Fifty Years of Golf Part 4

CHAPTER XII

THE BEGINNINGS OF THE AMATEUR CHAMPIONSHIP

Golf had jogged along very comfortably up to this time with its one championship, open to amateurs as to professionals, but never as yet won by an amateur. Then, in the winter of 1884-5 it occurred to some original genius of the Club at Hoylake--"why not a championship to be restricted to the amateurs?" I do not know whose great brain first flashed out the idea, but they wrote and explained it to me, asked me to serve on a Committee for the purpose, and gradually the scheme was licked into something more or less like shape. It was decided to hold, under the auspices of the Royal Liverpool Club, a tournament, under match play rules, open to all amateurs. The Club gave a handsome prize, or, rather, two prizes. I went up to Hoylake a little while before the affair came off, and there found the Committee in charge in something of a difficulty. Douglas Rolland had sent in his entry and they did not know how to deal with it. You see, at that date we had no definition of a professional, nor of an amateur, and had to decide on the a.n.a.logy of other sports. I was all for accepting Rolland's entry then, and I am of the same opinion now--that it ought to have been received.

His offence was that, having come in second to Jack Simpson in the previous year for the open championship, he had accepted the second prize money, thereby violating the law common to several sports and pastimes forbidding an amateur to receive a money prize when in compet.i.tion with professionals. That would have been all plain sailing but for the unfortunate fact that it was discovered that Johnny Ball, some years before, and while still quite a boy, had played himself into the prize list at an open championship and had been offered, and without a thought about the matter had accepted, a sum that I think amounted to no less than ten shillings. It was, of course, unthinkable that Johnny should be deprived of his birthright as an amateur for such a boyish error as this. There never was the faintest suspicion of professionalism about any act of Johnny Ball's extraordinary golfing life, but technically, at that date, his case and Rolland's were very much on all fours. I saw that the Committee, or a majority of them, were resolved to reject Rolland's entry. I did not care to be a member of a Committee which rejected, for a cause I could not quite approve, the entry of one who would certainly be a very formidable compet.i.tor for a tournament which I had a distant hope that I might possibly win. I therefore asked leave to resign from the Committee, before the vote was taken on the point, and did so, with perfectly amiable sentiments all round. I have been rather long-winded perhaps in this explanation, but I wanted to make clear to those who are not informed about it the reason why the present amateur definition is drafted just as it is, with a time limit beyond which--that is to say before sixteen years of age--a man shall be held guiltless of having done any action to spoil his amateur status in playing for a money prize in compet.i.tion with professionals.

So that was settled, and Rolland's entry disallowed. It pa.s.sed off with less trouble than I had expected, perhaps just because Rolland was such a thoroughly good fellow, whether he were professional or amateur, and not at all of that small spirit which is apt to take offence where none is meant.

We set to work to play our tournament. It was considered best not to ent.i.tle it a championship, seeing that it was the installation of a single club only, and had no official recognition. Funny things began to happen from the start. It gave much delight to the men of Hoylake that I should have drawn, as my first foe, my old enemy at Westward Ho! Arthur Molesworth. Him I managed to beat with tolerable ease. I think he had even then begun to lose the sting of his game. After that I rather forget my fortunes until the semi-final heat, when I came up against Johnny Ball. In a previous heat, by the way, he had committed the crime of parricide, knocking out his own father, who put up a stout fight against him, nevertheless. Johnny and I had a great contest, and I thought he was going to beat me, for he was two up at the turn; but I began to play rather well from there onwards and beat him by two upon the last green.

In that tournament we had not the arrangement which was made as soon as the amateur championship was put on an official footing--that is to say, in the very next year--of all byes being played off in the first round.

The effect of that was that Alan Macfie, the other semi-finalist, had a bye in the morning. The final was decided in a single round to be played in the afternoon. I had been wound up to high concert pitch by that morning round with Johnny and could not play a bit in the afternoon.

Macfie, on the other hand, putted like a demon and never made a mistake, so very likely the result would have been just the same if I too had been idle all the morning. He beat me, I think, by eight holes.

