The Spirit of the Links Part 3

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

THE QUEER SIDE

I

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

Thus we have old Alexander M?Kellar as the patron saint of the man who likes to get his three and four rounds a day in the summer-time, and is miserable unless he has a club in his hand in his resting hours.

It is something to have become regarded as the keenest golfer, for it goes without saying that every other worldly consideration of every description whatsoever must have been sacrificed to the attainment of that vast distinction. Such a man must have really earned the t.i.tle of "c.o.c.k o' the Green," which was given to M?Kellar, and with that t.i.tle his fame will be handed down through the generations as it is affixed to an historic print. This picture of the old worthy, who indeed was fairly "mad" on the game, was first circulated more than a hundred years ago, and has become one of our most cherished golfing antiquities. His enthusiasm brimmed over when in the act of play, and "By the la' Harry, this shall not go for nothing!" as he used to say involuntarily when addressing the ball, became something of a catch-phrase in his district.

He did his golf from Edinburgh, and Bruntsfield Links was his playing ground. How often does one find that they are the keenest golfers who do not take up the game in their youth? It may be true that generally the man who does not swing a club as a child has not such a good chance of becoming a player with pretensions to champions.h.i.+p form as have those who made such early acquaintance with the game; but do we not find that these men become the fondest and most thorough players, making up in enthusiasm and real enjoyment what they lack in skill? Thus there is a grand compensation after all, and let us weep no more for the golf that we missed in our schooldays; for some of those who played it then are they who now find their greatest ease of heart for some weeks of the year at fis.h.i.+ng, shooting, or some other sport in which something has to be killed.

And so the "c.o.c.k o' the Green" did not begin his golf at all until he was quite a middle-aged man, and all likelihood of his ever becoming a really finished player had completely vanished. And he was of comparatively humble means. He had saved a little money, such as went for some justification for his constant idleness; but his wife found it necessary to keep a tavern in Edinburgh when they went to live there.

M?Kellar gave no hand in the management of this tavern; he had no time for anything but golf, and bitter were the upbraidings that he had to endure from his worthy and industrious dame as a consequence.

Mrs. M?Kellar may indeed be set down as the first that we know anything about of that long line of sufferers who go by the name of golf-widows.

This lady might have borne her isolation better if it had not been the fact that she was somewhat mocked for it, and found the name of her lord a byword in every neighbour's house and at every street corner for his over-indulgence in the game of golf, fair "cracked" on it, as everybody took him to be. She tried to shame him once, but had much the worse of the experiment. She thought to make him a b.u.t.t for the laughter of his companions by taking to the links one day his dinner and his nightcap.

But when she arrived there he was in the throes of a hard-fought match, and when she offered him the meal he answered her kindly, but with some touch of impatience, that she might wait if she chose until the game was completed, when he would attend to her, but that for the time being he had no leisure for dinner. And the game went on. So she came to loathe the very name of golf, and was scarcely civil to the tavern customers who were players and friends of her good man. But one day she had a sweet revenge upon him. She set out for a journey to Fife, and was expected to be away for at least a day. No sooner was her back turned than hospitable M?Kellar went forth to bid his golfing friends to his house, which, when its lady was in residence, they might in no wise enter. A fine feast was prepared, and the party was a merry one, when the door opened, and there stood, with a countenance drawn with suppressed wrath, Mrs. M?Kellar, who had been obliged to return, through the ferry being impa.s.sable as a consequence of the severe weather that prevailed.

Every morning the "c.o.c.k o' the Green" hurried through his breakfast, and away he went to Bruntsfield Links with all the haste possible, never returning home again until night had fallen. Sometimes, indeed, he did not come then, if there were any good golfing excuse for not doing so.

Many were the times when he was discovered playing at the short holes by the dim glimmer of a lamp, and a moonlight night was an almost irresistible temptation to him. Heat and cold did not diminish his ardour; and in the winter, when the snow covered the course, he would do his utmost to persuade an opponent to share a round with him; and if he failed he would go out alone and wander the whole way round playing his ball from flag to flag, the greens and holes not being discoverable.

