The other day there was a little house-party of golfers for a week-end,
and it was a most delightful gathering in all respects--fine weather, a
rattling good seaside links, with putting greens that inspired the soul
of the player to fine flights of genius, and a host of the very best
golfing type, in whom is embodied all the best traditions and
sportsmanship of the game. Sternly contested singles in the morning of
the first day, with the yellow autumn sun shining and that pleasant nip
in the air that braces the golfer to great efforts when he takes the
wood out of his bag; a hard-fought foursome in the afternoon; and then
as they dressed to go down for dinner on the evening of the first day,
they reflected upon the magnificent opportunities of the golfing life
and the poor state of those who were not such as they were then. Dinner,
the glass of old port, piquant stories of the links and the recounting
of brave deeds in fine matches, and then by and by the testing of
various putting theories on the carpet--O! the happy, happy golfer.
Forty years upon the links had one by one only served to increase the
host’s enthusiasm for the game of games. In all things he was the golfer
first and the ordinary individual afterwards. Like all experienced
players, he was inclined to be dogmatic and, as some would say,
old-fashioned. But when you say that a golfer is old-fashioned you are
paying him a very high compliment; you are placing his portrait in an
exclusive gallery of the old masters of the game who built it up and
endowed it with traditions such as are the envy of all others. The
old-fashioned golfer nearly always belongs to the best type of the fine
old English or Scottish gentleman. But this host had still original
ideas of his own, and sometimes within the walls of his own house he
will tell of them, or let them slip by accident, which he might very
much fear to do when in the company of his colleagues of the Royal and
Ancient on the occasion of his bi-annual pilgrimages to St. Andrews. So
on the second morning, when the party was at breakfast and eager to
arrange the matches of the day, its curiosity was somewhat stirred by
the remark that he made to madame as she was lading the blue cups with
tea, that last night he “went round in 78.” The lady of the house nodded
and smiled, asked sympathetically if he had had any luck at the short
holes, and was assured that he had taken 3 to one and 4 to the other,
but had got his 78 by the aid of a grand--yes, by gad, a really corking
3 at the last hole! On the whole, it was gathered he was driving well,
but his iron play was not all that it might have been--putting splendid.
Now nothing had been heard before of any such fine performance as this,
as surely there would have been if, as it appeared, it was of such
recent date. The company was stirred with a desire for knowledge as to
the when and the how, so that they might not be laggard in their
compliments upon the making of such an evidently pretty piece of golf. A
3 at the eighteenth, too! If that was the same eighteenth the flag upon
whose putting green we could just see from the window now, it was a 3
to be spoken of with admiration and profound respect. And so one at the
table murmured that they had a desire for knowledge upon this 78, which
so evidently interested the chief, but he pooh-poohed the curiosity, and
said that the recounting of that particular round would do better for a
wet day than for a morning when all were so keen to be playing the real
golf. The “real” golf; so there was a qualification imparted to that
round of 78, and now they would not be denied. Come! come! And so they
had the secret out.
It appeared that though he looked so well and hale, the chief was not
one of those happy beings who after their days upon the links go to rest
at night and drop clean away into a dreamless sleep. There is usually a
preliminary period of insomnia, which is an unpleasant relic of some
hard times that he had abroad in the middle years of his life. It is an
effort with him to “drop off,” and many and various have been the
devices that in his time he has employed for wooing Morpheus to his
nightly service. For a long time he played the old game of shepherdry.
When the candle was extinguished and his head was laid upon the pillow,
he set up before him an imaginary hedge, a big thick hedge which divided
one large field from another, and in this hedge there was just one small
gap through which one sheep could pass at a time, or two by squeezing
when in a hurry. Why the sheep should be driven from one field into the
other no man can say; but on countless nights by many poor sufferers
from too much wakefulness, millions upon millions of sheep have been
driven through this same gap in the hedge. Through it they are hurried
in their ones and twos in a seemingly never-ending line. There is no
limit to this flock, and it is of the essence of the trick that is being
played against the enemy, insomnia, that the shepherd shall attend most
strictly to his duties, and never for a single moment shall let his
thoughts wander to other and more real affairs. And so at last the
active brain gives way, and as the tail-end of one big sheep is seen
disappearing through the gap a thick haze comes down upon the fields,
and the shepherd and his sheep are lost until the morning.
The chief was shepherd for some years, and it was only by the odd
accident of dwelling fondly for a few minutes, as he laid himself down
in bed, upon the fine things he had done in one great match that day
that he came by a change of nightly occupation. With the links laid out
before him on the inner side of his eyelids, he played every shot again,
and if the truth must be told, he played some of them twice, and in this
way he proved to his own immense satisfaction that, soul-satisfying as
had been his play that day, his round was morally at least three strokes
better than it had worked out. He played his round from the first tee to
the eighteenth green on the eyelid links once, and so pleasant was the
play that, like the gourmand golfer, he must needs play it again, shot
by shot; and a third time he set out with his clubs. But this time he
was tiring. The two mental rounds that had gone before had told their
tale, and he was constantly finding his wayward ball in the rough, and
making sometimes fine recoveries with his iron clubs, and sometimes
taking two to get clear again. You see he always played the game.
Perfection in golf is not given to any man, and even in the eyelid game
one must pull and slice at times, must now and again socket with the
irons, and take one’s eye off the little white ball. And so it happened
that at last the tired brain surrendered, and upon the fifteenth green,
with the match still unfinished--one up and three to go--he fell asleep.
Thenceforth the shepherdry was given up, and he took on the eyelid golf
instead. Two rounds he played every night, and every time he played the
game, refusing to allow himself things he had not clearly seen himself
do, and not taking unto himself the power of doing miracles or of always
playing the perfect golf. In that there would have been great monotony,
just as there would be if we always played perfect golf in our real life
upon the links. He never made a carry in this nightly imagination that
he had not made in daylight, never laid an iron shot dead, or holed a
putt the like of which he had not done with real club and ball. Some
nights he would be off his game, and his score would run far up into the
nineties, and he would be badly beaten. On those nights he might go to
sleep a little sooner than usual. On others he would be playing the best
game of his youth. In general he found the occupation much more pleasant
and agreeable to his tastes than the shepherdry, and it is a curious
thing, which one must believe since he said so, that these night rounds,
with all their thoughts and their minor anxieties, actually did
something towards the improvement of the real game that was played in
the daytime. The player now and then obtained new and good ideas, and
he was taught to be a little more thoughtful than perhaps he had been in
the past. By and by the secret of this play became too much for him to
keep, so he unfolded the story of his eyelid games to the lady partner
of his life, who, since the real service that they did to him was
evident to her sympathetic mind, treated it with becoming seriousness.
This was the explanation of the 78 that was spoken of at breakfast-time
that morning, and in it there is a hint that might sometime prove of
service to those who, like the host of that week-end, are sometimes
troubled for want of that ability to loose their thoughts to sleep.