In days gone by the position of the lady in the great world of golf was
something of a doubtful quantity, but there can be no question that she
is now an established institution, and that she will stay. There have
been men who have said that golf is not a lady’s game, and many who
still stoutly maintain that it is at all events only a game for very
young ladies who have not taken upon themselves any serious domestic
cares. But it makes little difference what they say. For the first time
in history a married lady won the Ladies’ Championship in 1906. The
ladies have a golf union of their own, which is the kind of thing that a
large section of rebellious men have been sighing for for many years,
but are apparently still far from getting. Moreover, they have an
inter-county championship, which again is what men say they ought to
have, but cannot get.
Some of the oldest but least common golf traditions have reference to
women, and it seems to be the fact that one of the first monarchs in
England or Scotland who ever sought pleasure and relaxation in trundling
a golf ball over the links was Mary Queen of Scots, and that she played
on golfing ground no less celebrated than St. Andrews. This was in 1563.
During that winter Mary occupied a house in South Street, and it is
generally believed that she yielded to the spell of the place and played
golf on the links with Chastelard, the favourite, who was subsequently
beheaded. Although the evidence that she did thus play at St. Andrews is
not conclusive, it is very likely that she did so, for it is quite
certain that she played at Edinburgh and elsewhere, and it is variously
quoted as a specimen of her heartlessness on the one hand and of her
enthusiasm for the game on the other, that she was found playing it only
a few days after the murder of her husband.
It is suggested that the golfing ancestors of the present lady players
were fish girls, and the evidence on the point is comprised in a minute
of the Royal Musselburgh Golf Club, dated 14th December 1810, which
reads thus: “The club to present by subscription a handsome new creel
and shawl to the best Female Golfer who plays on the annual occasion on
1st January next, old style (12th January, new), to be intimated to the
Fish Ladies by William Robertson, the officer of the club. Two of the
best Barcelona silk handkerchiefs to be added to the above premium of
the creel.--(Signed) ALEX. G. HUNTER, Captain.”
But the modern golfing ladies absolutely ignore all this ancient
history, and, in a manner, started afresh with a Year 1 on the inception
of their championship, like the French people did at the time of their
big Revolution. What happened before did not count. Thus, from their
point of view, they arrived at a sort of millennium straight away,
having no brakes of custom and conservatism on their wheel of progress.
Consequently it is no business of the modern writer to argue as to
whether the fair sex ought or ought not to play golf; the fact is there
that they do, and that more of them do so every week. And they do it
very whole-heartedly. In the box-rooms of the houses of golfing ladies
are sundry old tennis racquets with their stringing limp, despised and
rejected, and their once favourite croquet mallets have been cut down in
the shaft and are now used for odd jobs of carpentering about the house.
It is said that the golfing girl does not care a jot what she wears on
the links or--_mirabile dictu!_--what she looks like, so long as she has
boots or shoes on with which she can get a firm stance, or upper
arrangements which enable her to swing with ease. Thus one hears that
she has enormous nails in her footgear, wears the loosest of Irish
homespun costumes, and wouldn’t be seen in a picture hat. And she is a
fine, robust, healthy creature, who loves the game as much as anyone.
The great professionals say that she is a splendid pupil--better even
than the men. Harry Vardon holds that the American ladies--whom he has
studied on their native links--are better and more thorough than ours;
but he thinks that ours are very good when they roll up their sleeves
and give up the big hats. “They seem (ladies in general, that is) to
take closer and deeper notice of the hints you give them, and to retain
the points of the lesson longer in their memories,” says Vardon, and
James Braid concurs in the judgment. The only drawback to all this big
hitting, hard tramping, and devil-may-care spirit of the girl on the
links is that, according to Miss May Hezlet, one of the queens of the
links, it enlarges the hands and feet! But think of the freedom!
When the ladies play among themselves--as they generally do--they
employ, according to report, a golfing vocabulary of their own, which,
though unconventional, let it be said in haste, is quite proper.
Elsewhere than in happy England, the blessedness of whose sporting girls
has been sung by Gilbert of the Savoy, it may not be the same; indeed it
appeared in the newspapers a little while since that the minister of a
fashionable church in Halifax, Nova Scotia, declared from his pulpit one
Sunday that information had reached him that “women who went to church
on Sunday, went to golf on Monday and swore like troopers!” When this
was brought to the attention of the English ladies, they said that the
information that had been given to the reverend gentleman was very
likely true, as those ladies probably played such a very bad game. In
England there was no occasion to make use of such expletives as were
suggested, and a “Dash!” and “Oh, you naughty, _naughty_ little ball”
were generally found sufficient to meet the exigencies of the most
trying situations. At one time there seemed to be some considerable
rivalry and jealousy, quite characteristically feminine, between the
British and American lady golfers. But Miss Rhona Adair as was went over
to the States and won all her matches, the strain of the
effort--believing that she really had the credit of her country at
stake--being, so it was authoritatively said, largely responsible for
the breakdown in her health that ensued. Then the Americans sent over a
big team of ladies to try to capture our Ladies’ Championship with one
of them. The battlefield was at Cromer, and such a scene was there as
one by one the American flags were hauled down! At the end of the
meeting the British lioness held undisputed possession of the field, and
she placed the Cup on her tea table.