Like all keen golfers he loved the foursome, and preferred to be tested by it if he could find a partner of any quality whatever. One day he was in Leith and fell in conversation with some strangers there, gla.s.s-blowers they were, and, as always, the subject turned upon the game, and from the game in general to the prowess of the "c.o.c.k o' the Green" in particular. The men of Leith affected to think little of his play, and challenged him to a match, upon which moment a Bruntsfield youngster made his appearance. "By gracious, gentlemen!" exclaimed M?Kellar, "here is a boy, and we will play you for a guinea!" The match took place, and victory lay with M?Kellar, who was so excited when the last hole had been played that he ran post haste to the shop of the clubmaker, screaming, "By gracious, gentlemen, the old man and the boy have beat them off the green!"

The artist Kay, who made the picture of him, went out on to the links one day to draw it from the life unbeknown to the hero, and when he came to know about it afterwards he was sorely disappointed that he had not been given the opportunity of posing. "What a pity!" he lamented. "By gracious! If I had but known I would have shown him some of my capers!"

Perhaps it was as well he did not. When he won his match he would sometimes be so mad with joy that he would dance round the hole for a minute. Such delight was pure, for though he did wager a little on his matches he did not risk more than he could well afford to lose, and it was the game he tried to win and not the little that he bet. On Sundays, when there was no golf to be played, he fulfilled the duties of doorkeeper to an Episcopalian church, and held the plate. Douglas Gourlay, the famous ballmaker, one day put a ball into the plate by way of joke, guessing what would happen. He was right, M?Kellar's golfing cupidity was too much for him. His eyes glistened, and in an instant the ball was transferred to his pocket. Poor old M?Kellar! Weak enough he may have been, but he did love his game as absolutely nothing else in life, which for him ended nearly a century since.

II

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

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

You may always tell from the form of the answer when the St. Andrews lip has curled at the question that has been asked of it. Nowadays the committee can hear the mention of a hedge without a rise in its temperature; but when the secretary, in reading out the problem of the moment, has to say "mud" there is uneasiness still. The committee move in their chairs, they fidget, they scowl, somebody mutters "Tut, tut!"

and they all cough to hide their agitation. "Mud" is the word you must not say. I have not seen the committee in this agitation; n.o.body except its own members has, for it is a very private committee; but this sudden disturbance can be imagined most clearly. Yet these inconsiderate golfers will keep on mentioning mud, and St. Andrews answers them back with as much asperity as is consistent with the preservation of its own dignity. One time in a matter of this kind they gave a snubbing to a Kentish course. The club there, in all seriousness and innocence, propounded a very pretty point. "Playing in a foursome," they said, "A is left by his partner's approach shot a six-inch putt for the hole; but A's ball pitched in a small piece of wet mud left on the edge of the green (presumably from the boot of a player in front). A small piece of this mud clung to the ball, and was on the side of the ball A had to strike. A played the stroke, and the ball and the mud stuck to his putter, and the head of the putter and the ball on it were exactly above the hole." This was surely a most delightful situation! See how pretty is the combination of this foursome pair, and how they do play each the game to suit the other, thus: "His partner then with his putter tapped the ball off A's putter and it fell into the hole." A charming incident!

"Did A or his partner lose or halve the hole, and would A have been within his rights in shaking the ball off into the hole, or what should they have done?" Said the Committee to the secretary, "Tell these good people that the Committee have no experience of such tenacious mud, and such a contingency should be provided for by the local rules," and then they hurriedly spoke of the weather and the wind and the state of the eighteenth green, and how the Major got a bonny 3 there the night before--anything to get this taste of Kentish mud out of their St. Andrews mouths.

A point of some curious interest was that which arose in the course of medal play on the course of the Higher Bebington Club some time ago. A player had one of those most tantalising putts a yard in length to play, and, like many a man before him, he missed it! In his aggravation at the circ.u.mstance he s.n.a.t.c.hed back his ball, and, without having holed it out, he replaced it where it was before, in order to try his putt over again, to satisfy his _amour propre_ that the holing of such a putt was not beyond his mortal capacity. This is an old way of attempting to gain some small crumb of satisfaction from a very disappointing business. At the second attempt he holed that putt, but his partner then told him that he was obliged to disqualify him from the entire compet.i.tion for not having holed out when making his putt. The compet.i.tor agreed that he had done wrong, and accepted this fate; but some time later, when he had fully thought over the business, and read up the rules, he protested.

