THE BEGINNINGS OF GOLF IN THE UNITED STATES, AND EXPERIENCES IN
TRAVELLING THERE, WITH AN EXAMPLE OF AMERICAN CLUB MANAGEMENT.
There is little done to solve the mysteries of golf's beginning by
pressing into the farthest recesses of American golfing history. Only by
such little twinklings in the darkness of the almost prehistoric period
of the game do we begin more to suspect that, being such a natural and
simple thing, an almost inevitable kind of pastime despite its man-made
intricacies and laws, and all its heartenings and maddenings, it came up
of itself in different places, when man had reached full intelligence
and the desire to play properly other games than such as bowls. Those
Indian braves who wandered and hunted and fought over that magnificent
land when in its virgin state must have tried to knock something like a
ball, or a stone, in the direction of a particular mark, and that would
be a game for them. I remember hearing that several years ago a visitor
to one of the reservations found several of the red men playing golf of
a kind, with real clubs and balls. "Purple Cloud" was the champion of
the braves. Then in the autumn of 1903 another white wanderer looked in
upon the Indians in the reservation at Montana and reported that he had
witnessed a very spirited game. Golf, said he, is much better suited to
the Indian of to-day than his old game of lacrosse. He noticed very few
subtleties in the game. When the champion, "Spotted Horse," drove off,
there was a long stretch of clear prairie, with only here and there a
shrub, so that the game resolved itself into a chase of the ball for a
couple of miles and a return, the one who did it in the fewest strokes
being the winner. He saw some really capital drives, several well over
three hundred yards, he thought. The only thing that was very new and
characteristic about these red men's golf, so far as he could see, was
that the spectators "made a most infernal row all the time that the play
was in progress." When a brave took his stance for a tee shot, it was
looked upon as the signal for a perfect bedlam of yells and howling,
which should have disconcerted the player but did not do so. And with my
own eyes have I seen the modern Indians playing for the American
championship, and it might be claimed that though laws be made at St.
Andrews, and interpretations thereof in the council chamber of the white
men at New York, this after all, in essentials, is a game that is native
of the soil. Yet the history of such a game down the Indian line must be
hazy as the history of the braves themselves, and we must leave it now
with this ample recognition.
But though in names and other matters there is a Scottish flavour in
some of the records of the earliest American golf, and when it became a
real and growing thing it was obviously imported, one is sometimes
inclined to think that the Simpsonian theory of the spontaneous
generation of golf, or what approximated in essentials to golf, must
have applied to America as to other countries. A stick, a ball, a mark,
and there is the principle of golf fully indicated.
In a primitive way also it was played in America in the seventeenth
century, and, as in the homeland, some of the earliest references to it
that remain take the form of warnings of the punishments accruing to
players who departed from such severe restrictions as were imposed. It
was not proclaimed what advantages would be yielded men who played, as
is done to-day, but what grievous penalties they should suffer if they
played it when and where they should not, and alas! the times and places
that were forbidden appeared to be many in proportion to those when the
game might be enjoyed by those who liked it. Then as now, and in America
as in happy England, those who were not of golf were against it, and
bitterly. There were jealousies then as ever since. There were those
often-quoted Laws and Ordinances of the New Netherlands of 1659 in
which, because of a complaint by the burghers of Fort Orange and the
village of Berwyck about the damage done to their windows and the danger
to which they were exposed of being wounded by persons who played golf
along the streets, the golfers were threatened of consequences to come.
Then clearly the game was played in South Carolina in 1788, for at that
time an advertisement appeared in a local newspaper thus: "Anniversary
of the South Carolina Golf Club will be held at Williams's Coffee House
on Thursday, 29th instant, when members are requested to attend at 2
o'clock precisely, that the business of the Club may be transacted
before dinner." Here there is a clear indication of the close connection
maintained between the playing of the game and the social ceremonies
about the dinner-table that were held by the golfers on the same day in
the way that was practised by the early golfers of the Scottish centres
and of Blackheath. For many years afterwards these meetings of the South
Carolina Golf Club were held at the club-house on what was known as
"Harton's Green," which is now in the heart of Charleston. Perhaps this
was the first golf club-house in America, and if that were so it shared
the fate of pioneer establishments in many other places where towns have
widened and gathered in the outlying lands. There is also preserved in
the archives the form of invitation that was sent to Miss Eliza Johnston
to attend the ball of the Savannah Golf Club at the Exchange hall in
that city in December 1811. And then American golf seems to have lapsed
and slept like Van Winkle in the Catskills until the time of the great
regeneration came near the end of last century. One does not come now to
make a history of American golf, but only to indicate that new and
republican America also has something in the way of golf traditions.
