Fore! Part 12

Gilman had played his usual steady game--nothing brilliant about it, but extremely dependable; and, as for Waddles, he had staggered along on the ragged edge of defeat both morning and afternoon, annoying his opponents as much as possible and winning quite as much with his head as with his clubs.

The time has come to say a few brief but burning words about the way friend Waddles plays the royal and ancient game of golf when there is anything in sight for the victor. I trust that when he reads this he will have the decency to remember that he had already cut my handicap to the quick, as it were.

To begin with, Waddles has no more form than an apple woman or a Cubist nude. He is so constructed that he cannot take a full swing to save his immortal soul. Everything has to be wrist and forearm with Waddles, but somehow or other he manages to snap his foolish little tee shots straight down the middle of the course, popping them high over the bunkers and avoiding all the traps and pits. The special providence that cares for taxicab drivers, sailors and drunken men seems to take charge of Waddles' ball in flight, imparting to it a tremendous overspin that gives it distance. I never saw Waddles square away at a drive without pitying him for his short, choppy swing; but he usually beats me about ten yards on account of the run that he gets. I never watched him jab at a putt without feeling certain that the ball was. .h.i.t too hard to stay in the hole; but stay it does. Waddles actually putts with an overspin, and his ball burrows like a mole, dropping into the cup as if made of lead.

His bra.s.sy shots are just pusillanimous--there is no other word which describes them accurately--but somehow they keep on bouncing toward the pin. His irons run half-way and creep the rest of the distance. He always gets better results than his shots deserve, and complains that he should have had more. This one little trick of his is enough to drive an opponent crazy. Every golfer knows the moral--no, immoral--effect of going up against some one who gets more out of every shot than he puts into it, and still is not satisfied. It is like sitting in a poker game with a man who draws four to a deuce, makes an ace full, wins the pot, and then wolfs because it wasn't four aces.

I never played with Waddles without feeling certain that I could show him up on the long game, and it was straining to do it that ruined me.

Trying to pick the tail feathers out of that lame duck has ruined many a golfer, the secret being that the duck isn't as lame as he looks.

Waddles makes 'em all press--a big factor in his match play; but there are others, and not nearly so legitimate.

Playing the game strictly on merit, observing all the little niceties of demeanour and the courtesies due an opponent, Waddles would be a desperately hard man to beat; but he does not stop at merit. When he is out to win he does not stop anywhere. He has made a lifelong study of the various ways in which an opponent may be annoyed and put off his game, and he is the acknowledged master of all of them.

For instance, if he plays Doc Jones, who is chatty and conversational and likes to talk between shots, Waddles never opens his mouth once, but plods along with a scowl on his face and his lower lip sticking out a foot. Before long the poor little Doc begins to wonder whether he has said anything to hurt Waddles' feelings--and that is the end of Jones.

But if Waddles plays Chester Hodge, who believes that the secret of a winning game is concentration, he is a perfect windmill, talking to Chester every minute, telling him funny stories, asking him questions, and literally conversing him off his feet.

Bill Mulqueen is nervous and impatient and hates to wait on his second shots; so when Waddles plays him he drives short and takes five minutes to play the odd, while Bill fumes and frets and acc.u.mulates steam for the final explosion, which never fails to strew the last nine with his mangled remains. On the other hand, old Barrison is deliberation itself, and Waddles beats him by playing his own shots quickly and then crowding Barry--hurrying him up, nagging at him, riding him from shot to shot, trying to speed up an engine that can't be speeded without racking itself to pieces. Joe Bowhan hates to have any one moving about the tee when he is setting himself to drive. Waddles licks him by washing his ball fresh on every hole. Joe can't see him, but he can hear him scouring away behind him. "Hand-laundered out of the contest again" is what Joe tells us when he comes into the clubhouse.

Perhaps the cruelest thing Waddles ever did was in the finals of the Spring Handicap against young Archie Gatter. The kid was inclined to think fairly well of himself and his game, but on the day of the match Waddles lugged a visiting golf architect round the course with him, planning improvements in the way of traps and bunkers, discussing various kinds of gra.s.s for the greens, arguing about soil, and paying no attention whatever to the wretched Archie--not even watching him make his shots. It broke the boy's heart to be ignored so completely, and he shot the last nine holes in a fat fifty-seven, finishing a total wreck.

