Just lately certain desperadoes, whom one need hardly say had no
connection with the premier club, held a bogey competition over the new
course at St. Andrews. A while previously some others were reported to
have held a similar contest over the old course itself, which was worse.
Here in St. Andrews it is almost held as a sin merely to mention the
name of bogey, or even to refer to it somewhat indefinitely as “the
Colonel.” All know that the Royal and Ancient Club will have nothing
whatever to do with the idea of bogey competitions, and though they are
common enough in these days, you generally find the best class of
golfers of the old school fighting shy of the idea, and to the best
clubs, quite apart from the R. and A., the idea is still taboo. The
standpoint which these clubs and these men take is that ordinary
match-play is the true golf, and when it comes to needing a variation
from it for special purposes, there is the score game in reserve. These
two, they say, are ample for all purposes, and any other forms of golf
that may be invented are not real golf; they are more or less of
travesties, they are needless complications, and for the most part they
are the inventions of faddists, which, if universally sanctioned by the
community, would lead to the production of other fads even worse, so
that innumerable fantastic changes would be rung on this fine, simple
game of golf to its undoing, since it cannot possibly be better than, or
even so good as, in its simplest form. Already in some parts of the
country there are four-ball foursomes against bogey being played, and
some wild ideas for new-fangled competitions have been sent across the
Atlantic to us from America. That is why bogey is never so much as
mentioned at St. Andrews, and why the surest way that the Southron, on
making his first visit to the classic headquarters of the game, may be
made to feel uncommonly small and to wish that he had not been so
inquisitive, is to ask on playing the first hole--which often enough
leaves you a pretty stiff carry over the Swilcan Burn from your tee
shot,--whether it is a bogey 4 or 5. The town authorities notify you by
printed placard that they have the power by by-law to fine you for
playing on the old course with iron clubs only, and also for practising
putting on the eighteenth green, and one would never be much surprised
if it were made a matter of ten shillings and costs, or a week in
default, for playing there against old bogey. Certain it is that there
are many good golfers there who would be glad to hear of such a penalty.
The experienced man who tries to take a broad view of this minor
question of golfing politics generally comes to the conclusion that the
anti-bogeyists are quite right, and that we do not want any
complications in the game, and he takes it particularly in mind that the
bogey system is entirely the result of the modern craze for pot and
medal hunting, since it was designed solely and exclusively as a new
form of competition. One would not dream nowadays of going out to play a
game with a friend, each man playing his holes against bogey. Therefore
there is nothing friendly and nothing sociable in the idea, and it is
not golf, and it is condemned all the more inasmuch as its special
object is to release erring players from the penalties of their errors,
such as they would have to pay for in stroke play. It is therefore an
encouragement to mediocrity. At the same time our broad-minded critic
would agree that this bogey has been in for a good many years now, has
outlived the attacks that have been made upon it, and has certainly
established a place for itself in the golfing scheme of things which
nothing seems likely to disturb. You generally find that as a golfer
gets on in experience he cares less and less for bogey play, if he ever
cared for it at all; but the new generation like it apparently, and will
have it. Therefore we must tolerate it. It is a matter of some
satisfaction to notice that more and more do clubs begin to make a
standard reckoning of the value of their holes on the par system instead
of the bogey. There is no sort of sense in saying that the bogey of a
particular hole is 4 or 5, or anything else that it may be put down at.
The majority of “bogey 5’s” are real 4’s, and it is difficult to see
what is the object of placing a standard value on a hole unless that
standard represents faultless play by a good man, as the par figure
does, and not such play as may include two half-spoiled shots or one
completely foozled one, as the bogey figure frequently allows. It is
often the case that at a “bogey 5” on a suburban course a good player
can make a complete bungle of his second shot and still do the 5 with
some ease. What, then, is the use of this sort of valuation of the holes
on various courses?
So what with his somewhat surreptitious appearance at St. Andrews, and
many violent attacks that have been made upon him, some men saying with
withering sarcasm that they think they have heard of him before
somewhere, the poor old Colonel has been having a rather exciting and
not entirely happy time of it in recent seasons, and one feels a certain
amount of pity for him, recognising that he really has given much
pleasure to many players. In this sympathetic mood one may listen
patiently to the story of his career. He has seen considerable service
now, for he became attached to golf at the beginning of its boom days.
