The Spirit of the Links Part 5

Some of those cantankerous people who have no sympathy with games, and but a limited confidence in the wise precept that the healthy mind is most frequently to be found in a.s.sociation with the healthy body--practical people they like to call themselves--will sometimes ask you what is the good of golf. It is generally useless to attempt to humour them by advancing the proposition that it returns a dividend of fifty per cent. in mental and physical efficiency, and seventy-five in the general happiness of the subject.

What are really the least convincing examples of the practical value of golf are the most effective in argument against such folks. With them it may count a word in favour of the game that a man once playing it found that his ball from a full drive came to rest on a sixpence which had evidently dropped through a hole in the pocket of a previous player.

Here, indeed, was a material practical gain! They will be impressed also with the possibilities of the game when they are told a little story of how a man, who was not in quest of art treasures at the time, discovered an old master accidentally, and entirely through the medium of his golf.

It was in this way. A Montreal art dealer was playing the game on a country course one day in 1903, when he sliced a ball so badly that away it went through the window of a cottage hard by. Thereupon there came out from it an old lady, a French Canadian, who was possessed of remarkable power of speech, of which the golfer was given much evidence. Presently, when her attack was somewhat exhausted, the poor golfer offered to recompense her for the damage done to the window; but then it was put to him that the broken gla.s.s was not the only casualty.

The ball, after pa.s.sing through the window, had continued its course of destruction by breaking the gla.s.s that covered the picture; and without making any examination of the nature of this damage the player agreed that he would give a matter of a pound for the picture besides paying for the broken window. This soothed the feelings of the lady of the cottage, and she pressed upon him the picture, for the damage to which he had paid so handsomely. He took it away with him, and at home in the evening he was led in a spirit of curiosity to make some examination of it, when, to his astonishment, he discovered that it was a Dutch interior by Teniers, which he sold a few days later for 500. To the credit of this golfer be it said, he sent a cheque for half the amount to the cottager. This is an excellent story to tell to the absurd and practical people, and a true one.

It might be of service to add to it an account of a shot that was played on one occasion by a gentleman of no less scientific importance than Professor John Milne, who is known as a great seismologist, the man who is most in evidence when earthquakes are troubling. When the earth is still the Professor will leave his instruments in the Isle of Wight to their own care for a period, and he will wander away to the links for some golf. To what great feat has the golf of this professor led him?

Why, he of all men became the first to drive a golf ball across the Victoria Falls on the Zambesi River--a hundred and sixty yards of roaring, foaming water. That was when the British a.s.sociation went for its annual meeting to South Africa, and Professor Sims Woodhead, the celebrated Cambridge pathologist, was so much impressed by the achievement, that he too attempted to drive the Zambesi, and succeeded.

But these are the things that may be done by Professors once, and not always. Two more b.a.l.l.s were teed on the bank, and the Professors smote them with their clubs, but those b.a.l.l.s were claimed by the Zambesi, and perchance they have been digested by the crocodiles. Now here you have something done by golf which was not golf, but which marked the advance of civilisation into the dark regions of the African continent. Our practical friends must allow this to the credit of the game, not only for the achievement in itself, but for the possibilities that it suggests, for is not a picture at once conjured up of the resourceful golfer driving a ball from the sh.o.r.e to a sinking s.h.i.+p, when all other means of establis.h.i.+ng communication therewith had failed? To the ball there will be tied a silken thread, and the thread will help a string across, and the string will drag a rope. Thus must we plead for golf!

While in these serious aspects of the battle of life the game is thus to come to our aid, it shall be of similar service also in the gentler paths. Once upon a time a maker of golf b.a.l.l.s told me how he had suspected a rival of putting cores from old b.a.l.l.s made by him A into all so-called new ones made by the rival B. Therefore A for a little while wound a tiny piece of tissue paper with the rubber of his cores, and on the paper there was written A's name and address. Some time later the tissues came home again through the medium of the b.a.l.l.s that bore the name of B. There was this d.a.m.ning evidence of the pilfering of the cores. This story is not told as a hint to the trade, but surely it will convey one to ingenious persons who wish for a mode of secret communication with others which will be sure and safe. May it not be that some Romeo of to-day has already come by the device of lofting a ball or two on to the balcony of the fair Juliet, who in the seclusion of her chamber may be discovered in operation upon the cover with hair-pins and fire-irons, and presently in raptures upon the endearments expressed in the _billet doux_ of her Romeo?

