Is there not a considerable superstition of the links? Even great
players have old clubs that they carry about with them, not so much for
their practical value as for the luck of the thing, as they fancy it;
and a man once said at Prestwick that he always carried in his bag a
queer-shaped iron, though he never used it in these days. This was
because on one famous occasion many years before, when he was seven down
with eight to play, and won the match by a brilliancy that did not
belong to him, he could only account for it by the circumstance that
this club had somehow found its way into his bag by accident. As a small
acknowledgment to the gods, and a hint that such favours would be
welcome in the future, he vowed that he would carry that club with him
on the links for evermore, but that never would he play with it. And he
keeps his vow most steadfastly, to the irritation of the burdened
caddie.
Some sentiment clings to that cleek belonging to Mr. Edward Blackwell,
which, it has been said, is “shaped like an old boot,” but which, as we
all know, has done work upon which any cleek might be congratulated. And
is it not declared that before Mr. Travis set out to play in the
championship at Sandwich, Ben Sayers lent to him for mascot his
favourite spoon?
Other golfers have other fancies. Some have it that it is unlucky to go
out to play without a supply of money, for then surely shall the
half-crown be lost; and others fear that it might go hardly with them if
they had not the company of their favourite pipe. On severely important
occasions, Andrew Kirkaldy will hie himself beforehand to his
tobacconists in St. Andrews and buy himself a new pipe for luck. Does
not special fortune attach to special golfing clothes, and is not the
light grey jacket that which brings most luck? Think of all the fine
players who jacket themselves in this way with darker wear below, which
is out of the usual order. Mr. Hilton has a jacket which goes always
with him as the lamb went with Mary, and has thus played its part in
championships innumerable. This is a jacket that has won its place in
golfing history.
The superstitions about the winning of certain holes are stupid and
general. Why is it such an unfortunate thing with some people to win the
first hole? And yet do they always try to win, and do not bemoan their
fate if they lose. A trifle more reason, perhaps, is there in the old
couplet:
“Two up and five to play,
Never won a match, they say.”
But of course matches have been won when the winner was two up with five
to go, hundreds and thousands of them. There is one man of high
championship rank who has a list of exceptions to this rule, which he
applies for his own consolation when the fates decree that he shall be
two holes to the good as he stands upon the fourteenth tee. If it suits
him, he will put it that the spell will not work if it happened that he
fluked the thirteenth with a long putt; and he holds upon suitable
occasion that it has nothing to do with a foursome. One may suppose that
the essence of the idea is that the man who is two up at this state of
the game is just short of being in nearly the strongest position
possible, and is sometimes a little inclined to be slack in consequence;
and then, if he loses the next hole, and is only one up with four to go,
a sudden fear seizes him: he feels that he must fight for his life,
becomes flurried, presses--and then the rest of the tale is soon told.
But the best and the worst of the proverb lies in its recitation by the
man who is down when his opponent, bold in confidence, is taking the
honour at the fourteenth.
It must be held as an unfortunate thing to play a ball into a graveyard,
and it is better, perhaps, that one’s attention should not be called to
the memorial stone hard by the eleventh tee at Deal, which tells of a
foul murder committed upon some fair maiden at this spot in the long ago
when Deal was unacquainted with the game that has given her fame.
We hear that the most famous lady players carry charms when engaged in
their most important games. She who won fame as Miss Rhona Adair is said
to have invariably worn a particular ribbon with a gruesome device of
skull and crossbones upon it whenever she very much wanted to win her
match. White heather is supposed to be a most potent charm, and it has
been told as a secret that some ladies decline to wash their hands
between rounds, though luncheon comes in the interval, lest evil should
befall them afterwards.