Fifty Years of Golf Part 5

He also went round the links accompanied at a decent interval by two detectives. I used to play a good deal with him at North Berwick at that time, and it was rather curious to know that we were being stalked every step of the way by these guardians skirmis.h.i.+ng among the sandhills and the fringes of the course. It did not in the least interfere with Arthur Balfour's equanimity and concentration on the game. Of course he was not a great golfer, though he brought to the game that faculty which was so invaluable to him in politics of rising to an occasion. You were in good hands if he were your partner and you left him with a putt of just the doubtful distance to win the match at the last hole. But though he was not a great golfer, he was a very great figure in golf; and just because it is very human to be influenced by an example, the effect of his example was to make many a man play golf, on the principle that "there must be something in a game if a fellow like Arthur Balfour plays it."

He had been a fine tennis player at Cambridge, and was an extraordinarily good shot at a stag. I used to stalk on the splendid forest of Strathconan which he sold to Mr. Combe, the father of Christian Combe, the present owner, and the stalkers there have spoken to me with bated breath of his deadliness of aim with those old-fas.h.i.+oned rifles which tossed the bullet along in a high curve, and with black powder that made all nature invisible for a minute after the shot. Twenty-six stags without a miss, was his record, as reported to me by one of these stalkers, for one season, and it is a wonderful record in the conditions, especially as he was short-sighted. But then he had, by compensation, not only an accurate vision, but a coolness of nerve which made any idea of "stag-fever" an impossibility to conceive in connection with him. And "putt-fever" at golf was equally far from him.

I am very far indeed from saying that if golf had not been at this moment just ready for a "boom" the example of Arthur Balfour would have set the boom going, but as a matter of fact it was just ready. Courses were being made and Clubs founded all over the country, the amateur champions.h.i.+p was both a cause and an effect of the new impulse, and then came the beat of the Balfour drum and the note of "Ca ira" came from it triumphantly. I date from that year, and princ.i.p.ally as arising from the sources indicated, that "boom" which has never ceased to march and which is marching still. So much for what the incentive of one man's example may be in a race still generously capable of hero-wors.h.i.+p.

For a while at North Berwick Arthur Balfour's chief henchman was Crawford, Big Crawford, as he was most appropriately called, about whom many a legend clings in North Berwick tradition. The big Crawford was also the caddie of little Sayers in any of the important matches played by that great little man. The Crawford legend might run to far lengths, farther than I care to spin it now, but of all the instances of his wit and repartee the best I think is that which he produced, perfectly impromptu, so far as I know, when there arose a great discussion as to the precise nature of a toad-stool in course of a match which Sayers, his little man, played against Andrew Kirkaldy at St. Andrews. It was lifted, the lifter saying that it was a dead and loose-lying toad-stool, the objector that it had been rooted in the ground and therefore was not legally liftable. The discussion instantly raised numerous side-issues, as to one of which Crawford, having delivered his opinion, heavily, of course, in favour of the view of the case that would a.s.sist Ben Sayers--p.r.o.nounced, finally, "Weel, het's the rule o' the game, an'----"

at this point he paused an instant and lifted an enormous fist, "an',"

he repeated, indicating this leg of mutton bunch of knuckles, "there's the referee!" It is not the first time, nor the seventh time, that I have told this story; nor do I care if I repeat it seventy times seven.

It is good enough to bear it.

At the conclusion of an historic home and home foursome in which Sayers and Davie Grant defeated Andrew and Hugh Kirkaldy, Crawford would demand of any whom he could get to listen who it was, in their opinion, that had won the match, and when they professed a doubt, he would draw himself up with enormous dignity to his immense height, and striking himself dramatically on the chest, would exclaim with conviction, if not with grammar--"Me!" and really it was not altogether too large a claim.

His overmastering size and the fearsome aggressiveness of his manner might very well give pause to any tactics of an aggressive nature on the other side. He was a tower of moral (or immoral) support to little Sayers, and his presence at the hole when a hostile putter was attempting to approach it had all the effect of a black cloud overshadowing the atmosphere. But beneath all his dourness, and his sardonic air, he had a kindly nature, and of his loyalty to him whom he regarded as his chief, and incidentally the greatest man that ever lived, Arthur Balfour, there is not the slightest question.

