The Spirit of the Links Part 2

But there can be no doubt that Allan was a really great player in every way. Like Bob Ferguson, and like Harry Vardon in our own day, the beauty of his achievement lay largely in the concealment of his effort, and this is the perfection of style. It has been handed down to us as indisputable, that the easiness of his style was its most remarkable feature, and that he never, never seemed to hit hard at the ball. His swing was a long but a gentle one, and his clubs were light. He was the first man to cultivate in its perfection that fine cleek play from long range up to the hole that in our day has been accomplished with such magnificent effect by Vardon. The 79 that he did at St. Andrews in 1858--he was then just turned forty-three years of age, having been born in the year of Waterloo--was then and for a long time later regarded as a most superlative achievement. That time he was out in 40 and home in 39, winding up with a 4 and a 3. That great things could be and were done in those days, even reckoning their merit on the most exacting modern standard, may be realised from the circ.u.mstance that, taking the best scores at each hole in all Allan's rounds on the old course, which he kept, and making up a composite round from them, that round works out to the strange total of 56,--out in 27 and home in 29. In this strong essence of Robertsonian golf the ingredients, in the order of the eighteen, are, 3 3 3 3 4 4 3 1 3 to the turn, and 3 2 3 4 4 3 3 4 3 on the way back.

Allan was a great golfer, and a fine exemplar in every respect, for he was a great-hearted player who never knew when he was beaten, was always cheery and with a smile, and he possessed the very perfection of a golfing temperament, as most, though not all, great players do. That was why everybody found it such a delight to play with him, and why he and old Tom, who had also a fine temperament, were as a foursome pair just as strong and invincible as men could be imagined to be. That lionlike finish of theirs to their historic match with the Dunns deserves all the celebrity it has achieved, and will for ever hold, not so much because it was an exciting thing and a great match, but because it was a triumph of the golf temperament over another that was not quite so good.

Allan had the spirit of the game within him; he had the true soul of a golfer, and his most casual utterances constantly indicated how he saw right through to the back side of the game. "It's aye fechtin' against ye" was a common observation of his, and there is only too much truth in that simple remark, that the game is hardly ever with you, that it is fighting against you the whole way round. He had no greater admirer than his famous pupil. An "awfu' good player" was Allan to Tom. "Puir Allan!"

soliloquised Tom once, when his old master was no more. "The cunningest bit body o' a player, I dae think, that iver haun'led cleek an' putter.

An' a kindly body, tae, as it weel does fit me to say, an' wi' a wealth o' slee pawky fun aboot him."

"They may toll the bells and shut up their shops at St. Andrews, for their greatest is gone," somebody said when he died. He had golfed all his life from the time when he first knew that he was alive. His father and grandfather were golfers, and the first things that he played with as a child were golf clubs that were made for him.

V

Surely we must account old Tom Morris as one of the wonders of the sporting world, as he is indubitably in that relation to the world of golf. How many times have we heard that the light of that long and happy life was flickering towards its extinction, but the rumour has no sooner been spread than Tom comes forward in some activity to give it full denial. Long may he continue to do so; every time that we hear he is sick upon his bed may a telegram come to us from St. Andrews to say that again he is sitting in the chair outside his shop, watching the couples as they come forward in their turn to hole out on that beloved eighteenth putting green, which, with the clubhouse of the Royal and Ancient beyond it, has during recent times comprised almost the entire circle of his daily vision. Each time I go to St. Andrews I find him still cheery, and indeed it seems to me a little cheerier than the last time that I saw him taking the sun in his chair. There is the cheery respectful greeting and the felicitous remark that it is "a gran' day for a roond," and in the next moment he turns his head to mutter a grumble towards those "boys," who are idling away a few spare minutes outside Forgan's shop, and are giving evidence of the freshness of the life that is in them, to which Tom, a stickler for decorum in all connected with golf, however humbly or indirectly, demurs. Like most others who are running up the score of their life's round towards the ninety mark, he is p.r.o.ne to tell you that times have much changed, and that the boys were more sedate in the days when he was one of them. That is as it may be. But despite all the antics of the boys, and the little irritations that they give to old Tom, he remains a cheery Tom to the last, just as he has always been. His life throughout has been imbued with an optimism which has always been the most attractive feature of his character. Every good golfer is an optimist. I deny that it is possible to be a good golfer in the best sense and not be an out-and-out optimist.

