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THE HAPPY GOLFER
_BEING SOME EXPERIENCES, REFLECTIONS, AND
A FEW DEDUCTIONS OF A WANDERING PLAYER_
BY HENRY LEACH
AUTHOR OF "THE SPIRIT OF THE LINKS," "LETTERS OF A MODERN GOLFER," ETC.
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1914
COPYRIGHT
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
THE SEVEN WONDERS OF GOLF, AND THE ABIDING MYSTERY OF THE GAME,
WITH A THOUGHT UPON TRADITIONS AND THEIR VALUE 1
CHAPTER II
THE UBIQUITY OF THE GAME: WITH AN ADVERTISEMENT FOR THE COMMUNITY
OF GOLFERS, AND A NOTE UPON THE EFFECT OF ST. ANDREWS SPIRITS 28
CHAPTER III
THE TRAGEDIES OF THE SHORT PUTT, AND A CONTRAST BETWEEN CHILDREN
AND CHAMPIONS, WITH THE VARIED COUNSEL OF THE WISEST MEN 56
CHAPTER IV
OLD CHAMPIONS AND NEW, AND SOME DIFFERENCES IN ACHIEVEMENT, WITH A
SUGGESTION THAT GOLF IS A CRUEL GAME 88
CHAPTER V
A FAMOUS CHAMPIONSHIP AT BROOKLINE, U.S.A., AND AN ACCOUNT OF HOW
MR. FRANCIS OUIMET WON IT, WITH SOME EXPLANATION OF SEEMING
MYSTERIES 110
CHAPTER VI
THE BEGINNINGS OF GOLF IN THE UNITED STATES, AND EXPERIENCES IN
TRAVELLING THERE, WITH AN EXAMPLE OF AMERICAN CLUB MANAGEMENT 140
CHAPTER VII
THE PERFECT COUNTRY CLUB AND THE GOLFERS' POW-WOW AT ONWENTSIA,
WITH A GLIMPSE OF THE NATIONAL LINKS 166
CHAPTER VIII
THE U.S.G.A. AND THE METHODS OF THE BUSINESS-MAN GOLFER, WITH A
REMARKABLE DEVELOPMENT OF MUNICIPAL GOLF 199
CHAPTER IX
CANADIAN COURSES, AND A GREAT ACHIEVEMENT AT TORONTO, WITH MATTERS
PERTAINING TO MAKING A NEW BEGINNING 226
CHAPTER X
GOLF DE PARIS, AND SOME REMARKABLE EVENTS AT VERSAILLES AND
CHANTILLY, WITH NEW THEORIES BY HIGH AUTHORITIES 251
CHAPTER XI
RIVIERA GOLF, AND WHAT MIGHT BE LEARNED FROM LADIES, WITH A
CONSIDERATION OF THE OVERLAPPING GRIP 277
CHAPTER XII
ABOUT THE PYRENEES, AND THE CHARMS OF GOLF AT BIARRITZ AND PAU,
WITH POSSIBILITIES FOR GREAT ADVENTURE 302
CHAPTER XIII
THE GAME IN ITALY, AND THE QUALITY OF THE COURSE AT ROME, WITH A
SHORT CONSIDERATION OF THE VALUE OF STYLE 324
CHAPTER XIV
THE AWAKENING OF SPAIN, AND SOME MARVELLOUS GOLFING ENTERPRISE IN
MADRID, WITH A STATEMENT OF GOLFERS' DISCOVERIES 339
CHAPTER XV
THE SUPERIORITY OF BRITISH LINKS, AND A MASTERPIECE OF KENT, WITH
SOME SYSTEMS AND MORALS FOR HOLIDAY GOLF 364
CHAPTER XVI
THE OLD DIGNITY OF LONDON GOLF, AND ITS NEW IMPORTANCE, WITH A WORD
FOR THE CHARM OF INLAND COURSES 392
CHAPTER I
THE SEVEN WONDERS OF GOLF, AND THE ABIDING MYSTERY OF THE GAME, WITH A
THOUGHT UPON TRADITIONS AND THEIR VALUE.
The first of the seven wonders of golf is a mysterious fascination that
it sets towards mankind, from which, overwhelming and enduring, no
people are immune. The game seizes men of all ages, of every
nationality, all occupations, dispositions, temperaments--all of them.
The charm acts upon men and women alike. Sometimes we have suspected
that males are more whole-hearted golfers; but there are circumstances
of quick recurrence to cause a doubt, and even were there none the
fancied difference would be capable of explanation. It has nearly become
an established rule that they golf the most who golf the last, for there
is no man of the links so keen, so simple and humble in his abandonment
to the game, as he who but lately held aloof and laughed, with many a
gibe upon the madness of the class. Savages have attempted golf and
found they liked it, and the finest intellects are constantly exercised
upon its difficulties. So this diversion, pastime, game has become a
thing of everywhere and everybody as no other sport of any kind has ever
done. The number of people who play no golf decreases daily, and events
of the last ten years have shown that its supremacy as the chief of
games is sure. It is clear, indeed, that, so far as the numbers attached
to it are concerned, it is still only at its beginning, in toddling
infancy. A few years hence its intimate part in general life will be
better realised; even now you do not so frequently ask a man of movement
and intelligence whether he plays golf or not as what his handicap may
be and what kind of ball he likes the best. No other game or sport
exercises anything like such power of fascination upon its people as
this. A tennis-player may leave tennis if he must; the cricketer often
voluntarily gives up cricket for no compelling reason; a man of the
hills and moors may cease to care for shooting; and one who has made an
automobile speed like the wind along the roads may sell his car and be
motorist nevermore. But the golfer will and must always golf, and never
less but more while strength permits. Men who go to the sea in ships
take golf clubs with them; I have known golfers carry their materials
into deserts, and one of the greatest and noblest explorers the world
has known took them with him to one far end of earth. Surely this is a
very remarkable thing, a feature of life that is strange as it is
strong, and it is not nonsense to suggest that this is no ordinary game
and cannot be considered as a game like others. Somewhere in a
mysterious way it touches the springs of life, makes emotions shake. It
grips; it twitches at the senses. Why?
