THE PERFECT COUNTRY CLUB AND THE GOLFERS' POW-WOW AT ONWENTSIA, WITH A
GLIMPSE OF THE NATIONAL LINKS.
Round Chicago there is now a great belt of golf which is thickening
rapidly. More hundreds of acres are being claimed for the game
constantly, and one hears in these parts of the most splendidly equipped
club-houses being built to replace others at the cost of very many
thousands of dollars. Activity in the increase of golf is feverish. But
even here maturity has its charm, as it always must have in golf, and
the most delightful resorts in Illinois are those which are the oldest.
Such as Onwentsia, Exmoor, Midlothian, Glen View are excellent.
I am glad I went to Onwentsia. Most British golfers who have never been
and will never go across the Atlantic have heard something, even if but
the name, of the Onwentsia club. It seems to suggest American golf, and
there is a look of some mystery about the name. Onwentsia is by no means
like the others, and there are good reasons why. Here on a wall of mine
are two feathers of eagles fastened crosswise; below them an Indian's
pipe of peace with its silken tassel. They were sent to me across the
sea from Onwentsia by some members a while after I had been there, and
they are a reminder not only of happy days but of the characteristics of
Onwentsia, for the name of the place is an Indian one. Here were the
redskins before all others, and then the white men and golfers came, and
still it is almost as if the soil were redolent of the Indian trail. The
club perpetuates in a manner considered suitable the memory and legend
of the braves; my eagles' feathers are such as a "Running Driver" or
"Mighty Mashie" might have worn in their fighting days, and they adorned
our modern Onwentsians on the day of their Indian feast! Let me explain.
Lake Forest, where is Onwentsia, is a very charming suburb of Chicago,
at the side of Lake Michigan. Its name suggests its character; it is
well wooded, and one of the kind friends that I made there, Mr. Slason
Thompson, drove me in his car in the dusk of a balmy evening for miles
through the beautiful public grounds. The Onwentsia Club, as it is
called, is a close fraternity of the best people of these parts. It is a
country club in a large sense. It is a hunt club, it is a polo club with
a splendid ground, it is a tennis club, and it is a golf club, and it
need hardly be said that the golf is a very strong feature, the
predominator of the institutions. Now the Onwentsian golfers, zealous
and good, have their own manners and customs, and, particularly they
have one custom which has a fame all over America, and it has spread
even beyond the seas. If it be not sin to mention them together
Onwentsia has one great day of celebration as the Royal and Ancient Club
has one. Towards the end of September the Royal and Ancient Club calls
its members together for the autumn gathering at St. Andrews, and there
on that occasion, as has been related, many ancient and solemn
ceremonies of great dignity are performed. The captain "plays himself
in," guns are fired, in the evening at the banquet new members kiss the
silver club and swear their loyalty, and much more in that splendid and
time-honoured way is done. America is true to St. Andrews golf in its
law, but Lake Forest, far out toward the west, is not the same as
Fifeshire, and the Onwentsia Club at Lake Forest is not like the Royal
and Ancient. It is not a question of which is the better; they are
different, and when I was in Illinois, at any rate, Onwentsia was to me
a very entertaining place. And I do not say this merely because
Onwentsia, near to Lake Michigan, is so charmingly situated; because the
club is such a delightful place, perfect in equipment, with a luxurious
club-house, and inside it a huge swimming pool and many shower-baths,
making one sometimes a trifle regretful upon the bareness of our British
golfing-houses. It is just because when I first reached there the great
golfing gathering at St. Andrews was nearly due and the golfers at
Onwentsia were having theirs. When I dined with Mr. Thompson that
evening at his charming house overlooking the great lake, and we smoked
cigars on the lawn overhanging it, he told me why on everything that
concerned the club there was the same sign, the head of an Indian brave
with the big feather in it, and why they were just going forward to the
great annual pow-wow. If you would do it properly you should pronounce
Onwentsia in the soft, crooning Indian way. Murmur it slowly and gently,
and mount the cadence high upon the second syllable; then, after a
suspicion of a pause, lower the notes gradually to the end. If you said
it in the right way an old Iroquois brave would know that you were
referring to "a country gathering," for that is the meaning of the term.