Another fine thing about Tom, and one that has always endeared him to the golfing world, is the fact that there has never been anything in the least n.i.g.g.ardly in the grat.i.tude which he extends towards the game with which his life has been bound up. Suggest to Tom that there is anything better in life than golf, and you have done the first thing towards raising up a barrier of reserve between him and you. Listen to how he spoke of the game of his heart on a New Year's Day twenty-one years back from now, when even then he was by way of becoming an old man. "An' it hadna been for gowff," he said to the patron who greeted him in the customary form for the first day of the year, "I'm no sure that at this day, sir, I wad hae been a leevin' man. I've had ma troubles an' ma trials, like the lave; an' whiles I thocht they wad hae clean wauved me, sae that to 'lay me doun an' dee'--as the song says--lookit about a'

that was left in life for puir Tam. It was like as if ma vera sowle was a'thegither gane oot o' me. But there's naething like a ticht gude gowing mautch to soop yer brain clear o' that kin' o' thing; and wi' the help o' ma G.o.d an' o' gowff, I've aye gotten warsled through somehow or ither. The tae thing ta'en wi' the t.i.ther, I haena had an ill time o't.

I dinna mind that iver I had an unpleasant word frae ony o' the many gentlemen I've played wi'. I've aye tried--as ma business was, sir--to mak' masel' pleesant to them; an' they've aye been awfu' pleesant to me.

An' noo, sir, to end a long and maybe a silly crack--bein' maistly about masel'--ye'll just come wi' me, an' ye'll hae a gla.s.s o' gude brandy, and I'll have ma pint o' black strap, an' we'll drink a gude New Year to ane anither, an' the like to a' gude gowffers."

Sportsman, in the best sense, Tom has always been, and he was a worthy predecessor of the men who are to-day at the head of the ranks of the professional golfers. That is a pretty story that is told of Captain Broughton's challenge to Tom to hole a putt for 50. As everybody knows, Tom was once famous as the man who missed the very shortest putts, to whom there was duly delivered, when he was at Prestwick, a letter which was addressed only to the "Misser of Short Putts, Prestwick." On the occasion under notice Tom was playing to the High Hole on the old course at St. Andrews, and had got into sore trouble, so that he was playing two or three more when Captain Broughton happened to pa.s.s by and became a witness of what was happening. Tom, be it noted, always belonged to golfers of that fine and sportmanlike persistency, who would never give up a hole while there was a single spark of hope remaining alight. "Oh, pick up your ball, Tom, it's no use!" said the Captain half chidingly.

"Na, na," answered Tom, "I might hole it!" "If you do I'll give you 50," retorted the Captain, and it seemed a very safe retort too.

"Done!" responded Tom, and thereupon made one more stroke with his iron club, and lo! the ball hopped on to the green, and glided on and on towards the hole, hesitated as it came nearer to it, curled round towards it, crept nearer and nearer until it was on the lip--and down!

He had holed! Then said the triumphant Tom, "That will make a nice little nest-egg for me to put in the bank," and the Captain looked very serious and went his way. A few days later the Captain came along with the 50, and with a smile and a compliment offered it to Tom as the fruits of his achievement; but Tom declined absolutely to take a penny of it. "I thank ye, Captain, and I'm grateful to ye all the same; but I canna tak' the money, because, ye see, ye wisna really meaning it, and it wisna a real wager." And to that he stuck.

VI

There are alarms and excursions in the ball business daily, and the player takes a devoted interest in them all. The trade is striving with might and main to put ten yards on to the drive of little Tomkins, and poor old grandfather, who began his golf at sixty, may think as he goes off to sleep at night that perhaps by the morning there will be a new ball on the market which will enable him to get his handicap down to 20.