No person has yet answered that question well and with decision, though
many have attempted to do so in written words, and ten thousand times
and more have players in their talk touched upon the lasting problem,
and then, with that natural human avoidance of the impossible, have
shuffled off to some topic more amenable. Here, it seemed, was one of
the mysteries of life, and these are such as it is better not to meddle
with. So through neglect and our timidity the problem has seemed to
deepen. It has become the Great Mystery. Wonder and awe are thick about
it. Men who were innocent and have turned to golf do not give a reason
why; they are silent to the questioner. They say that he too will see in
time, and then they golf exceedingly. Surely, then, this Great Mystery
of its fascination is the first of the seven wonders of golf; and it is
appropriate enough that a game that covers the world and embraces all
mankind should have special and well-separated wonders numbering seven
like the seven others of the earth at large: the traditions of the game,
its amazing ubiquity, St. Andrews, the short putt, the achievements of
golfers, and the rubber-cored ball are the other six. Each has its
well-established place, and between the seventh of the group and the
eighth, being chief of the thousand minor wonders, there is a wide
separation.
* * * * *
It is not for one poor atom in a great and complex golfing world to put
forward with any look of dogma a suggested solution to this subtle
mystery which the philosophers have probed so long and fruitlessly. He
will subscribe with others in a consoling renunciation to the view that
it is not for human mortals, who should be happy with delights that are
given them, to tear down veils from the faces of hidden gods. But as a
theory--shall we say?--he may advance an explanation which is
satisfying to one who has wondered as much as any others and inquired as
often during many years, while yet it still leaves a place for mystery
and a suggestion of eternal doubt. And the chief difference between this
theory and others that have preceded it is that this is what might be
called Collective while the others have commonly been theories of single
ideas. Philosophic research towards the solution of the mystery
hitherto has been almost exclusively based upon the supposition of there
being one peculiar unknown cause for the amazing fascination, a
magnificent _x_, something that in our present imperfect state of
knowledge could hardly be imagined, but which has been vaguely conceived
to be connected in some ways with the senses--and maybe the spirit. We
have known that in some mysterious and it has seemed almost supernatural
way the emotions have been stirred, most deeply shaken, by the pursuit
of golf, and the case has seemed so inexplicable that the existence of
an overwhelming unknown factor for the cause has been suspected. Here
investigation has naturally faltered. I myself for long enough was
inclined to the possibility of the single-cause theory being correct,
and with devotion was attached to that "Hope" suggestion which satisfied
most requirements and went far towards an explanation of all the
mysteries. That this doctrine, whose merits shall be considered, is
largely correct, that it does account for much of the mystery, I am well
convinced; but we who have studied in the latest schools of philosophy
are now unwilling to believe that it accounts completely for everything,
that, in fact, this hope, which the circumstances of the game cause to
flame continually in the golfer's mind like the great human passion that
it is, is the one and only Force of golf, though it is almost certainly
the major force of a group and dominates the others. Our new idea for a
solution to the grand mystery is that there is a number of forces or
causes of widely different character but associated in complete harmony
for the production of strong emotional effects in the mind of the
subject--emotions of the simplest and most natural character, but, like
others touching at the mainsprings of life, in their action most
intense. In a simple, unanalytical, and rather unphilosophical way, the
game of golf has often been compared to the game of life, just indeed as
other games and pursuits have been pointed for comparisons with the
process of human existence. So we have been exhibited as starting in
life at the teeing ground, abounding in hope and possibility. The
troubles, ills, and worries that have soon afflicted us have been found
their counterparts, all the analogies made to suit the careful people
who play short of hazards and enjoy a smooth existence, the bold
adventurers who brave long carries and like best the romantic road, the
deep bunkers of misfortune, the constant menace of the rough for those
who hesitate upon the straight and narrow way, the unexpected gifts of
Providence when long putts are holed, the erratic inclination of the
poor human when the little ones are missed. But now we find that in a
far deeper and more consequential way this sympathy between golf and
life exists, and that in this gentle play there is a repetition in
lighter tones of the throbbing theme of existence.
In the strong action upon the emotions which takes place during the
practice of the game there are effects which are purely physical and
others which are largely mental and spiritual. The physical thrills of
golf are above the comprehension of any man or woman who has not played
the game. We are certain that in the whole range of sport or human
exercise there is nothing that is quite so good as the sublime
sensation, the exquisite feeling of physical delight, that is gained in
the driving of a golf ball with a wooden club in the manner that it
ought to be driven. This last provision is emphasised, for this is a
matter of style and action, and the sensuous thrill is gained from the
exertion of physical strength in such a mechanically, scientifically,
and physically perfect manner as to produce an absolute harmony of
graceful movement. It is as the satisfaction and thanks of Nature.