So that was the conclusion of it, and really it was most unfortunate for Macfie that he had not official right to place his name at the head of the list of amateur champions, for this was in all respects, except the t.i.tle, equivalent to a championship. Leslie Balfour was not there, but Johnny Laidlay was. It was the first time that I made his acquaintance, though I did not have to play him. He was knocked out at an early period of the campaign. In fact I am pretty sure that he was not playing as fine a game then as he developed later. His putting, in particular, improved greatly, and so did the direction of his driving. His iron play was always, from the first, unsurpa.s.sed. I think that according to the arrangements of that tournament all ties must have gone on into the next round, for I well remember that Walter de Zoete tied twice with Macfie and was beaten by him on their third time of meeting, when Macfie, amongst other atrocities, did the short hole (the Rush Hole) in one. De Zoete went very strongly in the tournament. One of his victims was Mure Ferguson, whom he beat by eight and seven. There must, of course, have been something wrong here: I am not sure that gout would not come into the diagnosis.

And somewhere or other, among the crowd of lookers on at that tournament, with a heart very black with rage against me at my presumption in daring to beat the local hero, Johnny Ball, would have been a little boy of the name of Harold Hilton: a name to be heard of in later years.

[Ill.u.s.tration: John Ball.

(From a water-colour drawing by the late T. Hodge.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A.F. Macfie.

(From a water colour drawing by the late T. Hodge.)]

That was the beginning, the preface, the preliminary canter, of the amateur championship, and it is to the initiative and enterprise of the men of Hoylake in getting up that tournament and conducting it to success, that we owe all the fun and all the tears we have had out of that championship since. No doubt it, or something like it, would have come sooner or later, whether or no, but it was due to the Hoylake Club that it came just as soon as it did. In the later course of that year it was taken properly in hand: the chief Clubs in the Kingdom gave it their sanction and subscribed to buy a challenge cup for it; rules were drawn up; the definition of an amateur was framed, and the first amateur championship meeting on these lines was put on the programme to be held at St. Andrews the following year.

Now, seeing that this veracious and highly egotistic record aims at being a serious contribution to the golfing history of modern times, as well as a sketch of my little personal share in it, it might be worth while just to note the names of the Clubs which subscribed for that amateur championship cup. For the subscribers were all the princ.i.p.al Clubs of Great Britain at that time, and anyone who has not looked over the list lately may very well feel something of the same surprise that the little boy experienced when he found himself in Heaven--surprise both at some of those who were there and also at some of those who were not there. All the more notable of the great inland golf Clubs, for instance, are conspicuous by their absence; and for the perfectly sound reason that they had not yet come into being, nor indeed had inland golf yet begun to be deemed at all worthy of consideration. There are, to be sure, the Royal Blackheath and the Royal Wimbledon. These are great in respect and veneration, but they no longer lead. St. George's at Sandwich was admitted to the sacred number of contributing Clubs many years later, when it came into existence and when its merits were proved well to warrant the inclusion of its course among the championship greens. And during all the first years of the amateur championship's existence it was my duty, acting on instructions from the Royal North Devon Club, to point out how very worthy was Westward Ho! to be the scene for that encounter, and also (but this was ever received with a bland smile in which, after a course of years, I began to join) how very central was its situation and how easy of approach from all directions.

It has taken a lapse of many years and a more moving eloquence than mine to convince the management of the championship on these so obvious points; but now that they are convinced they accord the links of the West all their due recognition. The original subscribing Clubs then, who gave the weight of their authority to the new championship, were the following:--Royal and Ancient; Royal Liverpool; Royal Albert, Montrose; Royal North Devon; Royal Aberdeen; Royal Blackheath; Royal Wimbledon; Alnmouth; North Berwick, New Club; Panmure, Dundee; Prestwick Club; Bruntsfield Links, Edinburgh; Dalhousie Club; Edinburgh Burghers; Formby; Gullane; Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers; Innerleven; King James VIth, Perth; Kilspindie; Tantallon; Troon; West Lancashire.

Is it not the case, that there are surprises in this list, both in the form of those who are in it and those who are not?

