Perhaps it would be as well for the golf of some of us if now and again
a time of quiet and inactive thought were enforced. It is certain that
many men feel much the better in their game for having been deprived of
play for a time, greatly irritated as they have been. The fact is that
he who is a faithful golfer often plays it mentally when real shots on
the links are denied to him. It turns out that this mental golf is of a
very thorough order; never is the player so analytical and severely
critical of his methods as then, and never does he grope more patiently
or more intelligently for the hidden light that is the source of
success. It is simple fact that men have discovered grave faults in
their play in this way, such as they never suspected during the whole
season that they had been committing them in real play on the links. And
in the same way others have come upon great secrets of fine details of
method, making for the improvement of their game, which they would never
have encountered at golf on a course.
The chief, if not the only reason, and one that is quite good enough to
be convincing, for this somewhat peculiar state of affairs is, that this
is essentially practice and experimental golf, in which the player is
constantly wondering and trying something new; while the golf that he
plays with clubs and balls on the green grass is far too often
exclusively match-play or score-play golf, and that is regarded at the
time as too responsible a thing to permit of any experiment. The old
ways may be bad ways, and no doubt many of them are; but we must stand
by them on occasions of this kind, we say to ourselves, when the wise
precept of an old player-friend flashes across our mind, the opponent
being one up with three to go, and a very vindictive fellow. It is
evident, then, that we do too much of this match and score play, and
that the consequence is that we are never given time and the opportunity
for thought and practice and the working out of experiments and ideas
that might prove of the utmost moment. Our game runs along a little
old-constructed channel, and it gets clogged with fault. When we go out
to golf for the day, no other possibility presents itself to our minds
than that of the two rounds, one before luncheon, and the other one
after, with living opponent or opponents, and always upon such occasions
we must trust to the old ways to pull us through. How much would it make
for future improvement if one of the rounds, or a long afternoon, were
devoted to simple lonely practice with one club, or at most two, in
which new ideas might be tried, theories considered, and different and
perhaps more effective ways to salvation worked out. Spend an hour thus
in close communion with one’s cleek or iron, and what an intimacy is
established that never would have been otherwise! There used to be
suspicion, distrustfulness, fear, and neglect--and what may follow upon
such relations save utter failure?--but now there is friendship, and an
appreciation of capabilities and qualities that bodes ill for the
arrogance of the opponent who has seen so many failures with this cleek
or iron, that he has come to think that when it is unbagged it is time
for him to be adding one more hole to his score. The man who never does
any of this practice golf never gives himself a chance of learning how
to play more than one stroke with one club, and when there is only one
stroke to a club it is not generally a very good or very reliable
stroke, as can easily be shown.
Thinking thus, we perceive the value of influenza and the minor
illnesses, and come to realise the truth of the remark by one earnest
golfer, that the thing that of all others had most improved his game of
golf was a severe attack of typhoid fever, which all but summarily
terminated his career. When this man told us that he emerged from that
disquieting experience a new and better golfer, and one more thorough,
the observation seemed cryptic to the point of absurdity, and it was not
taken very seriously. But it is certainly true that a very earnest
golfer will think long and hard upon all points of his game during a
dull period of enforced rest and idleness such as comes at sickness, and
then all the sins of omission and commission loom up in his troubled
mind, and he corrects the faults that he knows now, as probably he would
not admit before, went to the undoing of his game. The entire position
is revised; in the early days of convalescence we send downstairs to the
study for some favourite volumes, and we look up Vardon, Braid, or
Taylor on a subtle point of which we have been making mental
examination. The thoughtful studies of Mr. John Low are a stimulant at
such times. Such introspection is a fine thing and most fruitful, and
little wonder after all that the player does indeed return to health a
wiser and a more complete golfer, who will now go farther in skill upon
the links than ever he would have done in the old, narrow, careless
days.
What follows is a story that bears somewhat upon the moral that we have
been thinking over. There was a man who was in want of a shot that would
come between the driving iron and the wood, and he could not find one.
Of the cleek he had no good word to say; he could not play it. Of
driving mashies he had several, and some of them were well enough at
times, and at others they were like the cleek, so that what with his
driving mashies and his cleeks, this man was in constant jeopardy when
there was a shot of a hundred and sixty or seventy yards to play, and so
he was unhappy in his game. It happened that one of his driving mashies
was one that had been gifted to him upon a day by a great player, who
said, “I pick this from all that I have seen; may I never play more if
it is not a perfect club!” The man tried it, and it seemed to him that
the head wanted more ballast, and after a little while he allowed the
club to be gathered to his fine collection of idle relics, saying to
himself consolingly, “What suits one man does not suit another.” Thus it
came to pass that the perfect club that a champion player declared he
would love to play a long-short hole with to save the life of himself or
his dearest friend, lay for months and years in a dark cupboard.
