Ball of the Dominion of Canada, having won the champions.h.i.+p of his country seven times) on the heights where stands the club-house of the Lambton Golf and Country Club in Ontario, and we looked across the valley along which the course is traced to the woods on the opposite side where there were some fiery crimson spots to be seen as if burning amid the ma.s.s of foliage that was olive or tinting down to brown. They were the maple leaves of Canada, the emblem of the new land, of which it is prophesied that it shall be the greatest country of the earth. In early days the Canadians dabbled with the lacrosse which the Indians played, and some of the invaders, too, brought their cricket with them and taught it to others whom they found there. Then the people who are near to the borders of the United States, and are somewhat impressed with the American ways of doing things, have been cultivating an interest in baseball for its spectacular properties. Rounders revised is well enough for those who are within shouting distance of Buffalo and for places like Toronto, but I could never believe that such a game or pastime, whatever its merits--and I know that it has many--could suit such a very serious, contemplative, cold, and earnest people as the Canadians are. I regard the nature of these people, as I have had the opportunity of considering it, as more serious and intense than that of any other, and I know only one recreation beyond those that are the simplest and most essential, as of roaming in the untamed country, fis.h.i.+ng, shooting, and hunting, that is agreeable to such a nature. They also know it; they have declared for a national game.

There is this to be said at the beginning for Canadian golf and its courses, that the general atmosphere of the game in this great country, rough and often bare and primitive as still it is, seems to be much nearer the atmosphere of golf in Britain than that of any other country different from us. One misses the sea-coast links, courses are long distances apart, fine players are comparatively few, for the men of Canada are still so busy and so earnest that they have not even time to play, but yet there is a fine chain of the game all the way from St.

John's to Vancouver. There is more of the peculiarity of British sporting instinct in the Canadian than in any other person out of the British Isles; he likes what we like, and he likes it in the same way and for the same reasons. Except that the coldness, like that of the Scot, is sometimes too much exhibited in him, and that even on suitable occasions he is reluctant to demonstrate his enthusiasms, so serious he is, so deep he looks, I have found him to be a splendid opponent with an agreeable persistency, and a most desirable partner in a foursome. Here in Canada there are trestle tee-boxes, a few--but only a few--of the club-houses are built and equipped in the manner of the Americans, betokening an existing prosperity and a provision for that greater one which is felt to be as sure as the fruit and the corn of the following season; but otherwise golf seems much like what it is at home, and especially do we feel like that when we reach the old places where the game first took root out there. There is a Canadian Golf a.s.sociation to rule the affairs of the game in the country with a certain subservience to home and St. Andrews as the Dominion holds to Westminster, and such a ruling authority is necessary in a new and wide country like this where so much pioneering is being done, just as it is necessary in the United States and in Australia. The chief function of such an authority is to keep the game together, hold it compact and maintain it in even uniformity with the game elsewhere. There is no blame to the Canadians because they have not a.s.sociated themselves with the subtle and insoluble mysteries of the British handicapping system, but have followed the American lead in this matter and put their best champions at scratch. Otherwise they are full British still, and even if they have their doubts upon the wisdom of the edict of St. Andrews which banned centre-shafted clubs and the Schenectady putter of American origin, they have remained loyal to the law without dissenting as the Americans did.

So in Canada you may not use the Schenectady. You may putt with it on one side of the Niagara Falls but not on the other side.

It is fortunate that a ball cannot be played across the Falls, or over those whirling Rapids, or some puzzling international complications might arise. The adventures are called to mind of two great scientists, the late Professor John Milne, who made such a fine study of earthquakes and could feel them in the Isle of Wight when they were taking place in Asia, and Professor Sims Woodhead, the eminent Cambridge pathologist, when they went to the meeting of the British a.s.sociation for the Advancement of Science when it was held in South Africa. They travelled to the Victoria Falls on the Zambezi River, and there they contemplated a mighty carry of a hundred and sixty yards over roaring, foaming water.

The keen golfer is always prepared, for the emergencies of the game are constant and attractive, and Mr. Milne produced driver and ball, and, with a fine nerve and eyes that were controlled most marvellously, delivered a golf ball from one side to the other for the first time since the world began. The pathologist admired the achievement and emulated it. He also carried the Falls of the Zambezi. It were better that these greedy men had left it at that and been well satisfied.

