It is an ancient game; but let no man think yet that we have realised a
fair part of the curious situations that may arise on the links when the
golfer hits a ball, or that we have a full appreciation of the
possibilities of their complexity. Very quaint are some of the
difficulties that twice a year are presented to the Rules of Golf
Committee sitting at St. Andrews for the special purpose of discovering
solutions thereto.
From far Manawatu once there came a plaintive cry for help. These
New Zealand golfers confessed that in all the holes on their greens
there is an iron box with a small flag on the top to mark the holes. In
an inter-club match the caddie of one of the players before leaving the
green, when replacing the box, put it into the hole, flag downwards,
exposing a sharp point on the top. One of the next two players, when
approaching to that hole, landed his ball on the top of the box in the
hole, and it remained there. Then the arguments began, and not until a
letter had sailed the seas from the Antipodes, and the Royal and Ancient
Club had sent her answer back to this outpost of her empire of golf, did
they subside. The man who had executed this wonderful shot had held that
he could reverse the box and put it into its proper position and claim
the hole. It hurt St. Andrews to think that away there in New Zealand,
left to their own resources, they should give themselves up to such
queer-fangled contrivances as hole flags with boxes on them. If a bit of
cloth and a stick of sorts is good enough for the old course, why should
Manawatu want what these Royal and Ancients sarcastically referred to as
“mechanical contrivances”? The high authority begged leave to observe
that the Rules of Golf did not provide for such “mechanical
contrivances,” and the New Zealanders were recommended to make local
rules to suit them.
You may always tell from the form of the answer when the St. Andrews lip
has curled at the question that has been asked of it. Nowadays the
committee can hear the mention of a hedge without a rise in its
temperature; but when the secretary, in reading out the problem of the
moment, has to say “mud” there is uneasiness still. The committee move
in their chairs, they fidget, they scowl, somebody mutters “Tut, tut!”
and they all cough to hide their agitation. “Mud” is the word you must
not say. I have not seen the committee in this agitation; nobody except
its own members has, for it is a very private committee; but this sudden
disturbance can be imagined most clearly. Yet these inconsiderate
golfers will keep on mentioning mud, and St. Andrews answers them back
with as much asperity as is consistent with the preservation of its own
dignity. One time in a matter of this kind they gave a snubbing to a
Kentish course. The club there, in all seriousness and innocence,
propounded a very pretty point. “Playing in a foursome,” they said, “A
is left by his partner’s approach shot a six-inch putt for the hole; but
A’s ball pitched in a small piece of wet mud left on the edge of the
green (presumably from the boot of a player in front). A small piece of
this mud clung to the ball, and was on the side of the ball A had to
strike. A played the stroke, and the ball and the mud stuck to his
putter, and the head of the putter and the ball on it were exactly above
the hole.” This was surely a most delightful situation! See how pretty
is the combination of this foursome pair, and how they do play each the
game to suit the other, thus: “His partner then with his putter tapped
the ball off A’s putter and it fell into the hole.” A charming incident!
“Did A or his partner lose or halve the hole, and would A have been
within his rights in shaking the ball off into the hole, or what should
they have done?” Said the Committee to the secretary, “Tell these good
people that the Committee have no experience of such tenacious mud, and
such a contingency should be provided for by the local rules,” and then
they hurriedly spoke of the weather and the wind and the state of the
eighteenth green, and how the Major got a bonny 3 there the night
before--anything to get this taste of Kentish mud out of their
St. Andrews mouths.
A point of some curious interest was that which arose in the course of
medal play on the course of the Higher Bebington Club some time ago. A
player had one of those most tantalising putts a yard in length to play,
and, like many a man before him, he missed it! In his aggravation at the
circumstance he snatched back his ball, and, without having holed it
out, he replaced it where it was before, in order to try his putt over
again, to satisfy his _amour propre_ that the holing of such a putt was
not beyond his mortal capacity. This is an old way of attempting to gain
some small crumb of satisfaction from a very disappointing business. At
the second attempt he holed that putt, but his partner then told him
that he was obliged to disqualify him from the entire competition for
not having holed out when making his putt. The competitor agreed that he
had done wrong, and accepted this fate; but some time later, when he had
fully thought over the business, and read up the rules, he protested.
Yet his committee maintained that he really should be disqualified, and
after much argument the seers of the Royal and Ancient were begged to
give their decision. And it was a very interesting decision. The high
court held that Rule 10 of stroke competitions applied, and that,
therefore, if the player replaced his ball directly behind the spot it
occupied after he had missed the putt, the penalty was two strokes only,
the second putt thus counting as in the competition, though it is fairly
clear that the competitor never intended it for it. “But,” said the
committee, “otherwise he was disqualified.” Those who discover feelings
and frames of mind behind the mask of simple sentences would be moved to
say, in this case, that in that last simple sentence St. Andrews was
trying to cover up somewhat the absurd position to which the rules
brought this case; for it was clear that the essence of the problem in
relation to the law was as to whether the player replaced his ball
behind the spot where it first stopped, which came simply to this--Was
he short of the hole the first time, or did his ball run to either side?
If he was short, then he was saved, and he is allowed to go on under
penalty of two strokes; but if he over-ran the hole--which from the golf
point of view was better than to be short--or if he went to either side,
then he would be disqualified. That ruling has grown since then.
Pity the club committees in their constant troubles. Was ever committee
so sorely beset as that which had come, by devious means, to knowledge
of the faults of its members, and when honour seemed to forbid that the
knowledge should be acted upon, though otherwise would an injustice be
done to the sinless golfers. It was in County Sligo. A medal competition
had been played, and when all was over the members of the committee--as
such high officers constantly solicitous for the welfare of things
will--wandered through the rooms and the corridors of the club. And it
came to pass that one of them overheard a conversation that he was not
supposed to overhear, between two members of the club, in which it was
alleged that certain competitors had played on the putting greens before
starting. The committeeman knew then that these men should be
disqualified; but how was he to act? He told his colleagues, but they
likewise were sore in mind as to whether they were justified in taking
notice of the fact that had thus come to their knowledge. Were they
bound to investigate this matter, and prove it one way or the other, or
was it sufficient if they waited for someone to lay a formal objection?
In their despair they appealed to St. Andrews; but this again is one of
the nice points that the chief authority would rather others settled for
themselves, and they said accordingly, that the committee must use their
own discretion as to whether it was a case for their interference.
Upon other occasions the committee at St. Andrews has been called upon
to indicate the proper course of procedure when a ball, after being
played, lodged in the turned-up part of a player’s trousers. It has been
somewhat naïvely asked by Kenmare whether, in a mixed foursome, when the
lady missed the ball off the tee, she should “try” again, or whether her
gallant partner should rid the tee of that persistent ball. It had to
tell the County Down Club that a player could not carry a special flat
board round with him from which to make his tee shots; and it has had to
straighten out some quite frightful mix-ups in ladies’ competitions.
Sometimes it happens that some casual decision of this sort serves a
good purpose in bringing the portion of the golf world that has been
somewhat inclined to wander, back to its duty in the observance of the
strict letter of the law, as in the autumn of 1906, when on the appeal
of Aldeburgh it declared how, when in long grass or anything of the
kind, the player was only entitled to move so much of the obstruction as
would enable him to find his ball in the first instance, and was not
entitled to arrange things so that he could see it while attempting to
play it. A player is not so entitled to a full view of his ball, though
he will sometimes tell you that he is.