Perhaps it will not avail us as golfers to tell our practical friends that the principles of the application of physical force which have been taught us in the game, as of the steady body, the fixed centre of movement, and of the hand being under the constant leaders.h.i.+p of the eye, have benefited us not merely in the playing of other games, such as billiards and tennis, but in the attainment of greater proficiency in some of the most practical and useful of domestic occupations, so that the man of all others who may be depended upon to hang up the pictures in a new house as pictures should be hanged, is the golfer who has got his handicap down to 6. We will tell also to the critic of our game that it affords a scope for a kind of humour that is of occasional service to some wits and others. It helps them to raise a laugh over the tea-cups when they say that they will take the odd or two more in sugar. We do not like this jugglery with the terms, and it is only to be excused in such exceptional cases as when the doctor tells the new golfer that his temperature is 99 and the patient inquires anxiously as to what the bogey is; or when, in discussing the frowning fortunes of some unfortunate acquaintance who has had a hard time in life, and is called upon for severe labour in his last days, it is said of this poor chap that he is playing the nineteenth hole and has made an indifferent drive. But, in seriousness, we like our golf to be kept sacred to itself, and una.s.sociated with the generally duller pursuits of this workaday world.

XI

Is there not a considerable superst.i.tion of the links? Even great players have old clubs that they carry about with them, not so much for their practical value as for the luck of the thing, as they fancy it; and a man once said at Prestwick that he always carried in his bag a queer-shaped iron, though he never used it in these days. This was because on one famous occasion many years before, when he was seven down with eight to play, and won the match by a brilliancy that did not belong to him, he could only account for it by the circ.u.mstance that this club had somehow found its way into his bag by accident. As a small acknowledgment to the G.o.ds, and a hint that such favours would be welcome in the future, he vowed that he would carry that club with him on the links for evermore, but that never would he play with it. And he keeps his vow most steadfastly, to the irritation of the burdened caddie.

Some sentiment clings to that cleek belonging to Mr. Edward Blackwell, which, it has been said, is "shaped like an old boot," but which, as we all know, has done work upon which any cleek might be congratulated. And is it not declared that before Mr. Travis set out to play in the champions.h.i.+p at Sandwich, Ben Sayers lent to him for mascot his favourite spoon?

Other golfers have other fancies. Some have it that it is unlucky to go out to play without a supply of money, for then surely shall the half-crown be lost; and others fear that it might go hardly with them if they had not the company of their favourite pipe. On severely important occasions, Andrew Kirkaldy will hie himself beforehand to his tobacconists in St. Andrews and buy himself a new pipe for luck. Does not special fortune attach to special golfing clothes, and is not the light grey jacket that which brings most luck? Think of all the fine players who jacket themselves in this way with darker wear below, which is out of the usual order. Mr. Hilton has a jacket which goes always with him as the lamb went with Mary, and has thus played its part in champions.h.i.+ps innumerable. This is a jacket that has won its place in golfing history.

The superst.i.tions about the winning of certain holes are stupid and general. Why is it such an unfortunate thing with some people to win the first hole? And yet do they always try to win, and do not bemoan their fate if they lose. A trifle more reason, perhaps, is there in the old couplet:

"Two up and five to play, Never won a match, they say."

But of course matches have been won when the winner was two up with five to go, hundreds and thousands of them. There is one man of high champions.h.i.+p rank who has a list of exceptions to this rule, which he applies for his own consolation when the fates decree that he shall be two holes to the good as he stands upon the fourteenth tee. If it suits him, he will put it that the spell will not work if it happened that he fluked the thirteenth with a long putt; and he holds upon suitable occasion that it has nothing to do with a foursome. One may suppose that the essence of the idea is that the man who is two up at this state of the game is just short of being in nearly the strongest position possible, and is sometimes a little inclined to be slack in consequence; and then, if he loses the next hole, and is only one up with four to go, a sudden fear seizes him: he feels that he must fight for his life, becomes flurried, presses--and then the rest of the tale is soon told.