Sometimes we hear sportsmen speak of certain sensations derived from
particular strokes at cricket, others of an occasional sudden ecstasy in
angling, and one may well believe that life runs strong in the blood
when a man shoots his first tiger or his first wild elephant. But the
feelings of golf are subtler, sweeter, and that we are not stupidly
prejudiced or exclusive for the game may be granted if it is suggested
that we reach some way to the golf sensations in two other human
exercises, the one being in the dancing of the waltz when done
thoroughly well and with a fine rhythmical swing, and the other when
skating on the ice with full and complete abandon. In each case it is a
matter of perfect poise, of the absolute perfection of co-ordination of
human movement, of the thousands of little muscular items of the system
working as one, and of the truest rhythm and harmony being thus
attained. We come near to it also in some forms of athletics; we have it
suggested in the figures of the Greek throwing the discus. In golf there
is an enormous concentration of this effect in the space of a couple of
seconds--not too long to permit of becoming accustomed to it, not too
short for proper appreciation. In this brief time, if the driving is
properly done as Nature would have it, the emotional sensation is
tremendous. Again one insists on the method and manner, for, especially
in late years, ways of driving have been cultivated as the result of the
agreeability of the rubber-cored ball, in which the physical movements
are restricted and changed, and nearly all of the thrills are lost. It
is still, even then, a fine thing to drive a good ball; there is
peculiar satisfaction and a sense of smooth pleasure felt in doing so;
but it is not that great whole-body thing that is enjoyed when there is
the long swing and the full finish. That is why, even if style be so
difficult to attain and there are ways of playing which are far easier
to cultivate and more certain of their good results, it is worth all the
pains and study expended in acquiring it, and a hundred times again, for
the pleasure that comes afterwards. In the winning of holes or in the
making of low scores the driving may be a comparatively unimportant part
of the play, as it is said to be, though a certain high standard of
efficiency is demanded continually; but it will always be the favourite
part of the game because it appeals so much to those physical emotions,
stirs them up so violently, rouses the life of the man, and lifts him
for a moment to a full appreciation of the perfection of the human
system. Some of these emotions are experienced in a minor key when
playing the short game, as we call it, particularly in finely-made
pitching strokes with iron clubs. Here there are restraint and
sweetness; it is as if we listen to the delicacy of Mendelssohn after
the strength and stateliness of Beethoven. Undoubtedly there are keen
physical sensations enjoyed in this part of the play. When it comes to
the last and shortest strokes, to the putting, only a faint trace of
action upon the physical emotions remains, and the pleasure and
satisfaction--if any--that are gained are purely mental. So in the short
space of five minutes, in playing one hole of fair length, we may run
along a full gamut of emotions, and herein is a great part of the joy of
golf.
* * * * *
This, however, would be insufficient. The strong, self-controllable man
would not, in their absence, crave for these emotions. But other
influences are at work to kindle and continue the golfing fever in him.
For the highest and deepest pleasure of civilised and cultivated man a
combination of the best physical and mental emotions--with a little
disappointment and grief--is essential; one without the other is always
unsatisfying. Here, foremost among the mental experiences, so powerful
as to have a certain physical influence, is our Hope. The major force of
all life is hope. It is life itself, for without it the scheme of human
existence would collapse. To look forward, to anticipate, to hope for
better things, and believe in them--that is the principle of life. It is
for that reason that the atheist comes so near to being an
impossibility. An incredible he is. He asserts himself not only as an
ignorer of gods but as a rejecter of Nature, and his position is
untenable, impossible. He endeavours to place himself outside the scheme
of creation. Without hope man could not and would not continue. He would
give up. Motive would have vanished, and motive is essential to action.
We strain analogy to no extravagance when we hold that it is the same in
golf. It is pervaded with hope, lives on it, is played with it, depends
upon it throughout in its every phase. At the beginning of the day's
play a man hopes for great achievement. He does not ignore the
possibilities, and rarely, whatever his temperament and disposition,
does he wait for events, content in a manner of perfect wisdom to take
things as they come. He anticipates, and in the human way he builds
castles made of thoughts, and in his calculations overlooks existing
facts and past experience. Thus are charm, eagerness, and romance given
to life and the game. Never yet was golfer who did not believe that now
his great day might come.
So on the first teeing ground there is hope in the highest. Should the
first stroke be successful the hope is stimulated; if the stroke is bad
the hope is intensified. In the one case something more of the human
power of man, the strong right arm and the fingers deft, is poured into
the physical and temperamental boiler where the forces are being
generated. The success has increased probability, the man can a little
the more stand by himself, his independence increases, and his hope has
a rock of fact beneath it. In the other event, the first drive having
been a failure--as, alas! with the wearinesses of waiting and the
anxieties they engender, first drives so often are--the hope is
intensified by the addition of highly concentrated faith. The element of
the practical indefatigable man is slightly reduced, and in its place
there is filled the sublimer, grander essence of spirituality that is so
far above the merely human. The hope is not the less. Providence is
brought into the schemes, and the heart lives well. If the second shot
is a good one there is more of the human given to the hope and the
spiritual is a little subdued again; if the stroke should fail there is
something like another mute appeal subconsciously made to Providence.