In days of old the Iroquois trailed over all these parts where now the
course is laid. Here were their wigwams; here lingered their squaws with
the little papoose, while the red men hunted and fought. That is why the
golfers of Onwentsia have their pow-wow once a year.
The pow-wow is an invitation golf tournament lasting two days, and it is
open only to those members who are of a certain age or over (it was
thirty-nine when I was there) and their guests, one guest per member. In
order to preserve complete the familiar friendliness of the gathering
and to maintain its traditions undisturbed by new influences, the age
limit is increased from year to year to keep the new and young men out.
The call to the pow-wow, which is written anew for every festival, gives
us the key to the nature of the function, and I quote from one of them:
On the banks of Skokie water,
By the water flecked with golf balls,
Stands the wigwam, the Onwentsia,
The great wigwam of the Pow-wow.
Come ye forth, ye Jol-li-gol-fas,
Come ye forth and come ye quickly
To Onwentsia, the big wigwam,
To Onwentsia, the big Pow-wow,
In the Moon of Falling Leaflets,
Ere the trees are red with autumn,
Come in trains, the Puf-choo-choo-puf;
Come in motors, Aw-to-bub-buls;
In the 'bus, old Shuh-too-get-thah,
To Onwentsia, to the Pow-wow.
Here's the bartend, Wil-lin-mix-ah,
The head waitress, Goo-too-loo-kat,
The great golfer, Hoo-beets-boh-ghee,
And the caddy, Skip-an-fetch-it,
Waiting all to do you honour.
Leave your war club, Tom-ah-haw-kus,
Bring the peace sticks, Dri-vah-nib-lix;
Leave your toilsome reservations
And the dust of smoky cities
For the Pow-wow in the wigwam;
Bring the peace pipe, Swee-too-suk-kat,
Taste the bowl, Hi-baw-laf-tah;
Play the game, Roy-al-skoch-wun,
All the morning in the sunlight,
All the afternoon, till evening
Spreads the feast of squab and chicken
'Mid the joy of good companions
Gathered in the spreading wigwam
Of Onwentsia for the Pow-wow.
Lasting for two days, with one great night in between them, it happens
that the first session of play is conducted in a state of high
anticipation and with much joyful shaking of hands and exhibitions of
brotherly attachment, and the second session with a feeling as of a
slowly receding past. Only those who attend the feast in the big wigwam
are eligible to play in the numerous competitions to which are attached
such an abundance of prizes that it is difficult for the golfing brave
to go empty-handed back to his gentle squaw. A law indeed has had to be
made that he shall not take more than two of the trophies away with him.
At eight o'clock on the morning of the first day the play begins. There
is a thirty-six holes medal competition for the Sum-go-fah trophy (the
"Indian" titles are changed from year to year), and at the end of
eighteen holes the numerous competitors are grouped into sections of
eight, according to the place in the returns--first eight, second eight,
and so on for separate match-play competitions for the Sko-ki-ko-lah
prizes. The prize for the first eight is the Mis-sa-sko-kih, for the
second the O-ma-go-li, for the third the Hit-ta-sko-kih, for the fourth
the Sti-mi-gosh, for the fifth the Bum-put-tah, for the sixth the
Went-an-mis-tit, for the seventh the Top-an-sli-sah, for the eighth the
Let-mih-tel-you, and for the ninth the Dub-an-duf-fah. Then there is a
competition for the Bun-kah-bun-kah prize, which is embraced within the
Sum-go-fah, being for the best eclectic score made in the two rounds, or
"choice score" as they prefer to call it in the States. Two-thirds
handicap is allowed. Likewise there is the Noh-bak-num-bah prize, which
is by medal play with an age handicap, the handicap being determined by
the years of the contestant above or below forty. By such play, whether
it is successful or not, do the braves qualify for the feast, and at
half-past seven there is the call to the big and happy wigwam. The
great dining-room is indeed made by fitting and decoration to appear as
one great wigwam, and there are some of the adjuncts of the life of the
old Iroquois. The golfing braves stride eagerly, joyfully, chatteringly
in. Reddened are the golfers' faces; wrapped around them are their
blankets, from their hair stick big black feathers; long pipes of peace
are held before them. Then there are strange but toothsome dishes; they
taste the "Hi-baw-laf-ta-tah"; happiness and contentment increase; there
are toasts and shouts and whoops. The successors of the Iroquois hold
their pow-wow well. At the beginning of the morning, when the moon is
riding through the fleecy heavens of Illinois, softly they steal away,
and in the distance now and then there may be heard the same lone cry
that once resounded through the forest when Iroquois were on the trail.