* * * * *
The real beginning of American golf was made, as you may know, out at
Yonkers up the Hudson, and Mr. John Reid, the elder, is rightly regarded
as the father of American golf. Such recognition being of long standing
and his claims being incontestable, he was again publicly and officially
proclaimed as such at the silver jubilee celebration that was held in
New York on November 19, 1913. That was twenty-five years from the time
when the game was really set going in the States. One night I sat over a
log fire in a club-house in Massachusetts and heard the story of the
foundation by his father from the lips of Mr. John Reid, the younger,
secretary of the United States Golf Association. He told me how his
father and Robert Lockhart, who went to the same school in Scotland,
came to America together; how Lockhart who, as a buyer of goods, had to
pay periodical visits to his homeland, talked of the strange game that
was played there; how Mr. Reid became interested and asked for clubs and
balls to be brought across the water; how he tried the swings and
strokes in a field by their house at Yonkers, the son "fielding" for
the father; how the captain of a steamer was persuaded to bring another
set of clubs over with him, and how irons were thereafter cast in
America. Then he told me how other people, few but keen, were attracted
to this new pastime that the Reids were trying, and how the first little
club was formed here at Yonkers in November 1888, and called the St.
Andrews Golf Club. They were as the golfing fathers. I learned how the
members came to be known as the Apple Tree Gang because of the tree near
to the first hole on which they hung their coats; how six holes were
laid out at the beginning on Mr. Reid's land, his house being used as a
club-house; how he gave a medal which was the first prize ever put up
for competition in America--and it was for an annual thirty-six holes
stroke competition--and how it was won for eleven years, three in
succession, by Mr. George Sands. Those were days of consequence. From
that little beginning the St. Andrews Golf Club of Yonkers, after many
changes and enlargements, has risen to a place of importance and honour
in American golf.
These little histories and traditions of American golf do become
attractive as one probes more deeply into them. It was in Massachusetts
that the most remarkable thing that has ever taken place in the history
of the game on the other side of the Atlantic, or anywhere
perhaps--meaning, of course, the Ouimet triumph--happened lately, and I
have been much attracted to the story of the beginning of golf in that
part of the American world, and not less so when I see that the start
was made such a very little while before the birth of the boy who won
that great championship at Brookline. American golf and Ouimet have
grown up together. One finds that in the summer of 1892 a young lady
from Pau went on a visit to Mr. Arthur Hunnewell, at Wellesley, Mass.,
and took with her a set of golf clubs and balls. They had been playing
the game for a long time past at Pau, but it was only just being started
in other parts of France. After Yonkers it had been reproduced at
Shinnecock and one or two other places, but so far Massachusetts had not
known it. The girl showed Mr. Hunnewell how the clubs were used, and
some relatives of his, owning adjacent estates and being fond of outdoor
pastimes, watched and were won quickly to the game. On the first of June
Mr. Hunnewell wrote down in his diary, "F. B. arrived to-day from
Europe"; and on the fifteenth of September, "We are getting quite
excited about golf." A fortnight later he wrote that "J. B. is here and
plays golf all day." I calculate it as a coincidence worth remark that
twenty-one years afterwards, to the month and to the week, Mr. Ouimet
won the great championship.
Many of Mr. Hunnewell's friends were invited to come and attempt the
game at his place, which they did accordingly and fell in love with it.
He had fashioned a course of seven holes of moderate length over
undulating lawns and some park-land. The actual holes consisted of
five-inch flower-pots sunk in the turf, and the hazards were avenues,
clumps of trees, beds of rhododendrons, an aviary, a greenhouse, and an
occasional drawing-room window, as it is facetiously remarked by Mr.
Lawrence Curtis, who became the first secretary of the golf committee of
the Country Club, and to whose account of these happenings I am indebted
for my notes upon them. Mr. Curtis, seeing the fascination that the game
exercised upon all who became acquainted with it, wrote a letter to the
executive council of the Country Club informing them of it, suggesting
that it was a pastime that might very well be brought within the scope
of the club, and that the cost of an experimental course need not
exceed some fifty dollars. The suggestion was backed by several members
and the council agreed, the course being laid out in the spring of the
following year. The home hole was placed on a lawn in front of the
club-house which was soon discovered to be a very dangerous place for
it, so that it had to be removed. Almost immediately the game became a
strong attraction at the Country Club, new members came along in droves
because of it, and it has flourished ever since. The example of this
powerful club was followed at the Essex County Club at Manchester, then
just being begun. Mr. Herbert Leeds, now so closely and honourably
associated with Myopia, won the Country Club's championship in 1893 with
a score for eighteen holes of 109, Mr. Curtis being next with 110; and
that summer a Country Club side won a team tournament that was played at
Tuxedo against the St. Andrews and Tuxedo Clubs. And afterwards all went
very well indeed.