The good inventors are doing all that they can for him. They are trying everything and each thing in all possible different ways. The other day a great professional was taking stock of his shop, and he found that he had twenty-seven different varieties of rubber-cored b.a.l.l.s in hand. And many golfers feel that they must try them all and each new one as it comes out. The evolution of the golf ball is one of the most wonderful things of its kind. All of us who have played golf for more than five years can plume ourselves on the fact that we lived in golf in the earlier era of the gutta; it is strange to think that possibly half of the present golfing population cannot say that, so quickly has the game been coming on of late. But not one golfer in five thousand of those living now played in the days of the feather-stuffed ball, which was the pioneer. It had the game to itself up to 1848, which was the year that the gutta came in. St. Andrews was the great centre of manufacture of the "featheries," and in the shop of Allan Robertson alone there were some three thousand a year made. Of course three thousand rubber-cores would be nothing in these days, but making a ball was a big job then, and they were expensive, costing about four shillings each. And a single topped shot with an iron finished them absolutely! The ballmakers bought the little leather cases ready made from the St. Andrews saddlers, a small hole being left to stuff the feathers in. The feathers were boiled, and it took a large hatful to stuff a ball tight with them.

Mr. Campbell of Saddell is believed to have taken the first gutta b.a.l.l.s to St. Andrews, and when he did so there was consternation everywhere.

They thought the trade in the featheries would be ruined, and that anyone could make the new b.a.l.l.s. So an attempt was made to boycott them, and it is even said that Allan Robertson bought up all the lost b.a.l.l.s that were found in the whins and destroyed them by fire! Tom Morris was working in his shop then, and they quarrelled so violently the first day when Tom used a gutta that they parted for ever. Tom himself tells the story in this way: "I can remember the circ.u.mstances well. Allan could not reconcile himself at first to the new ball at all, just in the same way as Mr. John Low and many other golfers could not take to the Haskell when it first appeared. But the gutta became the fashion very quickly, as the rubber-cored ball has done, so what could we do? One day, and it is one that will always be clearly stamped on my memory, I had been out playing golf with a Mr. Campbell of Saddell, and I had the misfortune to lose all my supply of b.a.l.l.s, which were, you can well understand, very much easier lost in those days, as the fairway of the course was ever so much narrower then than it is now, and had thick, bushy whins close in at the side. But never mind that. I had, as I said, run short of b.a.l.l.s, and Mr. Campbell kindly gave me a gutta one to try. I took to it at once, and as we were playing in, it so happened that we met Allan Robertson coming out, and someone told him that I was playing a very good game with one of the new gutta b.a.l.l.s, and I could see fine, from the expression of his face, that he did not like it at all, and when we met afterwards in his shop, we had some high words about the matter, and there and then we parted company, I leaving his employment. There are two big bushes out there in Allan's old garden. Well, one of them was planted by him and the other by me, just about that same time, so they cannot be young bushes now." But by 1850 the guttas were in general use and n.o.body was much the worse.

It is odd to reflect that golfers were very near the rubber core several times during the fifty-four years that the gutta held office. As we were told in the big law case, an old lady made b.a.l.l.s that were wound with rubber thread to make them bounce more; but, nearer to our rubber-core, there were two golfers who at different times and places are said to have made what was to all intents and purposes just the same ball in principle that we use to-day, but not so thoroughly made and perfected.

One of these golfers used to make them and give them to his friends.

But there was no advertising and not so much enterprise in the way of companies with big capital in those days, and these inventors let their chance go by. What a chance! There were millions, and millions again, in their idea.

