Curious, indeed, are some items in the list of the feats of golf. In the
game heroic there is testimony to the pluck, perseverance, and
enthusiasm of Mr. J. W. Spalding, who in the spring of a recent season
came by an awful motor smash in France and lost an eye, but had no
sooner risen from the hospital bed and been sent to Italy to recuperate
than he was at his golf again, playing himself back with his single eye
to the game of scratch quality that he enjoyed before, and--good for
you, Mr. Spalding--but a few weeks went by ere one more scratch medal
came his way. Nor shall we forget how a popular champion struggled home
to the seventy-second green at Prestwick while the blood was oozing from
his lungs.
There are feats of other kinds, as those which count as freaks, poor
things enough but wondered at by some. What shall we say of the
Pittsburg golfer who wagered four thousand dollars that he could play a
ball over four and a half miles of the city streets in one hundred and
fifty strokes? Beginning at five o’clock in the morning, he did this
thing in one hundred and nineteen strokes, but lost a thousand dollars
in damage done to property on the way. That man found an emulator in
London who undertook to play a ball from Ludgate Circus to a fountain
basin in Trafalgar Square. There are men who like to drive fine balls
from the glass faces of other people’s expensive watches, and others who
prefer the tamer sport of driving from the eggs of hens. There was the
man of Sandwich, who, with a champagne bottle as his only “club,”
played, and--Oh, shame upon it!--beat a neophyte who carried a full bag
of the most improved clubs. There was the old-time golfer who lofted
balls over the spire of St. Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh, and another
who tooled his gutty from Bruntsfield Links to the top of Arthur’s Seat.
Better and more purposeful was the practice which Mr. Laidlay used to
undertake before championships, when, with Jack White for caddie, he
would play a ball from the first tee at North Berwick to the Roundell
Hole at Gullane, six miles away, by way of the Eel Burn Hole, the sands
along the shore, the neighbourhood of the fishermen’s cottages, and
away over Muirfield and the rough country to the top of the hill,
playing from whatever lie his ball chanced to find, and once doing this
course in a total of ninety-seven strokes.
V
Do we not sometimes hear one sort of sportsmen make it a complaint
against golf, that the player does not run any personal risk of injury
to his life or his limbs? Some of these men will tell you that you only
arrive at real sport when such dangers are incurred. It may be so, but
we shall not on that account seek to increase the risks of golf. It is
one of the glories of the game that it is such fine sport and commands
the wild enthusiasm of the best sportsmen, though it threatens the life
neither of the player nor any of the living creatures made by God that
give the fulness to Nature, and add, though it may be unconsciously, to
the golfer’s joy as he strides over the links on a fine morning. In
other sports, when man goes wandering over the hills, he takes his gun
with him that he may kill something. Leave him alone with Nature, and as
the lord of creation he is impelled to go forward to the attack on the
lesser beings. In golf alone does he roam over the country and by the
side of the sea with never a thought of what he may kill passing through
his mind. He has a great joy in his own life, and he is all benevolence
and wishful for the happy life of others.
Things have been killed--accidentally--at golf. Many luckless birds have
got in the way of tee shots, and even a fish lost its life on a golf
course, and is now in a glass case in the clubhouse at Totteridge. By
some devious means it got on to the course one day when there had been
heavy rains and much overflowing all about. And--let it be whispered to
the shooters and the mighty hunters!--men have been maimed, and even
killed on golf links, though we pray that, despite the extra sport,
there may be no more of them, and that the single pain of the game may
be the skin-blisters and corns that sometimes will come up at the bottom
of the left forefinger and elsewhere. I did not think better of golf as
a sport when one day, in playing my way outwards on the North Berwick
links, a ball from a hidden tee came upon me unawares and carried the
pipe that I was smoking away with it for some twenty or thirty yards,
while I stood to wonder what was happening. And even by his own deeds
may a man court perils, for we heard the other day that one was playing
at Ravenscar when he took a full mashie shot with the object of clearing
a stone wall; but the ball struck the wall and rebounded with great
force against his head. And from his head it rebounded again over the
wall, so it was said; and it was not astonishing to hear that the player
was slightly stunned! If adventure in the form of fierce conflict with
wild beasts and reptiles is what the full-blooded sportsman wishes, he
may have it. A member of the Royal Sydney Club played his ball down a
hole, and he put his hand down it to see if he could recover the ball.
He seized hold of something soft and drew out a venomous brown
snake--which he hurriedly pushed back. I am told by my golfing directory
that at Umtala, in Rhodesia, “the course consists of nine holes. In
addition to other hazards, lions are occasionally in evidence.” I happen
to have had some private confirmation of this report, and it is told me
that if ever a golfer in Umtala indulged himself in such a freak as golf
by candlelight, as players have been known to do elsewhere, he might not
complete the game that he had projected, for the king of beasts is
accustomed to prowl over the land at night, and picks up any little
living thing that he may find about. In other respects there is
something quaint about this golf at Umtala, for I am informed that in
the daytime the course is frequented by crows with white bands round
their necks, which go by the name of “Free Kirk Ministers.” They are
thieves, and now and again they swoop down and fly away again with the
ball.
They are fine pioneers of the game in South Africa, and it deserves to
prosper there. They have needed strong hearts and much patience and
forbearance. I have been to golf with a man who has lately come back
from a short visit there, and he says that their “greens” look as if
they were covered with millions of garnets; and poor as the putting may
be from some points of view, it can be performed with marvellous
accuracy, and the people of the Colonies deny that anybody loves the
game more than they do, or is more enthusiastic in it than they are.
Their trials are uncommon and severe, but they become accustomed to
them. At Wynberg, or some place like that, there is a lake to carry at a
short hole, and one knows what sometimes happens when there is a water
hazard between the tee and the green, one shot away. Here the avoidance
of it is not made any the easier, because a long line of Kaffir boys is
formed up on the near side of the lake, stripped, with eyes aflame with
eagerness, and wildly gesticulating with their arms and hands, and
jostling and scolding at each other while they seem to be appealing “Me!
me! me!” to the golfer on the tee. Away the ball goes from the tee, and
at the slightest indication that it was struck with dangerous
inaccuracy, splash go all the Kaffir boys into the water. It is very
much like the game of throwing sixpences overboard when your ship of
voyage is at anchor off some Eastern port.