There are many who hold that the most exasperating opponent of all is he
who is afflicted with an amazing indecision when about to make his very
shortest putts. For a minute he will stand with his putter to the ball
as if in abject fear of his fate, and surely at such a time there are
strange fancies flying through his brain. They must be like the fancies
of a drowning man. It was agreed among a company of his friends that
these must be the jerky thoughts of such a man whom they well know when
he was engaged gloomily upon the dreaded task of putting a ball that lay
eighteen inches from the hole, the little patch of putting green that
intervened being perfectly smooth and level:--
This is a very simple job,
And when I have holed the ball
I shall be certain of my half-crown.
Still, I must be careful. It is very easy to miss these short putts;
And I have missed many thousands, costing me
Many pounds--scores of pounds.
And now that I am up against it,
And looking at this putt,
It does not seem quite so easy as it did at first.
It will require most careful management--a most delicate tap,
And very accurate gauging of strength.
One needs to be very cool and deliberate over these things.
One’s nerves, and stomach, and liver must be in prime condition.
I wish I had not been out to dinner last night.
Was it Willie Park or Ben Sayers
Who said that the man who could putt could beat anybody?
I believe him--Willie or Ben.
This is really a most awkward putt.
The green looks slower than the others. It is very rough.
Why don’t the committee sack the greenkeeper,
Who ought to be a market gardener?
It is like a bunker between
My ball and the hole. Such very rough stuff.
One, two, three--six--nine--why!
There are eleven big blades of grass
Sticking up like the rushes at Westward Ho!
The grass becomes so very stiff and wiry in this very hot weather.
(Yes, it is too hot to putt properly.)
My ball will never break through this grass.
It is one of the hardest putts I have ever seen,
I wish I had more loft on my putter.
I _was_ an ass not to bring that other one out from my locker,
Where it is eating its head off (so to speak).
I think, also, that a little cut would do this putt a lot of good.
But how? The green slopes from the left;
Yet it seemed to slope from the right.
Also, it goes downwards to the hole.
This is a perfect devil of a putt!
I know my stance for putting is not good,
But Harry Vardon says that every man has his own stance,
So perhaps it is all right.
But I had better move my left foot; it seems in the way.
I see that two--four--six--seven of the pimples on this ball
Are quite flat.
Nobody can putt with a ball like that.
A man ought to be allowed to change his ball
Even on the green at times like this.
I must allow for those pimples.
Confound that fellow Brown!
He seems to be waiting.
And he is smoking his dirty shag so much
That I can hardly see the hole for smoke.
If I lose this hole I shall lose the match.
I am quite with Johnny Low in his new idea for handicapping,
When he says some of us should be allowed to play
Our bad shots over again.
In that case I would have one good smack at this ball
To get the strength and the hang of
Everything. And I am certain--yes, I am quite absolutely certain--
That I would hole the ball next time.
However, what does it matter?
Better men then I have missed such putts,
And I am not a chicken--live a hard life--lot of work--
Office to-night--awful day to-morrow.
And as the wife was saying--
Let me see. Oh! hang this putt!
He can have his half-crown if he wants it,
But I am going to have one good smack
At this ball. Now--
No, that was wrong. Now, yes, yes--
* * * * *
My godfathers!
And my godmothers!
I have missed that putt again!
[_When the ball came to a standstill it was just an inch and
a half short of the hole, and considerably to the left of
the proper line to the middle._]
X
Some of those cantankerous people who have no sympathy with games, and
but a limited confidence in the wise precept that the healthy mind is
most frequently to be found in association with the healthy
body--practical people they like to call themselves--will sometimes ask
you what is the good of golf. It is generally useless to attempt to
humour them by advancing the proposition that it returns a dividend of
fifty per cent. in mental and physical efficiency, and seventy-five in
the general happiness of the subject.
What are really the least convincing examples of the practical value of
golf are the most effective in argument against such folks. With them it
may count a word in favour of the game that a man once playing it found
that his ball from a full drive came to rest on a sixpence which had
evidently dropped through a hole in the pocket of a previous player.
Here, indeed, was a material practical gain! They will be impressed also
with the possibilities of the game when they are told a little story of
how a man, who was not in quest of art treasures at the time, discovered
an old master accidentally, and entirely through the medium of his golf.
It was in this way. A Montreal art dealer was playing the game on a
country course one day in 1903, when he sliced a ball so badly that away
it went through the window of a cottage hard by. Thereupon there came
out from it an old lady, a French Canadian, who was possessed of
remarkable power of speech, of which the golfer was given much
evidence. Presently, when her attack was somewhat exhausted, the poor
golfer offered to recompense her for the damage done to the window; but
then it was put to him that the broken glass was not the only casualty.