CHAPTER XIII

ON GOLF BOOKS AND GOLF b.a.l.l.s

In the year 1886 I perpetrated a book on golf. The only excuse to be made for it is that which was offered in another famous instance, that "it was a very little one." It was a much more notorious thing in those days to write a book about golf than it is now, for who is there now who has not done so? But in that golden age the whole bibliography of the game was comprised, I think, in four volumes--_Golf, a Royal and Ancient Game_, by that gallant old warrior at the game, Mr. Robert Clark; Stewart's _Golfiana Miscellanea_; and two small didactic treatises, the one by Chambers and the other by Forgan. I had a great many compliments paid me on my little book, _Hints on Golf_, when it first came out. I sent the ma.n.u.script to Mr. "Bill" Blackwood, and he eagerly consented to publish it, "for," he wrote, "I am sure there must be something in that book. Ever since I read it I have been trying to play according to its advice, and the result is that I've entirely lost any little idea of the game I ever had." That was gratifying praise, and an edition or two was soon sold out. Then it occurred to me to ill.u.s.trate its wisdom with figures in single lines. A little later I was dancing with a young lady I had just been introduced to in London and asked her whether she played golf and she replied, "Oh, yes, we all play, and we learn out of a most idiotic little book we've got." "Ah, yes," I said, "is it a little book with single line figures ill.u.s.trating it?" "Yes, yes," she said eagerly. "That's it. Do you know it?" "A little," I replied.

One remark in the book took the popular fancy--that "Golf is not agriculture." It was made to point the moral that the golfer should replace his divots. But the only pa.s.sage that seems to me at all worth quoting at length, although I did write the whole book myself, is one which ill.u.s.trates the temporary and historical importance of a controversy which is entirely forgotten now. The pa.s.sage is Number I. of "The Miseries of Golf," and runs thus:--

"Discovering, as you walk down to the tee, to start a foursome, that your partner has never in his life played a round with a 'putty'

(eclipse) ball, while you yourself know that you cannot play within one half of your game with a 'gutty' (gutta-percha) ball."

All through the early eighties a good deal of experimenting had been going on with the view of discovering a subst.i.tute for gutta-percha for the golf ball. When I first went to St. Andrews, Commander Stewart was there, having just produced his "Stewart Patent" b.a.l.l.s. They were of some composition, and were filled with steel filings. They had some merits, but were very heavy. All golf b.a.l.l.s used to be numbered then: 27 and 28 were the usual sizes, supposed to signify the weight in drachms, and I remember Logan White telling Commander Stewart, "We tried weighing your b.a.l.l.s yesterday. We put a 27 of yours in one side of the balance and we had to put a 28 gutty and the coal-scuttle in the other, to make it level." Slight exaggeration, but pointing towards a truth!

It was the fault of these b.a.l.l.s that they were too heavy. Then some firm in Edinburgh produced a ball called the Eclipse, and after several modifications they put out a ball that had distinct qualities of its own, in some points superior to gutta-percha b.a.l.l.s. They would not carry so well--they were dead, and with wonderfully little resilience when dropped on a stone--soft, so that a finger and thumb squeeze could compress them sensibly, but the compression came out again. That was one of the merits of this ball, which inevitably--its qualities being such as they were--received the nickname of "putty," to rhyme pleasantly with "gutty": it would come out again, resuming its spherical shape without any disturbance of contour, even after the most desperate hammering on the head with an iron. It was indestructible. Then it was a wonderful ball for keeping its line on the putting green--far the best putting ball that ever has come into being during the half-century or so of golf that I have known. But the quality, which perhaps was its highest virtue, was that it did not go off the line nearly as much as the gutty when pulled or sliced. I used to play with a "putty," as a rule, when I played against Old Tom. The old man hated the ball, as indeed did most of the professionals. Trade reasons weighed heavily with many of them, but I do not think that the old man was commercial-minded enough for these to have the slightest effect with him. He might have made a large fortune had he possessed but a little more of this spirit, but it was in his utter freedom from it that much of his charm consisted. Still he cordially hated "the potty," as he called it. Of course it was possible to pull or slice the putty, if you played badly enough, though it did not take the cut nearly as freely as the gutty, and whenever I pulled or sliced one of them to perdition the old man's delight knew no bounds.

