The Spirit of the Links Part 8

croquet!" exclaimed A, "but I _haven't_ been playing croquet!" B stood aghast. "You _haven't_!" he shrieked; "then what the d.i.c.kens were you doing this morning?" "Oh," said A, "I took the hint from what you said yesterday, and cried off the croquet match. I spent an hour instead in practising putting on the carpet, and stuffed the fire-irons underneath to make undulations!" There are one or two very good morals in this pathetic little story.

If you need to putt perfectly you should do nothing with your hands, and as little as possible with the remaining parts of your physical construction for a whole day beforehand. The fact is that everything puts you off your putting, but some things more than others, which is another reason for that old saying that putting is the devil. An old golfer has said that the ideal preparation for really fine putting is to lie in bed for twenty-four hours with your wife to feed you with a spoon. A few hours' penmans.h.i.+p is certainly fatal to one's putting, and typewriting is worse. A man may depend upon it that if he goes in for a motor-car and drives it, he will henceforth be about three or four strokes worse on the greens than he used to be, which accounts for the anxiety of so many golfers to sell their new cars. And oh, that my best golfing enemy would buy a motor-cycle! A player once told me that he could not putt in the afternoon after having found it necessary to beat his dog at lunch-time; and it has been observed to be quite a bad thing for one's putting to use a walking-stick in one's ordinary pedestrianism. The putting muscles and nerves are the most delicate, subtle things in the whole of animal creation, and the pity is that circ.u.mstances generally preclude their more careful preservation during the periods in one's life when they are not needed for holing-out purposes.

VI

Now the society season is most alive. The golfing society--without a course of its own and consisting generally of men who have some other common interest, usually business or professional, apart from their love for the game--is becoming an increasingly popular inst.i.tution in the south, and some people who have had to find fault with the const.i.tution and general scheme of such bodies, have now to confess that their protests have been completely without avail, and that, for good or ill, these combinations have settled permanently with us. Considering the circ.u.mstances of the time and the great advance in the popularity of the game, they must be regarded as a natural evolution. After all, those people who regard the society as a kind of new-fangled notion and an undesirable development, need to have it pointed out to them that it is the oldest kind of golf community, and that nowhere does it flourish more than in the great Scottish centres of the game. For example, a great majority of the clubs of Edinburgh are not clubs at all, as the term is understood in the south, but merely golfing societies, made up often of men with another common interest, and the only difference between them and the southern societies is that they have a public course to play upon and are dependent upon the kind favour of n.o.body for the playing of the game; whereas in the south there are no public courses, and the societies have necessarily to crave the permission of clubs for the courtesy of their greens on the days when they wish to go out to play their matches and compet.i.tions.

Perhaps some day there will be public courses in the south on which the societies may play. On the other hand, it has been suggested that the societies combined are even now almost strong enough to obtain and keep up a course of their own. In these days the societies' subscriptions are seldom more than five or ten s.h.i.+llings, but the majority of members would be agreeable to pay a guinea for the pleasures that they receive, and on such an increase it ought not to be a difficult matter to devise some scheme for the establishment of a society course. Alternatively, it is suggested that the societies might do something towards giving a substantial financial backing to some club or other that is in a bad way in this respect, on the condition that they had the use of that club's course on midweek days for all genuine compet.i.tions and matches. Against this it has to be considered that one of the charms of society golf, as it is conducted in the south at the present time, is the opportunities that are given to members of visiting and playing over courses which are unfamiliar to them and which are not generally accessible, and of organising expeditions of members to these courses in the way of having a good day out together. All those who have experienced this pleasure know that it makes one of the most delightful variations from the ordinary routine of a golfer's life.