These are the hopes of strokes. There are the hopes for holes; the hopes
for days; the hopes for seasons, each series being units made of
collections as years are made of months and days are made of hours. One
who loses the first hole hopes to win the second, and is even insincere,
for the encouragement of his hope, in saying and trying to believe that
to lose the first hole does not matter and is often an advantage. If the
second is lost there is a coming equality in the match imagined for the
fourth or fifth. Three or four down at the turn, even five, and the man
still lives and hopes (he is no golfer if he does not), and there have
been magnificent struggles made when players have been six down with
seven to play, or have even been dormy five to the bad. He who has only
lost the first hole holds his hope in a state that is highly charged
with belief in his own human capacity; he who is dormy down when the
match is far from home still keeps hope, is buoyed well with it, but he
does his best in a half-cheerful, half-nervous way, knowing that the
time for supreme human endeavour has passed, and he gives the matter
over to kind Providence, submitting that his deserts are good. So one
who has played badly in the morning hopes for success in the afternoon;
and where is the man who, having made poor shots all the day and lost
holes and matches by them, does not fall to sleep at night consoled and
peaceful in reflecting upon a discovery that will make full amends upon
the morrow? After the failures of a summer season hopes arise for better
fare when cool autumn makes the play more pleasant; when there has been
one whole bad year there is hope enough that the game will mend in the
time that follows.
In this way it is hope all through, hope always, in the beginning and
the end and in the small things with the great. Hope is the most human,
most uplifting of all the emotions. Banish this emotional quality from
the human mind and the golf clubs would be disbanded, for the game would
cease to be golf for another day. The charm would have gone completely.
Only the nature of the hope sometimes varies as we have shown, and the
most wonderful feature of this wonder of golf is the sublimely simple
way in which the man of a match, when all seems lost, when the cause
seems wholly ruined, when by nothing human does it seem that a situation
hanging upon a thread so thin can possibly be saved, believes in the
future still. Providence still exists for him. Every human reckoning
would show that he approaches the impossible, and yet he sees it not,
but only the narrow way of escape to success beyond. And there is
infinite satisfaction to the soul, much that is splendidly destructive
of utter materialism, in realising that often the seeming human
impossibility is broken and Providence pulls us through. In golf we
often ask for miracles, and sometimes we obtain them. It seems to me
that the golfer has one satisfying motto, and only one, and it is _Spero
meliora_. What is the use of the "far and sure" that the ancients have
bequeathed to us? Nearly meaningless it is. And if those words of hope
are emblazoned on his coat of arms, the golfing man should have the
Watts picture of "Hope" in his private chamber, courageous Hope
straining for the faintest note that comes from the one lone string that
remains on the almost dismantled harp.
* * * * *
Such strong exercises of emotions, physical and soulful, accounting, as
we may believe, for much of the fascination of the game, are supported
by others, subtler but also of large effect. There are the aggravations
of the game. It suggests an object that no man has ever completely
achieved and never will do, since none has ever arisen to a state of
skill and consistency when he plays perfect golf and plays it always,
though such success may nearly be achieved at other pastimes. And it is
not given to the player to know why the skill he feels himself possessed
of does not bear its fruit. He is left in wonderment and aggravation.
The game goads, it taunts, it mocks unmercifully. Old Tom Morris
expressed the simplest overwhelming truth when he said it was "aye
fechtin' against us." It does so from the first hour, the first minute
of the golfer's existence as such, when he misses the ball which it had
seemed so easy to strike. Then, his vanity wounded, he attacks, and the
lifelong feud begins. What always seems so easy becomes the nearly
impossible. There is always something new to learn, always another scrap
of explanation of mystery to be gathered, and the player is always
groping and being taught. But he moves forward only to fall back again,
and the simple consolation he has from this ever-recurring process is
that the tide of discovery, when it rolls back, returns a little higher
up the beach with the next wave and in the long succession there is a
gain. But this process is not so regular as the running of the tide, not
so much a matter of calculable natural law, and therein is the
disappointment and the aggravation. A man retires to his rest at night
feeling himself a good and well-satisfied golfer with rapid advancement
certain, and lo! the morning will be little spent when he is shown to
himself as one of the poorest and most ineffectual players. The mystery
of this reaction is quite insoluble; only the cold fact is clear,
convincing. No more tantalising will-o'-the-wisp is there than form at
golf. It is a game that lures a man, it coquets with him, trifles with
his yearnings and his hopes, and flouts him. So does it excite him, and,
hurting his pride, stirs his ambition and his desire to obtain the
mastery. The spirit of adventure and conquest is aroused, and the strong
man who has failed in no undertaking before declares that he will not
fail in this. And so, with his everlasting hope, he perseveres and will
not give in. But it is the game that wins.
It appeals to the emotions of the primitive man in another way that may
often be unsuspected. In essence it is the simplest and the most natural
of games. It is indeed a game of Nature, and it is played not on the
smoothest surfaces with white lines drawn upon them, but upon plain
grass-covered earth, a little smoothed by man but still with abounding
natural roughness and simplicity. Here on the links are space and
freedom such as are afforded to people, especially those of towns and
cities, rarely in present times. The tendency in all life now is to
confine itself closely. We live in small spaces, with many walls and
low roofs; we move through thronged streets and by underground railways.