The origin of the association was curious. Although some have it that
bogey was born at Elie, a Coventry gentleman, Mr. Hugh Rotherham, is
more generally believed to have been the first to come by the germ of
the idea. This was in December 1890, when what was called the scratch
score of the Coventry course was taken, and there was given to each hole
a figure which was supposed to represent the scratch value. This was
called the “ground score,” and some six months later, when the idea had
become well assimilated, Mr. Rotherham offered a prize for a competition
in which the players would play against this ground score; while in the
autumn of the same year the club put up a challenge cup for annual
competition on the same lines. Thus already the idea was established,
but not the name.
About this time some of the members of the Coventry club went as a party
to Great Yarmouth, where the idea was explained to Dr. Thos. Browne,
R.N., honorary secretary of the club. He thought well of its
possibilities and advantages, and, taking considerable interest in it,
wrote to various prominent golfers asking them their views of the
advisability or otherwise of introducing this “ground score” into the
general routine of competition golf. For the most part the replies were
favourable.
Now one day Dr. Browne went out to play against a friend of his, Major
Charles A. Wellman, on this system, and that winter the “bogey man” song
was the hit of the pantomimes in the music-halls.
“Hush! Hush! Hush!
Here comes the Bogey man!
So hide your head beneath the clothes,
He’ll catch you if he can!”
were the words of the refrain that gave a creepy feeling to the little
children of the day. “He’ll catch you if he can!” There was the idea of
bogey in golf, and it flashed across the mind of Major Wellman when he
was playing this game and getting caught by bogey. “Why,” said he to
Dr. Browne, “this player of yours is a regular bogey man.” In that
chance remark a considerable piece of golfing history was made, for
bogey was made for golf. Dr. Browne thought this name was excellent, and
should be adopted, as it was by the Great Yarmouth Club.
A little while afterwards he went on a golfing holiday to the south
coast, and playing one day at the course of the United Service Club at
Alverstoke in Hampshire, he informed his hosts that he had brought with
him a friend who was a very modest, quiet fellow and a steady golfer,
who played a uniformly good but never a brilliant game. He prayed that
he might be permitted to introduce him to the United Service Club as an
honorary member, and accordingly, in the continuance of his little
pleasantry, he presented him, in the way of an explanation of the “bogey
man game,” to the late Captain Seely Vidal, R.E., who was honorary
secretary of the club, and to Dr. Walter Reid, R.N.
“Capital!” they said; they would certainly have the bogey man as a
golfer, and after working out a score for him for that course they went
out to play with him.
“Stay!” said Captain Vidal at the moment of starting. “We must proceed
in a proper service way. Every member of this club has a proper service
rank. Our new invisible member, who never makes a mistake, surely ought
to be a commanding officer. He must be a colonel.” And then saluting, he
added, “Colonel Bogey! We are delighted to find you on the links, sir. I
couldn’t well say see you.”
After that, wherever Dr. Browne went in the course of his golfing
pilgrimages, he introduced “his friend” in the name of Colonel Bogey.
Several bogey matches were played at the United Service Club, and they
were reported in the papers, with some explanation of the new system. So
the Coventry, Great Yarmouth, and United Service Clubs had all a hand in
the establishment of the idea, and Dr. Browne, Major Charles Wellman,
and Captain Seely Vidal were Bogey’s godfathers in his baptism. Is is
quite likely that the golfers of Elie worked out a bogey of their own
independently.
V
“Ever let the Fancy roam,
Pleasure never is at home.”
So Keats did sing. And, alas! there are even strange golfers who are
sighing always for newfanglements, feeling that the things they cannot
or must not have, are much better than the things they are blessed with.
Yet are the things that are in golf better than the things that might be
if out-and-out Progressives had their way, and in this matter we shall
sing a hymn of praise to the old school and its famous traditions, being
something of a brake on these Progressives. Consider what were otherwise
the possibilities of the game if it fell into the hands of innovators.
Lately a story was printed and spread all about, that in some secret
fields a great champion was practising with a new ball of extraordinary
manufacture, with which he was constantly getting at least fifty yards
farther with his drive than he could with the ordinary rubber-cored
affair, that is to say, he was regularly driving from 250 to 300 yards!