With his rugged independence, he might stand as the type of the old Scottish caddie, now practically extinct. In later years he set up a booth at the far end of the North Berwick links where he would dispense ginger-beer and the like innocent refreshment, though it was said that to the initiate few a more generous and cordial liquid might be proffered. I do not know. What I do know is that when we went out, of a morning, and came to Crawford at his booth, he would often ask us, "Is Ar-rthur oot the day?" rolling the "r's" upon his tongue as if he loved to prolong the sound of his hero's name. It is thus that he would put the question--for all his wors.h.i.+p, making use of the familiar first name. And then, if we were able to comfort his soul by the a.s.surance that the great man would soon appear, he would hoist a little flag on the booth's peak, for honour's sake. And one day it happened that the Grand Duke Michael of Russia, coming to the tent and seeing the flag, inquired of Crawford in whose honour it was flying. I do not know whether the Grand Duke had been put up to making the inquiry, and asked it humorously, to see what Crawford would say. At all events he had his satisfaction, for in answer to the query, "Whom is yon flag flying for?"

the uncompromising reply was given, "A better mon than you." No doubt loyalty here leaped over the bounds of courtesy, but there is sign of a better quality than mere rudeness in the reply. Very well must Crawford have known that if he had chosen to reply to the foreign prince that it was in his honour that the bunting waved, it might have meant a piece of gold transferred from the princely pocket to Crawford's, but he did not hesitate. Partly perhaps the native disdain of the foreigner rang in the reply, but chiefly I think a very rugged honesty, which, in spite of the lamentably rude form of the speech, has its dignity.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A.J. Balfour.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Crawford.

Dispenser of refres.h.i.+ng drinks and counsel.]

We had great fun on the short North Berwick course, in those days, where nothing really paid you but accuracy in the pitch, developed to a nicety by Johnny Laidlay, who was always there. And besides him were Walter de Zoete, poor John Penn and many good golfers besides. I think it was with me as partner that Arthur Balfour first played that foursome against De Zoete, and Penn, which afterwards, with Johnny Laidlay taking my place, was played times without number. "Mike" Mitch.e.l.l was one of the regular frequenters, in the Eton holidays, and playing with him as partner he and I once did three successive holes in two each on that old short course.

CHAPTER XVI

THE SECOND AMATEUR CHAMPIONs.h.i.+P

In 1887 we were back, for the amateur champions.h.i.+p, on that Hoylake links which was the arena of the preliminary trial trip that Macfie won in 1885. I see that Arthur Molesworth was in that tournament of 1887, and survived until the fourth round, where he was beaten by J.G. Tait, eldest brother of poor Freddy. Another name of note is that of a small boy, appearing in such big company for the first time, Harold Hilton. He was beaten in the third round by Mr. John Ball, "old John Ball," as we called him for many years, although when I first went to Hoylake he was only John Ball the second, his father and Johnny's grandfather being still alive. One of the most remarkable points in the champions.h.i.+p of the year was the game that Johnny's father put up all through it. It never was a showy affair at all, that game of his, but it was wonderful how effective it was on the Hoylake course which he knew as well as the inside of his own pocket. He beat Hilton, as noted, then he knocked out J.G. Gibson, the Black-heathen, who had been going strongly and had defeated Henry Lamb the round before; and in the fifth round, which was the semi-final, I came up against him. I had only survived the previous round by the skin of my teeth, and remember all about it well. It was against Mr. Gregor Macgregor, a sound player, and a Scot, as his name suggests. I was getting on fairly comfortably with him, with a hole or two in hand, when he played a stroke in which I was morally sure that he hit the ball twice. I did not know whether to claim the point or not, and, not being possessed of the ideally equable temperament, was upset by the incident and played the last holes very badly, halving the round and being rather lucky to win the nineteenth hole. I forget whether, in point of fact, I did claim that foul, which I knew that Mr. Macgregor was quite unconscious of making, but what I do know is that I received from him afterwards one of the very nicest letters ever written, saying how sorry he was that anything of the kind should have happened, and that I should have been upset at all. So the conclusion of that nineteenth hole left me with John Ball, the elder, to play in the semi-final; and meanwhile that other John Ball, whom we distinguished as Johnny, was knocking Jack Tait out in the other semi-final. They were playing ahead of us, and as we went to the seventeenth (now the sixteenth) hole old John Ball was one up on me. And I had not played at all badly; only he had played in the most gallant way and had really hardly made a mistake. He was one up sheerly on the merits.