However, they came to think they might go on with this majestic carry continually, and generous Fortune chided them. Crocodiles took the b.a.l.l.s that they drove into the Zambezi.

Let us take a look at Lambton. From my room in Toronto I rang up Lyon, whom I had met several times in England, and asked him to guess the name of the caller; he gave the name without hesitation, though he had no more reason to know that I was in Canada than in Tasmania. So quite in a matter-of-fact way we met on the following day in a Grand Trunk car starting from the Union station, and inquired of each other as to the ball that each was using. The journey from Toronto is one of only a few minutes, and soon after the stopping of the train the feet may tread on some of the nicest golfing turf that is to be found out of England, and the reason is palpable, for here are the big bunkers of the proper kind made of real yellow sand, which is natural to the place. When they need new sand bunkers at Lambton they cut them open and there they are. So sandy is the place that sometimes they have a difficulty in making the gra.s.s grow properly, and one result of these favourable natural conditions is that the course is better bunkered than most others on the American continent. Tee shots and approaches must be played well, and at the very first green the hint is given that the short game must be well done. The fourth hole is one of the jewels of Canadian golf. The teeing ground is on a height, and below it is a series of descending plateaux like giants' steps until the level is reached. When he has made a very pa.s.sable drive the player is called upon with a very proper second to carry the Black Creek which guards the green and is coiled like a snake about it. The shot must have fair length and it must be very straight as well. Normally the hole is 365 yards long, so that in mere distance it is not a terrible thing, but when medals are being played for its length is stretched out to the four hundred yards. At the sixth the stream which they call Humber comes into the reckoning. It is a nice two-shot hole, and the seventh is an excellent short one with the inky creek here again. With the stump of a tree protruding from the water, large leafy growths upon the surface, a general sleepiness and the green in a sequestered corner beneath a shading hill, this is quite one of the most attractive of water holes. It is a strong hole, too, with fear about it, for the carry is one of 165 yards, and I was told that when Miss Rhona Adair, now Mrs. Cuth.e.l.l, several times lady champion, was in these parts some years ago she twice did the carry and a third time her ball skimmed the water and reached the green after all. This was good work for a lady, especially as I rather fancy she must have been using the gutty ball at that time.

The greens at Lambton are generally excellent, and they have adopted a means for keeping them in good order which, though it has been tried in other parts of America, has not to my knowledge been employed elsewhere.

I have heard objections raised against it, but the results at Lambton are uncommonly good. Nearly all the greens here are kept properly moistened by a process of sub-irrigation, and are never watered on the surface. Below the green there is a deep bed of cinders, and over this and about eighteen inches from the gra.s.s there is a network of water pipes made of a hard porous clay, "weeping clay" they call it, the entire under-surface of the greens being covered with them. At the corner of each green there is a feed pipe connecting with this network, and once a day the water supply is laid on to it and all the pipes under the green are loaded. The heat of the sun then slowly draws the water through the porous pipes and up to the surface, and the results of the process are uniformly good. Lambton is a fine inst.i.tution altogether.

There is a short ladies' course as well as the other, a fine toboggan chute down the slope in front of the club-house, and the latter is in all respects an admirable place, well fitted with baths, bedrooms, and public apartments that are elegant and comfortable. This place has something to do with Toronto life of to-day. There are seven hundred members, and now it costs a new one the equivalent of six hundred dollars in his first year. He has to get a hundred-dollar share in the club to begin with, and these are at such a premium that he has to pay five hundred dollars for one. On one of the walls of the club-house is a life-size portrait of the champion of the country in a characteristic att.i.tude with his bra.s.sey under his arm.

The case of Toronto is very interesting. The club, which takes the name of the city and is one of the oldest in the country, was started in 1876, and completely reorganised some eighteen years later. The pretty little course that it had until lately was on the outskirts of the city, with an old and quaint farm-house, which had from time to time been enlarged, for a club-house. As to the course, it was quite nice. It was very undulating, ravines, gullies, and belts of trees being prominent everywhere. The turf was good, and some of the holes were excellent. In the club-house there were fine trophies and some old prints, and a plan of the old course at St. Andrews, with a photograph of old Tom Morris attached to it, signed "From Tom Morris, to the members of the Toronto Golf Club, 1896." Everything belonging to this old course was sweetly mellow, and one's visit there made a pleasant experience. But it met a fate which has been common enough near London but rare elsewhere. The speed of Toronto's expansion brought it about, and, owing to the encroachments of the builders, the club had to move. I was there at the parting, and it was a sad one. Its members, however, being a very wealthy and enthusiastic body of gentlemen, determined to make for themselves a new home which should be as good as anything that could be done, and their ambition was fulfilled. Etobic.o.ke! It is one of the wonders of the west, and I was the first wandering British player to set his foot upon it.