But at nine in the morning more competitions begin, and are most
thoroughly attended. There are tournaments for the Bus-tis-tik-sah, the
Boo-li-bus-tah, the Strok-a-hol-ah, the Heez-noh-mut-sah, the
Ho-pu-get-it, the Get-sa-loo-kin, the He-za-pee-chah, the
Wil-lin-loo-sah, the Oh-you-papoose, and other cups. Some of the prizes
go to the players doing certain holes in the lowest gross score during
the tournament, the Wil-lin-loo-sah is captured by the man who does the
four rounds worst of all on the two days, and an Onwentsia medicine
pouch, the nature of which may be guessed by golfers with little
difficulty, remembering British practice, is awarded to the brave who
does a particular hole in one stroke. It is all very remarkable,
wonderful, interesting, and thoroughly American, and not the ragged
corner of a paper dollar the worse for it either. Happy Onwentsia!
* * * * *
At the Glen View Country Club they have a special autumn festival also
which has a character of its own. The motto of Glen View is "Laigh and
lang"--low and long--which is a good variation on the monotonous "far
and sure." And about Glen View there is a Scottish flavour; in manners
and customs for a very brief season in the golden days of the fall there
is wafted from the far distant Highlands a breath of Scotland. Here they
call their festival the "Twa Days," and it is carried through with a
fine spirit. There are competitions in number and kind to satisfy
everybody, and the social side of the affair is excellent.
Glen View, again, is not like the others either. I spent some days there
as the guest of the club, and nowhere have I had a more pleasurable
time. It came after an exceedingly strenuous, rushing period at other
places, and towards the end of one of the hottest spells of weather that
they had known for many summers in those burning parts. Glen View is a
pretty name, but it is not prettier than the golf course there, which is
one of the most charming I know. It reminded one in some ways of
Sudbrook Park in the early summer, always, as I think, one of the most
delightful inland courses in the south of England; but Glen View, with
its sleepy streams, is nicer. It may not be up to "championship
standard" in its architectural features, but it might be made so. Yet if
such a change would remove much of the character of Glen View, I, in my
selfishness, knowing that on some future morning I shall again take the
9.35 from Chicago on the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railroad, and
alight at the station which is called "Golf," hope for my high pleasure
that there will be none such made. When a club once becomes infatuated
with the championship idea its contentment and happiness depart, and
Glen View is best as it is. The holes have character. The greens are
placed in the most beautiful nooks and corners, great belts of trees
surround the course, and a stream winds snake-like through the grounds.
At about every third hole there is a large barrel which is filled every
morning with fresh spring water, into which a large block of ice is
placed. When you play in a shade temperature of nearly a hundred
degrees, as I have done at this place, you appreciate these barrels.
They have a natty way of naming their holes at Glen View. The first is
called "The Elm," the second "High Ball," the third "Sleepy Hollow," and
the next in order are "Polo," "Lover's Lane," "Old Hickory," "The Round
Up," "Trouble," "Reservoir," "Westward Ho!" "The Grove," "Sunset," "The
Bridge," "The Roost," "Spookey," "The Orchard," "Log Cabin," and "Sweet
Home." The course is 6279 yards long, and every one of these yards is a
pleasure to play along. Visitors do like this place. In one year
recently there were 3550 of them who paid a dollar a day for the
privilege of playing. The members of the club pay one hundred dollars a
year subscription, and nowadays it costs about five hundred dollars for
admission. Every member must be the possessor of a hundred-dollar share
in the club, and these shares are now at a premium of about five times
their par value. At few other places in the golfing world is there such
a nicely appointed club-house as there is here. One could put two or
three of the largest dining-rooms that our golf clubs possess into the
one of Glen View, and the furnishing is finely and tastefully done in a
Flemish style. Some of the golfing prints with which we are most
familiar hang upon the walls. Other pictures of value keep them
company, and there is a large crayon drawing done on the spot by my old
friend, the late Tom Browne, who once came here with his bag of clubs.