Things are not the same as when there was the Garden of Eden and the
open world outside it. His confinement is a wearing oppression to the
modern man, though he may not always suspect it. Because it emancipates
and gives us back a little of our lost freedom is the chief reason for
the popularity of motoring, and it was to attain more freedom still that
man made up his mind to fly and now flies accordingly. We cannot
entirely escape from this unnatural confinement which modern conditions
of life have forced upon us, but for a little while at intervals,
through the medium of this sport, we may experience the sense of space,
of freedom, of the something that comes near to infinity. Unconscious of
this cause, a golfer on the links is uplifted to a simpler freer self.
He has a great open space about him, the wilder the better, and the open
sky above. He takes Nature as he finds her, accepting her every mood,
and that is why this game is and must be one for all weathers. There is
the ball upon the tee. Hit it, golfer, anywhere you please! Hit it far,
no limit to the distance! Strike with all your strength! Until in the
game the time for wariness comes, as with the hunter upon his prey, see
no limitations, accept all consequences. The golfer's freedom has a
flavour that other people rarely taste.
Emotions serve the human system better than comforts and conveniences,
for these emotions are the pulse of life and the conveniences are mere
aids to existence. Golf, being complete, has its advantages of
convenience as well as its thrilling emotions, and when the players
reason to their relatives and their friends upon the good of the game,
shaping their excuses for a strange excess, they exhibit with a limited
sincerity the real advantages and conveniences. The game may be played
anywhere and everywhere. It is the same in principle, the same in rules,
the same in actions; but yet again it is like a new thing everywhere,
and it is always fresh. There is a golf course wherever a man may go;
and there is a new experience for him always. He needs only one man to
play with him; or indeed, if there is no such man available, he may play
with the game itself as his implacable opponent, fight it in the open
and without the medium of a human opponent to break the shocks for him.
If variety is the spice of life, then here is spice enough. Then it
gives us such companionship as can be gained by few other means, for it
brings us to inner intimacy with the man we play, bares his hidden
nature to us, strips from him all those trappings of manner and
suggestion by which in the ordinary social scheme every person plays a
part as on a stage and rarely is well discovered. No man plays a part in
golf; his individuality, in all its goodness and weakness, is unfolded
in the light. He is known entirely and for his own true self. The game
gives us fresh air and the most splendid exercise. These are enormous
advantages in golf, and we extol them in defence of our enthusiasm and
they are accepted; yet, honest to ourselves, we know that we do not play
golf because of fresh air and exercise, and indeed we only think of them
as gain when, in the slavery to which we have been subject, our emotions
for a day have been shivered and shocked by failure. It has the
advantage that we can play it when the period of life for other games
has passed, and we can play while life leaves to us but a flick of
vigour. Some of the meanest men, who are barely worthy of being in this
excellent community where the sense of brotherhood is so good, have been
gross enough to say that golf serves their professional and commercial
purposes thoroughly well--as indeed it may--by giving them intimacy with
valuable and helpful friends. These are men who would buy their idols
and sell them for a profit of five per cent. The advantages of golf are
there; but they are the accident of circumstances, or not perhaps the
accident but simply like the scheme of Nature in supporting what is good
with good itself; but they do not and cannot in any measure explain the
mystery of the fascination of the game, for that mystery lies in the
emotional, the spiritual, the psychological, and not in anything that is
just material. Golf is something of a passion, and passions are of the
blood and have nothing to do with conveniences and rules of life for
health and plain advantage.
* * * * *
The traditions of golf are the second of its wonders. All things that
are old have certain traditional sentiment clinging to them, and it
makes a good flavouring to life, for it is suggestive of age and time
and continuity and eternity. Had golf no traditions now, those emotional
effects in its subjects might be produced the same, but yet the sport
would not be the same rich colourful thing that we know it to be, but
something grosser. And again we could stand for golf and say that no
other sport can testify to its past and present worth and greatness with
such excellent tradition. Three only can rank in the same class, and
those are cricket, hunting, and the turf. Their traditions indeed are
rich, they uphold their sports to-day, and they abound in those rare
stories which, even if they have lost nothing with time, make fine
things for the listening now and have the tendency always to promote a
better sporting spirit. But three things are essential to good
traditions, the first being acts, the second persons, and the third
places, and the last of the three is far from being the least important,
because birds do not love their nests more than traditions do the plots
of earth where are their homes. They cannot live in space; there they
would lapse to a state of film and would fade away. Give them abiding
places, real solid ground upon which their delicate ghostly structures
may rest, and they have a substance which gives them a fine reality. If
a character of the past were invented, given a real name, all his
manners and customs, his feats and follies carefully described, even his
father and mother most properly identified, and a statement made of the
provisions in his will for those who followed after him, that would
still be likely to linger on as a character merely, a possibility of the
past but a thing of no account, not an influence. He could not be
placed. If we give ourselves a licence to roam the earth in search of
golf, we like to think of the good men of the old traditions as being
comfortably settled, as being at special places where, in our fireside
fancies on winter nights when the winds are moaning and the rains are
lashing against the window-panes, we can see them and sit down with
them. The wandering hero of tradition does not suit. And here is a great
virtue of the people of our golfing traditions: we can catch them tight,
nail them fast. We have special plots of land--the majestic links of
Scotland, the old course of Blackheath, almost every yard of which
might, if speechful, tell a story of some old golfer of the past. The
old golfers trod those links some time in their earthly days. We know
the shots they played, where balls pitched and how they ran, the bunkers
where they had disasters, their amazing recoveries and the putts that
they holed and missed--for even the golfers of tradition missed their
putts at times. We know where those golfers walked, and so the
traditions are of the links and the men with the links, and the links
are the same now as once. Let us then hope fervently that they may
remain the same, though a hundred kinds of new balls, each farther
flying than the one before it, should be invented, and such courses
should be declared to be weakened and out of date. It is easy enough to
invent a character, but it is not so easy to invent a links and then
declare that by sea encroachments on the coast it has been swallowed up
and has gone. The tale is weak and unconvincing. But invent your
character, and then produce your place, and say: "He was here; his feet
were on this teeing ground; here he took a divot; it was in this bunker
that he was caught," and there is nothing more that is needed for
complete conviction.