In the even cycle of this golfer’s life the time of torment came round
once again, and, as it had seemed before, it was more desperate than it
had ever been. There appeared to be no remedy. All the tricks had been
tried, and all the clubs generally put into commission had been
experimented with, and there was no good result. And then a strange
thing happened. Things were at about their worst, when, as sometimes was
the case, this poor tormented golfer awoke in his bed very early one
morning in summer. The sun had not long broken the darkness; it was
about three o’clock. Being a man who went to bed betimes and who was
early refreshed, he did this time, as on others, lie in long thought
upon the events of life and his own affairs, the perfect stillness of
the time conducing to effective contemplation. And, as was inevitable,
the chain of reflection brought him round to the prevailing worry of the
game, and for half an hour or so he considered this grave problem from
every conceivable point of view, and subjected each iron instrument that
was concerned with it to the severest cross-examination, from which none
emerged with an unspotted reputation. It is not always in the human
golfer to attach entire blame to flesh and blood, and wholly exonerate
inanimate iron. Pride must have its place, even in the times of
adversity. This man was self-assured that one reason for his
failure--not the whole reason, perhaps; but still one reason--was that
all his searchings and purchasings had yet left him without the club
that he really needed, that one which was resting somewhere in a shop or
in another man’s bag, that was the affinity of his game, the thing that
was meant for him and which one day might come his way. He had a vague
instinct of what the feel of that club would be like, of the shape of
its head, its balance, and the length of the shaft. When he encountered
it he would know it at once for the long-sought-for club.
Then, as by a gift of the gods, an idea flashed through his mind and
caused him to start up, thoroughly roused from the dreamy state of
lethargy. That club! That old despised club that had come to him from
the champion with such a glowing recommendation, wasted entirely! That
was the club that was wanted; it must have been one of the most
irresponsible and illogical moments of his golfing lifetime when it was
rejected. Did it not conform to that ideal that was vaguely felt in the
mind? As he handled it in imagination now, did it not seem quite
perfect, that above all other clubs its true motto was “Far and sure.”
When a golfer makes discoveries of this kind about his old clubs, that,
poor things, cannot speak for themselves and tell him what he is doing
wrong, he is man enough to own his previous mistakes, and this player
owned them. He was all contrition, repentance, humility. He wished to
abase himself before the champion club and promote it to the captaincy
of his bag. Therefore when there is no sound to be heard save the
chirruping of the birds and the creaking of stairs, see this inspired
golfer leave his room, clad in a dressing-gown, at half-past three in
the morning, and go forward to the ransacking of a rubbish cupboard in
search for the wanted club. And there it was found at last, a little
rusty, the marks of privation from golf and of severe neglect written
plainly upon its face, but sure enough that same grand club that had
lived in the remembrance until at last it was appreciated. Yes, it was
just as it had been imagined to be. It was the perfect club; it would do
what all others had failed to do. Happy club in which there is placed
such belief and confidence, for the less likely is it ever to
disappoint! In his mood of repentance the man gets a little emery and
brightens up the blade until the first shafts of the morning sunlight
glint upon it. Being a handy man with a tool or two, he takes out the
tack at the end of the grip and unwinds it, laying it back again in some
way to suit the fancy of the time. And then the grip is waxed, and the
club is ready, and it is laid to a ball on the hearth-rug, and how that
ball could be hit, with a fine, low, skimming flight that would yield
much length, and the stroke, having been something of a push, would dump
the ball at the end of it just down beside the flag! It is no use. Let
it be four o’clock or twelve, why should the conventions keep us off the
links when these exalted moods are upon us? The golfer hurries through a
bath, puts his clothes about him, and with the whole world of golf save
this one unit still asleep, even unto the most watchful greenkeeper, he
hurries down to the course with a few balls and just this one club, this
one fine club. And there the truth of it all is realised. It is the club
that was wanted, and the shots that come from it are just as perfect as
shots by this man will ever be. The balls are fired off up to the first
green one by one, and it is found then that such are the virtues of this
club of exquisite balance that it is a splendid thing to putt with!
It is a glorious morning. The pearly sky seems to speak well of weather
prospects for the day when it opens out, and there is not wind enough to
curl a wavelet on the sea, which simply makes a little soothing creamy
lapping on the pebbles. How grand is the fine expanse of the course in
this morning freshness, and is there not something of rugged beauty in
that huge sandy projection which marks the short hole far out? This
indeed is the time of day for the golfer to be abroad. Happy man who is
in this mood, having found that which was lost. The golfing life is not
the same. A little thought and much confidence, and see to what they
will carry you! Make the most of them, you happy fellow, for they may
not last--they may not last!