Then he said to me, as we walked after our second shots to the seventeenth hole and an emissary came back to say that Johnny had beaten Jack Tait, "It would be a funny thing if father and son had to play it off together." It was an innocent remark enough, and yet it nettled me a little, and I said in answer, "Wait a bit, Mr. Ball: you haven't done with me yet." Perhaps I ought not to have said it: it was rather a boastful answer. I can only plead the excuse of comparative youth. I sincerely hope it was not that reply which put him off his next stroke, but something bothered him as he played it. I saw him look up once, as he addressed the ball, at the legs of the people standing (or not standing as still as they should have been) opposite him. Anyone who knows Hoylake will know the stroke he had to play--to pop the ball over the cross bunker before the green, of the then seventeenth and now sixteenth hole. What happened was that he took his eye off and popped the ball into the bunker instead. I lofted mine over all right and won that hole. Then, by a lucky approach and a good putt, I got the last in three; and that was a stroke better than the hole ought to be done in and one too good for Mr. Ball.

So then the next, and the final, problem was the worst--Johnny! I dare say I was a little lucky in that match: I know I had one rather lucky shot. I got into the bunker just before the green, going to the short hole, called the Cop. I dug the ball out, pretty near the hole, and holed the putt. It was fortunate, but I have always contended that with practice, the judgment of the strength with this dig shot is not nearly so difficult as it seems to the uninitiated, and at Westward Ho! there was every opportunity for initiation, in the shape of bunkers close to the hole. Moreover, in those days, there was no rule forbidding you to test the consistency of the sand by a trial dig into it before the real shot. I have always thought the rule which forbids the testing dig a very bad one, because a clever bunker player ought to have the advantage of his cleverness, and this prohibition takes away much of the advantage and puts him more nearly on a level with the man who has no idea of judging strength with this shot. Then, two holes from home, Johnny broke his bra.s.sey. I see that Mr. Everard, speaking of this incident in the Badminton Book, described it as "the very bad luck to break his favourite bra.s.sey." That is interesting to note now, as a sign of the times. It indicates an importance belonging to a bra.s.sey which it certainly would not have now, when a full second shot with a wooden club is hardly ever wanted. But of course it was hard luck then, and perhaps it was due to that that I got dormy one up. Then Johnny obligingly topped his tee shot going to the last hole. I did not play the hole very bravely, and had to hole rather a good putt to get a four. I do not think Johnny troubled to putt out. He was a little nearer than I was, but not stoney. Anyhow, that was the conclusion of a lucky champions.h.i.+p for me.

This reference to the far greater importance, in those days, of the bra.s.sey reminds me of a queer notion that Johnny Laidlay had. If he had a big match to play he always bought a new bra.s.sey for it. His theory was that he could play better with one that was strange to his hand. If this paradox is at all to be explained it must be by psychic, rather than physical reasons. I take it to mean that, just because the club was strange to his hand, the strangeness subconsciously suggested to him the need for a closer keeping of the eye on the ball. And the subconscious suggestions are always the best. I may be quite wrong, but that is the only explanation I can find for it. But in this again we see the vastly greater importance of the bra.s.sey in the days when the gutta-percha b.a.l.l.s were used. It was equally important with those eclipses with which I won both these champions.h.i.+ps. Johnny Ball and Johnny Laidlay always stuck to the gutties, I think. Certainly the latter did, and so would I too, had the old short course at North Berwick been my chief golfing haunt; for there the value of the pitch shot was out of all proportion greater than on the larger courses elsewhere. But as for the reason why the bra.s.sey was so much more in vogue then, it has been rather misunderstood. It was not because you drive so much further off the tee with the rubber-cored b.a.l.l.s than with the gutties--if both are hit dead true there is not a mighty difference in this. But it is because you can drive the rubber-cored b.a.l.l.s so very much further with the iron clubs than you could the gutties. That is the great difference. Ironing range means a considerably longer distance with the rubber-cores than with the solid b.a.l.l.s, and the distance gained by taking a bra.s.sey instead of a driving mas.h.i.+e or a cleek is as nothing compared with what it used to be.