The fun would come twinkling out of his eyes under their s.h.a.ggy brows and he would say, "Eh, they potties--I thocht they potties never gaed aff the line."

Willie Fernie was the only one of the professionals who ever condescended much to them, and I have been playing with him when he used a putty going out at St. Andrews, in the teeth of the wind, and then took a gutty coming home down wind. But he did not make much of it. The two b.a.l.l.s required such a very different touch for the short game that it was very difficult to go from one to the other--it is in that that the point lies of the above quotation from my "idiotic little book." But Willie Fernie was a man of infinite ingenuity. The ball, evidently from what I have said of it, was a fine ball against the wind--it kept so low and so straight. On hard ground it would make up in its run for its loss in carry, and therefore it was a better ball on the flatter than on the more mountainous links. But in this account of its qualities, I have also indicated its defects. Running as it did when it pitched, it was an impossible ball to stop on the green off a lofted shot; and just as it would not take much cut, so as to go far to right or left when heeled or toed, so it would not take a cut when one purposely tried to put a cut on to stop it.

On the whole I liked the ball. It was very economical, because it would last for ever and because its soft substance did not inflict such damage on the clubs as the hard "gutty." I won both the first two amateur championships with a putty ball. I do not mean that I used the same ball in each. But Andy Stuart had a putty ball with which--the same identical ball--he won three St. Andrews' medals. The great argument against them was the difficulty aforesaid of stopping them off the pitch. That, and their lack of carry, were their weak points: their straight travel, especially off the putter, was their strong point. And then, all at once, the manufacturers began to make them less good. Just what happened I never knew. I think that they changed the mixture in order to get them harder, and, so, more like the "gutties"; but whatever the reason, the effect was that they lost much of their merits and never overcame their defects. Result--exit the putty ball towards the end of the eighties, and the gutty holding the market until the Americans sent us what at first were called Haskells; which is another and more modern story.

I had written, at the commencement of my little book, that I had seen a recent advertis.e.m.e.nt of an outfitting firm, "The Game of Golf Complete, in a Box." It suggested a _multum in parvo_. I went on to say, "if anyone would only write us 'The Art of Golf, complete, in a Book'--why, what more could be left to wish for?" But I added, "I am afraid no one will ever be quite bold enough to attempt that." And hardly were those words published before out came Sir Walter Simpson, greatly daring, with a book actually called _The Art of Golf_. He did not add "complete, in a Book"; but no doubt that is how he meant it. And an admirably witty and humorous book it was, and is. Its wit and humour abide with us. Just what value it ever had as an education in the art I hardly know. Walter Simpson, poor fellow (he died while comparatively a young man), never was a first-cla.s.s golfer, though he was a first-cla.s.s companion for a round. We who were pleased to rate ourselves the best of the amateurs could give him about a third, and there were many strokes in the game of which he had no idea, but his book, like himself, is excellent company.

Quite a modern book, having the same t.i.tle (which is rather a pity), has come out lately, by Joshua Taylor, the champion's brother. I will refrain from comparisons. But I suppose that at the date I am writing of, the world, for the time being, had enough of golf literature, for I cannot think of any work in book form on the great subject until the Badminton Golf Volume, in 1890; and I remember an article of Professor Tait's written in the late eighties in which he speaks of "the magnificent Clark, the voluminous Simpson and the sardonic Hutchinson,"

with the suggestion that these three virtually comprised the whole of the bibliography of golf as generally known to the public. How far pens have travelled over how many of the reams of the paper so appropriately termed foolscap in the quarter of a century or so since, we may consider with much amazement--and here am I still piling up the leagues!

CHAPTER XIV

THE FIRST AMATEUR CHAMPIONSHIP

The first amateur championship, as by law established, was played at St.

Andrews, and started for me, as I suppose did most things at that time of life, on the note of comedy. It must be understood that this inst.i.tution meant a great gathering of clans and of clansmen not very well known to each other. I dare say some of us had our own ideas that no one was likely to be unearthed from the dark places able to upset reputations more or less established; but everything was possible. I had, carrying for me, one of the numerous family of Greig at St.