And while I write in this way of the grand pioneering work that was done
in those days when champions of the present time were being born and
trained, I am reminded of a conversation I once had with Mr. Edward
Blackwell, in which he told me of his going out to California in 1886
and staying there for six years. His people had bought some land in
those western parts, and he and his two brothers went out there to
convert it from barley to a vineyard. Mr. Blackwell is a very great
golfer to-day, but considering the gutty ball and circumstances in
general, he was, relatively to his contemporaries, as great then. Only
about a week before he sailed for California a match was arranged
between him and Jack Simpson, who had gained the Open Championship the
previous year, and Mr. Blackwell won that match at the last of the
thirty-six holes that were played. Out in California there was plenty
of hard work to do on the land and good sport with the gun, but, of
course, there was no golf. Mr. Blackwell's thoughts frequently turned
towards it, and he missed it very much. He considered the possibilities
and found that they were practically non-existent, for the country round
about was too hopelessly rough for laying out any sort of holes. So he
never saw a golf club and never hit a ball during those six years, but
for all that he won the King William IV. medal at the autumn meeting of
the Royal and Ancient Club immediately on his return. Then he went back
to California and did not see club or ball for another five years. Some
of us could almost wish he had made some sort of course out there in
California and become the first golfer of that far west, for he would
have been so good to have been a pioneer, and golf has flourished there
exceedingly since then. California sends men to championships. It would
have given a special piquancy to that fateful amateur championship final
at Sandwich in 1904 when Mr. Blackwell was his country's last hope
against America's Mr. Walter Travis, and as it happened he was not quite
equal to the occasion, for the American captured four holes at the start
with his amazing putting, and he won by as many at the end.
That was a great day for American golf, a kind of consummation it was,
and I shall never forget the queer sensation that filled the atmosphere
on the St. George's course, nor the dumb feeling, not exactly of dismay
but of incomprehension, there was at the end. As to the first of these
sensations I believe that nearly everybody felt--without knowing why
exactly, for comparatively few had noticed his play until he got to the
fourth or fifth rounds and was appreciated as dangerous--that the
American player was nearly sure to win, that nothing could stop him from
winning. It was a conviction. Certainly Mr. Travis's wonderful putting
had created a very deep impression, but if he had been a British player
I think the feeling would have arisen that putting like that, which had
been continued for the best part of a week, would be sure to give out
before the end. Take the case, for instance, of Mr. Aylmer in the
championship of 1910 at Hoylake. He had been putting in the most amazing
manner all the time, and holing them from everywhere, but nobody had any
confidence in his ability to beat Mr. John Ball in the final, and he
collapsed utterly. Of course, Mr. Aylmer then had not the tremendous
fighting power and pertinacity of Mr. Travis in match play, qualities of
their kind which I have only seen equalled by a successor of his in the
American championship roll, Mr. Jerome Travers, and to beat Mr. Ball at
Hoylake is a different matter from beating Mr. Blackwell at Sandwich.
But then they were saying that Mr. Aylmer could not go much farther even
when he was only at about the third round, and as for Mr. Ball at
Hoylake there was a considerable feeling among golfers about that time
that the old champion could not go on defying the law of averages any
longer, and that there could be no more championships for him. I confess
that I rather shared this view, held in a superstitious sort of way, but
now that Mr. John has clapped another championship on to that Hoylake
affair, we have given him up. There is no reason why he should not win
another eight! However, when the Scot and the American teed up that
fateful morning there was a disposition to be sorry for Mr. Blackwell,
and a kind of hope that the end might be painless. In the circumstances
Mr. Blackwell's performance in losing nothing more after losing four of
the first five holes was as good as it could be. He kept the pump
working splendidly.
The truth is that he was by no means so gloomy as his friends about his
prospects, as he told me afterwards. He said he thought he had a good
chance of winning, and did not believe he would get beaten. He wished,
however, that the tees had been farther back so that his long driving
would have given him a better advantage. Two things about his opponent
impressed him very much, one, of course, being his astonishing putting
and the other his silence. But then, of course, one does not work one's
way into a final of a championship for conversational purposes, or for
debating the merits of the sixth sub-section of one of the rules of
golf. When the deed was done completely Mr. Blackwell joined the
converts who departed from the old prejudice and raided Tom Vardon's
shop for Schenectady putters, with which they practised, and marvelled
as the sun was setting on the first day that any but a British player
had won a British golf championship. With that victory the first era in
modern American golf, not counting the prehistoric times of golf in
Charleston and the Indians' games, came to an end. America had made
good. Now she became a power.
The second era lasted nine years and was one in which she gradually came
to be taken more seriously. She suffered a set-back of sorts when Mr.