But the best and the worst of the proverb lies in its recitation by the man who is down when his opponent, bold in confidence, is taking the honour at the fourteenth.

It must be held as an unfortunate thing to play a ball into a graveyard, and it is better, perhaps, that one's attention should not be called to the memorial stone hard by the eleventh tee at Deal, which tells of a foul murder committed upon some fair maiden at this spot in the long ago when Deal was unacquainted with the game that has given her fame.

We hear that the most famous lady players carry charms when engaged in their most important games. She who won fame as Miss Rhona Adair is said to have invariably worn a particular ribbon with a gruesome device of skull and crossbones upon it whenever she very much wanted to win her match. White heather is supposed to be a most potent charm, and it has been told as a secret that some ladies decline to wash their hands between rounds, though luncheon comes in the interval, lest evil should befall them afterwards.

THE WANDERING PLAYER

I

The golfers and other people who know nothing of St. Andrews are often inclined to fancy that some of the enthusiasm professed by those who have a tolerable golfing acquaintance with it is affected, because it "is the proper thing," and because it harmonises with the feelings of many revered members of the old school of the game. Perhaps such scepticism is pardonable, particularly when it is known that there have been many hundreds of golfers who have gone to St. Andrews once and failed to be impressed by it, and have not hesitated to declare their doubts about its supremacy on their return to their native links. These people belong to one of three cla.s.ses. The first is the smallest of the three, consisting of good golfers of sound discrimination, whose idiosyncrasies of taste lead them honestly to the conclusion that St. Andrews is greatly overrated, and that it has superiors in various other greens. The second and largest batch is composed of men who lack both the necessary golfing knowledge and the true golfing spirit. The third consists of those who have not had sufficient time to know, for verily St. Andrews is, to a large extent, a cultivated taste, and there are many worthy golfers to whom its first appeal has not been entirely convincing. There is a more or less vague something that attracts instantly, but the rest only comes to the Southron stranger after two or three, or even more, visits of fairly long duration.

The English golfer does not generally love St. Andrews at first sight, but he shows that interest in her which leads him to talk about her and awakens the suspicions of his friends. Then he may speak of her with indifference, but he goes back to her again and again, and at last one day, when he returns to his home after one of these visits, he feels an exquisite soreness at heart, a sweet longing, a strange exaltation, and he knows that a change has come over his golfing life, that he is at last in love with St. Andrews, and that he cannot do without her.

Forthwith his plans for future golfing expeditions are changed and modified. He must now always think of St. Andrews. If he is a man of leisure he must go there at least once a year, and even if he has but little time to spare he will be going to Scotland once in a twelvemonth with his bag of clubs, and must so arrange his itinerary that he shall touch Leuchars Junction going or coming, and shall run down that little strip of railway which makes to the golfer the finest travelling in the world, for two or three days of heartening play on the premier links.

All golf is good, but there is something subtle about the St. Andrews golf which makes it not quite like the other, and the man who learns to love it, though the love come in his riper years, when the emotions are slow of action and may be weak in result, is faithful to it for the rest of his golfing days.

Probably no man has been able completely to define the charm of the place. Its charm is of its golf, for though it has some natural beauty, and is greatly historic and of celebrity for its ruins, it casts no enduring spell over the man who does not know the use of a driver. The constant talk of it and its tradition has something to do with the charm, no doubt. The stranger, who has never struck a ball there, feels something of nervous ecstasy as he hears the brakes go on the train that slows down on its approach to the station. There, during the last two minutes of his journey, is a view of the links, the Swilcan Burn, the players going out to the second and approaching the seventeenth--and there goes a ball on to that famous road!--just like the fathers of golf used to do in the olden days as it is written in the books. Then, walking in St. Andrews, one seems to breathe golf as never before. All the men and boys one sees are players or caddies; there is a knot of men at the street-corner talking about the 76 that one of the professionals did in his evening round; there are many golf shops; it is all golf. On the walls, and in the hotels and post offices, there are displayed official notices, giving the warning that those who play on the course with irons only, or who practise putting on the eighteenth green, may be fined 20_s._ or--wonderful enactment!--be sent to prison for a period. A personage of no less consequence than a Cabinet Minister, this being Mr. Asquith, has been stopped under this rule. The pipes that one hears seem to be skirling a song of the greatness of the game and the glory of the men who used to play it here in the olden days. Above all, one comes instantly by a deep sense as of walking on hallowed ground, of being one of the heirs to a great heritage in golf, and to a great responsibility. Life and the game are stronger things than they used to be. That same subtle oppression of soul is felt as when one has a first glance at the Pyramids or at the tomb of the great Napoleon in the Invalides. These things stand for what was a great might, and in its golf St. Andrews is truly mighty.