Andrews; I presume some connection of the fine golfer of that name and of his brother, the lion-voiced starter. Of course, the prospects of the championship were the great subject of discussion, and during my first match of the tournament--I think things must have been going fairly easily, and that I had my opponent pretty well in hand--he said to me, "There's a mon Fogie, frae Earlsferry, and they say he's gaein' tae win the chompionship. He's a terrible fine player an' he daes na' mind the gallery a dom." This was terrific news to me. By "the mon Fogie" I understood him to mean a Mr. Foggo of Earlsferry, whose name I had noticed on the list of the draw, and had noticed further that this Mr.

Foggo would be my own fate in the second round of the tournament. That is, of course, always on the a.s.sumption that he and I both survived; and of his survival, after Greig's remarks, I had no doubt. When I came in I heard to my surprise, as well, I may say, as to my relief, that this terror of Earlsferry had actually been defeated and knocked out on the last green by Dr. McCuaig. Of Dr. McCuaig I did not know very much; and then, on the evening of that day, it was reported to me that he had said, "I shall beat Horace Hutchinson to-morrow. I believe he is a good player, but he is a young player. You'll see; I shall beat him." This was retailed to me, and whether it were a true saying of the doctor's or whether the retailer had merely invented it to see how I should take it, and to raise my ire, I do not know to this day; but I do know that it did raise my ire, and that I went out in the morning with a very grim determination to play my hardest. I had no idea of any amateur starting out with the expectation that he was going to beat me, unless, indeed, it were Johnny Ball. I played steadily; the doctor was not at all at his best, and I won--I think it was the first seven holes. At all events, it was such a number as made the match a very comfortable one. The doctor took his beating in the best of spirits, and bore no ill-feeling whatever.

Altogether that was a comfortable championship. After the first thrill of the terror inspired by the reputation of "the mon Fogie," it went on oiled wheels. Mure Ferguson, I remember, whom I met in a later heat, was a hole up going to the eleventh, and I was a little anxious, but he let me win in the end, though only by a hole, and then it looked very much as if I should have to play Johnny Ball in the final--which was never to be regarded as a holiday. But the unexpected happened. In the semi-final he had to meet Henry Lamb. Henry Lamb was a beautiful golfer. It was he who invented the "bulger," that club with its convex face, off which the ball flew with a straightness that was a revelation. You see, before the bulger was invented, the faces of our wooden clubs, by the perpetual contact and hammering of the hard "gutty" b.a.l.l.s, always got worn away, so that instead of being flat, they were very decidedly concave. And you may understand what the effect of that gradient of face would be--to emphasize and aggravate every sin of heeling or toeing to which golfing flesh is heir. Therefore, the good influence of the bulger was not really so much in introducing the first convexity, though that in itself helped the ball to go straight off it, but it also corrected that fatal concavity which all clubs soon a.s.sumed of which the faces were flat to start with. Instead of being concave, after much battering, the face of the bulger became merely flat.

So it was a blessed invention; and as to its inventor, he was not only a player of a very fine and graceful game of golf, but he was also the most delightful fellow to play with that could be imagined. He had a temper which in its perfect serenity was a most valuable golfing a.s.set to himself, and also most valuable in the charm of the companionship which it brought into a round of golf with him. His mode of addressing the ball was remarkable, for he stood as if he were going to drive at an angle of at least forty-five degrees to the right of the hole. I remember, at some inland course in the South, where his strange method was not known, a caddie calling out to him as he was on the point of driving from the first tee: "Stop, stop, you're playing to the wrong hole." Henry Lamb gave the boy one of his sweetest and most lamb-like smiles, and proceeded to drive the ball two hundred yards straight down the middle of the course--to square leg. He used to swing round so far as he came down that really it was to the cricketer's square leg that he drove; and yet his style was a singularly graceful one, which seems as if it could not be. It was a singularly effective one no less, and he was a medallist on most of the courses then known to the golfer. Still, he was not a Johnny Ball. On that day, however, he proved himself a greater than Johnny Ball, who was far from being at his best, and when I came in from my own semi-final effort I learned, with a breath of even deeper relief than I had given to the shade of the defunct "mon Fogie,"

that Henry Lamb and not Johnny was my man for the final. Neither of us started well in that final round--it was only of eighteen holes in those days; but I began to get going after the fourth hole, and Henry Lamb was, I think, a little done after his match with Johnny. At all events, he let the holes slip away very quickly, and I had an easy win, on which he was the first to offer his congratulations--a very courteous gentleman!