Etobic.o.ke is several miles out from Toronto, and here with the money that the club obtained from the sale of the old course they bought 270 acres of what was virgin land, being for the most part covered with trees at the time. This they had cleared, ploughed, and properly prepared, and Mr. Harry Colt came out from England to lay out the course. His finished work, as I have seen it, must rank as one of his masterpieces. As on so many of the Colt courses there is something of a Sunningdale look about the holes, and nearly all are extremely good. A very fine short one is the fourth and one with which the architect himself was much in love when he had completed the design from the natural materials that were at his hand; and the tenth is a wonder of its kind, the hindmost tee being on a hilltop from which a glorious view of the course is to be had, with Lake Ontario beyond it, while some way lower down the slope are second and third tees, making the distance shorter. The soil is sandy, the turf is good, and the course must be considered to rank as first cla.s.s absolutely. Mr. W. A. Langton, who went over it with me, said he believed they had come into possession of what would be the finest golf course in America when it has matured, and his judgment may be right.

Many parts of the world were laid under tribute for the making of this course at Etobic.o.ke where the club is still called by the good old simple name, the Toronto Golf Club. It was designed, as I have said, by an English architect, and in order to give a gra.s.s to the course that would stand the rigours of the climate better than the ordinary gra.s.ses with which courses in North America are generally sown, seeds were obtained from Finland. Then nearly all the rough work of construction was done by Bulgarians and Roumanians, these immigrants being splendid for work of this kind. They were paid at the rate of about seven s.h.i.+llings a day, and they lived in huts which they made on the ground and saved the greater part of the money that they earned. A little over 16,000 or 80,000 dollars were paid for the land, and about the same amount was spent on its preparation and completion as a course; while 20,000 or 100,000 dollars were spent on the building and equipment of a splendid club-house, embracing the utmost comfort and convenience, with about fifty bedrooms. This is a members' club, and the club has all the members and money that it needs, and it is not a speculative enterprise in any way whatever. But British golfers must surely pause with wonder when they hear of a place like Toronto spending 50,000 on a new golf course! Such is the enthusiasm of the Canadian for the game, that while this enterprise was afoot a six-holes course was being constructed alongside it, at a cost of 10,000, for a gentleman who intended to build a house near by to which he might ask his friends.

One pleasant day when staying at Montreal I went out to Dixie, a few stations along the Grand Trunk line, where there is the course of the Royal Montreal Club, to be regarded now as the oldest properly established club in the Dominion. This one alone has that t.i.tle of Royal which Queen Victoria gave it permission to use in 1884. In its early days the course was in Mount Royal Park, overlooking Montreal. Out here at Dixie a certain flavour of the old spirit and good strong sporting simplicity of the game are tasted. The course is somewhat flat and parky, and big banks of bunkers stretch across the fairway, making the general style of the architecture very much of the Victorian, but the undulations and unevennesses of the banks and hollows are redeeming features. Some of the holes are good and the putting greens are excellent, but generally the course suffers from the absence of testing second shots. There is a magnificent view up the river from the seventh tee. A house agent might honestly declare that the club-house is commodious and comfortable. It was made before it was the fas.h.i.+on to erect palaces on golf courses, and sheet-iron bulks largely in its composition; yet it is cosy enough inside, and contains many relics of peculiar interest. In a gla.s.s case there are some ancient clubs with which members played in the early days, and a leather belt for which they competed, the names of the winners being written on the inside.

There are many other courses in Montreal and round about it. There is the Beaconsfield Club with its place situated some way up the river, reached by the G. T. R. at Point Claire. The part of Fletcher's Fields in Mount Royal Park, on which the Royal Montreal Club first played, is now in the occupation of the Metropolitan Club, and is only about five minutes' ride by car from the centre of the city. On the eastern slope of Mount Royal is the course of the Outremont Club, which, at the time of my visit, was about to go forward to a new and great enterprise; while on a plateau at the western end of Mount Royal are the nine holes of the West Mount Club, most charmingly situated, with fine views of the city and the river.