There is no reason to suppose that clubs generally, or any club in particular, are hostile to the society idea and practice, and we have not yet heard of any case in which a club has declined permission to a society to play its match or compet.i.tion on its course. So far from that being the case, the most important clubs of all, with the best courses, have shown a marked amiability in the matter. Still, from time to time there have been people who have suggested future difficulties, and even hinted at an abuse by societies in general of the good nature and courtesy of the clubs; and in view of the fact that in two years from now there will probably be ten societies for every two that are at present in existence, just as even now there are about five times the number that there was two years since, it will be as well if the clubs think the matter out and decide upon their policy, and, so far as they are able to do so, or regard it as politic, to announce it. When they do come to consider the matter, they will do well to do so on the broad basis of the common good, and to remember that an enormous factor in bringing about the increase in the popularity of golf, and in affording the great delights that golfers of the present day derive from the game, has been the principle of the community of interests which is generally agreed upon. When a man becomes a member of a "recognised golf club" in these days, he becomes _ipso facto_ a kind of provisional member of all other golf clubs, that is to say, upon the payment of certain small fees and on a proper introduction--that of the secretary of his own club being commonly regarded as sufficient--he has some claim upon the courtesy of any other club whose green he may like to visit. The members of a club that extends these privileges to strangers obtain those of a like kind from other clubs, and thus to the individual player there is opened up the entire variety of all the golf in the country. How much would our pleasure in the game be reduced if this variety were not available, and we were compelled to play exclusively upon the courses of clubs of which we were full members!

In this matter we have the principle of the community of golfers'

interests in full play, and it seems that the proper recognition of the society and its right to the privileges that it seeks will be only another form of the same principle, and one scarcely less advanced than that which obtains at present. For already a fair proportion of the members of a club are members also of one or other societies, and the time is coming when it will be the exception for the club golfer not to be a member of a society. When this time arrives, it will evidently be necessary to apply this principle referred to, partly for the general good and enjoyment, and partly because any club that did not, and that withheld privileges to societies that were granted them by other clubs, would place all its own members who belonged to such societies in a very unpleasant position. Two rules seem to be called for. The first is, that in order that this principle shall always act fairly, and that no man shall get what he is not in a sense ent.i.tled to, it shall be enacted that each member of a society shall also be a member of a club in the district in which the society chiefly carries on its operations. The second is, that in all cases of society visits to clubs' courses, full green fees shall be paid, and that in no pecuniary sense shall the society be under any obligation to the club. The whole question is really one of very great importance, and those who are at the head of club and society affairs would do well to be giving to it their serious consideration, for nothing would be more unfortunate than the creation of any misunderstanding which might lead to trouble in the future.

VII

The other day there was a little house-party of golfers for a week-end, and it was a most delightful gathering in all respects--fine weather, a rattling good seaside links, with putting greens that inspired the soul of the player to fine flights of genius, and a host of the very best golfing type, in whom is embodied all the best traditions and sportsmans.h.i.+p of the game. Sternly contested singles in the morning of the first day, with the yellow autumn sun s.h.i.+ning and that pleasant nip in the air that braces the golfer to great efforts when he takes the wood out of his bag; a hard-fought foursome in the afternoon; and then as they dressed to go down for dinner on the evening of the first day, they reflected upon the magnificent opportunities of the golfing life and the poor state of those who were not such as they were then. Dinner, the gla.s.s of old port, piquant stories of the links and the recounting of brave deeds in fine matches, and then by and by the testing of various putting theories on the carpet--O! the happy, happy golfer.

Forty years upon the links had one by one only served to increase the host's enthusiasm for the game of games. In all things he was the golfer first and the ordinary individual afterwards. Like all experienced players, he was inclined to be dogmatic and, as some would say, old-fas.h.i.+oned. But when you say that a golfer is old-fas.h.i.+oned you are paying him a very high compliment; you are placing his portrait in an exclusive gallery of the old masters of the game who built it up and endowed it with traditions such as are the envy of all others. The old-fas.h.i.+oned golfer nearly always belongs to the best type of the fine old English or Scottish gentleman. But this host had still original ideas of his own, and sometimes within the walls of his own house he will tell of them, or let them slip by accident, which he might very much fear to do when in the company of his colleagues of the Royal and Ancient on the occasion of his bi-annual pilgrimages to St. Andrews. So on the second morning, when the party was at breakfast and eager to arrange the matches of the day, its curiosity was somewhat stirred by the remark that he made to madame as she was lading the blue cups with tea, that last night he "went round in 78." The lady of the house nodded and smiled, asked sympathetically if he had had any luck at the short holes, and was a.s.sured that he had taken 3 to one and 4 to the other, but had got his 78 by the aid of a grand--yes, by gad, a really corking 3 at the last hole! On the whole, it was gathered he was driving well, but his iron play was not all that it might have been--putting splendid.