These are only a few of Waddles' little villainies, and the fact that he is a consistent winner at match play bears out the theory that the best study of golf is golfers--splitting it fifty-fifty with the late Mr.

Pope.

The most exasperating thing about Waddles is the bland, unconscious manner in which he perpetrates these outrages upon his opponents. He never seems aware that he is doing anything wrong or taking an unfair advantage; he pleads thoughtlessness if driven into a corner--and gets away with it too. You have to know Waddles very well before you are certain that every little movement has a meaning all its own and is part of a cold-blooded and deliberate plan of campaign.

With all these things in mind, I had a hunch that Friday's match with Cyril would be worth watching, and I was at the clubhouse at nine in the morning. Cyril and the Major were already there, driving practise b.a.l.l.s.

It was generally understood that the matches in the semi-finals would start at nine-thirty, and promptly on the dot Jay Gilman and the Major were on their way--both of them off to perfect drives.

I waited to follow Cyril and Waddles--and a long, weary wait it was.

There is nothing which secures the angora so neatly and completely as to be all dressed up and keyed up with nowhere to go. Have you ever seen a boxer fretting and chafing in his corner, waiting for the champion to put in an appearance; and did you ever stop to think that the champion, in his dressing room, was counting on the effect of that nervous period of inactivity? Golf is a game which demands mental poise, and Cyril was losing his, minute by minute. He prowled all over the place, searching for Waddles; he walked out and looked down the road toward town; he practiced putting--and hit every shot too hard. If he had not been an Englishman, and schooled to keep his feelings to himself, I think he would have said something of a blistering nature.

It was eleven-fifteen when Waddles arrived, dripping apologies from every pore. Had Cyril understood that nine-thirty was the hour? Well, wasn't that a shame--too bad he hadn't telephoned or something! Waddles stated--and there was and is no reason to doubt his word--that he thought the matches were scheduled for the afternoon. He dawdled in the locker room for a scandalously long time, while Cyril made little journeys to the first tee and back again, growing warmer and warmer with each trip.

When Waddles finally emerged, neatly swathed in flannels, he suggested lunch. Cyril replied a bit stiffly that he never took food in the middle of the day.

"And a hard match in front of you, too," said Waddles. "I couldn't think of starting without a sandwich. Do you mind waiting while I have one?"

Cyril lied politely, but it was a terrible strain on him, and Waddles consumed a sandwich, a gla.s.s of milk and forty-five minutes more. Then he had to have one of his irons wrapped where the shaft had split--another straw for the camel's back. By this time the Major and Jay had finished their match, the Major winning on the sixteenth green.

They joined the gallery, after the usual ceremonies at the nineteenth hole.

"Are you ready?" asked Waddles, breezing out on the first tee--and that was rather nervy, too, seeing that Cyril hadn't been anything else for three mortal hours.

"After you, sir," said the boy, short and sharp. He knew that he was getting "the work," and he resented it.

It always suits Waddles to have the honour. He likes to shoot first because his tee shot usually makes an opponent sore. He popped one of his d.i.n.ky little drives into the air, but instead of dropping into the bunker it floated beyond it to the middle of the course and ran like a scared rabbit.

"No distance!" grumbled Waddles, slapping his club on the tee. "No distance. I'm all out of luck to-day."

Well, that was no more than rubbing it in by word of mouth. It produced the desired effect, because Cyril nearly broke himself in two in an attempt to beat that choppy half-arm swing. He swung much too hard, didn't follow through at all, and the ball sliced into a trap far up to the right.

"Do you know what you did then?" asked Waddles. "You tried to kill it, you didn't follow through, and----"

"And I sliced. I know perfectly, thanks." And Cyril started down the course, with Waddles tagging at his hip and telling him what was the matter with his swing. Coming from a man who never took a full-arm wallop at a ball in his life, criticism must have seemed superfluous. I couldn't see Cyril's face, but his ears reddened.