Having seen a little of the way in which certain potential and probable
traditions of the future are now being made, I have a suspicion about
some of the amazing histories of the past that have been reported to us.
Such suspicions are developed in the minds of those who have themselves
been parties to some exaggerations of things done on certain links, and
have lived to see those exaggerations improved upon by further tellers,
and of a rich story, with scarcely a base of fact, being thus
established in history and made ready for a monument. Having our plots
of land, with their permanent marks and milestones, it is easy to do it
so, and all golfers cannot be commended for complete veracity, though
their lies are tolerably honest of their kind, being, like their shots,
made subconsciously, and the cause, being companionable conduct, is a
good one. Listeners believe in them and so make them three-parts truth.
Cricket and racing have had their splendid men, and they have had
certain sorts of places, but nothing homelike, merely round patches of
smooth land with rails and grand stands, to which traditions can never
cling like ivy to the crumbling tower. The ghost men of these old
traditions were fine creatures; well did they do their work; they fought
and won; but they seem lonesome creatures. They lack location, and they
have no family histories and traditions of their own. They are mere
particles of the past. Nearly all the men of our great traditions are
heroes of fine countenance and rich character, brilliant in their
individuality, with that proper touch of pride and arrogance blended
with the finest old conservatism, which all good traditions should
enjoy. Only the ancients of the chase are good company for them.
* * * * *
It seems to me that our traditions and their associate legends might be
separated into five periods. There is the primeval, the prehistoric, the
most royal and ancient, the early Scottish, and the late gutty periods.
Of the primeval there is no more to be said than there is of primeval
man. We know the latter was born, that he did work of sorts, that he ate
and slept, that in his way he lived and perhaps he loved, while
certainly he died. Of the primeval golfers we are solid in the belief
that they had clubs and balls, for they must have had, and they had
holes or marks, for they could not have done without them. We suspect
them of stymies, for only the weight of tradition has held the stymie to
us still, and for its power this tradition must be far extended. Almost
certainly they made their first clubs from the branches of trees, but
there was nothing grand in that, for Harry Vardon and brother Tom,
Edward Ray as well, all three beginning their golf in their native
Jersey, did the same, and they played with stone marbles for their
balls, played in the moonlight too. There would seem here to have been a
tendency towards a throw-back in Jersey golf; but Vardon and his
associates have made an ample advance since then. Good Sir Walter
Simpson, in his deep researches, leaned to a more exact and defined
theory or tradition of the primeval golf, and he gaily marked for it a
beginning and a place. It is attractive and it is reasonable, and this,
with the theory of the spontaneous and inevitable origin of the game in
many places in the early times of man, theories with living detail
thickening on them, come near in quality to real tradition. Sir Walter,
you may remember, supposed a shepherd minding his sheep, who often
chanced upon a round pebble and, having his crook in his hand, he would
strike it away. In the ordinary way this led to nothing, but once on a
time, "probably," a shepherd feeding his sheep on the links, "which
might have been those of St. Andrews," rolled one of these stones into a
rabbit scrape, and then he exclaimed, "Marry! I could not do that if I
tried!"--a thought, so instinctive is ambition, as Sir Walter says,
which nerved him to the attempt. Enter the second shepherd, who watches
awhile and says then: "Forsooth, but that is easy!" He takes a crook in
his hand, swings violently, and misses. The first shepherd turns away
laughing. The two fellows then perceive that this is a serious business,
and together they enter the gorse and search for round stones wherewith
to play their new game. Sir Walter Simpson was a terrible man, and he
must needs work into this excellent romance the declaration that each
shepherd, to his surprise, found an old golf ball, every reader knowing
that they "are to be found there in considerable quantity even to this
day." Then these shepherd-golfers deepened the rabbit scrape so that the
balls might not jump out of it, and they set themselves to practising
putting. The stronger shepherd happened to be the less skilful, and he
found himself getting beaten at this diversion, whereupon he protested
that it was a fairer test of skill to play for the hole from a
considerable distance. When this was settled it was found that the game
was improved. The players, says the theorist, at first called it
"putty," because the immediate object was to putt or put the ball into
the hole or scrape, but at the longer distance the driving was the chief
interest, and therefore the name was changed to "go off" or "golf." In
the meantime the sheep, as sheep will do, had strayed, and the shepherds
had to go in chase of them. Naturally they found this a very troublesome
and annoying interruption, and so they hit upon the great idea of making
a circular course of holes which enabled them to play and herd at the
same time. By this arrangement there were many holes and they were far
apart, and it became necessary to mark their whereabouts, which was
easily done by means of a tag of wool from a sheep, fastened to a stick,
which, as is remarked, is a sort of flag still used on many Scottish
courses in much the same simplicity as by those early shepherds. And Sir
Walter wrote with reason that since those early days the essentials of
the game have altered but little.