And so it comes that the spirit of the game seems to brood over this hallowed spot, and stirs the golfer with fine imaginings and gives to him great impulses. It is all so different from anything else. On the evening of his first day he knows that St. Andrews is not like the other places, and when, after his first rest, he kisses the morning, he is glad and he is exalted, because he is at St. Andrews, and there is not a man or woman in the place who will not talk to him of the game that he loves and sympathise with him in his ardour. The golfer has come home at last.

It is difficult to describe the merits of the wonderful old course. It is there. The people who do not know it cannot be made to understand, and the people who do know it have not to be told. It would be hard for anybody to prove that it is not the best, if the severest, test of scientific golf. Nothing but scientific golf will avail the player here.

Of late years people have been railing against the bunkers on the course, and the increase thereof; but after all it is to be remembered that the placing of the majority of these bunkers has been the result of the aggregate of thought of some of the best golfers in the world for a period of scores of years, and they must be considered in the spirit that Mr. John Low suggests, that no bunker can really be unfair. It is there to be avoided, and it is the best shot that avoids it. No doubt this view might lead to awkward conclusions if pressed in some cases, but it is apparently sound as a general principle of scientific golf, as apart from the mere pastime and the sensual pa.s.sion for hard hitting. If a bunker is in the middle of the course at just the distance of a good drive, it is obviously the duty of the driver to play to one side or the other and avoid it; and that is just the characteristic of proper play at nearly all of the St. Andrews holes, that the tee shot has not only to be cleanly played, and at the proper strength and so forth, but that over and above all these things it has to be so accurately placed as on no other course. Position means everything at St. Andrews, and the number and variety of the undulations of the course, the constant bunker, and the extreme diversity of the glorious putting greens and the approaches thereto, bring it about that a man may play a hole a thousand times and it has something new to offer him every time, and he might play rounds on this course all the time from his childhood to his old age, and those of his last years would be riper with interest than any that went before. Here, indeed, is a course for character; there is nothing like it.

II

Hoylake is new in comparison, but Hoylake is old for England, and it is the leader of golf in the southern section of the kingdom. Hoylake has fine traditions of its own which it would not exchange for those of any other centre or club, and while it has always had the most perfect respect for the dignity and the conservation of the game, it has occasionally shown a commendable disposition towards useful progress. It was the Royal Liverpool Club at Hoylake that took the initiative in the establishment of the Amateur Champions.h.i.+p and the international matches; and at other times it has impelled St. Andrews towards unwilling, but necessary, action. The club may look back with pride upon the earnestness and dignity of its pioneers. They were true golfers of the old and most worthy school, and when they began the game there they had, as in some other old places, to take a pinch of sand out of the hole that they had just putted into in order to make a tee for their next drive.

By some it is said that it was the establishment of the links at Westward Ho! that gave the idea for making a golf course at Hoylake to the Liverpool golfers. Some of the people of West Kirby played there about the middle of the last century, and the Rabbit Warren, as the present links was then called, was used for golf about 1865. The Royal Liverpool Club was established four years later, and for twenty-six years, before the building of its present handsome clubhouse, was housed in the Royal Hotel.

In those days the course began on the hotel side, but with the change of residence there was some necessary changing of the order of the holes, the old first becoming the present last, the old second being now numbered the first, and the old last is the present seventeenth. The land of the links is leased from Lord Stanley of Alderley, whose ancestors acquired it in the time of Queen Elizabeth; and it is significant of the increasing richness of Hoylake, due largely to its golf, that the a.s.sessment upon the club by the union overseers, which used to be 165, was recently raised to 500.