None the less the Americans deserve the credit for being the men who gave us the rubber-cored ball as we know it. But for their belief in it, and their enterprise, there would have been no rubber-cores to-day, and perhaps far fewer golfers. Let me tell the real story of how they came by their idea and their determination. In the early summer of 1898, Mr. Coburn Haskell was the guest of Mr. Wirk, one of the magnates of the American rubber industry, at his house in Cleveland, Ohio, and both being golfers, they golfed all day and talked golf during dinner and afterwards. It was these dinner conversations that brought about the Haskell ball, revolutionised the game, and made an industry which is the most thriving of all connected with sport. Both gentlemen agreed that they wanted a better ball than the gutta, something that would go farther. At last, after many sittings, one of them observed that something might be done by winding rubber under tension. Winding it without such tension would result in the ball being too soft. This idea was elaborated during the next night or two, and then Mr. Wirk hurried away to his factory, obtained some rubber strands, and he and Mr. Haskell spent nearly a day in winding, by their own hands and in secret, the first ball of the new era. They covered it with gutta-percha and gave it to a professional to try, without informing him of the nature of what he was trying. They watched anxiously for the result, and with the very first shot that the man had with it he carried a bunker that had never been carried before, beating the best drive that had ever been made on that course by many yards. Then the two makers smiled happily at each other. They knew that they were "on a good thing." It took more than two years to invent a machine to do the winding, and some time longer to perfect the process. Then the Haskell killed the gutta in a season. Before that Britain supplied America with all her b.a.l.l.s. Afterwards she sent none; but the makers of the Haskell bought 30,000 dozen that had been sent over, for the sake of the gutta-percha of which they were made, and at the bare price of that material.

In the first five months of 1903 the American people shipped 40,000 dozen of their b.a.l.l.s to this country. So were the tables turned. Now they ship very few indeed, as we make our b.a.l.l.s ourselves. Instead, they are threatening American golfers as to what will happen if they catch them playing on American courses with British b.a.l.l.s. Of the little ball that was thought out over the dinner table in Ohio on those hot summer evenings there are now half a million used in a week in the busy season on British courses, and some fifteen millions, at a cost of about a million pounds, in the course of the season!

But yet not one man in a thousand who looks upon his beautiful white rubber core when it is new knows what and how much is inside it. In one ball there are 192 yards of thread, the whole of which is stretched to eight times its original length, so that, as it is in the ball, there are 1536 yards of it--nearly a mile. This thread has to be wound round something. It has commonly been wound round a tiny piece of wood; now, in the case of some b.a.l.l.s, it is being wound round little bags of gelatine and things like that. Some people are under the delusion that in the case of such b.a.l.l.s the whole centre is gelatine, and that there is no rubber.

VII

The man who has the courage to enter upon a medal round or a match with a keen opponent and play with a cheap, or cheaper, ball, is a rarity, and an admirable one. Faith goes for a long way in these matters. Give a man the most expensive ball on the market to play with, and he feels that he has got something which will do justice to his capabilities, and occasionally let him off with light penalties for some of his errors.

Let him have a cheap ball and he is uneasy, with the idea that nothing is likely to go right for him. When he has faith in his ball--his expensive ball--he plays accordingly, that is to say, he plays with confidence, and the probabilities are, of course, that in such case he will play better than he would otherwise do, especially if he makes a good start. If he has not so much faith in his ball--because it is cheap--he will not play so well, because he will play without confidence. This is really a truism which is emphasised over and over again on the links every day. As this player cannot test his b.a.l.l.s accurately and show for a certainty which one is better than others, he has naturally faith in the more expensive, because it ought to be better, whether it is or not. So one comes quite logically to the conclusion that the most expensive b.a.l.l.s are the best. Now suppose that the makers of any of our leading brands of florin b.a.l.l.s were at this stage to reduce the price of their specialities to a shilling each. What would be the att.i.tude of these golfers to that ball? They would say to themselves, or suspect, that these makers were taking something out of the quality of their wares, and if they suspected that, they would almost certainly find innumerable happenings in their next match, which in their opinion would give the utmost possible support to their theory.

Every drive that fell short of the proper standard would be put down to the makers of the ball; this really very funny golfer would shake his head and say that it was a great pity, and so forth, but that he would have to give up this shilling ball, of which at two shillings he was so very fond. And he would do it. But all the time there may not be a particle of difference between the old two-shilling ball and the new shilling one.

Once again one is tempted to the fancy that there is a good future for a reasonably good ball to be sold at five shillings. It would not be a popular ball, because there is a large proportion of players to whom this one would at last be too expensive; but all who could afford to play with it by making some little sacrifice, such as by cycling to the links instead of going by train, by carrying their own clubs two or three times a week instead of employing a caddie, or, simpler still, by reducing the weekly or monthly allowance for domestic purposes to the lady of the household because of the hard times, would certainly do so.