Now nothing had been heard before of any such fine performance as this, as surely there would have been if, as it appeared, it was of such recent date. The company was stirred with a desire for knowledge as to the when and the how, so that they might not be laggard in their compliments upon the making of such an evidently pretty piece of golf. A 3 at the eighteenth, too! If that was the same eighteenth the flag upon whose putting green we could just see from the window now, it was a 3 to be spoken of with admiration and profound respect. And so one at the table murmured that they had a desire for knowledge upon this 78, which so evidently interested the chief, but he pooh-poohed the curiosity, and said that the recounting of that particular round would do better for a wet day than for a morning when all were so keen to be playing the real golf. The "real" golf; so there was a qualification imparted to that round of 78, and now they would not be denied. Come! come! And so they had the secret out.

It appeared that though he looked so well and hale, the chief was not one of those happy beings who after their days upon the links go to rest at night and drop clean away into a dreamless sleep. There is usually a preliminary period of insomnia, which is an unpleasant relic of some hard times that he had abroad in the middle years of his life. It is an effort with him to "drop off," and many and various have been the devices that in his time he has employed for wooing Morpheus to his nightly service. For a long time he played the old game of shepherdry.

When the candle was extinguished and his head was laid upon the pillow, he set up before him an imaginary hedge, a big thick hedge which divided one large field from another, and in this hedge there was just one small gap through which one sheep could pa.s.s at a time, or two by squeezing when in a hurry. Why the sheep should be driven from one field into the other no man can say; but on countless nights by many poor sufferers from too much wakefulness, millions upon millions of sheep have been driven through this same gap in the hedge. Through it they are hurried in their ones and twos in a seemingly never-ending line. There is no limit to this flock, and it is of the essence of the trick that is being played against the enemy, insomnia, that the shepherd shall attend most strictly to his duties, and never for a single moment shall let his thoughts wander to other and more real affairs. And so at last the active brain gives way, and as the tail-end of one big sheep is seen disappearing through the gap a thick haze comes down upon the fields, and the shepherd and his sheep are lost until the morning.

The chief was shepherd for some years, and it was only by the odd accident of dwelling fondly for a few minutes, as he laid himself down in bed, upon the fine things he had done in one great match that day that he came by a change of nightly occupation. With the links laid out before him on the inner side of his eyelids, he played every shot again, and if the truth must be told, he played some of them twice, and in this way he proved to his own immense satisfaction that, soul-satisfying as had been his play that day, his round was morally at least three strokes better than it had worked out. He played his round from the first tee to the eighteenth green on the eyelid links once, and so pleasant was the play that, like the gourmand golfer, he must needs play it again, shot by shot; and a third time he set out with his clubs. But this time he was tiring. The two mental rounds that had gone before had told their tale, and he was constantly finding his wayward ball in the rough, and making sometimes fine recoveries with his iron clubs, and sometimes taking two to get clear again. You see he always played the game.

Perfection in golf is not given to any man, and even in the eyelid game one must pull and slice at times, must now and again socket with the irons, and take one's eye off the little white ball. And so it happened that at last the tired brain surrendered, and upon the fifteenth green, with the match still unfinished--one up and three to go--he fell asleep.

Thenceforth the shepherdry was given up, and he took on the eyelid golf instead. Two rounds he played every night, and every time he played the game, refusing to allow himself things he had not clearly seen himself do, and not taking unto himself the power of doing miracles or of always playing the perfect golf. In that there would have been great monotony, just as there would be if we always played perfect golf in our real life upon the links. He never made a carry in this nightly imagination that he had not made in daylight, never laid an iron shot dead, or holed a putt the like of which he had not done with real club and ball. Some nights he would be off his game, and his score would run far up into the nineties, and he would be badly beaten. On those nights he might go to sleep a little sooner than usual. On others he would be playing the best game of his youth. In general he found the occupation much more pleasant and agreeable to his tastes than the shepherdry, and it is a curious thing, which one must believe since he said so, that these night rounds, with all their thoughts and their minor anxieties, actually did something towards the improvement of the real game that was played in the daytime. The player now and then obtained new and good ideas, and he was taught to be a little more thoughtful than perhaps he had been in the past. By and by the secret of this play became too much for him to keep, so he unfolded the story of his eyelid games to the lady partner of his life, who, since the real service that they did to him was evident to her sympathetic mind, treated it with becoming seriousness.