In the quality of the golfers that it has produced Hoylake can challenge the whole world of golf. It alone has found an amateur winner for the Open Champions.h.i.+p--two of them. It bred the inimitable Mr. John Ball, who has six times won the Amateur Champions.h.i.+p--1888, 1890, 1892, 1894, 1899, and 1907--and is good enough to win it again; and he won the Open Champions.h.i.+p in 1890, thus holding both t.i.tles at the same time, being the only golfer who has ever done so, and quite likely who ever will. A bra.s.s tablet in the entrance-hall and the clock over the clubhouse commemorate this achievement. Mr. Harold Hilton, winner of the Open Champions.h.i.+p in 1892 and 1897, and the amateur event in 1900 and 1901; and Mr. John Graham, junr., one of the finest products of Hoylake, despite his insistence that he is a Scottish golfer when it comes to International rivalry, is now at the top of his game, and is good enough to win one Champions.h.i.+p and very nearly another. So true is it that a fine course will breed fine players.

Of the quality of Hoylake there can be no two opinions. It is one of the very best courses in the world, and by common consent it and Deal are the two best in England. Hoylake is far better than it looks. The first hole is generally cited as being one of the best two-shot holes to be found anywhere, and it is always good, no matter where the wind is. The course looks easy. If you play thoroughly well it may not be difficult, but if you do not play well it rends your miserable game asunder. What the possibilities for failure are, were exemplified in a grossly exaggerated manner in the final for the Amateur Champions.h.i.+p in 1906, when the finalists halved the sixth hole, which goes by the name of the Briars, in 9! They lost their heads, and a player needs his head at Hoylake. The course is famous for its putting greens. They are fine now; but they are not what they used to be, for in the old days they were so magnificent that it used to be said by everybody that it was a sin to walk upon them. The water has in late years been drawn from the land for the purposes of wells, and this has made a difference.

St. Andrews and Hoylake--a n.o.ble pair!

III

Choosing a companion for a golfing holiday is at all times a serious business, and the light and thoughtless manner in which some young people perform the task is, in the interests of their own future golfing welfare, deplorable. Young people are mentioned advisedly, for you do not find the old golfers making their selections hastily, and they do not live to regret those that they make as do the hot-blooded youths who are swayed by the fancies of a moment. These select at haste, and often enough they repent bitterly before the golfing trip is over. The same nice discrimination should be exercised in the choice of such a companion as would be, or ought to be, in the choice of a wife, and many of the points that have to be taken into consideration are similar. As a general principle, youth should not mate with age for the purposes of many days' golf in their own exclusive company away from home, when the twain are cast upon their own joint resources and have their pleasure and their welfare bound up with each other. It is a good thing that there should have been a long and tolerably thorough acquaintance beforehand, and there should be some approximate equality in playing ability. The partners to this important contract should be satisfied above all things that not only are their ideas and ideals concerning the good game largely alike, and their tastes outside the game agreeable to each other, but that their temperaments agree to the point that they can make the necessary allowances for each other's waywardness of conduct, when in the interests of continued concord it becomes imperatively necessary that this should be done. Trials of this kind will have to be endured, and it is well that there should be a firm resolution beforehand to bear with each other's weaknesses, satisfied always of the high value of the man. Some old golfers have said, and wisely, that it is a good thing to go away on a golfing holiday with a man and never to golf with him--to get the game with others, and to talk of it with the companion of the trip at breakfast in the morning and at dinner when the play for the day is over; and there can be little doubt that in this maxim there is much wisdom, though it is not necessary to carry the recommendation to the extreme. Too much familiarity with the game of one man breeds some contempt for it, even though it be a game that is more remunerative in holes than that possessed by the other; and while there are no rivals like old rivals, still, if their rivalry is uninterrupted it becomes dull and uninteresting.

IV

There is an old golfer who says that it cost him many weeks of failure, and many hundreds of pounds, to come by that experience in conducting a golfing holiday as enabled him to make a complete success of such always afterwards. For the benefit of others of the smallest experience, who are liable to err grievously, he offers the following precepts:--

"However keen one may be, and however much one may enjoy the excellent golf that is obtained on a good seaside course, it is a great mistake to play too much during a short holiday, and failure to appreciate this fact has completely spoiled more golfing holidays than any other cause.