Harold Hilton won the American Amateur Championship at Apawamis in 1911,
but there were some circumstances attending that victory at the
thirty-seventh hole which were rather galling to the Americans, and they
behaved well in saying so little about them. Mr. Hilton ran away with
the match in the final, as it appeared, and Mr. Fred Herreshoff in the
afternoon was offered about the most forlorn hope that golfer ever had
to lighten his way for him. He brightened it up and made it thoroughly
serviceable, and was distinctly unlucky in being beaten at the extra
tie hole when Mr. Hilton's bad second shot cannoned off the famous rock
to the right and went kindly to the putting green instead of getting
into a hopeless place. It has been said that even if Mr. Hilton's shot
was lucky, Mr. Herreshoff played the hole so badly that he hardly
deserved to win it even if he was hardly treated by losing. But it is
forgotten that it was match play, and that what one man does affects the
other's game, and Mr. Herreshoff told me once, long after, that the
American crowd, which is supposed erroneously to be many shots to the
advantage of an American playing against an Englishman, on that occasion
misled and upset him. It cheered for Mr. Hilton at the wrong time and
for the wrong thing, and led to Mr. Herreshoff making a hash of a most
fateful stroke. This era of American golf came to an end with the
amazing victory by Mr. Ouimet at Brookline.
The present state of things is very remarkable, and I have found the
study of it very interesting during two long golfing expeditions through
the United States, when I have visited many of the chief American clubs,
met and made friends with men who are at the head of American golf and
the most distinguished players, and in every way gained a good practical
knowledge of the amazing progress of the game in this country. The
Englishman who visits America and is not a golfer suffers a loss that he
must regret always afterwards. To strangers in general the Americans in
their own country are kindly and hospitable. That touch of carelessness
and arrogance which is sometimes noticed in the wandering American when
he is "doing Europe" is not in evidence among good Americans when they
are at home, always provided that the Englishman has the good sense and
manners--which one regrets to say is not always the case--to remember
that when in the house of his host it is not good taste to praise his
own for its superiority in divers ways. Pay the American now and then,
and with proper delicacy, that little compliment that is so very well
deserved about the magnificence of his achievement in making a country
like that in such a short space of time, and about the excellence of
many of his established systems. It is a compliment that can and should
be paid with the most absolute sincerity. The American has the right to
be proud of his own country, and we should be proud of the American, for
that his blood is much the same as ours--trite observations, no doubt,
but commonly disregarded. Then with all his fancy hustle and his
tarnation smartness, the American is at bottom rather a sentimental man
(perhaps it is because he has to be so very businesslike most times that
he is liable to a sharp reaction at any good chance) and he is touched
with signs of genuine good feeling towards him and an appreciation of
what he has done. Thereupon in a softened voice he will tell of his
weaknesses, and of his appreciation of the greatness of mother England,
and he will play the host in a more thorough and warm-hearted way than
any other man on earth will or can. The ordinary non-golfing visitor may
find out many of these things, and have his own good time in his simple
way, but even in the freest countries there are often social omissions,
accidents, and disasters when there is not good common ground for
meeting and friends in waiting, and it is very possible to go to America
and fail in the way of holiday. The man who visits as a golfer, enters
at once into joys of existence and the most friendly companionship. I
have visited clubs in many parts of the country, and have made good and
abiding friends among countless golfers, and it is but a poor expression
of my feelings to say that I am very appreciative and deeply grateful.
If, therefore, for anything whatever I should criticise the golf of the
country I hope that American golfers will believe that in my comments
there is no trace of adverse prejudice.
It is difficult to estimate how many players of this game there are in
the country at the present time, and whatever figures were fixed upon
would soon be made inaccurate through the rapid increase that is going
on all the time--more rapid by far than is the case in Britain. I have
seen it estimated that there are six or seven hundred clubs in the
States at the present time, with a total membership of about a hundred
and fifty thousand. The Americans say that they will double their
golfing population in the next five years.
* * * * *
It is impossible for a person who has not crossed the Atlantic to
imagine the United States as the country and people really are. I found
it easier to imagine Italy and Spain and oriental Morocco before ever I
went to those places, than I did to conceive a picture of the country
and the life of our own blood relations in this new America. All the
fraternising with Americans in London and elsewhere, our reading of
their newspapers and their books, printed in the words of our own
language, pictures and photographs of the Statue of Liberty in New York
Harbour, of the sky-scrapers in the background and the Fifth Avenue that
glitters on a summer's day, all the pictures of Boston and Washington,
or of the boulevards and business activities of Chicago, will not help
any one to preconceive those places exactly. The atmosphere and the life
and the ways of the people are a little beyond the imagination of the
untravelled western man. In the same way I do not think that British
golfers who have not been to the United States can understand the
American's present-day attitude towards the game; certainly those who
have not been to America should not judge upon it as they are often
inclined to do. It is good, sound, and in its every aspect it is
exceedingly interesting.