And as the rich golfers would play with it also, it would have a good sale, and if it cost no more to make than the florin b.a.l.l.s it would be very profitable to the manufacturers. All the ordinary golfers would play well with it. They would feel that they had the very best, that at last they could do themselves justice. They would have confidence. Queer world this of golf!

VIII

"The course is black with parsons," was said one fine Monday at the outset of his game by a man who had been kept waiting for a most unconscionable time while a minor canon and a plain vicar had been worrying away in bunkers on opposite sides of the first short hole. In this observation there was some evident exaggeration, but it is being borne in upon us every day how more and more popular is this diversion becoming with the cloth, as indeed it should and might be expected to be, since golf makes its greatest appeal to those of the most thoughtful and philosophical temperaments, such as clergymen should possess.

Excellent is this a.s.sociation, and it is a poor and threadbare humour that is constantly fancying the cleric in such exasperation with his game that ordinary modes of expression are insufficient for him. Having heard of the worthy divine who was horribly bunkered and in a heel-mark at the Redan at North Berwick, to whom the most excellent of caddies, "big" Crawford observed, "Noo, gin an aith wad relieve ye, dinna mind me"; and of the other one who was reported as repeating the Athanasian Creed at the bottom of "h.e.l.l"--the bunker of that name on the St. Andrews course--one would wish to go no farther with such stories.

The celebrated Bishop Potter of New York was playing golf on the course at Saranac, and he made a mighty attempted drive that topped the ball, and another one that tore up the turf, and yet a third that almost missed the ball, and each time he uttered a soothing "Sh-sh-sh-sh-sh!"

But the caddie was himself a golfer of a very stern and human school, and in his great annoyance he exclaimed, "Man alive! sh-sh-sh-sh won't send that ball where you want it to go to!" The Rev. Silvester Horne, who is one of the keenest of the clerical golfers, and has been known to captain a side of parsons occasionally, once drew up a system of conduct to be observed by brother clergymen when playing the game, and a very excellent system it was, with severe adjurations against the doing of many things such as are common with the ordinary golfer, and certain small licences permitted to make the path a trifle less difficult than it might otherwise be.

There was a worthy rector who was given to golf, and was somewhat sensitive upon the subject of the large scores that were made by his foozling. He had a pretty way; he did not count his score himself, though who knows what subconscious ideas he may or may not have formed as to its dimensions? But be that as it may, he would say to his caddie as at last he flopped the ball on to the green at the short hole, "Now, my boy, how many have I played this time?" The caddie, being official counter to the rector, would say at once, "Six, sir!" Then the reverend gentleman would stop suddenly in his march forwards, and would turn upon this miserable little boy with a severe and awful frown, and would say, or almost shriek, "Six! six! six! Whatever are you saying, my boy? Have you been watching the game? Do you really mean six?" The caddie was utterly cowed. "N--n--no, sir," he would stammer, "I'm very sorry; I m--m--mean five!" "Ha! That is better," his reverence smiled. "Yes, no doubt it is five; five, certainly. Let it be five. But"--and this very seriously--"my boy, it is of the greatest importance to count the strokes correctly at this game, and let this be a warning to you. Take great care with the counting." And yet it was six.

But, tell us, why is it that the clergyman, with all his magnificent opportunities, is so seldom anything like a good player, so often has a handicap deep down in the teens? You may see him on the links six days a week, and yet he goes on from year to year no nearer to the degree of scratch, still driving his short and very wayward ball with that nervous, fearful stance of his, that slow, hesitating swing. I can almost tell the clergyman on the tee, however he may be disguised, he is such a doubter. Yet, with his opportunities, the Church ought to be by way of finding a candidate for the championship. Can it be that the philosophical temperament in excess kills keenness and makes a man content in his own little kingdom of foozling and shortness--

"Contented if he might enjoy The things that others understand."

There can be no other explanation. But it is to be set down perhaps to the clergyman's credit that he is so often unorthodox in his methods.