It is very difficult to draw a correct comparison between these courses of St. Andrews and Hoylake, then and now, in respect of the difficulties that each presented to the golfer. The whins at St. Andrews encroached, on what is now either the clear ground of the course, or is dotted only with occasional trappy bunkers amongst which the ball often finds quite a good lie, in such a dense ma.s.s that a wandering ball was hardly worth the trouble of looking for among them. At Hoylake the little rushes, which are now scarcely to be regarded as a hazard at all, used to be very dense too, and in the summer and autumn a tough long gra.s.s grew among them, so that your ball lay as if in a plover's nest, and sometimes it took you several strokes to get out. It was a horrid hazard. Then at some of the earlier and later holes of the course the remaining posts and rails of the disused racecourse were very vexing. To find yourself tight up against a post was only a little less annoying than to hit it with a full shot and to find your ball come dancing back to you or flying past your head as if it meant to brain you. All these things happened. Then the rabbit holes were more numerous and came farther out on the course. It was about this time that I was moved to much fury in course of a match by seeing my ball lying at the bottom of a burrow, where I could not reach it, and, when I was on the point of dropping another ball with loss of stroke (as was specifically permitted by the local rule regarding rabbit holes), being told, "You mayn't do that--it's a lost ball." "Lost, be d----d," I said. "What d'you mean by lost? Why there it is: you can see it for yourself." "Yes," said the other, "but a ball is lost unless you can garther it"--he was a Scot, with a patriotic accent, and he spoke of the ball as if it were a daisy or other flower. I concluded the round under protest and a cloud of wrath; and, what made the cloud blacker--the Committee upheld the view of the "gartherer." Possibly they may have been right, but certainly I did not think so at the time.

CHAPTER XVII

THE FIRST GOLF IN AMERICA

In the autumn of 1887 I did a very foolish thing: I went to America. I do not by any means imply that it is not an essential part of a liberal education to visit that great country, nor do I mean that it would be any act of foolishness on the part of a golfer to go there now, but I do mean that in my own golfing circ.u.mstances, and in the golfing conditions of the States at that time--which was a condition of no golf at all--it was very silly of me to go away from golf for so long. For that is what it involved. I was abroad for several months. At that date there was no golf in the States. I did not touch a club while I was there; and after I came back, after this long while of letting the hand grow unfamiliar with the club, the game never came so easy to me again. From that experience I believe that it may be taken as a maxim by all golfers who have learnt the game as boys, that they run a risk of losing a measure of skill and confidence, which they may never regain, if they do not touch a club for many months together. You see, this game that a man has grown up with, learning it as his muscles grow, so that it is more or less literally true that he has "grown into it," is rather different from the game that he learns later, after his muscles have set. The effect of going away from golf for a long time is that you lose some of these lessons that you have acquired as you grew; you have then to re-learn them, so far as you may, as if they were a new acquisition that you had to take possession of after you have finished growing; and you never acquire quite the same unconscious and instinctive grasp of them.

I went to America again the following year. But it did not matter then.

The harm had been done; the first and best lessons, or a large number of them, were lost--their teaching laboriously and only partially to be regained. And on that second visit I actually did take out some clubs.

It is a condition of things hardly to be realized now, but at that time there was not, to my knowledge, such a thing as a golf club or a golf ball in the United States. Canada had its established Clubs and courses at Quebec and Montreal. Probably somewhere, in secret places, some few Scots were pursuing their national pastime, on very "natural" courses, in the States too: it is impossible to think that it must not have been so. But probably their sanity was shrewdly doubted, and they did not court the public eye. As for "natural" courses, the whole boundless prairies at certain seasons invite the knocking of the golf ball about on them.

On this my second visit to America it had been suggested, I think by Mr.

