“In spring,” we have been told in the _Georgics_, “heat returns to the
bones.” And the blood runs eagerly through the golfer’s veins. April and
May are the months of hope and of exultation. There is joy in the
present, in the showers and the sunshine, and a great joy in prospect in
the future. Each true golfer is a lover of Nature, and something of a
philosopher, and at this season, as at no other, when he gets wakened on
a bright morning and sees the country clean and fresh, and coming again
into bright green and many colours, while the birds sing at _allegro_
and _fortissimo_, a deep pleasure fills his being, the pleasure of
spring. He is alive, alive; and it is fine to be alive. Summer is
glorious, autumn is beautiful, cold winter has charms for those who have
proper feeling for it; but spring, the Germinal, is surely Nature’s
favourite season, and the golfer must always love his spring.
It gives him hope and thought. Change always induces reflection, and
here we have the change of the seasons, and a little of all of them in a
short space of time. An old proverb says that “April borrows three days
of March, and they are ill.” But as often she borrows several days of
May, and they are warm and sunny, and so hereabouts we have the winds,
and the showers, and the sunshine; and who can walk on the links to-day
and not think something of what the rain has been doing, and what the
winds have done, and what the sun is doing and is going to do? Here they
are all together, great master wonders to be thought much of. They are
much to all men; everything to the sportsman and the folks of the
outdoor life.
The sun and the rain are in such daily association in the days of the
sportsman’s spring, and more than ever is he inclined at this season to
give some passing thought to the phenomena of Nature, that one comes to
wonder sometimes whether he reflects as he might do on the eternal
exchange, how the drops of water that the sun takes up from the fields
over which he tramps, the golf links that he plays over, the rivers and
streams that he fishes, are every one of them placed back again, perhaps
not on the same fields or in the same rivers, but in some field or river
somewhere. The bare fact is one of elementary knowledge; but its
extensions are not so much so, and are interesting to think upon. If the
sun always gave back to each particular sportsman the rain that it had
taken away from his own playing fields and rivers, how dull would his
life be from the knowledge of what the weather and the seasons had
certainly for him in the future? With the caprice of the clouds and the
wind there is no such even and regular return of that which was taken
away. The golf links of the Lothians may be kept rained upon and moist
so that the turf is the most perfect, all with the rain that was sucked
up from the courses of the south coast of England, round about Deal and
Sandwich and Rye; and surely when the links in the south are parched,
and when they are green and moist in the north, we must think of that.
V
It behoves every earnest golfer to keep a match-book in which there
shall be faithfully recorded the results, with some particulars, of all
the matches whatsoever that he shall play in the course of each season.
Yet it is likely that not more than two or three golfers in every club,
if indeed so many, keep such a record of the golf that they have played,
which is sinking away into the forgotten history of their golfing lives.
The idea of the private match-book may have occurred to many golfers,
who, on a careful consideration of the circumstances of the case, have
rejected it, though it goes without saying that the chief reason for the
absence of the book in the majority of cases is simple neglect. Those
who deliberately avoid the intellectual pleasures of the match-book do
so either because they conceive that there is something namby-pamby in
the thing, and that it savours too much of the keeping of a little diary
which so few people know how to keep, consequently degenerating into a
record of the trivial acts instead of the life-governing thoughts; or
they are deterred by the fact that there are no such books with ruled
columns ready for the purpose which are at all agreeable to their ideas
as to what a match-book ought to be. Certainly there is no ready-ruled
match-book; the little things to fit the waistcoat pocket are hopelessly
inadequate, and really are only fit for doll’s golf, so that it is one
of the things to wonder at that there are still apparently some
thousands of golfers--beginners for the most part, you may be sure--who
buy these trifles year by year.