Waddles slapped a bra.s.sy to the edge of the putting green, but Cyril, trying for distance out of a heel print, took too much sand and barely got back on the course again. His third reached the green, whereupon Waddles promptly laid his ball dead for a four. Cyril missed a twenty-footer and lost the first hole.

Again Waddles spatted out a drive that narrowly escaped a cross bunker, but it struck on a hard spot and ran fully one hundred yards before it stopped. Waddles knows every hard spot on the course and governs himself accordingly.

Cyril followed through this time--followed through so vigorously that the ball developed a hook. A cross wind helped it along into the rough gra.s.s, leaving him a nasty second shot over shrubbery and trees. It hadn't stopped rolling before Waddles was talking again.

"You know what you did then? Too much right hand; and your club head----"

"Precisely," said Cyril, and left the tee almost on a dog-trot; but Waddles trotted with him, explaining what had happened to the club head. He was so earnest about it, so eager to be of a.s.sistance, so persistent, that Cyril did not know how to take him. Then, to add to the boy's discomfiture, Waddles played a perfect spoon shot, taking advantage of the wind, and the ball stopped six feet from the pin. Only a miracle could have saved Cyril after that, and there were no miracles left in his system. His ball carried low from the rough, struck the limb of a tree and glanced out of bounds. He played another, which dropped into thick weeds, and then picked up, conceding the hole. All the way to the third tee Waddles expounded the theory of the niblick shot out of gra.s.s, pausing only to spat another perfect ball down the course.

It was here that Cyril left the wood in his bag and took out a cleek. He wanted distance and he needed direction, our third hole calling for a well-placed tee shot; but he sliced just enough to put him squarely behind the largest tree on the entire course.

"I was sure you'd do that," said Waddles, sympathetically. "It's really a wooden club shot, and when you took your iron I knew you were afraid of it. Changing clubs is always a sign of weakness, don't you think so?"

Cyril mumbled something and started down the path, and at this point the old Major, who had been lingering in the background, swung in behind him with his first and last bit of advice.

"Keep your hair on, dear boy," he bleated. "Keep your hair on. Whatever happens, don't get waxy."

Cyril grunted but didn't say anything, and the Major dropped to the rear again, making queer little noises in his throat.

"Now the ideal--shot on this--hole," panted Waddles, overtaking his victim, "is a little bit--farther to the left. A hook--doesn't hurt you--as much--as a slice----"

"I'm not hurt yet!" snapped Cyril.

"Why, of course not!" cried Waddles with the heartiest good nature. "Of course not--but if your ball--had been farther to the left--you wouldn't have to play--over that tree--and----" There was more, but Cyril did not wait to hear it.

Waddles, executing his second with mechanical precision, carried the deep ravine with his mashie and put the ball on the green for a sure four. Off to the right Cyril prepared to do likewise, but the tree loomed ahead of him, his nerves were unstrung, his temper was ruffled, and instead of going cleanly under the ball he caught the turf four inches behind it and pitched into the ravine, where he found a lie that was all but unplayable.

"Tough luck!" said Waddles.

Cyril turned and looked at him. I expected an outburst of some sort, but the boy was evidently trying to keep his hair on.

"I didn't hit it," said he at length, swallowing hard. I heard an odd choking noise behind me. It was the Major, attempting to remain calm.

"Of course you didn't hit it!" agreed Waddles. "You took a hatful of turf; and you know why, don't you?"

Cyril groaned and plunged into the ravine.

Why follow the harrying details too closely? With the Major as chief mourner, and Waddles holding sympathetic postmortems on all his bad shots, Cyril suffered a complete collapse. I could have beaten him--any one could have beaten him--and as a matter of fact he beat himself.

Having found his weak spot, Waddles never let up for an instant. Talk, talk, talk; his flow of conversation was as irritating as a neighbour's phonograph, and as incessant. I wondered that Cyril contained himself as well as he did, until I remembered that it is tradition with the English to lose as silently as they win.

The Major, who saw it all, addressed but one remark to me. It was on the tenth hole, and Waddles was showing Cyril why he had topped an iron shot.

"Look here," said the Major, jerking his thumb at Waddles, "does he always do this sort of thing? Talk so much, I mean?"