This was the explanation of the 78 that was spoken of at breakfast-time that morning, and in it there is a hint that might sometime prove of service to those who, like the host of that week-end, are sometimes troubled for want of that ability to loose their thoughts to sleep.

VIII

One does not see St. Andrews at its best at a time of a champions.h.i.+p, or at any other time when there are great crowds in the streets and on the courses, and swarming round about the clubhouse and outside the shops of the clubmakers overlooking the eighteenth green. It is not its natural self then; it is at its worst. I do not like it when the trippers pour in from Glasgow. One cannot resist the suspicion that many of them are not as good golfers as they ought to be, and that they love St. Andrews for what they save by her, being the only course in the world on which a man may play for nothing; with a kindly Corporation and a great club spending large sums of money upon it. To keep those marvellous greens in their fine state they employ a genius among greenkeepers, who is Hugh Hamilton, who is the successor of Tom Morris, who was the successor of Allan Robertson. It may seem strange to some that the play should be made without any charge, but St. Andrews would not be the same, and would lose rather than gain in dignity, if it were not free. The time to see it at its best is in the spring, and it is fine again in the late autumn, when the mere holiday-makers have gone back to their cities and workshops.

The only time when a crowd is bearable at St. Andrews is on the autumn medal day, and then, indeed, it is as if the tradition and the sanct.i.ty of the place are intensified. This surely is the great Celebration Day of golf. With its dignity, ceremony, tradition, crowds, and excitement, it is really very much like a Lord Mayor's Day. Old folks who may have never played, wee bairns who are only just beginning to think they will play when they can walk a little better, are all straining to excitement because it is the club's medal day, the day of the Royal Medal, and of the captain's playing himself in, and of the firing of the guns. From north, south, east, and west--many of them from London--the members of the Royal and Ancient Club foregather for the occasion. There is a hushed solemnity overhanging the place. Something is about to be done that used to be done in the days of the grandfathers and the great-grandfathers, and the men on the links on this occasion feel themselves to be the descendants--as often enough they are in blood--of the great golfers of old who made the early chapters of the history of the game.

The playing-in to the captaincy is a great ceremony, for this captaincy of the Royal and Ancient Club is the highest honour to be achieved in the game. No man who is not of the highest character and of the greatest golfing integrity is ever chosen for this high office. To be captain of the club is quite comparable to being Lord Mayor of London. Amateur champions have been captains, but no man may be captain because he has been amateur champion. It is an understanding that the captain shall win the Silver Club, given by the club a century and a half ago, and the Gold Medal, which was presented by Queen Adelaide in 1838, when she expressed the wish that the captain would wear it on all public occasions, as he does at the club meetings; and to make sure of the coincidence of the captaincy and the winning of these trophies it is ordained by custom that the captain-elect shall have no opponents in the round that he is supposed to play; and, furthermore, to make his path to victory as smooth and easy as possible, he is merely called upon to tee up his ball on the first tee in front of the clubhouse, to drive it off, and then he is supposed to have played his round and to have gained his victory.

Thus this simple historic ceremony of teeing up and driving off for the Silver Club and the Royal Adelaide Medal is a great function. Crowds gather to witness it, and a line of men and boys is stretched out along the course from the tee, often giving to the hero of the moment an all too narrow margin for error in his stroke. It is ordained that this ceremony shall be performed at the exact stroke of ten o'clock in the morning, and when the hand of the clock on the clubhouse points to that hour a military person fires a small cannon on the foresh.o.r.e and--crack!--the captain-elect drives his ball, and he thus advances to the topmost height of honour. The boys rush for the ball, which, being gained by one of them, becomes an heirloom in his family. And then the real compet.i.tion begins at once, and the new captain may take part in it if he wishes. The prize now is the Gold Medal with the green riband, which was given by King William IV. in 1837. The King himself decreed that it should be challenged and played for annually, and, writing from St. James's Palace, he expressed "his satisfaction in availing himself of this opportunity to evince his approbation of that ancient inst.i.tution." Two by two the great golfers of the time go out to play for it, and excitement is keen as the day wears on. The last couple having holed out on the eighteenth green, the cannon is fired again to indicate that for one more year the Royal Medal has been won and lost, and all is over so far as the outdoor proceedings of the meeting are concerned.