The cafe at the Glen View club is an interesting institution. The club
has one of the cleverest cocktail mixers in America, and the printed
list of available liquid refreshments that is laid upon the tables
suggests a little consideration. The American golfers, for the most
part, do not drink very much, and what they do drink has little effect
upon them, thanks to the heat and much perspiration; but they do like
novelties and the variety. So on this list--which, mind you, includes no
wines, which are quoted on a separate sheet--there are scheduled no
fewer than 147 different kinds of refreshments. There are thirteen "soft
drinks," eight different lemonade mixtures, eleven sorts of mineral
waters, thirteen beers and ales, six rye whiskies, seven Bourbon
whiskies, eleven Scotch and Irish whiskies, thirteen varieties of
cocktails, two "toddies," three "sours," three "rickies," three
"cobblers," six "fizzes," two "flips," seven "punches," three "smashes,"
and thirty-six "miscellaneous." The last is a most interesting section.
It includes the "Prairie Oyster," the "Millionaire," the "Pousse
l'Amour," the "Sam Ward," the "Russian Cooler," the "Japanese Cooler,"
the "Golfer's Delight," the "Angel's Dream," the "Ladies' Puff," and the
"Glen View High Ball." Nearly all of these cost twenty or twenty-five
cents each.
One may be most pleasurably lazy at Glen View. The club-house has some
forty bedrooms, with a fine equipment of shower and other baths, and the
usual telephone service to all the bedrooms with a complete telephone
exchange downstairs. The service and comfort are as good as they can be.
I liked the lounges and the shady verandahs, with rocking-chairs to tip
one away to a short dream on a hot afternoon of purling brooks on
English hills and woods in Wales. Yet when I awake I am satisfied. There
is no hurry here. In the mornings one would hear the men rising at six
o'clock and splashing themselves about in the bath department, and
generally becoming very active all at once. Some time later I would join
them at breakfast, and see them depart very early for their businesses
at Chicago. When they had gone one could settle down, and there were
ladies to chatter with or to play Chopin or something else on the piano.
It is necessary to take things a little easily during the early and hot
part of the day, because soon in the afternoon the men come back from
Chicago, and they are all energy and rush as if they had not spent a
howling morning in the "Pit" or one of the other great business centres.
One has to fall in with their schemes of activity, which endure until
the evening meal, taken in an easy way of _en famille_ in the restaurant
of the club, luscious green corn to begin with and the most appetising
dishes later, with laughter and gossip always. And later in the evening
David Noyes and I might sit in the dark on the verandah, and under those
stars of Illinois speak of the differences between English people and
the Americans as we respectively saw them. We understood each other and
could be frank. "The worst of America," said I, "is that it has no soul,
and the Americans have none either." "Well," said he; "but we have big
hearts." Agreed. He is a leading broker in the "Pit" at Chicago, the
great wheat market of the world, and one morning he took me there and I
met many golfers I knew round about those four screeching masses of men
who make of this place a babel and such an exhibition of raw fighting
human nature as, with all its differences, I can only compare with the
same brilliant and yet ugly show that is made in the rooms of the
Casino at Monte Carlo. It is raw life on the strain at both places--hot
seething life. The reposeful Glen View is needed for the people who
barter there.
* * * * *
Massachusetts is a fine golfing land, and it rose to the heights in
1913. After gaiety in New York, and amazement at Chicago, you should go
to Boston. And really they who live there have reason for their pride.