Yet his committee maintained that he really should be disqualified, and after much argument the seers of the Royal and Ancient were begged to give their decision. And it was a very interesting decision. The high court held that Rule 10 of stroke compet.i.tions applied, and that, therefore, if the player replaced his ball directly behind the spot it occupied after he had missed the putt, the penalty was two strokes only, the second putt thus counting as in the compet.i.tion, though it is fairly clear that the compet.i.tor never intended it for it. "But," said the committee, "otherwise he was disqualified." Those who discover feelings and frames of mind behind the mask of simple sentences would be moved to say, in this case, that in that last simple sentence St. Andrews was trying to cover up somewhat the absurd position to which the rules brought this case; for it was clear that the essence of the problem in relation to the law was as to whether the player replaced his ball behind the spot where it first stopped, which came simply to this--Was he short of the hole the first time, or did his ball run to either side?

If he was short, then he was saved, and he is allowed to go on under penalty of two strokes; but if he over-ran the hole--which from the golf point of view was better than to be short--or if he went to either side, then he would be disqualified. That ruling has grown since then.

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

In their despair they appealed to St. Andrews; but this again is one of the nice points that the chief authority would rather others settled for themselves, and they said accordingly, that the committee must use their own discretion as to whether it was a case for their interference.

Upon other occasions the committee at St. Andrews has been called upon to indicate the proper course of procedure when a ball, after being played, lodged in the turned-up part of a player's trousers. It has been somewhat navely asked by Kenmare whether, in a mixed foursome, when the lady missed the ball off the tee, she should "try" again, or whether her gallant partner should rid the tee of that persistent ball. It had to tell the County Down Club that a player could not carry a special flat board round with him from which to make his tee shots; and it has had to straighten out some quite frightful mix-ups in ladies' compet.i.tions.

Sometimes it happens that some casual decision of this sort serves a good purpose in bringing the portion of the golf world that has been somewhat inclined to wander, back to its duty in the observance of the strict letter of the law, as in the autumn of 1906, when on the appeal of Aldeburgh it declared how, when in long gra.s.s or anything of the kind, the player was only ent.i.tled to move so much of the obstruction as would enable him to find his ball in the first instance, and was not ent.i.tled to arrange things so that he could see it while attempting to play it. A player is not so ent.i.tled to a full view of his ball, though he will sometimes tell you that he is.

III

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

Still there is room for distinction in holing in 1 yet, and the men who crave for such notoriety need not despair. If every man can hole in 1, obviously the proper thing to do is to find some particular way of doing it that every man cannot equal, or at least is not likely to do.

For example, J. S. Caird, the Newcastle-on-Tyne professional, was out playing the other day, when in the course of his game he took the fifteenth in 1 in a very strange way. He popped his ball up into the air with his mas.h.i.+e, and down it came plump into the hole, falling clean into the tin and never bouncing out again! Fancy pitching into the hole in 1! Luckily the caddie was standing there and took out the flag in time, and one cannot be surprised that he was so overcome with the strangeness of the thing that happened, that his imagination was fired until he saw something of the supernatural in it, and believed that his eyes had witnessed more than they really had. At all events, to the players and to the people afterwards he described in the most circ.u.mstantial and convincing manner how the ball at one time seemed to be flying far past the green, but how when just above him it came to a sudden stop in mid-air and then fell vertically into the hole! Why were we not told the name of this ball?

Another advance on the simple feat of holing in one stroke is to do it twice within a year. The first man to do this was Mr. L. Stuart Anderson, who took the tenth and fifteenth at Balgownie (Aberdeen) in 1 in 1895. Since then I have heard of three other men having done it, one at Fort Anne, another at Bristol, and the third at Tunbridge Wells.

Mr. Anderson, by the way, who is now the secretary of the Royal Portrush Club, holds the record for the greatest number of times that one man has done a hole in 1; and here again is another suggestion to the ambitious one-stroke man. Mr. Anderson has done it seven times. He began by doing it at the expense of his sister, Miss Blanche, at North Berwick, which perhaps did not matter much, as sisters are indulgent, and wound up for the time being by doing it (the seventh at Tavistock) in the presence of and in a match against a parson, which, to say the least, was indelicate. I have heard of a lady who has done this thing four times.