In the evening is the feast, when the new captain achieves the full measure of his dignity. h.o.a.ry traditions surround his presidency at all meetings. In days of old, in the century before last, captains were fined pints and magnums of claret for certain delinquencies. At this feast the captain and ex-captains sit at the high table, in red coats, with all the ancient insignia of the club laid out on the table before them. Silver clubs are set there, to one of which each of all the long line of captains has fastened a silver ball, with his name and the date of his captaincy engraved upon it. The winner of the King William IV.

Medal is toasted, and he is called up from his place that the captain with solemn ceremony may invest him with the medal, hanging it round his neck. Then, upon occasion, new members of this ancient club have been called up before the captain, who, holding one of the silver clubs before them, calls upon them to kiss it and to swear honour and obedience to the laws and customs of the club and the game. And then great golfers of the old school may sing old ballads, and an evening of happiness goes on, and if there are no trains to be caught in the morning, matches are made to-night. This is St. Andrews.

IX

The sowing of seed upon a course may seem a dull business, and the average golfer leaves the consideration of all such matters to those whose duty it is to attend to them, and contents himself with his play on the resulting turf; but in this indifference he misses much that is interesting, and occasionally some most pleasant humours, as witness the true story of what happened on a suburban links. A very thorough club manager had bought many bags of two different kinds of seed, which were to be used by an intelligent workman for the benefit of the course, according to a scheme already devised and discussed. One kind of seed was that which would produce long, thick gra.s.s of a very coa.r.s.e character, and which would grow with big and almost indestructible roots under the very worst of circ.u.mstances. It was intended that this should be sown under the many trees that abounded on the course. It was not only to be gra.s.s that would thrive under the most disadvantageous circ.u.mstances, but it was meant also to be "rough," which might some day do something to stimulate the power of language among those golfers who just now might play from underneath the branches of those trees with their putters. The other seed was that which would make gra.s.s of the very finest texture. It needed a delicate, well-groomed soil for its sustenance, and its prime object was to produce putting greens that would give great joy to golfers on their game.

So the contents of some bags were to be scattered underneath the trees, and the contents of the others were to be spread over the putting greens, and the manager rested and refreshed himself with tea while this, as he thought, was being done, and he talked pleasantly to me of the various excellences of the course and the way in which difficulties of soil and situation had been conquered. And then there broke in upon us an emissary from the man who had been sowing the seed, who came to say, "Please, sir, there's been a sort of accident happened, and it's like as William has been and mistaken and gone and planted the putting green seed under them trees, and he's planted the seed as'll make the long gra.s.s on some of the putting greens. And we want to know, sir, what we must do!" What, indeed?

X

When October comes we bid her a very loyal and joyful welcome, for we have come to regard her as the queen of months for golf. No soul so serene as that of the golfer as he tees the ball on a bright October morning. It sometimes seems to us of the links that we are glad of every change in the seasons. When it is spring, we look forward to the coming of summer, and then we sigh for the autumn, and in turn are glad even to sink back to the adventures and trials of the heroic golf that we are called upon to play in the winter-time. And yet it is seldom through discontent that we thus antic.i.p.ate the changing of the seasons, but rather that we, as golfers, do so highly appreciate the glorious variety which is afforded to us by the system of Nature. Constantly happy in our game, while we are playing it, the season is for the moment forgotten, and it is only in the intervals of holes or rounds that we are roused to the eternal transformation that is proceeding.

"With thee conversing I forget all time; All seasons and their change, all please alike."

But there is nothing sweeter than the bright October morning on the links. A fragrant smell of moist earth rises up, and it is as if that very scent is a rare stimulant to the golfer after the heat of summer.