There is no other town or city in the United States or Canada that has
anything like such an English flavour as this in the New England. There
are times when we wander along the great thoroughfare, Washington
Street, or turn up one of the side avenues like Boylston, that the
American idea for a moment ceases to press closely upon us, and when we
pass the old churches, wander through historic chambers Georgian in
their style, look into the Faneuil Hall, or into the old-fashioned
market, or go down to the shipping in the docks where our Boston man
will surely take us, that we may see the place of the "tea party," as
they call it now, which had vast consequences to the States and England
when taxes were made and were rejected--then in the New England we feel
the old one there. And, of course, the wandering Englishman is taken out
to Bunker Hill as well. Though with all Americans their spirit of
independence is an obsession, and it seems sometimes that they like to
think of themselves as a new race of people come up out of nothing or
from heaven, owing nothing to any other race, yet at Boston I suspect
they are a trifle glad that they and their city are not like the others,
but are something more English in their way. There is a difference in
the atmosphere. A certain ease is possible, a culture is apparent.
Streets and shops do not look as if they had been cut out by machinery
at the same time that the streets and shops of a dozen other cities were
being cut, and all life is not mathematically arranged and standardised.
If an American university is not at all like either Oxford or Cambridge,
still Harvard is an influence, and Harvard is at Cambridge, a near
suburb of Boston. The result of it all is that we feel something of the
old atmosphere of home and are stimulated. Boston grows upon us very
rapidly. The father of one of my good American friends, Mr. John G.
Anderson, who has gone on golfing expeditions with me in England,
Scotland, France and the United States, is a Scot with a great love for
his home country, and our rambles round old Boston have been of a
peculiarly interesting kind. And when in Boston, and the car of a friend
comes along to the Touraine in the morning, we throw the clubs in the
back of it, and get up with just that feeling of having a sporting day
ahead that one develops in the country at home and hardly anywhere else.
There are many courses round about Boston, and there are four of them,
all quite different from each other, of which I shall have a clear
recollection always. Two have very special places of their own in
American golf, one being The Country Club of Brookline already
described. Massachusetts itself will not be called a "state" like other
states, but is a "commonwealth," and The Country Club is not the Boston
Country Club or the Brookline Country Club, but The Country Club, and
visitors who would be appreciative and make no _faux pas_ are
recommended to keep the point in mind, the reason being that this one,
with its charter of incorporation away back in the eighteenth century,
was the first of all the country clubs in America, and is dignified
accordingly.
They do blow the place up in America when they determine to make a golf
course. Forest and rock are of no more hindrance to any idea or scheme
than a few daisies might be. I was strongly impressed with this view of
things when I was out one day at the Essex County Club at
Manchester-by-the-Sea, another of the outer-Boston courses. "Come to
golf at Essex in the morning; you will see something of the way in which
we do our golf in America that you have never seen before." Such was the
substance of an invitation from Mr. George F. Willett, one of the most
ardent and admirable leaders of the golfing movement in the Eastern
States. So in the morning golf at Essex, twenty miles out of Boston, was
the programme of the day, and by half-past ten we were on the first tee
preparing to drive from an eminence down towards low land in front. The
terms of the invitation were amply justified. Towards noon, when we
might be somewhere about the thirteenth or fourteenth hole, a great roar
and crashing sound came from the other side of the course in the
locality of the fifth hole, and looking towards it there was to be seen
a rising cloud of smoke, with masses of earth and splintered rocks being
hurled high into the air. A moment later and there was another deafening
bang and more earth, more rocks, and various stumps of trees were shot
up towards the sky. Bang! bang! bang!--ten times in the space of a few
seconds was this surprise repeated, and it began to seem that we must be
on Olympian links and that Jove himself or Hercules was bunkered. "It's
only Ross's men tinkering away at the new fourth," said my man
unconcernedly, as he ran down a long putt. A couple of minutes
afterwards we rounded a bend of the course, and as we did so some wild
yells were heard and a number of the Italian workmen were seen running
fast in our direction and then stopping suddenly to hide themselves
behind trees. Three more big bangs, more smoke, flying earth, flying
rocks and roots, and then as my partner played his brassey he
soliloquised that he had added, unintentionally, a touch of slice to the
stroke and was in the pot on the right. As to the noises, our part of
the course, I was assured, was perfectly safe. The three explosions were
made by Ross's Italians at the new fifth. Thirteen of them in five
minutes was perhaps a little unusual, but they were all over now, and,
as could be seen, the Italians, with sundry calls to each other, were
moving back towards the place they had sprinted from. The object of this
concentration of noise and disturbance in five minutes, it was
explained, was to give the full body of workmen plenty to do as soon as
they resumed after their midday meal.