"Bob" Purdey, with whom I stayed near Meadowbrook, on Long Island, that I should bring some clubs over and show the people what sort of a game golf was. But I went first to Mexico and subsequently to California, leaving the clubs in New York the while, and when I came back sundry members of the Meadowbrook Club turned out on a certain Sunday to see me give an exhibition show. We cut some holes in the soil, probably with carving knives, and I proceeded to instruct them, by precept and example, as to what golf meant. I cannot think that my exposition was very effective. They did not seem to think that it meant very much. They tried shots for themselves, and the result of those trials was not such as to give them a very exalted opinion of golf. The most favourable criticism that I can recall was that "it might be a good game for Sundays." I do not think it was extravagant praise.

I believe that was the first time golf was ever played in the States, though there may, of course, have been these secret Scots, as I have said. However, the Meadowbrook people were so far impressed as to ask me to send them out some clubs, when I got back--which I did, from the shop of Peter Paxton, then at Eastbourne. But what became of those clubs I never heard. Neither they nor my excellent example inspired America with golfing zeal. That great country had to wait before awaking to a true sense of the merits of the great game. But time has its revenges and the awakening has come. Also, at the moment of writing, it has the effect of making England conscious that she must "Wake up"; for that twenty-year-old Mr. Ouimet has just taken the American champions.h.i.+p, in a manner that has made history, out of what seemed the securely holding hands of either Ray or Vardon.

I think it was in 1888, soon after I came back from America, that I had my first match of any public note with Johnny Laidlay. I think it was the Town Council or some other people anxious to attract golfers to North Berwick--is it conceivable now that there should be a desire to attract more?--that gave some prizes for a scratch tournament open to all amateurs. Johnny Laidlay persuaded me to enter (he was my host for the occasion), and he gave me a good hammering in the final bout. For we both survived till the final, and I remember that, starting out, we both played badly enough for a hole or two. Then I lighted a pipe and smoked it, and it is a sign of how times have changed that one of the Scottish papers, commenting on the match, said, "At this point Mr. Hutchinson lit a pipe and smoked it and actually did not remove it from his mouth while playing the strokes--a thing never seen before in a big match." That seems queer comment at this time of day, when the incense of tobacco curls perpetually upward from the pipe of champion Ray and when the cigarette of Harold Hilton is like the fire that is never quenched. But the soothing of the nerves and accuracy of game that I had hoped to follow from the lighting of that particular pipe did not ensue. Mr.

Laidlay found his game, while I was still looking vainly for mine, and he hammered me, if I remember right, pretty easily. The reporters were fairly out after me that day. They criticised the pipe unfavourably, and then one of them recorded a painful incident of the game in the following terse and pregnant sentence: "Here Mr. Hutchinson broke his niblick, his favourite club." I do not know whether this literary gentleman had seen me in bunkers and niblicking out of them so frequently that he inferred the niblick to be the club that I most loved to have in hand; at all events, that was his comment, and it went home.

I think they must have had a golfing reporter at this time with a vein of ironic humour about him, for it was then, or nearly then, that one of them wrote about Captain w.i.l.l.y Burn: "Here the Captain hit one of his characteristic shots--far into the whins!" Whether it all was irony or innocence we did not know, for this commentator did his good work by stealth and we never found him out.

I was in no way surprised at losing that match with Mr. Laidlay, especially at North Berwick, where he was very strong. But I did lose a match about this time which I had not thought of losing, and by its loss did a little towards the making of golfing history. All history is curiously made. The coming of a little sandy-haired boy from Northam village to do the work that an odd boy does about our house near Northam village is not an incident that looks big with history, but when the little boy's name is known to be J.H. Taylor, the historical importance becomes evident. He left that "odd boy" work and went as a gardener's a.s.sistant, where, for a short while, we lost sight of him. But then he was put on as an a.s.sistant on the Westward Ho! links in aid of Sowden, the old Californian Forty-niner, who looked after the green, or left it to look after itself. We pa.s.sed the time of day with him, quite as if we were his equals, with no notion of his future greatness. Then the Northam village players (I hardly know whether their Club was formally inst.i.tuted by that date) said they would like to play the Royal North Devon Club a match. I was put to play Taylor. I did not think much about the job. I had hardly seen him play a stroke before. Going to the very first hole I remember a shot of his with a cleek: it went low; I thought he had half topped it; but it continued going. It had seemed certain to fall into the bunker guarding the green. But it carried that bunker and lay close to the hole. Again and again I found the same deceptive low-flying shot going a great deal further than I had expected it to. I began to realize then that it was because of his stance, with the ball so very far back towards his right. I also began to realize that I was a hole or two down. I did not play well; really, at that date, I ought to have beaten him. But he was one up with four to play, and then I laid him a stimy. He had two for the half. But instead of putting round, as all ordinary men of experience would, he tried to loft, for the hole, with his ordinary--and his only--flat iron. He just failed: but he holed the next putt, though he was not dead. Finally he beat me--I think at the last hole--and I congratulated him, as in duty bound, adding that when he knew a little more he would not be trying to loft stimies when he was one up and had two for the half. So I said, thinking to be wise, whereas it was I really who did not know--not knowing of what Taylor even then, and even with a flattish iron, was capable in the way of putting stop on the ball.