But perhaps it is as well that there is no stereotyped form of
match-book, to which we might be persuaded to attach ourselves with some
misgivings as to its form, and the irritation that would be caused us in
the future by the attempt to fill up constantly one particular column
that might seem to be either unnecessary or suggestive of indelicate
revelations. You will not find the ideas of many men in agreement as to
what ought to go down in the book and what ought not. One will want
spaces reserved for full particulars as to wind and weather, of the ball
with which he played, and of the many other little details of varying
importance, forming the sum of the circumstance of the day’s golf.
Another will have a horror of such conceits, and will limit his
confessions to statements of the date, the opponent, and the result. As
in other matters, the medium is the happiest choice; but the difference
of taste which could not be accommodated by so many different varieties
of match-book, suggests at once that the proper course to pursue is for
each player to purchase a perfectly plain book and rule it off in so
many columns to his own satisfaction; or even, indeed, for the sake of a
neater and less formal appearance, and an arrangement which is more
accommodating, leave it blank, and let the facts of the match be
inserted in order, just as the man is disposed to insert them at the
time of the entry. Then a blank column will not in after years convey
any reproach in the matter of a possible suppression of the truth, nor
one overcrowded tell too much a tale of despondency and excuse on the
one hand, or on the other of that boastfulness that comes not well from
the heart of a good golfer.
Now the beginning and the continuation of a match-book is a serious
matter, and the golfer will do well to come to an understanding with
himself beforehand as to the policy that he will pursue in regard to it.
It is essential that the strictest truth, and all the essential truth,
should at all times be set down, and it is only a simple extension of
the principle involved that if any matches are to be recorded they must
all be so. The chronicler of the time must not consider himself as
historian, and set himself to discriminate between what is important and
what is trivial; for, as in all things, it will be many years hence,
when the matters have been well sifted in the cold recollection of the
mind, before such a determination can be accurately made. Therefore it
is the duty of the chronicler to state the full facts, that is to say,
as full as he determined they should ever be according to his system of
match-book keeping, and he must leave it to himself in after years,
when, the chronicler now exalted to the student of his own history, he
can ponder over the statements in his leisure and make such judgments
upon them as he is disposed. Thus it is of the essence of the proper
making of such match-books that no fault of the maker at any time or in
any game shall be in any way extenuated, and that nothing to the
discredit of the opponent shall be set down maliciously, so that in days
to come, when the player shall have advanced many more seasons towards
the end of his golf, in turning over these pages and with their honest
help fighting his matches over again, he shall truly behold “the bright
countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies.”
So it seems that the best match-book should rightly be a strictly
private thing; if it were meant as a book for the table or any other
place where it might be exposed to the gaze of the curious, there might
at some time come a reluctance to the owner to state in full the truth
of the day’s play, since the honest criticism of a partner in a foursome
or of an opponent, to some who did not understand, might not appear so
necessary as was actually the case. This faithful record should be kept
under lock and key, and it should be taken with him when the golfer goes
far afield for play which is to last more than a day, and the entries
should be made on the night of each day. It will be soon enough for
others to pry into this confessional when the golfer who whispered into
it at nights is no more. That such present labour will afford a rich
sequence of future pleasure there can be no doubt. Just as there are no
friends like the old friends, and no wine like the old wine, so one is
sometimes disposed to fancy that there is no golf like the old golf that
is now indeed but a memory, and one often much too dim at that. The
match-book will refresh the mind to the recollection of dear friends
with whom one is no longer associated, and of fine sport that one had
with them on days when the thrills of life seemed to be a little quicker
than they are now. By the mention of an incident, and occasionally by
giving the score of a few holes, much of the whole game, shot and shot,
is conjured up in the memory in all its keenness and its tensity.
And it shall come as a good recommendation in this matter that the
golfer who is the favourite hero of us all, as he was a pattern of the
golfing virtues, made a match-book for himself while he was still
playing the schoolboy golf, and kept it continuously for the rest of his
time. Freddie Tait’s match-book was just what we might expect it to be.