The truth is, that golf at Essex, when I was first there, was undergoing
a great and most wonderful transformation, regardless of cost,
regardless of the magnitude and seeming impossibilities of the task,
regardless of everything, but caused by the insatiable desire of the
American golfer to have courses that are as good as they can be. To
satisfy this desire he is everywhere pulling Nature to pieces and
reconstructing her, doing his work deftly and skilfully, and with a good
eye for pleasing effect. At the finish you might think that, save for
the putting greens and bunkers, it was all the simple work of the mother
of earth herself in her gentler moods, smooth swards for rocks, and
chaste glades where forests were. This transformation and extension of
American golf and the way it is being done is most amazing. All the old
courses are being lengthened and greatly improved, and new ones of
first-class quality are being made in large numbers. When it is desired
to make changes and extensions on a British course the work that has to
be done is not generally of a very formidable character. Some tolerably
smooth sort of land is frequently available, and alternatives to
existing holes may be planned. But even so, the question of expense
seems often to be a fearsome thing, and a year or more of thought and
yet another year for action are commonly needed. A thousand pounds or
two thousand seems to be a mighty sum to spend, but for all that we
think that in the south, at all events, we are doing our golf on a very
grand scale in these days. And when I think of St. George's Hill and
Coombe Hill and others of their kind I know we are doing it on a very
fine scale. But the case of America at present is most specially
remarkable. In the Eastern States particularly, the courses have had for
the most part to be carved out of virgin forests. Tens of thousands of
tons of rocks have had to be blasted, and hundreds of acres of swamps
drained before the fairways could be laid and sown with grass. Such work
is having to be done now for the extensions and improvements, and it is
wonderfully done. The committees appear to take about a week to think
about it, a day to decide, and then in two or three months, with the
help of dynamite, tree-fellers, and hundreds of foreign workmen, the new
scheme is carried through. The cost is not considered till afterwards,
and then it never worries, but it is enormous. Here at Essex, the chief
work that was being done was the addition of a total of 175 yards only
to the fourth and fifth holes, which were to be given new numbers, and
this little bit of lengthening, with the tree-felling, the splendid
draining of a swamp, and the use of 400 lbs. of dynamite on the rocks,
was costing 10,000 dollars or L2000. Some other alterations and new
constructions were being done, and the course, one of fine undulations,
well-planned bunkering, magnificent putting greens, and glorious
scenery, was being brought to perfection. The work was being carried out
under the direction of Mr. Donald J. Ross, the chief superintendent of
the club and course, who was once a Dornoch man. He thinks out his
construction schemes in the grand way, and he is going about America
blowing hundreds of acres of it up into the air and planting smooth
courses upon the levelled remains. Shortly before this, they called him
up to a mountainous place at Dixville Notch, in New Hampshire, to plan a
new nine-holes course that had to be cut out of solid rock, at a cost of
L10,000. No golfer had ever been to that place, and the first had yet to
arrive when the promoters wrote hurriedly to Mr. Ross, not long back
home, saying: "We are convinced that it will soon be necessary to have a
longer course, and are very desirous that you will come at once to lay
one out on Panorama Hill." It will cost L20,000, but that does not
matter. Golf is demanded everywhere in America, and it must be supplied.
A little extra space was required for play by the Rhode Island Country
Club at Narragansett, so, with Ross's help they took forty acres from
the sea, and are now playing the game where a year previously the waves
were rolling. Again, this remarkable golf engineer a little while since
finished his work on the very first course that has been laid out in
Cuba. I do not know what the future of American golf will be, but its
present is a bewildering, astonishing thing.
