Hoylake is new in comparison, but Hoylake is old for England, and it is
the leader of golf in the southern section of the kingdom. Hoylake has
fine traditions of its own which it would not exchange for those of any
other centre or club, and while it has always had the most perfect
respect for the dignity and the conservation of the game, it has
occasionally shown a commendable disposition towards useful progress. It
was the Royal Liverpool Club at Hoylake that took the initiative in the
establishment of the Amateur Championship and the international matches;
and at other times it has impelled St. Andrews towards unwilling, but
necessary, action. The club may look back with pride upon the
earnestness and dignity of its pioneers. They were true golfers of the
old and most worthy school, and when they began the game there they had,
as in some other old places, to take a pinch of sand out of the hole
that they had just putted into in order to make a tee for their next
drive.
By some it is said that it was the establishment of the links at
Westward Ho! that gave the idea for making a golf course at Hoylake to
the Liverpool golfers. Some of the people of West Kirby played there
about the middle of the last century, and the Rabbit Warren, as the
present links was then called, was used for golf about 1865. The Royal
Liverpool Club was established four years later, and for twenty-six
years, before the building of its present handsome clubhouse, was housed
in the Royal Hotel.
In those days the course began on the hotel side, but with the change of
residence there was some necessary changing of the order of the holes,
the old first becoming the present last, the old second being now
numbered the first, and the old last is the present seventeenth. The
land of the links is leased from Lord Stanley of Alderley, whose
ancestors acquired it in the time of Queen Elizabeth; and it is
significant of the increasing richness of Hoylake, due largely to its
golf, that the assessment upon the club by the union overseers, which
used to be £165, was recently raised to £500.
In the quality of the golfers that it has produced Hoylake can challenge
the whole world of golf. It alone has found an amateur winner for the
Open Championship--two of them. It bred the inimitable Mr. John Ball,
who has six times won the Amateur Championship--1888, 1890, 1892, 1894,
1899, and 1907--and is good enough to win it again; and he won the Open
Championship in 1890, thus holding both titles at the same time, being
the only golfer who has ever done so, and quite likely who ever will. A
brass tablet in the entrance-hall and the clock over the clubhouse
commemorate this achievement. Mr. Harold Hilton, winner of the Open
Championship in 1892 and 1897, and the amateur event in 1900 and 1901;
and Mr. John Graham, junr., one of the finest products of Hoylake,
despite his insistence that he is a Scottish golfer when it comes to
International rivalry, is now at the top of his game, and is good enough
to win one Championship and very nearly another. So true is it that a
fine course will breed fine players.
Of the quality of Hoylake there can be no two opinions. It is one of the
very best courses in the world, and by common consent it and Deal are
the two best in England. Hoylake is far better than it looks. The first
hole is generally cited as being one of the best two-shot holes to be
found anywhere, and it is always good, no matter where the wind is. The
course looks easy. If you play thoroughly well it may not be difficult,
but if you do not play well it rends your miserable game asunder. What
the possibilities for failure are, were exemplified in a grossly
exaggerated manner in the final for the Amateur Championship in 1906,
when the finalists halved the sixth hole, which goes by the name of the
Briars, in 9! They lost their heads, and a player needs his head at
Hoylake. The course is famous for its putting greens. They are fine now;
but they are not what they used to be, for in the old days they were so
magnificent that it used to be said by everybody that it was a sin to
walk upon them. The water has in late years been drawn from the land for
the purposes of wells, and this has made a difference.
St. Andrews and Hoylake--a noble pair!