Wandering through the country I have visited many clubs and courses. If
we would have much golf in America we must move quickly as the Americans
do, and think as little of travelling all night as they think, for it
would be too much waste of time to make the long journeys that have to
be made by precious daylight. As a rule the golfer at home protests
against being asked to play anything like his best game after a night in
a railway train. I remember Mr. H. E. Taylor, who is not possessed of
the strongest constitution in the world, told me that he had set off
from Charing Cross one morning in the winter, arrived at Cannes in the
south of France at breakfast time on the next morning, cleaned himself
and put on his golfing shoes, and then gone along to the golf course out
at La Napoule to win a scratch gold medal. Again I recall that Mr.
Hilton once travelled all night from Hoylake to Muirfield and broke the
record of the course there on arrival, playing two more rounds the same
day. However, men like these are exceptions to most rules.
But a golfer may cure himself of more of his weaknesses and
susceptibilities than he may think he can--all that are imaginary and
not really of the temperament. A man who hates wind and avoids it would
learn to play well and bravely in it if he had always to take his golf
on an exposed part of the eastern coast. The ability or otherwise to
play in wind is largely a matter of temperament. So it is with the
journeys. I had either to golf, and golf for me tolerably well, in the
intervals of scampering from one part of the country to the other, or I
had to spoil the whole expedition. I managed it somehow.
Arriving in New York for the first time early on a Sunday morning, I
fixed myself up at my appointed quarters, rang up a golfer on the
telephone, and then, according to arrangement, proceeded to track a man
down at his club on the Fifth Avenue with the object of playing in the
afternoon. I walked into Fifth Avenue from a cross street, and my first
glimpse of it is one that will not soon be forgotten. It was a glorious
morning, the sun shining hot and white, and New York, for the only time
in its hustling week, was comparatively quiet. There was no traffic and
few people just then in the Fifth Avenue, quite one of the most majestic
and wonderful thoroughfares in the world despite its plain simplicity.
But it was not the whiteness, not the glittering cleanliness, not the
real splendour of this Fifth Avenue with all its newness, that struck
the first impression on my mind. Upon the moment that this wandering
British player of the most meditative of games emerged from somewhere
round about West 36th or 37th, into the big avenue, there whizzed along
it, right in front, a motor funeral which was doing a fine fifty miles
an hour clip along the smooth and open thoroughfare. There was just the
hearse with glass panels, the coffin plainly exhibited inside, and the
chauffeur on the seat, with another man beside him who might have been a
mourner. Holding life a little more cheaply in America than we do, they
grieve a little less for those who lose it, which is not to say that
they are heartless or unsympathetic, but more practical. This funeral,
done with petrol instead of horses, was positively going north at the
rate of fifty miles an hour. It was moving just as fast as I saw any car
ever go in the United States, and I could not help reflecting that the
spirit of the good American, viewing the last journey of its separated
corpus, must feel a certain satisfaction that it was hustlingly done and
that no time was wasted. _Finis coronat opus!_ Inspired, I played on
two different courses in New York on the same afternoon.
* * * * *
English people hear much about railroad travelling being far better in
the United States than it is in our own country. It is--and it is not.
The comfort and conveniences of the cars in the daytime are much in
advance of anything we have. The men's smoking cars, the observation
cars, the parlour cars, are delightful and enable us thoroughly to enjoy
the journeys. Although they standardise so many things in America, they
cease their standardisations when considerations of personal comfort and
peculiarities have to be considered. It never occurred to me until I
travelled my first thousand miles in America that it is a hardship that,
no matter what our girth may be, nor the length of our bodies and legs,
we must all of us at home, though we pay for our first-class
accommodation, sit in standardised seats which are all the same and
attached to each other. In the American railroad car running on a
long-distance journey there are seats of different sorts, some are high
and some are low, and they are detached. This makes much difference. In
the dining-cars the tables and chairs are all loose, and one does not
have to squeeze into them with the feeling that one is being locked into
one's place as we do in England. And the dining arrangements on the
American cars are far superior to what they are elsewhere. But if the
American system gains by day the British system makes up for much of the
lost comfort at night, and that is when the American, golfer and
non-golfer, does most of his long-distance travelling. The Pullman day
cars are converted into sleepers by the dark-skinned attendants
(uncommonly good railroad car servants these niggers make), and by an
almost magical transformation the lounging car is made into a sleeper
with about two dozen berths, a dozen on each side, half uppers and half
lowers, and an alley down the middle. The chief difference between the
upper berths and the lower is that the uppers have to be reached by a
short stepladder and are not convenient to fat, gouty, or unathletic
persons, while those who wake early and like to look upon the prairie,
or what once was that, have a window at the bottom as the people in the
top have not. The berths are covered in with thick green curtains which
button together. We may leave our boots outside for the attendant to
brush in the morning, but our other clothes and traps must go along to
bed with us, and be stowed away at the bottom of the berth, or in the
little netting that hangs alongside. And here I must timidly state in
evidence that there are not separate cars for the sexes; in America all
go together, and the ladies and the men occupy the same cars. The ladies
generally go off to bed earlier than the men. Whether they do or not, we
all climb into our respective berths, fasten up the curtains, and
undress in the very limited space at our disposal, a process which seems
to me must be the same as that by which acrobatic performers wriggle
themselves out of chains and ropes with which their limbs and bodies
have been tied up fast. After a time we become expert. What is most
difficult to become accustomed to is the horrible jolting, and the
painfully sudden stopping of the trains in the middle of the night.