After the time of these first shepherds there were doubtless more
shepherds, and the bucolics in general would be given to the game. Yet
it should never be understood that even in its origins this game was one
that was practised chiefly by persons of low intellectual strength.
Indeed it was not. In the ancient classics there are references to ball
games that bear close resemblance to primitive golf, and then when games
began to appear in Holland and France that had golf in them, even though
they were not golf, it was not the common people always who were most
attracted. And in passing, it must be said, that while golf as we have
it now is British--Scottish, if you like--and there is enough authority
and substance in the claim for the satisfaction of any pride seeing that
the laws of St. Andrews have been for ages back the laws of the world at
large, it is too much to believe that a game so simple in its
essentials, so obvious and so necessary and so desirable, should have
had an exclusive origin in any one country, to be copied by the others.
The elements of golf must have come up spontaneously in many different
parts of the world, although they were without rule, organisation, and
might not have been known as a game or anything like that by those who
employed them. But it was there, as eating and kissing were; and it fell
to the lot of those canny and most discerning Scots to regularise it, as
it were, to declare it a game and give it definiteness, and in due time
to set up laws and a government, all of which were just what they should
be and the best conceivable. It might not have been such a good game as
it is now had it not been nurtured at St. Andrews, Leith, and
Musselburgh, and in those other early cradles of the pastime; but I
cannot believe that if there had been no land north of Newcastle there
would have been no golf, and we should be moaning now in vague
discontent for a mysterious something lost to life.
* * * * *
I may adduce some circumstances from most ancient history and tradition
which have not been applied to this question hitherto, but should have
been, for they seem to be apposite and remarkable. In these days
Ireland, with a fine spirit, is struggling for better golfing
recognition, and should have it. When a game is for the world, what is
the Irish Channel? The country has some very splendid links, and has
produced some players--if few of them--of the finest quality; but a
people who exhibit frequently a fine appreciation of the spirit of the
golfing brotherhood, and to the wandering player extend a hospitality of
which it can only be said that it is Irish, are treated coldly in
championship dignity being withheld from their courses and their not
being admitted to the higher councils of the game. I remember with
gratitude a very early acquaintance with the golf of Newcastle in County
Down, that glorious course in the shadow of the Mourne Mountains, and
with Portrush in the north, while about Dublin there are links that fear
no comparison with the best of other lands. The ordinary records may
indicate that there was no golf in Ireland until 1881, when what is now
the Royal Belfast Club was formed; but listen to a story which is
brought to me in some spirit of triumph by a friend, Mr. Victor Collins,
a golfer, who practises his game, for the most part, not on any mainland
but out on the Arran Isles, west of the Irish coast, out on little
Inneshmor, where he lives when he is not in London, and where he has a
small course of just a few sporting holes for his own delight, one which
would have been as agreeable to the golfers of the prehistoric period as
it is now to a modern gentleman who occasionally becomes a little tired
of over-civilisation and likes to retreat to simplicity and Nature. It
is a considerable change from Stoke Poges to Inneshmor, but only a poor
soul would not like it for a period. In London one evening we talked of
golf and Inneshmor, and he told me a legendary story, the documentary
narrative of which he has since produced in the form of an extract from
"O'Looney's unpublished MS. translation of the 'Tain bo' Cuailgne' in
the Irish Royal Academy, Dublin." Knowing little of these matters, I
quote Mr. Collins direct in saying that this is the most famous of Irish
epics, and describes the war Queen Maeve of Connacht, assisted by her
vassal kings of the rest of Ireland, waged against Ulster to obtain a
bull which was reputed to be a finer animal than the one she herself
possessed. The central hero of Ulster was the famous Cuchullain, the
greatest of all Irish heroes, in truth an Irish Achilles. Fergus,
ex-king of Ulster, who had taken refuge with Maeve, tells her who are
the champions against whom her armies will have to contend, and these
lines occur in the course of his terrifying account of Cuchullain, whose
age at the time of this expedition was between six and seven: "The boy
set out then and he took his instruments of pleasure with him; he took
his hurly of creduma and his silver ball, and he took his massive
Clettini, and he took his playing Bunsach, with its fire-burned top, and
he began to shorten his way with them. He would give the ball a stroke
of his hurly and drive it a great distance before him; he would cast (?
swing) his hurly at it, and would give it a second stroke that would
drive it not a shorter distance than the first blow. He would cast his
Clettini, and he would hurl his Bunsach, and he would make a wild race
after them. He would then take up his hurly, and his ball, and his
Clettini, and his Bunsach, and he would cast his Bunsach up in the air
on before him, and the end of the Bunsach would not have reached the
ground before he would have caught it by the top while still flying, and
in this way he went on till he reached the Forad of the plain of Emain
where the youths were." This young Cuchullain does appear to have been
appreciably better than scratch. Apparently he was going to attend
something in the nature of a club gathering, and his way of getting
there was much in the nature of cross-country golf with a touch of trick
in it; for there are professionals to-day who make a show in their idle
moments of pitching up a ball and catching it with their hands. My
informer tells me that Cuchullain was not confining his attention to
golf alone, but doing feats of jugglery as well in order to while away
the journey. "The description of driving the ball before him," he
remarks, "evidently contains the germ of golf. Some years ago I saw in
an illustrated paper a reproduction of a picture of a tombstone from
some place in Ulster dating to the twelfth century. It was the tombstone
of a Norseman. On it were a double-headed sword, the sign of his
profession, and below it the perfect representation of a cleek and a
golf ball, his favourite amusement. It would be interesting to make a
serious search in old Irish records for further information on the game.