The ball, after passing through the window, had continued its course of
destruction by breaking the glass that covered the picture; and without
making any examination of the nature of this damage the player agreed
that he would give a matter of a pound for the picture besides paying
for the broken window. This soothed the feelings of the lady of the
cottage, and she pressed upon him the picture, for the damage to which
he had paid so handsomely. He took it away with him, and at home in the
evening he was led in a spirit of curiosity to make some examination of
it, when, to his astonishment, he discovered that it was a Dutch
interior by Teniers, which he sold a few days later for £500. To the
credit of this golfer be it said, he sent a cheque for half the amount
to the cottager. This is an excellent story to tell to the absurd and
practical people, and a true one.
It might be of service to add to it an account of a shot that was played
on one occasion by a gentleman of no less scientific importance than
Professor John Milne, who is known as a great seismologist, the man who
is most in evidence when earthquakes are troubling. When the earth is
still the Professor will leave his instruments in the Isle of Wight to
their own care for a period, and he will wander away to the links for
some golf. To what great feat has the golf of this professor led him?
Why, he of all men became the first to drive a golf ball across the
Victoria Falls on the Zambesi River--a hundred and sixty yards of
roaring, foaming water. That was when the British Association went for
its annual meeting to South Africa, and Professor Sims Woodhead, the
celebrated Cambridge pathologist, was so much impressed by the
achievement, that he too attempted to drive the Zambesi, and succeeded.
But these are the things that may be done by Professors once, and not
always. Two more balls were teed on the bank, and the Professors smote
them with their clubs, but those balls were claimed by the Zambesi, and
perchance they have been digested by the crocodiles. Now here you have
something done by golf which was not golf, but which marked the advance
of civilisation into the dark regions of the African continent. Our
practical friends must allow this to the credit of the game, not only
for the achievement in itself, but for the possibilities that it
suggests, for is not a picture at once conjured up of the resourceful
golfer driving a ball from the shore to a sinking ship, when all other
means of establishing communication therewith had failed? To the ball
there will be tied a silken thread, and the thread will help a string
across, and the string will drag a rope. Thus must we plead for golf!
While in these serious aspects of the battle of life the game is thus to
come to our aid, it shall be of similar service also in the gentler
paths. Once upon a time a maker of golf balls told me how he had
suspected a rival of putting cores from old balls made by him A into all
so-called new ones made by the rival B. Therefore A for a little while
wound a tiny piece of tissue paper with the rubber of his cores, and on
the paper there was written A’s name and address. Some time later the
tissues came home again through the medium of the balls that bore the
name of B. There was this damning evidence of the pilfering of the
cores. This story is not told as a hint to the trade, but surely it will
convey one to ingenious persons who wish for a mode of secret
communication with others which will be sure and safe. May it not be
that some Romeo of to-day has already come by the device of lofting a
ball or two on to the balcony of the fair Juliet, who in the seclusion
of her chamber may be discovered in operation upon the cover with
hair-pins and fire-irons, and presently in raptures upon the endearments
expressed in the _billet doux_ of her Romeo?
Perhaps it will not avail us as golfers to tell our practical friends
that the principles of the application of physical force which have been
taught us in the game, as of the steady body, the fixed centre of
movement, and of the hand being under the constant leadership of the
eye, have benefited us not merely in the playing of other games, such as
billiards and tennis, but in the attainment of greater proficiency in
some of the most practical and useful of domestic occupations, so that
the man of all others who may be depended upon to hang up the pictures
in a new house as pictures should be hanged, is the golfer who has got
his handicap down to 6. We will tell also to the critic of our game that
it affords a scope for a kind of humour that is of occasional service to
some wits and others. It helps them to raise a laugh over the tea-cups
when they say that they will take the odd or two more in sugar. We do
not like this jugglery with the terms, and it is only to be excused in
such exceptional cases as when the doctor tells the new golfer that his
temperature is 99° and the patient inquires anxiously as to what the
bogey is; or when, in discussing the frowning fortunes of some
unfortunate acquaintance who has had a hard time in life, and is called
upon for severe labour in his last days, it is said of this poor chap
that he is playing the nineteenth hole and has made an indifferent
drive. But, in seriousness, we like our golf to be kept sacred to
itself, and unassociated with the generally duller pursuits of this
workaday world.