The 1st of September is a fine date for the golfer, for it seems to mark
for him the beginning of the period of play which is the best of the
whole year. The summer heats are cooling, the tints of Nature are
turning to beautiful golds and browns and crimsons, and with a little
rain the turf begins to yield more to the foot and the club, and play is
pleasanter than it was in the dog days. We would have no sorrows to mar
the pleasure of such a day; but the golfer need only be braced to skill
and worthiness by the reminder that this date has a little black edge
round it in his calendar, for on that day there died one who was
certainly one of the greatest golfers who ever lived. That was Allan
Robertson.
It will always be a difficult matter to compare the golfers of a living
generation with those of a dead one, or to estimate the relative quality
of the golfers of two different generations, both of them of the long
distant past. We have no standards that are carried on from decade to
decade and century to century, and while men do not change, their
implements do, and the courses on which they play, while, what with the
alterations in implements and courses, the methods are much changed, so
that it is quite the same game no longer. Therefore it is impossible and
futile to make any comparison between the man we have to-day and whom we
like to think is the greatest golfer who ever handled a club, and some
of the great heroes of the past. That is a question that can never be
settled. What we do know, and we can think it for our modern
satisfaction, is that there are of necessity many more fine players in
these days than ever there were before, and there are dozens for every
one that there was in the days of Allan Robertson and young Tom Morris.
Therefore it must be much harder to assert supremacy in these days than
formerly, and all the greater is the feat of doing it not once, but many
times. If some of the old golfers triumphed as often, or nearly, we can
say for the men who live in our time, that, in the numerical weight of
their conquest at all events, theirs are by far the greater
achievements, and they must have that credit.
As in all other matters, it happens that estimates of the merits of
things of the past are necessarily indefinite; they vary from time to
time. One generation will have it this old-time celebrity was the
greatest in his line; while the sons of that generation make
hero-worship of another master, and say that he was the best. So it is
in golf. One time there will be a feeling that young Tom was
incomparably the best of the golfers of the early period of the game.
Then by and by a little of this enthusiasm will fade, and it will be
agreed that there was no one better than Allan Robertson. Sometimes a
wave of feeling will roll over these discussions in favour of good old
Tom, and of late years poor Bob Ferguson has been having justice done to
the magnificent skill that he displayed when he was in his prime. Now,
taking a mental vote from all the authorities one can remember to have
spoken or written on these weighty matters, it seems to result in Allan
and young Tom coming out at the top. Bob Ferguson is too near our time
for his merits to be properly appraised. Our grandchildren may better be
able to give his due to the man who won three championships in
succession, and tied for a fourth.
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 circumstance 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 prone 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 niggardly in the gratitude 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 God an’ o’ gowff, I’ve aye gotten warsled through somehow or
ither. The tae thing ta’en wi’ the tither, 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 glass 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 pass 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.