VI

Now the society season is most alive. The golfing society--without a

course of its own and consisting generally of men who have some other

common interest, usually business or professional, apart from their love

for the game--is becoming an increasingly popular institution in the

south, and some people who have had to find fault with the constitution

and general scheme of such bodies, have now to confess that their

protests have been completely without avail, and that, for good or ill,

these combinations have settled permanently with us. Considering the

circumstances of the time and the great advance in the popularity of the

game, they must be regarded as a natural evolution. After all, those

people who regard the society as a kind of new-fangled notion and an

undesirable development, need to have it pointed out to them that it is

the oldest kind of golf community, and that nowhere does it flourish

more than in the great Scottish centres of the game. For example, a

great majority of the clubs of Edinburgh are not clubs at all, as the

term is understood in the south, but merely golfing societies, made up

often of men with another common interest, and the only difference

between them and the southern societies is that they have a public

course to play upon and are dependent upon the kind favour of nobody for

the playing of the game; whereas in the south there are no public

courses, and the societies have necessarily to crave the permission of

clubs for the courtesy of their greens on the days when they wish to go

out to play their matches and competitions.

Perhaps some day there will be public courses in the south on which the

societies may play. On the other hand, it has been suggested that the

societies combined are even now almost strong enough to obtain and keep

up a course of their own. In these days the societies’ subscriptions are

seldom more than five or ten shillings, but the majority of members

would be agreeable to pay a guinea for the pleasures that they receive,

and on such an increase it ought not to be a difficult matter to devise

some scheme for the establishment of a society course. Alternatively, it

is suggested that the societies might do something towards giving a

substantial financial backing to some club or other that is in a bad way

in this respect, on the condition that they had the use of that club’s

course on midweek days for all genuine competitions and matches. Against

this it has to be considered that one of the charms of society golf, as

it is conducted in the south at the present time, is the opportunities

that are given to members of visiting and playing over courses which are

unfamiliar to them and which are not generally accessible, and of

organising expeditions of members to these courses in the way of having

a good day out together. All those who have experienced this pleasure

know that it makes one of the most delightful variations from the

ordinary routine of a golfer’s life.

There is no reason to suppose that clubs generally, or any club in

particular, are hostile to the society idea and practice, and we have

not yet heard of any case in which a club has declined permission to a

society to play its match or competition on its course. So far from that

being the case, the most important clubs of all, with the best courses,

have shown a marked amiability in the matter. Still, from time to time

there have been people who have suggested future difficulties, and even

hinted at an abuse by societies in general of the good nature and

courtesy of the clubs; and in view of the fact that in two years from

now there will probably be ten societies for every two that are at

present in existence, just as even now there are about five times the

number that there was two years since, it will be as well if the clubs

think the matter out and decide upon their policy, and, so far as they

are able to do so, or regard it as politic, to announce it. When they do

come to consider the matter, they will do well to do so on the broad

basis of the common good, and to remember that an enormous factor in

bringing about the increase in the popularity of golf, and in affording

the great delights that golfers of the present day derive from the game,

has been the principle of the community of interests which is generally

agreed upon. When a man becomes a member of a “recognised golf club” in

these days, he becomes _ipso facto_ a kind of provisional member of all

other golf clubs, that is to say, upon the payment of certain small fees

and on a proper introduction--that of the secretary of his own club

being commonly regarded as sufficient--he has some claim upon the

courtesy of any other club whose green he may like to visit. The members

of a club that extends these privileges to strangers obtain those of a

like kind from other clubs, and thus to the individual player there is

opened up the entire variety of all the golf in the country. How much

would our pleasure in the game be reduced if this variety were not

available, and we were compelled to play exclusively upon the courses of

clubs of which we were full members!

In this matter we have the principle of the community of golfers’

interests in full play, and it seems that the proper recognition of the

society and its right to the privileges that it seeks will be only

another form of the same principle, and one scarcely less advanced than

that which obtains at present. For already a fair proportion of the

members of a club are members also of one or other societies, and the

time is coming when it will be the exception for the club golfer not to

be a member of a society. When this time arrives, it will evidently be

necessary to apply this principle referred to, partly for the general

good and enjoyment, and partly because any club that did not, and that

withheld privileges to societies that were granted them by other clubs,

would place all its own members who belonged to such societies in a very

unpleasant position. Two rules seem to be called for. The first is, that

in order that this principle shall always act fairly, and that no man

shall get what he is not in a sense entitled to, it shall be enacted

that each member of a society shall also be a member of a club in the

district in which the society chiefly carries on its operations. The

second is, that in all cases of society visits to clubs’ courses, full

green fees shall be paid, and that in no pecuniary sense shall the

society be under any obligation to the club. The whole question is

really one of very great importance, and those who are at the head of

club and society affairs would do well to be giving to it their serious

consideration, for nothing would be more unfortunate than the creation

of any misunderstanding which might lead to trouble in the future.