At Ottawa there is a course which ranks high among the very best on the continent. It is different in character from that at Dixie, for here there are ravines and gullies, and the land is strongly undulating everywhere. The bunkers and other hazards are natural, the putting greens are smooth, and the subsoil is of sandy loam. It is on the other side of the Ottawa River, beyond Hull, and owing to its being exposed to a broad reach of the stream it is seldom that there is not much wind blowing across it. And there are courses all the way from east to west of this wonderful, blossoming Canada. We find that wherever we wander in the Dominion we are not much distant from a golf club. Even when on a day I sailed across Lake Ontario and made the Gorge Valley trip to the Niagara Falls there was golf near by had it been wanted. Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary, round and about the Rockies, and up them too--everywhere the game is played. I was told that when the course at St. John, New Brunswick, was started in 1897, Mr. H. H. Hansard, who made the opening stroke, holed from the tee in one. Holes in one have been done in many curious circ.u.mstances, but surely this is one of the most interesting of all. Compare the excellent beginning of St. John with what happened the other day when a new course was being started here at home. I am sorry to say that the munic.i.p.al dignitary upon whom the chief responsibility was cast missed the ball the first time, and also the second, but contrived to move it from the tee at the third attempt.

A note has just reached me from a friend in the Dominion saying that out on the Gulf of Georgia, on the coast of Vancouver, they are reaching forward to a golf ideal. They have planned and started there a new town, which they have called Qualic.u.m, of which the golf course is the central feature. They have laid out a fine one along the sh.o.r.e, one that has splendid natural qualities, and they are doing their best to make it understood that here is a golf city if ever there was one, for they have christened the streets and roads by such names as St. Andrews Road, Berwick Road, Portrush Road, Rye Road, Sandwich Road, and Dollymount Road; and there are others with the names of Hoylake, Sunningdale, and all the rest of our British best.

Friends whom I consulted in the matter declared there was no golf in Quebec, little but French people, French talk, and French games of two generations back, the Canadian French not yet having adopted the sport to which so many of the Parisians have attached themselves with great earnestness. I was barely satisfied with such denials, and when, after another night on the C. P. R., I found myself on a glorious Sunday morning on those famous heights of Quebec, whence the view is one of the most magnificent in the world, I set about investigating the matter all alone. I can hardly say why, but somehow I strongly suspected the Plains of Abraham, the big, bare piece of land on the heights overlooking the St. Lawrence, on which Wolfe and Montcalm, more than a century and a half ago, fought that great fight, and died. I have always found it as a most remarkable thing that where great battles have been waged, and big encampments made, golf courses in a great number of cases have been laid out there later. Sure enough, then, the game was here on the Plains of Abraham. I had just been looking upon the pillar with the simple inscription, "Here died Wolfe victorious," and had walked for the length of two or three good drives towards the citadel end of the plain, called, I think, the Cove Fields, when putting greens came to view, with sticks not two feet long and bits of red rag attached to them in the holes. The greens and the teeing grounds were rough as could be, and there were no proper bunkers on the course, but plenty of trouble for all that, the ground being coa.r.s.e and stony. The public could roam about the place just as it pleased, and did so, and there did not seem to be anything to prevent any one from playing the game on this course. It looked just like public golf on common land, and though it is a far cry from Blackheath to Quebec, there is something in the nature and character of this golfing ground at the historic Canadian port to remind one of England's oldest and crudest course. I discovered afterwards that the Quebec Golf Club, a club without a club-house, had acquired the rights to play on it; that this club is one of comparatively early origin; that its members are clearly primitive in their tastes, but sincere and earnest; and I am led to the belief that the course has another point of similarity with Blackheath, being the oldest now in existence on the American continent. It is said that a daughter of old Tom Morris, who married a Mr. Hunter and went to America, was largely responsible for the beginning of golf at Quebec. Men and boys were playing on it on this beautiful Sunday morning when the bells in countless steeples of Quebec and at St. Levis on the other side of the St. Lawrence were ringing their music through the stillest air. I sat down on the edge of the course overlooking the precipitous depths to the river, far down below, where the smoke from a wars.h.i.+p at anchor came lazily from the funnels, and looked for long enough to gain an undying impression of one of the grandest panoramas in the world, seen at its most peaceful and its best. Nature had a grand inspiration when she made Quebec as now we find her.