The intelligent student of golfing history up to this period might very well note, and with some surprise, that whenever reference is made to Johnny Ball it always seems to be as of one disappointing expectation.

And that, in truth, was very much the case. Men of Hoylake used to come to me almost with tears in their eyes, because they knew that they had my full sympathy and understanding. They knew that I knew what a terror Johnny Ball really was on his own course and when playing his right game. But what afflicted them almost to hysterics was that he never seemed able to produce this wonderful best of his when he went away to play anywhere else than at home; and the consequence of that was that the other folk, the Scotsmen, laughed at them, saying: "This local idol of yours has feet of very poor clay"--or gibes to that effect. They took it very badly. It is hardly to be believed now, when we know what a brilliant lot of victories in all fields Johnny has to his credit, that he had to wait a very weary while, and to suffer a number of disappointments, before he began to come to his due. When he did come, he was not to hold nor to bind.

Johnny Laidlay did nothing effective in this first championship. He, too, had to "bide a wee" before he did all that was expected of him; but I made his much better acquaintance about this time and acquired the greatest respect for his game, especially for the accuracy and delicacy of his approaches with the mashie. It was a new club to me, and something of a revelation in its possibilities. For it would, of itself and without any special effort of the player, do all to the ball that might be done with our old irons only after a deal of cut had been carefully put on. I do not at all regret that labour; it was an excellent education; but there is no doubt that the mashie simplified the approaching problems. It made an easier game of it. I have been looking up the details of this championship, and find one of its "points" to have been the meeting of Johnny Ball and Johnny Laidlay, the first of very many encounters of its kind, resulting in the English Johnny's win by three and two. So that was the fate of the Scot; he fell by no unworthy hand. There is always consolation in this reflection.

Henry Lamb, as I read on the same record, had fought his way to the final over the corpses of some stout foes. The first round gave him a bye; but then he had to meet Mr. Charles Anderson, forgotten by golfers of to-day, but a stalwart in his time. Next, Harry Everard fell to him; and then he had a bigger man than either, especially at St. Andrews, in Leslie Balfour. He beat Leslie at the last hole. Then, in the semi-final, he beat Johnny Ball by no less than seven and six to play, and it was by the same sufficient margin that I defeated him. What Johnny can have been doing I hardly know. That he must have been playing some game widely different from his real one is very certain.

CHAPTER XV

MR. ARTHUR BALFOUR AND HIS INFLUENCE IN GOLF

It is not on first sight very obvious how the appointment of a statesman to the Chief Secretaryship for Ireland can have an intimate bearing on the history of the game of golf. Nevertheless that appointment, in the year 1886, of Mr. Arthur Balfour had, in my humble judgment, an important influence and bearing on the game. It so happened that about this time an eminent weekly journal had propounded the statement that none but stupid people played golf, and even that the successful playing of golf demanded, as an essential condition, that the player should be stupid and dest.i.tute of all imagination and of all intellectual interests. It was rather an extravagant statement. At the same time also the office of the Irish Secretary was invested with a peculiar importance in the public eye. It was not long after the tragic affair in the Phoenix Park. Ireland was seething with murderous discontent. The man who accepted the secretaryship took his life in his hand with that acceptance, and this risk Mr. Balfour took with all his characteristic coolness and courage. He became at once, both on this account and because of his record as a still rather untried statesman, as a "philosophic doubter" and as a distinguished figure in a certain set of Society to which the name of "Souls" had been rather foolishly given, perhaps the most popular figure in politics. The public eye was upon him and it was known that this man of so many and so varied gifts was an enthusiastic golfer. He went round the links as an object lesson to contradict the unfortunate p.r.o.nouncement of the aforesaid respectable paper about the stupidity essential to the man who would confess himself a golfer.