Their permanent ways are not laid so finely as the magnificent lines
along our coasts from London to Scotland. Their rails are not fixed in
chairs laid on the sleepers, but are pinned down straight on to the
wood. This makes much difference. The cars shake exceedingly. Then the
drivers at night have to be wary and stop quickly at times, and no
doubt they do right not to reduce their speed gradually for the sake of
the men and women who are asleep behind them, but instead to stop with a
suddenness that could only be improved upon by a collision. However, I
say again, that we find ourselves accustomed to it all in time.
I shall not forget my first experience of a thousand-mile golfing
journey from the New York Central Station to Chicago. A few golfers were
in a party going westward for the championship at Wheaton in Illinois,
and we discussed the game from the time of starting in the late
afternoon until we had passed Albany, about ten, when we moved into our
sleeping quarters. My bag of clubs had to go to bed with me, and they
lay alongside all the night; there was no room for them underneath. I
had to sleep with one hand on the bag to prevent them from attacking me
or going overboard into the avenue, so much did that wretched train
rattle and shake as it hurtled its way through the darkness, with the
big bell in the front of the engine jangling mournfully all the time.
And what a wild, sad note it is that is struck by the bells on these
American engines, suggestive of the loneliness of the open country
through which they speed, now and then making a big noise with a sort of
foghorn. I am much attached to my clubs, and they are the chosen
favourites of a vast number that go with their master everywhere, and
are carefully watched and tended, but the intimacy that was sprung upon
us then was too much, and I invented another arrangement for the next
travelling night. James Braid, very wise man indeed, tells me that long,
deep nights of placid slumber are the best things in the world for the
golfer who would keep steady his hands and nerves and clear his eyes so
that he may play the best game of which he is capable. But no British
golfer could sleep at the beginning of his American experiences in such
circumstances. I was just falling into some sort of a doze in the small
hours of the morning when the train pulled up sharply at a station which
I discovered to be Schenectady, where the famous putter that disturbed
the peace of two nations was born. Next, one realised that we were
within a mile or two of the Niagara Falls, and so on with jolting and
banging and sudden stopping all the night. By and by daylight came and
then we had a long day of travelling through the heart of America to
Chicago.
Some may suggest that all this about railroad travelling in the country
where there is more of it than any other has little to do with golf, but
it has all to do with it, for the thorough golfer in America, whether a
citizen or British, must needs spend a large part of his time in the
train, and if he would have the maximum amount of golf, much sleeping
must be done behind the green curtains in the darkened cars. The
travelling done by the American golfer, therefore, is a surprising
thing, but a few months of it is a fine and valuable experience for the
British golfer afterwards. No longer, since I have been across the
Atlantic, do I consider it a far way from London to the links of
Dornoch. St. Andrews and North Berwick have come pleasingly near to me.
All the world has shrunk, and I feel I have my foot on every course--or
soon may have.
Though it be a thousand miles from New York to Chicago, and these are
the two great golfing centres of the east and west, it is a fact, as I
know well, that the golfers in the two places visit each other for a
weekend's golf almost as frequently and with as little fuss as would be
the case with golfers in London who go down to Sandwich. They take the
"Twentieth Century Limited" from New York on Friday afternoon, and on
Saturday morning they are at Chicago. They flash out on a local train to
Onwentsia, Midlothian, Glen View, Wheaton, Exmoor, or one of those
places, play all day, start play again at eight o'clock on Sunday,
finish their couple of rounds early in the afternoon, catch the fast
train back to New York, and are at their office on Monday morning as if
they had spent the week-end pottering about the garden. I am not
concerned with the question as to whether they are prolonging their
lives by these acts; nor are they concerned. In the meantime they appear
to be in the best of health, and are certainly in the highest of
spirits.