Another out-of-the-way feat is to hole in 1 just when you hear that someone else has done so. One April evening, when the course at Heaton Moor had not the appearance of stirring events happening upon it, such as would go down into history as records, two of the members of the club, not playing together, did two different holes in 1 each. At Christmas time in 1899 a most remarkable feat was performed by Mr. P. H.

Morton, celebrated in his day as a Cambridge bowler, who took the first hole on the Meyrick course at Bournemouth twice in one day, morning and afternoon, with his shot from the tee. It is a better achievement than usual to take a tolerably long hole in one stroke, and, in this cla.s.s, honours at present are with Mr. J. F. Anderson, who with a wind behind him and playing on a frost-bound course got the ninth at St. Andrews in a single shot, and the ninth measures 277 yards. It must be accounted excellent also to do the trick one-handed, as did an amateur with the promising name of Willie Park when playing to the eleventh on the relief course at Troon. Mr. Park had to do it with one arm or not at all, for he has only one, and he was certainly to be congratulated on the fact of his unfortunate state not preventing him from graduating as a hole-in-oner.

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

Concerning the coincidence connected with the name of Park, just noticed, it may have been perceived that two of our greatest heroes in these matters are of the name of Anderson. This coincidence can be carried a long step farther, for perhaps the most valuable hole in 1 ever gained was by another Anderson, and that was Jamie, the champion.

He was playing for the champions.h.i.+p at Prestwick and making his last round. He knew he was very close up, and that he had nothing to spare.

He was playing the next to the last hole on the course as it used to be--not as it is--and was just about to hit his tee shot when a girl standing close by remarked to her father that the player had teed his ball outside the teeing ground, and that accordingly, if he played his shot from there, he would be disqualified altogether. Jamie heard, looked, and quietly removed his ball and placed it within the limited s.p.a.ce. Then he made his shot and holed out in 1, and very properly he raised his cap to the little girl and said, "Thank you, miss!" for she had done him a very good turn indeed. A few minutes later he was in possession of the Champions.h.i.+p Cup. That was in 1878. It is clear that the Andersons are the men who do the holes in 1, particularly as another of them, Mr. W. W. Anderson, once in 1893 worked most gradually and systematically up to a hole in 1 at North Berwick by taking the fourth in 3, the fifth in 2, and the sixth in the minimum 1. One in 1 and three in 6!

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

There is one hole in the world where you do get paid for achieving a 1, that is if you happen to do it at either the Easter, Whitsuntide, or Autumn meetings. This is what is called the "Island Hole" on the course of the Royal Ashdown Forest Club in Suss.e.x. It is an excellent hole, and a gentleman who played it on one occasion fell so much in love with it that he endowed it with a sum of 5, the acc.u.mulated interest on the sum to go to the compet.i.tor at any of the meetings named who should do this trick of getting it in 1. Ever since the endowment was made the interest has been growing and growing, and n.o.body has qualified for it. Money acc.u.mulates so fast once it gets a fair start, that we can imagine this interest some day amounting to a fortune, and then what a scene there will be at the Island Hole at Easter when the golfer, having been training at the Redan, the Maiden, and a few like holes for a whole month previously, comes here with weird clubs and b.a.l.l.s made of lead, and has greed written in large characters across his face.

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

IV

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

There are feats of other kinds, as those which count as freaks, poor things enough but wondered at by some. What shall we say of the Pittsburg golfer who wagered four thousand dollars that he could play a ball over four and a half miles of the city streets in one hundred and fifty strokes? Beginning at five o'clock in the morning, he did this thing in one hundred and nineteen strokes, but lost a thousand dollars in damage done to property on the way. That man found an emulator in London who undertook to play a ball from Ludgate Circus to a fountain basin in Trafalgar Square. There are men who like to drive fine b.a.l.l.s from the gla.s.s faces of other people's expensive watches, and others who prefer the tamer sport of driving from the eggs of hens. There was the man of Sandwich, who, with a champagne bottle as his only "club,"

played, and--Oh, shame upon it!--beat a neophyte who carried a full bag of the most improved clubs. There was the old-time golfer who lofted b.a.l.l.s over the spire of St. Giles' Cathedral in Edinburgh, and another who tooled his gutty from Bruntsfield Links to the top of Arthur's Seat.