This marvellous country is a rare place for making the new beginning.

Everything is so raw, so suggestive, so encouraging to earnest failures who would, like Omar, if they could, conspire with fate, shatter the existing scheme of things and "remould it nearer to the heart's desire."

Canada is indeed a fine place for hope for the future. I met several men in the country who told me, that on leaving England and Scotland, they had perforce, with all the hard work before them, to give up the game for a long period; while another reason was, that those having been much earlier days, there were fewer courses there. So years after, when the fortunes had been made, they came back to golf again, and they were making another new beginning, and felt a certain gladness as they remembered some of the faults and the torments of the old game with all its vast imperfections. In everything they would start over again as if it were all quite new, and they knew nothing about it. Generally they have made successes of their second golfing lives on earth in this way, but yet they have found that they needed to act warily and be on their guard always against old enemies, for golf poisons are marvellously subtle and enduring things; and it has been found that when once a man contracts a habit that is bad it will last for ever, whether he plays the game continually or not, and the worse the habit the more incurable it is. The best that can be done is the application of a system of subjection, by which the disease is kept under, and does not pain or hinder. But men who have fallen into bad and hopeless complications with their golf, and found that it never could be improved any more, have tried to begin it all over again as left handers--the most drastic change--and even that has failed. They have then realised that the only way to die happy is to give up the game for a matter of half a generation and start again, with the determination to keep the head still, to begin the back-swing with the wrists, and not to start pivoting on the left toe as soon as the driving is begun, as if it were necessary to do this thing, as so many of the teachers have suggested, to the ruin of their pupils, for the unsteadiness it has produced. One learns to do this pivoting after an hour's practice at the game, and can pivot well when nothing else can be done at golf. But it takes years and years sometimes to get rid of such a stupid custom. The left heel must rise, but let it rise as little as may be, and of its own accord. Its rising should be always a result of something, and not a cause of something else.

What is needed at a beginning, or a fresh start in any golfing life, is a thorough grasp of essential principles. Considering the subject the whole way through, we may feel that there are really only two essential and compulsory principles applicable to all cases, instead of two hundred or more as the bewildered player is often led to imagine. These two are, first, that the eye must be kept upon the ball until it has left the club; and, second, that in addition to the still head there must be one fixed and practically motionless centre in the human system while the stroke is being made. It is neglect, generally accidental, of one or both of these principles that causes most of the bad shots that are made. Let us remember that. Never, or hardly ever, should we neglect these principles, and if we do not our handicap is almost sure to come down, not only because so many bad shots will be avoided, but because the exactness, certainty, and quality of all the strokes will be steadily improved as they cannot be when hampered by neglect of the principles. The eye makes the connection between the captain in the brain and the engineers of the physical system. It is the speaking-tube or the telegraph apparatus. There can be no union without it. But, as we all know, it is not such an easy thing to keep the eye on the ball as it ought to be kept on it, and the more anxious the player the more liable is he to err in this matter. As to the fixed centre--somewhere in the interior of the waist--we should reflect that the golfing swings, when carried out properly, consist of the action and movements of thousands of different muscles, operating in different ways, different directions, and at different times. Perfect harmony and correlation among them all is necessary if the general result is to be smooth and exact. Make no mistake about it, the golfing swing, with all its complications and the acute precision that is necessary for its good and proper effect, is one of the most wonderful things of which the physical system is capable.

When I reflect upon it I think it is marvellous that the human man can make it as he does. To obtain harmony among all these thousands of movements there must be one centre from which they are all regulated. If we think it out we see that this is so, and then we appreciate the importance of what is too baldly described as keeping the body still, as we have perhaps never done before. As a point of truth, the body as a whole cannot be kept still, but there must be one centre that must be fixed from the moment that the club addresses the ball until the latter has left its place after impact. The captain in the brain, the eye, and the fixed head and centre are the great trinity who manage the whole concern. Only one man who has neglected this law has ever raised himself to eminence in golf, and that man is Edward Ray, who has done it by mere physical strength. When the fixed centre is held secure a great host of evils which constantly cause failure are avoided--swaying of the body, collapse of the legs, improper foot work, dropping of the right shoulder, falling forward, and more of such a kind of fatal faults.