SPRING

I

To discover the secret of its wonderful charm is not the least of the

problems of golf. It is a game that encourages the reflective and

philosophical mind to close investigation, and so it is not enough for

the worthy player that he should take the things that he sees and feels

for granted, with no questions concerning the mystic influences that

seem constantly to brood over the links, and the people who are of them.

Each day as we go forward to the game, and in particular if it marks the

beginning of a special period of play, we feel these influences strong,

and it may happen that for a moment we wonder again as to their cause

and their origin.

Many minds have made great efforts towards the discovery of this secret,

but the fruits thereof have not been satisfying. Golf is not like other

games which stir up great enthusiasms in their players. Long spells of

failure or of ambition thwarted often kill the passion that has fed the

energy of the players of these games; but that is not the case with

golf, and golf almost alone. Nor does a surfeit of play lessen the

desire for it as it does in the case of other field sports, which need

close seasons for their healthiness. When one day’s golf is over, the

thought is of the next that will succeed it, and the hope already goes

forward to anticipation of the superior delights that may be in store.

And it makes the same appeal to all persons of all classes who once

attach themselves to it, and it has been found that the golf impulses

are as strong in the men of other races and of other colours as they are

in the British who have cultivated the game. This universality, the

constant enthusiasm, the unweariedness of the golfer, and the intense

ardour that distinguishes him from the players of other games, suggest

to us that some strong emotion of the human mind is touched by golf in

some peculiar way, that its principles and the conditions of its play

make a special appeal to some elementary feature of simple human nature;

for it is the appeal to these primitive instincts that is always the

strongest, the most overpowering.

Upon this line of investigation we come upon a clue that leads us to a

more satisfactory idea as to the secret than any other which has been

suggested. The strongly humanising tendencies of the game are evident to

all, and admitted. No cloak of convention can be worn over the manners

and thoughts of the player; he is the simple man. And what are the

subtle features of the primitive instincts that are awakened in him so

constantly, at almost every stroke, in every round, and on every day? It

is sometimes difficult to seize upon them, floating in a vagueness as

they do, but it does seem that all the strong emotions of the golfer

combining to make up his grand devotion to the game, are clustered round

the simple human instinct, most human and most potent of all, the

instinct of Hope. It is this hope that leads the golfer on through all

his troubles and disappointments, and it still urges him forward when he

has already ascended to a great delight. It is a hope that will never

permit complete satisfaction. This simple formula that the mystic charm

of golf is hope, will explain all the emotions that rise up in the

golfer in the course of a year of play. Take him from the first tee to

the end of his game. It is the fresh morning, and the ardour of the

golfer is warm within him, and he has a yearning and a high hope for a

great day’s sport. Here, on the teeing ground, he is animated by a great

desire to play the first hole as well as ever before, and to drive a

clean far ball that shall speak well of his skill and make good augury

for the strokes that are to come. If he succeeds his hope but increases.

Does he play the tee shot badly, and his hopes go forward to a great

recovery with the second shot of the game. If that should fail,

vexatiously, there may still be the chance of a wonderful approach, and

though the approach be not so wonderful, is there not the possibility

that the gods may be so kind as to steer a very long putt into the hole?

These are exactly the alternating sentiments; and if the fulfilment of

the hope be denied to the last putt, and the hole be lost, at the second

tee there is hope again that the indifferent start will be succeeded by

a flash of brilliance as shall restore the position and the complete

equanimity of the player.

And so it is from shot to shot and from hole to hole all the way round

the course, and “_Spero meliora_” is the eternal motto, even though the

present state be happy. If the whole round be weak and the result of it

adverse, there is the hope of the afternoon; and at the end of the day

the unfortunate golfer, moved almost to despair by his failures, soon

recovers again that optimism which is his constant succour, and then his

hopes are of the morrow. Does he not know now what it was that he was

“doing wrong,” the golfing sin that he committed all the day? To-morrow

the fault shall be corrected, and the swings that are made in

after-hours now give fair promise of a great change. A well-prepared

heart has the golfer, the like of which, as Horace says, hopes in the

worst fortune, and in prosperity fears a change in the chances. Give it

that the man has golfed above his true ability, and how he does fear

that the next game may put him back again; but here again there is

buoyant hope in evidence, and when the evening is filled with the

exaltation of it, how sweet it is to wander a little over the resting,

deserted links and mark the places where balls were pitched, and the

lines along which fine putts were made, and the points to which play

shall be directed when the next round is in the making, perhaps the best

of all.

So it is hope and hope all the way through the golfer’s life, and it is

the most joyous, the most uplifting of all the instincts, and the most

intensely human, and that which is given to man alone. It is because

golf strikes always this chord in his nature that it makes the strong

appeal to him. There is no other game or sport that permits him to hope

through failure in the same way, that leads him on, coaxes him, cajoles

him, even fools him. And this drama of the emotions of the individual is

played always in the most perfect setting for such a simple human

play--the sea and green fields and plain earth, and the simplest tools

to move a little white ball, not along marked lines or within narrow

limits or in protected arenas, but anywhere along that green grass, over

the hills and through the valleys and across the streams and rushing

rivers, while the wind blows now this way and then that, and the rain

pours. All the time the golfer pursues the little ball, alone with plain

nature and his human adversary. Here he is released from all the

conventionalities of mind that hold him in his other doings in this

complicated civilisation. The primitive instincts are in command; they

have the fields and the sea for harmony in the scene, and the golfer is

away from all the intricacies of the twentieth century, and is the

simple man and the hopeful man.

That is a fair creed concerning the command of golf, and we may reject

the theory that indomitable, persevering mankind finds the fascination

of the game merely in the failures and irritations that it brings and in

the desire to overcome them. The activity of that instinct of hope is

the mystic charm, and surely it is to the credit of a game that it

should teach the man to look forward with courage and cheerfulness, and

to be always something of an optimist, and the more of it the better for

his game. These things lead to the making of a good man as well as a

good golfer.