On the links he is the broadest-minded man alive, and he is tolerant of all things. Why, if ever in London one wants to be reminded of just the way in which the Barry swing is done, one might seek out none other than the Bishop of London, for if ever a man performs that fall-back, bent-kneed swipe it is Dr. Ingram, as photographs will prove. If this is to be, then an archbishop might play no stymies, and how then shall a curate become a champion?

IX

We have not that form and ceremony in the management of our golf clubs that our ancestors had, nor is there so much idea and sentiment employed. Golf in these days seems often to be regarded too much as a work-a-day affair, so that at few places besides St. Andrews is there any real preservation of the old feeling. Else, the true spirit dominating, why should there not still be chaplains to all the old-established golf clubs? How much the chaplain counted for in the great golfing days of old may be gathered from the minute of the Honourable Company which they made when settling an appointment to the office. The club then had its home at Leith, the date being 1764, and it was entered in the book--"The Captain and Council, taking into their serious consideration the deplorable situation of the Company in wanting a G.o.dly and pious Chaplain, they did intreat the Reverend Doctor John Dun, Chaplain to the Right Honourable the Earl of Galloway, to accept the office of being Chaplain to the Golfers; which desire the said Doctor, out of his great regard to the Glory of G.o.d and the good of the Souls of the said Company, was Religiously pleased to comply with.

Therefore the Company and Council Did and Do hereby nominate, present, and appoint the said Rev. Doctor John Dun to be their Chaplain accordingly. The said Reverend Doctor did accept of the Chaplaincy, and in token thereof said Grace after dinner." Whether the general company of golfers is at present in as "deplorable situation" as the Honourable Company was at this time, is a nice point which need not be inquired into.

X

In a day when the young school of golfers is making such a determined advance it is often difficult to make distinctions of merit and to determine who are the most promising and who will most probably become the really great golfers of the future. We are a little too much inclined to get into the way of saying that this man is likely to be an amateur champion of the future, and that that player is almost a certainty for the high honours of the game. When people talk in this irresponsible fashion they forget several things--that compet.i.tion now is many times keener than it was in the days when the b.a.l.l.s and the Taits and the Hiltons first became champions, and when it was quite safe to prophesy beforehand that they would be, and that in the future it will be keener still; that there is more luck than ever in the game and in the selection of champions, and that if the honour is to be denied to such a fine player as Mr. John Graham, who has forgotten more about the game than some of the younger school know, n.o.body should say that others are likely to be champions; and that because a man does some fine golf for a week or two it does not follow that he is a fine golfer.

The game no doubt is easier now than it used to be, and it is more difficult for fine distinctions in merit between players to be reproduced in the balance of holes; but still in the long run knowledge and skill will tell, and those men of the younger school who are deeply thoughtful and scientific golfers will in the end separate themselves from those of their rivals whose methods are more of the slapdash order.

With all the advance of the young school, and its scores of men with high plus handicaps, each of whom is declared to be good enough to win the championship if it finds him on his day, one would seriously hesitate to suggest that there are more than five or six young players at the present time who show any promise at all of becoming as good golfers as Ball and Hilton and Laidlay have been. The remainder may be only the veriest trifle their inferiors, and the difference may be so small that it may constantly be not indicated in the results of compet.i.tions, or it may even show a balance to the credit of the players whom we are regarding as the inferior ones. But in the long run the minority, who know more about the game, will triumph, and will be separated from the general ruck. With all the talk that there has been about the levelling up of the players as the result of the rubber-cored ball, depend upon it that in twenty years from now we shall still have a high table in golf, at which will sit the acknowledged masters of the game, just as some of those whose names we have mentioned have sat at this table for the past decade or two.

XI

Perhaps it would be as well for the golf of some of us if now and again a time of quiet and inactive thought were enforced. It is certain that many men feel much the better in their game for having been deprived of play for a time, greatly irritated as they have been. The fact is that he who is a faithful golfer often plays it mentally when real shots on the links are denied to him. It turns out that this mental golf is of a very thorough order; never is the player so a.n.a.lytical and severely critical of his methods as then, and never does he grope more patiently or more intelligently for the hidden light that is the source of success. It is simple fact that men have discovered grave faults in their play in this way, such as they never suspected during the whole season that they had been committing them in real play on the links. And in the same way others have come upon great secrets of fine details of method, making for the improvement of their game, which they would never have encountered at golf on a course.