Now, some of us have heard of that ball before, but shall believe in it
only when we see it, and shall then cry aloud for its extinction, even
if that dreaded Golf Union has to be established for the purpose, as
probably it would need to be. But some people ask why it is wrong to
sigh for more and more length in the drive; why should not our old men
drive all the long holes in two, and our young men do them with a drive
and a pitch, and play the short holes with their putters? They say
there is enormous pleasure in length, and that the rubber-core has given
increased enjoyment to scores of thousands of players. Which is true,
the last. But the more length you get the less golf there is in your
play. If length is all that is wanted, why not go shooting instead of
golfing? You can shoot a bullet a whole mile, and are not bothered to
trudge after it. Fatal points against the 300-yard ball are, that a
large proportion of golfers would lose sight of it before it came to
rest--and where would be their pleasure then?--and that it would upset
the construction of all our courses, since all the bunkers would be in
the wrong places, and the links would all be too short. More land and
huge sums of money would be needed by every club. The clubs had one
experience of this when the rubber-core came in; depend on it they will
not have another. By all means improve our present sort of balls, which
is what makers are doing, and incidentally they are making them go a
little farther, which is excusable. But no more revolutions. As it
happened, the story of the professional and the new ball was untrue.
The news of something that took place recently in golfing India came
over the sea, and the committees and members of very small clubs were
fired with a new idea. They are rather whimsical with their golf in our
colonies and dependencies at times, and it has been said facetiously
that the ships that come home from there ought to be put in quarantine
near St. Andrews for a while, to make certain that there are none of
these ideas on board. The Royal Bombay Club, thinking possibly that
bunkers in the same places always are monotonous, and moreover that,
being in the same place, they upset one’s calculations so much when the
wind changes, went in, according to report, for movable bunkers! They
made them from hurdles, and they could move them about the course
according to the weather and the committee’s fancy.
In some places, as already hinted, they have been trying a strange kind
of game called “a four-ball foursome against bogey,” being a blend of
many things most objectionable to the old spirit. This is the kind of
golf that would be exceedingly popular if people generally went mad with
the revolutionary idea and held executions in Trafalgar Square. In the
meantime it does not “take on.” And a new kind of multi-match lately
came over from America. They play, say, six a side, but only one ball to
each side, the whole dozen players starting off together. They do not
play alternately, but each man is chosen for the team according to his
special abilities. One man is a specialist in long driving, another in
his brassey play, a third with his irons, a fourth with the short
approaches, a fifth with his niblick, and a sixth with his putter. When
within fifty yards of the green the captain sings out for No. 4, and
No. 5 is wanted when the ball is in a gutter. A man might not have a
shot to play the whole way round. Great skill would be needed in the
selection of the team. For a match on a short course the wise captain
might leave out his brassey man and put in, say, a fisherman, if there
were many water hazards on that course. But it is not golf, and never
will be.
From the same source there emanates another idea in competitions. This
is for stroke play, and all the men who enter play the first hole, one
after the other. Those men who take most strokes to it retire from the
competition. The others proceed, and there is the same weeding out
process at the second hole, and so on until there are only two players
left, and then the first man who wins a hole from the other wins the
competition.
A possibility, which is none the less dreadful because there is some
good common sense in the idea from which it springs, is that there will
be examinations in the rules, which all must pass either before being
elected to full membership of a golf club or before being allowed to
take part in competitions. It is a certain fact that two golfers out of
every three--at least--are hazy on many important points in the rules.
Three British clubs have already held such examinations, with startling
results. Scratch men were plucked! How curious it would be if the
favourite for a championship were disqualified in this way. Of course
the examiners would trip up the candidates by tricky riders to the
rules, and as my artist friend, Mr. E. W. Mitchell, suggested, good
questions will be: “A is your ball, B is your banker’s ball, and C is
the hole (all being within a circle ten inches in diameter). Play one
off two and lose!” Also, “What happens when a bull sits on your
ball--(1) in match; (2) in medal play?”
As it is said, there is no telling what we may have next, particularly
as a patent was recently applied for on behalf of a new club which had a
sliding lid bottom, covering a receptacle in the head of the club, in
which the golfer might keep his matches and his money!