'Clettini' is from an Irish word for 'feather.' It was evidently a
feathered javelin he hurled. 'Creduma' means 'red metal,' that is brass.
Hurly of creduma therefore comes curiously near the quite modern
brassey. Bunsach is a very obscure word. In middle Irish there was such
a word, but it meant a kind of dagger." This discovery opens up an
excellent speculation.
* * * * *
The periods of the traditions of course impinge upon each other and
softly blend, so that the game some way or other seems to go back
continuously from now to the beginning. We have in the most royal and
ancient period the Stuart kings playing their golf, and Charles the
First hearing of mighty troubles to his throne perpending while he was
golfing on the links of Leith; of James the Second with his court
playing the golf at Blackheath and sowing seeds that were to bear
amazing fruit in the south at a far-off date; of Mary Queen of Scots
golfing with her favourite Chastelard at St. Andrews. There was
Archbishop Hamilton, who signed the authority that was given to the
Provost and magistrates of St. Andrews to put rabbits on the links,
which authority recognised the rights of the community to the links,
more especially for the purpose of playing at "golff, futball, schuteing
at all gamis, with all other manner of pastyme." This was a kind of
ratification of a Magna Charta of Golf. There was Duncan Forbes, of
Culloden, first captain of the Gentlemen Golfers, now known as the
Honourable Company, in 1744. A marvellous man was Duncan Forbes, Lord
President of the Council, and we know that he played for the Silver Club
in 1745--for the last time, probably, because just then the rising of
the clans obliged him to set out for the north, where he exerted himself
to the utmost to prevent them from joining the cause of the Young
Pretender. And here in passing let it be written that there is good
cause to think that Bonnie Prince Charlie himself was the first to play
real or Scottish golf on the continent of Europe, for he is believed to
have had a course made for himself when in Italy, and was once found
playing in the Borghese gardens, so Mr. Andrew Lang once told us. There
was the wonderful William St. Clair, of Roslin, so much skilled at golf
and archery that the common people believed he had a private arrangement
with the devil. Sir George Chalmers painted a picture of him, which is
possessed by the Honourable Company, and Sir Walter Scott wrote that he
was "a man considerably above six feet, with dark grey locks, a form
upright, but gracefully so, thin-flanked and broad-shouldered, built, it
would seem, for the business of war or the chase, a noble eye, of
chastened pride and undoubted authority, and features handsome and
striking in their general effect. As schoolboys we crowded to see him
perform feats of strength and skill in the old Scottish games of golf
and archery." And from there the tale passes on with life and colour to
the beginnings of the Royal and Ancient Club; to the activities of the
early members like Major Murray Belshes, and the interest of William
the Fourth, whose gift medal is played for at St. Andrews to this day;
to such fine gentlemen of the old school as the late Lord Moncrieff and
the Earl of Wemyss; to the professionals also like the Morrises and
Allan Robertson, and old Willie Park. So on along from the ages past to
such as Frederick Guthrie Tait, who gave to the modern history of golf
something that glows as well as the best of the old traditions.
Now it may be said that these traditions and all the others, like them
and unlike, make the game no better, and that they add nothing in yards
to our driving from the tee. After a consideration I will not agree
either that they make the game no better or that they add nothing to the
driving. The spirits of a romantic history are a continual influence.
They give a dignity to the game which is felt right through it. Only the
golfer knows how true this is. Men who look upon it lightly as a pastime
before they know anything of it, learn upon their initiation, and not
only learn but feel, that there is all that is mysterious, wonderful,
and awe-inspiring in the game and its past, a new and deep respect is
created, and there is no more beginner's lightness and nonsense. Age and
solemnity, and many ceremonies great and small, have given to golf some
of the attributes of a religion, and with membership of it there comes
responsibility. When a new Nonconformist chapel has the same exalting
influence upon the mind and sentiment of a person of intelligence and
sympathies as an ancient cathedral with all its tombs and relics, and
the dim pillars among which echoes seem to float and mingle with spirits
of the past and the great eternity, or when the dining-room of a flat in
Knightsbridge inspires and dignifies its company like the banqueting
hall of some ancient castle, I will perhaps agree that the traditions of
golf are of no practical effect beyond that of merely preserving the
game from vandalism and giving it a place above the others. Often when
reflecting thus one feels that in duty to the game one's policy in
matters should be "St. Andrews, right or wrong." But yet one could wish
that these mighty traditions were not at times invoked for improper
purposes. There is too much free and unintelligible talk about them in
these modern times. They are wantonly applied to base uses; a man will
urge the traditions in his favour and against his opponent when he
attempts some vile procedure. When a crafty person is beaten in
argument, he cries, "The traditions!" and people who speciously, and
with insincerity, condemn what we may call the modern advancements of
the game will murmur that the rubber-cored ball and clubs with steel
faces are not according to "the traditions." Truly they are not, and
those old traditions had nothing to do with gutties either; but Duncan
Forbes would have rejoiced in the possession of a modern driver and
mashie niblick. It is too often and absurdly assumed that the ancients
used the tools they had because they were the best conceivable and most
appropriate, just right in practical quality and proper sentiment. They
were merely the best that had been discovered up to then. The Stuart
kings might have had a happier time had they possessed some rubber
Haskells to coax and lead them on.