CHAPTER XVIII

HOW I LOST THE CHAMPIONs.h.i.+P AND PLAYED THE MOST WONDERFUL SHOT IN THE WORLD

In 1888 I lost the amateur champions.h.i.+p at Prestwick, and I lost it badly. I do not mean by that that I lost it to a bad player. It was Andy Stuart who knocked me out, and for his game I have always had a high respect. But I do not think that either of us played very well in that match. I know that I did not. For one thing (or for two things) I topped two tee-shots running, and one of them was going to the "Himalayas Coming In," which, as all who know Prestwick will realize, is not a good place to choose for a tee-shot "along the carpet." He was three up and five to play, and I worried him down to one up and two to play, but he did the seventeenth hole better than I and finished by laying me a stimy. But I do not think I should have holed the putt anyhow--I was by no means dead--and at all events he won the hole and so the match.

And then the next morning, when he was stropping his razor, he cut his hand so severely that it was against the doctor's advice that he played at all, but play he did, and seeing that he was far from his best by reason of this damaged hand and that it was Johnny Ball that he had to play, it is no great wonder that he was defeated; and he had all my sympathy. He had my sympathy by reason both of his damaged hand and of his defeat, but still I did think that if he were going to cut his hand at all, it would have been as well that he should have done so the morning before. In that case I, and not he, might have been up against Johnny on the morrow.

I have no reason to look back on that match with pride, but I remember it with special interest, because it had one of the most extraordinary incidents in it that ever did happen in any match at golf. And this notable incident was as follows. Going to the hole after the Himalayas going out, which was much the same then as it is now, save that the green was not levelled up and that the tee-shot probably did not run as far, I sliced my second very badly, right over the hillocks on the right of the green. I went over the ridge, with my caddie, to play the ball, and pitched it over, with a loft, to the place where I thought the green to be. Then I ran up to the top of the ridge, and looked, but could see no ball. I asked then, as I came down over the ridge, where the ball was. There was a small concourse of perhaps a score of spectators. "Oh,"

they said, "the ball has not come over." "Not come over!" I repeated, filled with astonishment. "Why, I know it has!" As a matter of fact it had been lofted high into the air and both I and the caddie had seen it with the most perfect distinctness. Still, it appeared that it was not there; it almost seemed as if the ordinary operations of Nature's laws had been suspended and the solid gutty had been dissolved into thin air in mid flight.

Then, as we all were looking about, in much surprise, a man spoke up. He was a Mr. Kirk, a townsman of St. Andrews and a fine golfer. He took part in the first amateur champions.h.i.+p when it was played at St.

Andrews, but he had come to this one as a spectator only. He said, "Well--I did think I felt a tug at my pocket." (By this time we all were very much intrigued to imagine what could have happened to the ball.) And at that he looked into the outside breast pocket of his coat; and there the ball lay, on his handkerchief, like an egg in a nest.

Has a more wonderful thing ever happened at golf? I, at all events, have never heard of any more extraordinary series of small marvels ever taking place. In the first instance it was wonderful enough that the ball should thus plump down so cleanly and neatly into the pocket at all; then that none of the score or so of watchers should have seen it; next, that not even the man into whose pocket it thus plumped should have noticed it as it came down, imperilling his very nose and eyes; and, finally, that it should have landed so gently that he did not actually realize that anything had struck him--only "fancied he felt something tug at his pocket." Naturally, if it were not for the cloud of witnesses, I should never have ventured to tell the tale. My own character, if I have any, for veracity is not nearly high enough to stand such a strain.