The chief, if not the only reason, and one that is quite good enough to be convincing, for this somewhat peculiar state of affairs is, that this is essentially practice and experimental golf, in which the player is constantly wondering and trying something new; while the golf that he plays with clubs and b.a.l.l.s on the green gra.s.s is far too often exclusively match-play or score-play golf, and that is regarded at the time as too responsible a thing to permit of any experiment. The old ways may be bad ways, and no doubt many of them are; but we must stand by them on occasions of this kind, we say to ourselves, when the wise precept of an old player-friend flashes across our mind, the opponent being one up with three to go, and a very vindictive fellow. It is evident, then, that we do too much of this match and score play, and that the consequence is that we are never given time and the opportunity for thought and practice and the working out of experiments and ideas that might prove of the utmost moment. Our game runs along a little old-constructed channel, and it gets clogged with fault. When we go out to golf for the day, no other possibility presents itself to our minds than that of the two rounds, one before luncheon, and the other one after, with living opponent or opponents, and always upon such occasions we must trust to the old ways to pull us through. How much would it make for future improvement if one of the rounds, or a long afternoon, were devoted to simple lonely practice with one club, or at most two, in which new ideas might be tried, theories considered, and different and perhaps more effective ways to salvation worked out. Spend an hour thus in close communion with one's cleek or iron, and what an intimacy is established that never would have been otherwise! There used to be suspicion, distrustfulness, fear, and neglect--and what may follow upon such relations save utter failure?--but now there is friendship, and an appreciation of capabilities and qualities that bodes ill for the arrogance of the opponent who has seen so many failures with this cleek or iron, that he has come to think that when it is unbagged it is time for him to be adding one more hole to his score. The man who never does any of this practice golf never gives himself a chance of learning how to play more than one stroke with one club, and when there is only one stroke to a club it is not generally a very good or very reliable stroke, as can easily be shown.

Thinking thus, we perceive the value of influenza and the minor illnesses, and come to realise the truth of the remark by one earnest golfer, that the thing that of all others had most improved his game of golf was a severe attack of typhoid fever, which all but summarily terminated his career. When this man told us that he emerged from that disquieting experience a new and better golfer, and one more thorough, the observation seemed cryptic to the point of absurdity, and it was not taken very seriously. But it is certainly true that a very earnest golfer will think long and hard upon all points of his game during a dull period of enforced rest and idleness such as comes at sickness, and then all the sins of omission and commission loom up in his troubled mind, and he corrects the faults that he knows now, as probably he would not admit before, went to the undoing of his game. The entire position is revised; in the early days of convalescence we send downstairs to the study for some favourite volumes, and we look up Vardon, Braid, or Taylor on a subtle point of which we have been making mental examination. The thoughtful studies of Mr. John Low are a stimulant at such times. Such introspection is a fine thing and most fruitful, and little wonder after all that the player does indeed return to health a wiser and a more complete golfer, who will now go farther in skill upon the links than ever he would have done in the old, narrow, careless days.

What follows is a story that bears somewhat upon the moral that we have been thinking over. There was a man who was in want of a shot that would come between the driving iron and the wood, and he could not find one.

Of the cleek he had no good word to say; he could not play it. Of driving mashies he had several, and some of them were well enough at times, and at others they were like the cleek, so that what with his driving mashies and his cleeks, this man was in constant jeopardy when there was a shot of a hundred and sixty or seventy yards to play, and so he was unhappy in his game. It happened that one of his driving mashies was one that had been gifted to him upon a day by a great player, who said, "I pick this from all that I have seen; may I never play more if it is not a perfect club!" The man tried it, and it seemed to him that the head wanted more ballast, and after a little while he allowed the club to be gathered to his fine collection of idle relics, saying to himself consolingly, "What suits one man does not suit another." Thus it came to pa.s.s that the perfect club that a champion player declared he would love to play a long-short hole with to save the life of himself or his dearest friend, lay for months and years in a dark cupboard.