There is a fine spring in the turf as we tread upon it, and, quite revelling in it, we find that we must needs go tripping light-heartedly along the links until the problems of the play at a couple of holes have sobered us down. We like even to see the dewdrops lingering on until starting time, taking advantage of the laggard autumnal sun. The film of mist that is hanging a few holes out, and the suspicion of a nip in the air, are fine. And then there are the glorious tints of autumn, the yellows and the crimsons and the browns, blended as only one Artist knows how to blend them, and, amidst the happiness of it all, the pathos of the scene comes in upon us as we listen to the faint crackle of falling leaves. The heart of every golfer is touched by all these changes, for whatever may have been his previous disposition and his tastes in life, each one becomes in time something of a Nature lover, and acquires a knowledge and interest in some of the simpler features of her work. For, of all games, golf is the game which is most closely allied with simple Nature. A little ball, a stick, a small hole, and the open country at her wildest and roughest, and there you have your golf.

Then what is deeper than the soul's content of the golfer when he finishes the afternoon round just as the red sun is dipping away to other lands, and by the time he and his clubs are cleaned, the twilight is already changing into the evening gloom, and the thing that it seems best to do is that which is one of the happiest in the golfer's day, which is to sit by a bright fire and talk with one's enemy of the links of all the good and the bad golf that has been played since the morning.

Come night, we have had our day, and this talk by the fire, while the white mists gather again upon the links outside, is yet more cheering to the heart of the golfer than all the evenings of summer.

THE PROFESSOR ON THE LINKS

I

"The problem of the golf ball's flight is one of very serious difficulty." That is what was said to a gathering of savants by Professor Peter Guthrie Tait, one of the most brilliant scientists of the latter part of the last century, and the only man who has probed deeply into the real science of the game of golf. He was a wonderful man in many respects. He applied his marvellous scientific knowledge and powers of investigation to everything that came his way. One day he would be extracting cube roots from the most unsuspected quarters, and another he would be a.n.a.lysing the character and formation of the ripples on the surface of a viscous liquid. A few flourishes of the knife of science, a sharp explosion with one of his specially prepared _formulae_--consisting of the most wonderful combinations of the ?'s, the ?'s, the t's, and the f's--and the common but stubborn thing of everyday life was made to yield up its innermost secrets, so that thenceforward it was regarded in a quite different way from that which it had been in the past.

Nothing was sacred from the application of the Professor's science, and golf was not; but to the credit of the game be it said that some of its scientific problems baffled this great man of science as nothing else that he had ever tackled before so seriously had done. He spent weeks, months, and even years, in occasional periods, upon it; he employed the most intelligent men of science with marvellous powers of reckoning as his a.s.sistants, he bombarded the game with the most terrible _formulae_ that even he had ever invented; but golf still held the upper hand and retained some of its secrets, while it often smiled derisively at the Professor when it had sent him a long way along a false path. The Professor would not give up. He returned always to the attack, and golf and he came to closer grips. He did, indeed, obtain many wonderful secrets from its possession, and he found out more about it--all of it very wonderful and very interesting--than any man had ever done before, or possibly ever will do again. Now and again he told his learned brethren of the difficult nature of the task that he had entered on.

Before he died he had found out most things, but golf still held some secrets from him.

Many of the things that he knew, and the way in which he found them out, were never published to the golfing world. He issued one or two papers of a quite popular character, and very elementary; but they did not contain a t.i.the of what he had discovered or say how he had discovered it. Here we will try to tell the golfer a little of what the Professor found out about the things that happen when the ball is driven from the tee. They will interest him, and perhaps cause him some surprise. Only those conclusions will be given which he proved beyond question, and the truth of them must generally be taken for granted, as it may be safely, since the professor's lines of study would take a volume to expound with any lucidity, and even then a considerable scientific knowledge on the part of the reader would first of all be necessary.

II

It should be said that, while the Professor played a little golf himself, and was much in love with St. Andrews as a resort, what led him in the first place to make his investigations was watching the play of his famous golfing son, Fred Tait. A few idle, fanciful conjectures on the flight of the ball that was sent skimming through the air from Freddie's driver led to a more serious calculation, and then, like a siren, the great mystery of golf drew him on. But early in his investigations he committed himself to the statement that n.o.body could drive a golf ball that would have a carry of more than 180 or 190 yards without exerting at least three times the strength that is generally exerted by a strong man when driving; that is to say, that a carry of such distance was practically impossible. But this statement was no sooner before the public than young Fred proved the fallacy of it, by celebrating his twenty-third birthday by driving a record ball which had considerably more carry than that.