* * * * *
With this talk of journeys we seem in fancy to be in Chicago now, so let
us consider the leading club of the busy district in the heart of
America. The course of the Chicago club is at Wheaton, some twenty-five
miles out on the North Western line, and this is the foremost club of
the Central States, and west in the sense of being west of the east, for
all golfing America is divided into two parts, the east and the west,
Chicago being the capital of and held chiefly to represent the west,
which holds some close rivalry with the east, where New York is
headquarters. The west out California way is just the far and other
west, and is in another world. The Chicago club is exclusive and
dignified. The most solid men in the city support it, and they see that
everything is good. It is not an ancient institution, but it has some of
the characteristics of solidity and strength of age and sound
experience. Chicago is not an old city, but, as the proud citizens like
to tell you, about a hundred years ago there was no Chicago at all, but
just a few wigwams of Indians and some huts and things round about a
creek. Since then the place has been once burnt down, and yet it is now
the fourth largest city of the world, while in its tenseness of
commercial industry it is the foremost of all. If all the ages past in
Chicago only amount to a hundred years, then one-fifth of all time as
known to Chicago history, which represents the life of the Chicago Golf
Club, is comparatively long indeed.
In 1892 a small golf club was started for the first time round about
Lake Forest, but the promoters had only about sixteen acres of ground.
In the following year, when the World's Fair was held, a number of
foreign visitors were in Chicago and asked for golf, as travellers will
do, though the great golf boom had not yet then set in. Mr. Charles B.
Macdonald came in with the movement, ground was searched for, and the
Chicago Golf Club was organised at Belmont, some twenty-two miles out of
the city. When the Fair was over in the following spring, only about
twenty members were left to the club, and the outlook did not seem
splendid. But once begun, in either place or man, golf is a very hard
thing to kill. The twenty die-hards asked their friends to come and see
the place and try the game. They did so, and those men of Chicago knew
at once that they had discovered the real thing. A hundred and thirty
members were quickly obtained. The inevitable result followed. They
wanted more and better golf, and they wanted it to belong to them and
not to be on leased ground, so in 1894 the club met and authorised the
purchase of two hundred acres at Wheaton, twenty-four miles out from the
city, a fine course was laid out, a splendid club-house was built, and a
really great club was established. Here and now we may gain a very fair
idea of the difference in cost to the player between American golf and
British. No better club could be selected for the purpose of
exemplification than this one. It so happened that a few days before I
arrived there, its club-house was burnt down, with all its contents and
appurtenances, and from the wreck only a single one of the club-books
of rules and regulations was rescued. I took possession of it while I
made some notes upon the terrace of the only part of the building that
was saved.
The first paragraph in the book, being Section 1 of Article 1 of the
bye-laws, states that "this club is incorporated under the laws of
Illinois as Chicago Golf Club, and its corporate seal is a circular disc
bearing the words, 'Chicago Golf Club,' the figure of a golf player, and
the motto, 'Far and Sure.'" To become a member of the club the applicant
must be over eighteen years of age; he must have not more than one
adverse vote cast against him by the governing body; and he must pay an
entrance fee of not less than a hundred dollars or L20. The resident (or
full) membership of the club is limited to 225, and the annual
subscription is 75 dollars or L15, half of which is payable at the
beginning of the year and half at midsummer. Now this subscription is
much higher than that of any golf club in Great Britain, and the fact is
only partly attributable to the circumstance that everything in America
is more expensive than it is in England. The higher subscription is
necessitated because the membership is kept down so low as 225, and that
is done in order that there may be no overcrowding of the course. In
England such a club, being situated within thirty miles of a great city
and having the best course round about, would probably admit at least
five or six hundred members, with the result that on the fine and busy
week-end days the course would be hopelessly blocked and there would be
no pleasure for anybody. This is certainly so in the case of two or
three of the most popular clubs in the outer London golfing area, and
one may come to a speedy decision that in this matter the American way
is by far the better. Ladies who are over sixteen years of age and the
immediate relatives of a member are permitted to have the privileges of
the course, subject to the rules of the Green Committee, on payment of
ten dollars a year. There is another class, "summer members," who are
not to exceed fifteen in number, and who pay 150 dollars for one summer
season's play. There is practically no play in the winter, the climatic
conditions being too severe. The other rules as to membership are much
the same as those which obtain in the case of British golf clubs.
Among the "house rules," it is stated that the club-house generally will
remain open until midnight, and the cafe, which is the British
equivalent of the smoke-room with bar, until one o'clock in the morning,
which is a lateness of hour almost unheard of in England, but then it
has to be remembered that such club-houses in America are mostly
residential. "Juniors" are not allowed in the cafe. The warning is given
that smoking and the lighting of matches in the locker or dressing room
are absolutely prohibited, and that a fine of ten dollars will be
imposed on any member violating this rule. Fires in club-houses in
America being so numerous is the cause of this rule, which is rigorously
applied. Then it is perceived that no member makes any payment
whatsoever in cash in the club-house. He signs a check or bill, an
account of his expenditure is kept, and it is served to him fortnightly.