In the even cycle of this golfer's life the time of torment came round once again, and, as it had seemed before, it was more desperate than it had ever been. There appeared to be no remedy. All the tricks had been tried, and all the clubs generally put into commission had been experimented with, and there was no good result. And then a strange thing happened. Things were at about their worst, when, as sometimes was the case, this poor tormented golfer awoke in his bed very early one morning in summer. The sun had not long broken the darkness; it was about three o'clock. Being a man who went to bed betimes and who was early refreshed, he did this time, as on others, lie in long thought upon the events of life and his own affairs, the perfect stillness of the time conducing to effective contemplation. And, as was inevitable, the chain of reflection brought him round to the prevailing worry of the game, and for half an hour or so he considered this grave problem from every conceivable point of view, and subjected each iron instrument that was concerned with it to the severest cross-examination, from which none emerged with an unspotted reputation. It is not always in the human golfer to attach entire blame to flesh and blood, and wholly exonerate inanimate iron. Pride must have its place, even in the times of adversity. This man was self-a.s.sured that one reason for his failure--not the whole reason, perhaps; but still one reason--was that all his searchings and purchasings had yet left him without the club that he really needed, that one which was resting somewhere in a shop or in another man's bag, that was the affinity of his game, the thing that was meant for him and which one day might come his way. He had a vague instinct of what the feel of that club would be like, of the shape of its head, its balance, and the length of the shaft. When he encountered it he would know it at once for the long-sought-for club.

Then, as by a gift of the G.o.ds, an idea flashed through his mind and caused him to start up, thoroughly roused from the dreamy state of lethargy. That club! That old despised club that had come to him from the champion with such a glowing recommendation, wasted entirely! That was the club that was wanted; it must have been one of the most irresponsible and illogical moments of his golfing lifetime when it was rejected. Did it not conform to that ideal that was vaguely felt in the mind? As he handled it in imagination now, did it not seem quite perfect, that above all other clubs its true motto was "Far and sure."

When a golfer makes discoveries of this kind about his old clubs, that, poor things, cannot speak for themselves and tell him what he is doing wrong, he is man enough to own his previous mistakes, and this player owned them. He was all contrition, repentance, humility. He wished to abase himself before the champion club and promote it to the captaincy of his bag. Therefore when there is no sound to be heard save the chirruping of the birds and the creaking of stairs, see this inspired golfer leave his room, clad in a dressing-gown, at half-past three in the morning, and go forward to the ransacking of a rubbish cupboard in search for the wanted club. And there it was found at last, a little rusty, the marks of privation from golf and of severe neglect written plainly upon its face, but sure enough that same grand club that had lived in the remembrance until at last it was appreciated. Yes, it was just as it had been imagined to be. It was the perfect club; it would do what all others had failed to do. Happy club in which there is placed such belief and confidence, for the less likely is it ever to disappoint! In his mood of repentance the man gets a little emery and brightens up the blade until the first shafts of the morning sunlight glint upon it. Being a handy man with a tool or two, he takes out the tack at the end of the grip and unwinds it, laying it back again in some way to suit the fancy of the time. And then the grip is waxed, and the club is ready, and it is laid to a ball on the hearth-rug, and how that ball could be hit, with a fine, low, skimming flight that would yield much length, and the stroke, having been something of a push, would dump the ball at the end of it just down beside the flag! It is no use. Let it be four o'clock or twelve, why should the conventions keep us off the links when these exalted moods are upon us? The golfer hurries through a bath, puts his clothes about him, and with the whole world of golf save this one unit still asleep, even unto the most watchful greenkeeper, he hurries down to the course with a few b.a.l.l.s and just this one club, this one fine club. And there the truth of it all is realised. It is the club that was wanted, and the shots that come from it are just as perfect as shots by this man will ever be. The b.a.l.l.s are fired off up to the first green one by one, and it is found then that such are the virtues of this club of exquisite balance that it is a splendid thing to putt with!