It was a very honest thing, and Mr. Low, who has handled it and copied
some of it for the deep interest of us all, remarks on the way in which
the brave soldier golfer never spared himself, his partner, nor his
opponents, but dealt out praise and censure with a level hand. One day,
though he had halved his round, he says, “Played as bad a round as
possible”; and at another time his comment is, “Never played worse with
the exception of a few iron shots.” Then as to a foursome it is, “The
characteristic of the game was the bad play of both”; and of his partner
in another match he remarks, “The play of Mr. ---- was feeble in the
extreme.”
There were eight column divisions in Tait’s match-book. First there was
the place for the date, then for the name of the links, and the third
for the statement of the parties to the match. The fourth column was for
the mention of the odds of the handicap if any, or for the name of the
competition if he was engaged in one. Then there was one column for
holes won and another for holes lost, a broad one for “remarks,” and a
last little one at the side of the page for the total of the score.
Generally the “remarks” were brief and pointed, and it is these which
make the record of the play of the most beloved golfer we have known so
real and human, so that it is a pleasure to sit by the fire and create
some fancies of these matches. Now and then there is a little humour;
here and there a touch of sarcasm at the expense of “F. G. T.,” as he
generally referred to himself. Round by round there is the full story of
the way in which he won the championship at Sandwich, and the next entry
concerns the very next match that he played, which was the day after at
Rye, when, with his honours new upon him, he essayed the task of playing
the best ball of Mr. H. S. Colt and Mr. J. O. Fairlie. The remarks run:
“H. S. C. and J. O. F. too strong for the golfed-out Champion, to whom
they showed no mercy. H. S. C. and J. O. F. both played a good game and
did some very fine holes.” Here there is a 6 in the “Lost” column, and
it is a notable thing that this, on 23rd May, was the first figure that
had appeared in this column of defeat since 16th April, though golf was
being played almost every day. In his comments on the final of that same
championship he twice pays compliments to the pluck of Mr. Hilton, who
in the game was very soon left without the slightest chance of victory,
and was beaten by a full eight holes. The gods would never permit the
favourite Freddie to be beaten by the finest player of his time, and
that player now refers to his early engagements with the soldier as the
day when Tait “commenced his career as the slaughterer of Hilton.”
Another day we find Freddie revelling in two glorious matches with
Andrew Kirkaldy on the new course at St. Andrews. In the morning he lost
by a couple of holes, but in the afternoon he was the winner on the last
green. “Another splendid match,” he rejoices; “both in great form.
F. G. T. only halved the third hole by carelessly moving his ball with
hand while removing a piece of grass. The hole was played out and won by
F. G. T., but he had, of course, to lose a stroke, according to the
rules of golf. This unfortunate accident made the difference of one
hole. A. K., 80, a magnificent score. F. G. T., in: 4 3 5 4 4 4 5 4 4 =
37.” Here is another comment, “R. T. B. very fair. Self good at first,
but got too many up, and then got careless, with the usual result.” He
lost that match by a hole. Another time, when he was playing the best of
two balls, he wrote: “Played badly. The two balls also bad.” That match
was fittingly halved. In this way we can follow the happy Freddie all
the way through the spring and summer to the end of the year on all the
best links that are to be found, and these judgments of his will serve
as models to other men who in this small matter would copy the methods
of the perfect golfer.
There is this entry in the match-book alongside the date 31st July 1888,
concerning a match with Mr. Norman Playfair: “Driving very poor. Put a
ball through a man’s hat and had to pay five shillings.” Young Freddie,
then only eighteen years of age, went to old Tom Morris to complain of
his ill-luck in the matter, but Tom answered him wisely, “Ah, Master
Freddie, ye may be vera thankful that it’s only a hat, and no’ an oak
coffin ye hae to pay for.” Even now, when the sad happenings of the
South African War, which at the time so wrung our heart-strings with
misery, have been somewhat mellowed by time, the great consoler, it is
impossible to glide into this channel of reminiscence without feeling
that the pleasure of it is touched with melancholy that the body that
held that noble soul should be resting among the trees by the banks of
the Riet River.