"Stuff! Humbug!" said the Professor; but the fact was there, and when the golf world came to know about it, they asked the Professor what was the use of all his calculating--and to this day that error is chiefly what is remembered by the general public about his investigations. This incident may have been largely responsible for the fact that thereafter he only once or twice let the golfers into the secrets of what he was doing and had found out, reserving the story of his investigations for learned bodies who were most closely concerned about them.

The mistake that he made, which was exposed to him by his son, set him out on a new line of thought, and showed him vaguely where his error was, though not the nature of it. And the discovery which he made at the outset was a startling one, and it may cause some astonishment to the player of to-day who will reflect upon it for a moment. The steadiest, most constant, and most persistent force with which we are generally acquainted is the force of gravity. It is always there; it acts unceasingly upon everything. To defeat gravity, therefore, is almost for a while to suspend the working of Nature. Suddenly it burst upon the mind of the Professor that the golf ball was made as it were to defeat gravity, and so in a sense it does. He found this out by observing the time of flight of the ball, and discovering that it was nearly twice as long as it ought to be, if gravity had free and unfettered play. This is to say, that if gravity were allowed to act in the usual way on the ball from start to finish, as it acts on other things, it was quite inevitable by all the laws of nature and science that a drive of 200 yards would be completed in three and a half seconds. If a man threw a ball so as to describe as nearly as possible the same trajectory as a golf ball, and to stop at the same spot, it would only take three and a half seconds. But the golf ball takes six and a half seconds! Somehow or other it was clear that gravity was being beaten all the way. If it were not so, it would be impossible for the golf ball to remain in the air so long while it was accomplis.h.i.+ng such a short flight. That was the great mystery that the professor had to solve, and he solved it at last.

It may be said here, in pa.s.sing, and will be more fully explained another time, that he found out that it was due to the rotation given to the ball by the club, and the nature of the stroke when it was struck from the tee, a rotation which in many ways was responsible for some most extraordinary happenings; all of which the golfer will be a much wiser man for having knowledge of. But before he could go thoroughly into the mystery of this rotation he had to make many other preliminary investigations, and some of the results of these may be quoted.

One of the Professor's first efforts was in the direction of finding out the speed with which the ball left the club; and it was a long time--years, in fact--before he came to any definite understanding on the point; so difficult did he find the investigation, despite all the experiments he made, the _formulae_ that he applied to them, and the scientific instruments that he brought to bear on the problem. He had a very capable observer, Mr. T. Hodge, making examinations of the flight of b.a.l.l.s driven in actual play at St. Andrews, by the help of the instrument known as the Bashforth Chronograph, with which the speed of bullets is measured; and, what with the results arrived at in this way and others, he came to the conclusion that the initial speed of the ball was over 500 feet a second, which speed, of course, was lost very quickly as the resistance of the air was encountered.

With this as his starting-point, he made many deductions; but subsequently he found that he was wrong in the original a.s.sumption.

A vast number of calculations and experiments followed. In a cellar he constructed a complicated pendulum arrangement, to the bob of which there was attached a large screen with a thick clay surface, and against this he got several well-known golfers to drive their hardest, and made the most minute calculations as to the effect upon the pendulum. The clay was scattered in all directions, damage was done, and the golfers complained that under such circ.u.mstances they were not able to drive their best. The pendulum and the strangeness of the whole arrangement "put them off." Some time afterwards he constructed an improved pendulum, the clay screen being fixed on to lengths of clock spring, and when this was placed in a doorway the golfers were again set to drive at it.

What with one thing and another the Professor at last came to the final and definite conclusion, that the ball started from the club at a speed, in the case of a good drive, of about 240 feet a second, but that in the case of exceptional b.a.l.l.s it sometimes was as much as 300 or even 350 feet per second. This, of course, was with the gutta ball; and the resiliency and initial speed of the rubber-cored ball being certainly much greater, it is fair to believe that the average initial speed of a well-driven ball in these days is quite 300 feet a second; or, to put it in another way, over two hundred miles an hour. Great as this speed appears, it might be mentioned incidentally that the muzzle velocity of a bullet from a Maxim gun is generally about 2000 feet a second, or about seven times as fast.