The early keenness is followed by carelessness, and after a while the game becomes somewhat of a taskmaster. Then one's game suffers severely, and even a strong physical const.i.tution is hardly equal to three rounds a day kept up constantly. Yet that is what many holiday golfers try to do, and when they have finished their vacation they are sick of the mention of golf, and wish they had gone fis.h.i.+ng or shooting instead. My advice is never to play more than two rounds a day, and to play no golf at all on two days of the week; whilst, if the holiday lasts a month, the man will be all the better for a four or five days' rest in the middle of it. He will then enjoy all his golf, and the entire holiday will be much more of a success.

"On a holiday course, where there are many visitors, one sees a greater variety of clubs and golfing implements than anywhere else, and numerous novelties of a more or less attractive character. However favourably many of these ideas may strike you, do your best to resist the inclination to invest in them, because, if you once begin doing this, you will have a dreadful quant.i.ty of rubbish to take home. A golfer who thinks several times before he buys a new club when he is at home, somehow seems to be a very irresponsible creature when he is holidaying, and will purchase wonderful bra.s.seys, niblicks, and putters at the slightest provocation.

"As soon as you get on to your holiday seaside course, don't make the mistake of beginning to play for larger money stakes than you are accustomed to do on your home links, even when you are invited to do so and you may feel it difficult to refuse. Comparatively small beginnings in this direction have a way of developing before the holiday is far advanced into gambling on the game to an extent that the player cannot afford. Apart from this important view of the matter, the pleasure of playing the game is completely ruined. A ball on the match is enough for anybody, no matter what balance he may have at his bank, and in starting a golfing holiday a man will be wise to make up his mind in advance that he will not play for more.

"When you are a complete stranger and alone, and you beg the club steward that he will find you matches, do not hesitate when he offers you an opponent, even though the latter's handicap is either too large or too small to give you the most enjoyable match. Take him on at once, and be thankful. The steward, who is always an obliging fellow, has a rather difficult task in suiting everybody, and you should be greatly obliged for the favour he does you in supplying you with any kind of match.

"If you are a long-handicap foozler, make your start for the round either very early in the morning or very late, say nine o'clock or half-past eleven. Either of these times is just as good as half-past ten, and you will miss the crowd, have a clear course, and spare yourself the anxiety of being a constant annoyance to the scratch men behind you if you started at the busy time. You will play a much better game.

"At the commencement don't announce your handicap as either more or less than what it is at home, whatever your views upon the accuracy of the latter may be. If you say your handicap is more than it really is, you are grossly dishonest and a cheat, though some misguided players do so without any full sense of the grave responsibility of their action. On the other hand, many players with the best of motives say they are several strokes less than they really are, for the purpose of seeing what they can really do at a shorter handicap, and thus, as they put it, pull their game out. They also do it with the object of getting better matches, but their sins will find them out. They may very likely lose most of their matches, and their opponents, perhaps, will not care to play with them again, wanting something more to do. Besides, they may run up against some of their own club fellows, and then they may look rather foolish.

"Don't give your newly-made opponent-friend a long account of your many brilliant performances on your home course, particularly if the account is by way of being an excuse for your falling off on the present occasion. The probability is that he will take a large discount off your story, and in any case he doesn't care an old gutta what you do at home.

"Also, don't make the shocking mistake of discussing with him the play and the manners of other visitors to the course with whom you have been having matches, or whom you have otherwise encountered on the green. It is very bad form, and, besides, after you have been denouncing some person or other, your companion may inform you that he is a friend of his.

"Don't ask permission of your opponent to take your wife or your sister or your mother round the links with you to watch the match, even with the proviso that she shall keep at a convenient distance from you both.

Like the good fellow he is sure to be, he will say at once that he will be delighted, and will be most agreeable. But would you be delighted, and would you play your best game in such circ.u.mstances? Would not the presence of a lady stranger rather irritate you, however gallant you might desire to be? And what if all the players on the links did this kind of thing? The proper place for ladies who do not play golf is the seash.o.r.e.