One does not see St. Andrews at its best at a time of a championship, or
at any other time when there are great crowds in the streets and on the
courses, and swarming round about the clubhouse and outside the shops of
the clubmakers overlooking the eighteenth green. It is not its natural
self then; it is at its worst. I do not like it when the trippers pour
in from Glasgow. One cannot resist the suspicion that many of them are
not as good golfers as they ought to be, and that they love St. Andrews
for what they save by her, being the only course in the world on which a
man may play for nothing; with a kindly Corporation and a great club
spending large sums of money upon it. To keep those marvellous greens in
their fine state they employ a genius among greenkeepers, who is Hugh
Hamilton, who is the successor of Tom Morris, who was the successor of
Allan Robertson. It may seem strange to some that the play should be
made without any charge, but St. Andrews would not be the same, and
would lose rather than gain in dignity, if it were not free. The time to
see it at its best is in the spring, and it is fine again in the late
autumn, when the mere holiday-makers have gone back to their cities and
workshops.
The only time when a crowd is bearable at St. Andrews is on the autumn
medal day, and then, indeed, it is as if the tradition and the sanctity
of the place are intensified. This surely is the great Celebration Day
of golf. With its dignity, ceremony, tradition, crowds, and excitement,
it is really very much like a Lord Mayor’s Day. Old folks who may have
never played, wee bairns who are only just beginning to think they will
play when they can walk a little better, are all straining to excitement
because it is the club’s medal day, the day of the Royal Medal, and of
the captain’s playing himself in, and of the firing of the guns. From
north, south, east, and west--many of them from London--the members of
the Royal and Ancient Club foregather for the occasion. There is a
hushed solemnity overhanging the place. Something is about to be done
that used to be done in the days of the grandfathers and the
great-grandfathers, and the men on the links on this occasion feel
themselves to be the descendants--as often enough they are in blood--of
the great golfers of old who made the early chapters of the history of
the game.
The playing-in to the captaincy is a great ceremony, for this captaincy
of the Royal and Ancient Club is the highest honour to be achieved in
the game. No man who is not of the highest character and of the greatest
golfing integrity is ever chosen for this high office. To be captain of
the club is quite comparable to being Lord Mayor of London. Amateur
champions have been captains, but no man may be captain because he has
been amateur champion. It is an understanding that the captain shall win
the Silver Club, given by the club a century and a half ago, and the
Gold Medal, which was presented by Queen Adelaide in 1838, when she
expressed the wish that the captain would wear it on all public
occasions, as he does at the club meetings; and to make sure of the
coincidence of the captaincy and the winning of these trophies it is
ordained by custom that the captain-elect shall have no opponents in the
round that he is supposed to play; and, furthermore, to make his path to
victory as smooth and easy as possible, he is merely called upon to tee
up his ball on the first tee in front of the clubhouse, to drive it off,
and then he is supposed to have played his round and to have gained his
victory.
Thus this simple historic ceremony of teeing up and driving off for the
Silver Club and the Royal Adelaide Medal is a great function. Crowds
gather to witness it, and a line of men and boys is stretched out along
the course from the tee, often giving to the hero of the moment an all
too narrow margin for error in his stroke. It is ordained that this
ceremony shall be performed at the exact stroke of ten o’clock in the
morning, and when the hand of the clock on the clubhouse points to that
hour a military person fires a small cannon on the foreshore
and--crack!--the captain-elect drives his ball, and he thus advances to
the topmost height of honour. The boys rush for the ball, which, being
gained by one of them, becomes an heirloom in his family. And then the
real competition begins at once, and the new captain may take part in it
if he wishes. The prize now is the Gold Medal with the green riband,
which was given by King William IV. in 1837. The King himself decreed
that it should be challenged and played for annually, and, writing from
St. James’s Palace, he expressed “his satisfaction in availing himself
of this opportunity to evince his approbation of that ancient
institution.” Two by two the great golfers of the time go out to play
for it, and excitement is keen as the day wears on. The last couple
having holed out on the eighteenth green, the cannon is fired again to
indicate that for one more year the Royal Medal has been won and lost,
and all is over so far as the outdoor proceedings of the meeting are
concerned.
In the evening is the feast, when the new captain achieves the full
measure of his dignity. Hoary traditions surround his presidency at all
meetings. In days of old, in the century before last, captains were
fined pints and magnums of claret for certain delinquencies. At this
feast the captain and ex-captains sit at the high table, in red coats,
with all the ancient insignia of the club laid out on the table before
them. Silver clubs are set there, to one of which each of all the long
line of captains has fastened a silver ball, with his name and the date
of his captaincy engraved upon it. The winner of the King William IV.
Medal is toasted, and he is called up from his place that the captain
with solemn ceremony may invest him with the medal, hanging it round
his neck. Then, upon occasion, new members of this ancient club have
been called up before the captain, who, holding one of the silver clubs
before them, calls upon them to kiss it and to swear honour and
obedience to the laws and customs of the club and the game. And then
great golfers of the old school may sing old ballads, and an evening of
happiness goes on, and if there are no trains to be caught in the
morning, matches are made to-night. This is St. Andrews.