Payment must then be made within ten days, failing which the member is
suspended. Some interesting items are to be found among the ground
rules. One says that in medal play competitions new holes must be
assumed to have been made on the morning of a competition, unless
otherwise stated by the Green Committee; and another that a member
playing a round, and keeping score other than in club competition must
allow parties playing pure match-play to pass. The Americans are not
content with merely requesting a player to replace the divots of turf
that he cuts up in play. They say: "Divots of turf cut up by players
must be carefully replaced and pressed down. A fine of one dollar will
be imposed on any member violating this rule. All members are earnestly
requested to report any member who violates this rule to the Green
Committee." Caddies are paid "from the time of their employment until
the time they are discharged, to be determined by an electric clock, at
such rate per hour as may be determined by the Green Committee." There
is nothing that is inexpensive about a club of this class, and let it be
understood that there are few second-class golf clubs in the States
where the fees are small. A day's golf at a good club is cheap indeed at
five dollars. When one goes to stay there for a night or two one finds
that the statutory price for breakfast is a dollar, for lunch 1.25, and
for dinner 1.30 upwards. When I returned to England it appeared that
golf and all pertaining to it was cheap, almost to the gift point.
The course at Wheaton is good, although there are some in America that
are better. It is plain, its holes sometimes lack strength, but it is
well tended and its putting greens are quite perfect. Its fairway is not
perfect, any more than the fairways of other American courses are. The
climate will hardly permit of their being so. It bakes them up and makes
them hard, and the inevitable result is little knobs and depressions
which give cuppy lies, and turf which for all its greenness is not by
any means comfortable to the feet in comparison with the yieldingness of
our British turf. The Americans cannot help this; if it were practicable
to treat every inch of their turf for climatic troubles all through the
day and night they would perhaps do it. It is practicable to treat their
putting greens thoroughly, and the result is that, taking them all
round, they have undoubtedly got the best putting greens in the world.
I mean, without reservation, that the average of the best courses in
America is higher than the average of the best in our own country, and I
say it with some regret that they have a score of courses in the United
States with greens far superior to those on the old course at St.
Andrews the last time the Amateur Championship was played there, those
greens being then not what they used to be. I think much of the credit
for the high quality of the greens at Wheaton is due to the splendid
work of David Foulis, the professional and greenkeeper there. Need I say
that David is a Scot, and a very true Scot too, who still loves his old
homeland better than any other, and is glad when the wandering golfer
from it gets his way. Chicago may seem a strange place to visit for
facts of old golf history, and yet here I added some details to the
histories of the people and their golfing ways of fifty years and more
agone, for Foulis has his father living with him out in Illinois, and
Foulis the elder was at work with old Tom Morris in the great days when
the Open Championship was young, and stirring are the stories that he
can tell you, as he did to me in David's shop, of old Tom and Allan
Robertson, and the other giants of those times, carrying one in mind and
spirit far away from the land round about the big lake of Michigan to
the old grey city which was old more than a hundred years ago.
I took away with me as a memento from David Foulis a club that he has
invented, and which for a special purpose I can commend. It is a kind of
mashie niblick, David claiming to be the inventor of this type of club,
but it is different from others in that it has a perfectly straight,
flat sole and a concave face. I, like others, found that by the use of
this club I saved some dollars, for it enabled me to pitch the ball from
a hard lie on to the hard greens and make it stay close to the hole
when nothing else would serve the purpose. The ordinary mashie niblick
with curved sole is not perfect for baked and iron-hard courses, as it
is not easy to get well hold of the ball when taking it cleanly as must
often be done in such circumstances, and the margin for error is
painfully small. The flat-soled club is essentially one for taking the
ball cleanly, and somehow that hollow face does impart extra backspin to
the ball. It lifts it up and drops it dead as no other club that I have
handled will of itself ever do.
But let me write that the Americans are not given to fancy and freak
clubs as some people suppose they are. There is nothing freakish about
this article of which I write, and for the most part the implements that
the American players employ are the simplest. And just to complete my
generalising remarks on American courses, which naturally vary greatly,
let me say that commonly they are not so severely bunkered as are the
best of ours, particularly from the tee. They do not demand either such
long or such straight driving as our best courses do, and I think that
the Americans realise now that this is the case and that they need
stiffening up. They are doing that already. There are some very good
holes at Wheaton, and the short hole at the ninth is about the most
tantalising water hole I have encountered. It is all water from the
teeing ground to the foot of a high plateau on which the green is
situated, and it is about a hundred and ten yards across the pond.