These are the facts; and then of course arose the question as to what should be done with the ball. As it happened, it did not arise in a form very acute, because Andy Stuart was well on the green in two and I, in Mr. Kirk's pocket, standing on the edge of the green, in three. We agreed finally that the pocket should be emptied where the pocketer stood, and from there I played out the hole and lost it. It is almost a question whether such a shot as this did not deserve to win the hole.

Curiously enough the only other golfer I ever knew who played a ball into a man's pocket is Andy Stuart himself. He hit a full drive right into the coat tail pocket of Lord Lee, the Scottish Lord of Session. But his lords.h.i.+p was very far from being unaware, like Mr. Kirk, of the pocketing. He was quite painfully aware of it. As Andy was at that time at the Scottish Bar, it seems to me that it was a very injudicious stroke for him, as a rising young advocate, to play.

The curiosities of that great shot of mine are not exhausted yet. For a full quarter of a century I told that story, saying that not a soul had seen the ball come over the hill, and that, but for Mr. Kirk bethinking himself of the fancied tug at his pocket, I should have had to treat that ball as lost. And then, one day when I was waiting before the Clubhouse at Biarritz, there came up to me one whom I knew by sight only, Colonel Von Donop, of the Royal Engineers. He introduced himself, using as the medium of introduction that stroke and that ball. It appears that he, though I had not known it all those years, had been standing further along the ridge at a point whence he could see both me as I played the shot on the one side and the little crowd of spectators on the other. He saw the ball rise into the air, and also saw it drop, as he thought even at the time, into a spectator's pocket. He also saw the discussion and the search which took place when I came over the hill, and when I replied with some indignation to the statement that the ball had not gone over also. He was just about to come forward to explain what he had seen when Mr. Kirk found the ball and the incident terminated. It was the last and crowning act in the curious comedy, that I should discover, twenty-five years later, and in the south of France, that there had been an unsuspected spectator of that funny little episode in the West of Scotland.

Johnny Ball, thus defeating Andy Stuart, found himself in the final face to face with that very frequent foe, in this and after years, Johnny Laidlay. The latter had been playing very finely: he had won a tournament with a good entry at Carnoustie, and had picked up many medals in the Lothians, but he could not hold Johnny Ball in that final.

The Sa.s.senach seemed to have the better of the match all the way and won quite comfortably. The Hoylake folk had comfort at length in the long deferred fulfilment of their great hopes for the local hero, and certainly they have not to complain that he has disappointed them since.

There was something very attractive about the Prestwick golf at that time. Nor has it lost that special attraction since. The West of Scotland did not then, nor does it now, take the same general interest in golf as the East, but there was a very zealous and very friendly society of golfers belonging to the Prestwick club. It was the country of the Houldsworths, the iron people, who took the keenest interest in golf. Mr. William Houldsworth, known as Big Bill, was most kind to me when I was a boy at Westward Ho! He made frequent pilgrimages to that green. He was my first host at Prestwick, at his house of Mount Charles, some miles out, and I think looked on it as some disgrace that, coming from his house, I should lose the champions.h.i.+p. At Prestwick itself too, looking out on the fourteenth green, lived Mr. Whigham, the father of a family of great golfers, both the brothers and the sisters. And about the whole course there was, and still is, an air of friendliness. It is not great golf, but it is exceedingly pleasant golf and also it is exceedingly difficult golf. In the days of the "gutty" ball it was great, as well as good, golf, but the golf there has never, to me, worn the very business-like aspect of the East Coast golf. I do not say that it is any the worse for that--on the contrary. It lies in a district of more kindly climate and more rich pasturage than the East, and I remember one open champions.h.i.+p there when Willie Fernie, always a fellow with a ready jest, came in humorously lamenting that he had lost his ball twice "on the putting green." It was a sad gra.s.sy year that season, and if you might not actually lose the ball on the putting green itself, you might, and you did, spend many a minute in search for it only just off the green. No mowing could overtake the growth. And of course Prestwick has all the picturesqueness of the Clyde estuary--the Kyles of Bute, Arran and the rest of the professional natural beauties of that coast--for its setting.