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 godly 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 God 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 competition now
is many times keener than it was in the days when the Balls 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, nobody 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
competitions, 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.