Better and more purposeful was the practice which Mr. Laidlay used to undertake before champions.h.i.+ps, when, with Jack White for caddie, he would play a ball from the first tee at North Berwick to the Roundell Hole at Gullane, six miles away, by way of the Eel Burn Hole, the sands along the sh.o.r.e, the neighbourhood of the fishermen's cottages, and away over Muirfield and the rough country to the top of the hill, playing from whatever lie his ball chanced to find, and once doing this course in a total of ninety-seven strokes.

V

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

Things have been killed--accidentally--at golf. Many luckless birds have got in the way of tee shots, and even a fish lost its life on a golf course, and is now in a gla.s.s case in the clubhouse at Totteridge. By some devious means it got on to the course one day when there had been heavy rains and much overflowing all about. And--let it be whispered to the shooters and the mighty hunters!--men have been maimed, and even killed on golf links, though we pray that, despite the extra sport, there may be no more of them, and that the single pain of the game may be the skin-blisters and corns that sometimes will come up at the bottom of the left forefinger and elsewhere. I did not think better of golf as a sport when one day, in playing my way outwards on the North Berwick links, a ball from a hidden tee came upon me unawares and carried the pipe that I was smoking away with it for some twenty or thirty yards, while I stood to wonder what was happening. And even by his own deeds may a man court perils, for we heard the other day that one was playing at Ravenscar when he took a full mas.h.i.+e shot with the object of clearing a stone wall; but the ball struck the wall and rebounded with great force against his head. And from his head it rebounded again over the wall, so it was said; and it was not astonis.h.i.+ng to hear that the player was slightly stunned! If adventure in the form of fierce conflict with wild beasts and reptiles is what the full-blooded sportsman wishes, he may have it. A member of the Royal Sydney Club played his ball down a hole, and he put his hand down it to see if he could recover the ball.

He seized hold of something soft and drew out a venomous brown snake--which he hurriedly pushed back. I am told by my golfing directory that at Umtala, in Rhodesia, "the course consists of nine holes. In addition to other hazards, lions are occasionally in evidence." I happen to have had some private confirmation of this report, and it is told me that if ever a golfer in Umtala indulged himself in such a freak as golf by candlelight, as players have been known to do elsewhere, he might not complete the game that he had projected, for the king of beasts is accustomed to prowl over the land at night, and picks up any little living thing that he may find about. In other respects there is something quaint about this golf at Umtala, for I am informed that in the daytime the course is frequented by crows with white bands round their necks, which go by the name of "Free Kirk Ministers." They are thieves, and now and again they swoop down and fly away again with the ball.

They are fine pioneers of the game in South Africa, and it deserves to prosper there. They have needed strong hearts and much patience and forbearance. I have been to golf with a man who has lately come back from a short visit there, and he says that their "greens" look as if they were covered with millions of garnets; and poor as the putting may be from some points of view, it can be performed with marvellous accuracy, and the people of the Colonies deny that anybody loves the game more than they do, or is more enthusiastic in it than they are.

Their trials are uncommon and severe, but they become accustomed to them. At Wynberg, or some place like that, there is a lake to carry at a short hole, and one knows what sometimes happens when there is a water hazard between the tee and the green, one shot away. Here the avoidance of it is not made any the easier, because a long line of Kaffir boys is formed up on the near side of the lake, stripped, with eyes aflame with eagerness, and wildly gesticulating with their arms and hands, and jostling and scolding at each other while they seem to be appealing "Me!

me! me!" to the golfer on the tee. Away the ball goes from the tee, and at the slightest indication that it was struck with dangerous inaccuracy, splash go all the Kaffir boys into the water. It is very much like the game of throwing sixpences overboard when your s.h.i.+p of voyage is at anchor off some Eastern port.

VI

Rummaging through a second-hand book shop in Oxford Street one day, I came upon an old volume of sporting anecdotes published far back in 1867, and long since out of print and forgotten. Turning over the pages in the evening, and encountering therein many stories of doughty deeds by river and on field and moor, I came at last upon what must evidently be the original version of the story which has been more briefly told by others of the golf match at night for 500 a hole, and I cannot do better than quote it direct from the book. One of the contributors was quoting from a letter he had received from a well-known sporting friend of his, in which this gentleman gave him a short description of golf, about which n.o.body else belonging to the book appeared to know anything.