We may set it down with some conviction that William Shakespeare was a
born golfer. It does not matter that golf was as rare in the glorious
days in which he lived as are eagles in twentieth-century Britain. We
do not say that he played golf, had seen it played, or had ever heard of
it. So far as we are aware, there is no evidence to support any such
propositions. Yet he was a born golfer, and if the game had come his way
he would have played it, and one doubts not that he would also have
excelled in it; so that it is well that it was after his time, or
England would not have been proud in the possession of such work of his
as is the envy of all other nations. For, of all the classic writers
whose work we read, there is none who gives such evidence in almost
every line of it that he was possessed of a perfectly ideal golfing
temperament, of a philosophy that seems constantly to have a subtle and
most perfect application to the life of the links. Through and through
it is the real golfer’s philosophy, that which is the best suited to the
intensity of the game, to its deep humanity, and that which serves for
the complete appreciation and full joy of the game. You may read all the
other poets, from Homer and Virgil to Byron and Tennyson, without ever a
thought of the links obtruding upon your study; but it is no evidence of
a vagrant mind, or one that is indifferent to the sweetest music of
words, that not three consecutive minutes can hardly ever be spent in
reaching Shakespearian lines without the fancy being touched by the
perfection of the philosophy and sentiment when applied to the peculiar
pleasures and pains of the golfer.
Only one other classic writer with whom we are familiar can give such
solace to the troubled player, such wise counsel to him who errs or is
in doubt, such chastening admonitions to those who have offended against
the spirit of the game and whose consciences are disturbed. That is
Marcus Aurelius, and we pass on the volume of his rules of life to all
those players who from time to time seek their homes at night weary and
depressed after a day on the links, when all has been for the worst and
despair broods darkly over the soul. After all, the golfer who is
indifferent to the ills he sometimes, nay often, suffers, and can in an
hour completely forget the tragedies of two rounds, is somewhat too
phlegmatic, and there will always be denied to him the higher ecstasies
by which the men of finer and more nervous temperament are uplifted. We
do not set it against a man that when he has done discredit to his
capabilities, he should show many signs of inward turmoil and display
much active vexation towards innocent persons and things on seeking his
home. He may rail against the arrangements of his household, and he may
appear peevish to the members of his family, and find new faults in
their manners and conduct. If they are the kind, sympathetic people that
they so often are, they will bear with him and wait patiently for the
passing of the cloud. On the morrow the good game may be back in all its
fulness and richness, and then at eventide there will trip lightly
homewards a happy and withal a penitent golfer, who will not be slow to
confess his fault and to make a full measure of amends. The colour of
life will have changed from the dull grey to the red of roses. And how
much thinner and poorer would be the days of our golfing life did they
not contain such constant change and yield to us such a variety of
emotion! But it is the days of sorrow rather than the days of gladness
that teach us the great lessons that all worthy golfers should learn,
and they should not neglect the cultivation of the philosophic spirit
for which the best opportunities are then afforded. So it is likely the
stricken player may find a deep and wholesome contemplation in his
lonely privacy at the end of the day, by meditating with Marcus Aurelius
on the morals of life and events. He will tell you that “you have
suffered a thousand inconveniences from not being contented with
performing what your capacity was given you to perform,” and so, by such
a little hint as this, he will lead you home to the simple truth that
your proper game is not your best game, and that much of the misery that
obtains in the world of golf is due to the universal habit of too high
appraisement of the quality of one’s play.
But it is Shakespeare who teaches us best to be good golfers, and the
secret of the perfect application of his sentiment and philosophy to the
golfer’s life is that his writings are so intensely human, and that of
all the diversions of man there is none that so much stirs in him the
simple instincts, reduces him to the simplest human elements. A round of
golf will sometimes bare faults and qualities in a man that have been
hidden from the time of their formation in his early years. It is to the
man who constantly undergoes this fierce analysis that Shakespeare will
most appeal. Let the golfer test his text and see the perfection of the
result. The quotation selected for the first day of the year for a
Shakespearean calendar that was hung up in a golfer’s den was--
“Like a bold champion, I assume the lists,
Nor ask advice of any other thought
But faithfulness, and courage.”
Could a golfer take a better motto?