* * * * *
"Yes, but wait until you see Myopia!" I was not glad to leave Essex, but
I was happy to go from there to the Myopia Hunt Club a few miles distant
(and may I never forget that glorious ride in Mr. Willett's big car,
along the winding road fringed with silver birches and autumn-tinted
foliage, past placid little lakes, through some of the country of
chastest charm in New England!), for Myopia is America's golfing pride.
Besides, it is one of the few American courses that have a wide
international reputation. Remember the astonishment when Andrew
Kirkaldy, a St. Andrews golfer, if ever there was one, a man believing
in the old course of Fifeshire as a Mussulman believes in Mecca, came
back from an American tour and declared to British people that Myopia
was the best course in the world! So we approach one American golf
course with wonder and a certain awe. There are other reasons for doing
so if we only knew them beforehand. Traditions and old dignity are
strongly attached to it, and this Myopia is such a club for high feeling
and exclusiveness as would do credit to any institution we have at home,
golf or otherwise. It is, at the very least, as difficult to become a
member of Myopia as of the Royal and Ancient. If I dared I would say it
is more so. Myopia, I am told, will use the black ball with joy when
there is a candidate at the doors. It might be easier in some
circumstances for a man to become the President of the United States
than to become a member of the Myopia Hunt Club. The dignity of Myopia
exudes from the timbers of its long, quaint club-house. The ceilings are
low, while the walls are panelled and are really old, for in quite early
days of New England this, or part of it, was a farm-house.
The name of the club in this case has nothing to do with golf, nor with
the name of a place, for the place is Hamilton. Myopia is a technical
term for near-sight. The original members despised the game, and as for
letting it influence them in their choice of name of the club, such a
thing is inconceivable. Originally, and for long afterwards, and
primarily even now, Myopia is a hunt club; it prides itself on being so,
and when anybody asks one of the old hunting members if they do not
possess a good golf course there, he might say he supposed they did play
some game with that name there sometimes. In the early days, I believe
that many of the members wore coloured glasses for some reasons
connected with their sight, and it was through this that the name of the
club was given. Golf was a very late addition, and some of the old
hunting-men, whom you will see moving about the club-house in real and
unaffected riding costume as hardly anywhere else in America, feel a
little sore about it still, and it is even now the fact that the hunting
section keep to themselves in one part of the club and the golfers to
themselves in their part, with such as Mr. Herbert Leeds and one or two
others in both. Mr. Leeds showed me some of the old prints on the walls
illustrating the race meetings that had taken place there in almost
prehistoric times, and some mementoes of the early days of the golf
club, together with the score card of George Duncan's record round on
the course. I hope you realise that Myopia is not an ordinary golf club;
I did so within a minute of my arrival there.
The course is not like others in America. It is almost more of the open
heathland sort of course than any other I have tramped over while in the
country. It is a little barer, seemingly a little wilder than most of
the others, and none the worse for that. Its putting-greens are capital,
and at some of the holes, if not all, I have certainly trodden on turf
that is better than anything else that my feet have touched on that side
of the Atlantic. I remember that I nearly shouted with delight to my
partner when I came upon the first stretch of it--green and soft and
velvety. But it was not all like that, and in some respects I do think
that, splendid as the course is, praise of it has been a little
overdone. Yet on the other hand it is certainly a course that grows on
the constant player there, and reveals new subtleties to him every time
of playing. That after all is the test of a great course.
Architecturally many of the holes are splendid. I do not quite like the
idea of the man having to drive uphill at the first hole, but the
tee-shot has most decidedly to be placed--to the left--or the player has
the most fearful approach that he might ever dream of after the most
indigestible dinner. The fourth hole is a splendid one of the dog-leg
kind, a drive and an iron with the green very well bunkered, and some
very low land to the left which is a constant attraction to the
weak-minded ball. Then for my own part I liked the tenth very much, for
a big drive has to be done over some high ground with a bunker away to
the right that draws hard at sliced balls, while the green is one of the
nicest and most prettily guarded. I lingered about it for some time in
an admiring way. The last hole also has infinitely more in it than
appears at the first glance, for here again a big bunker jutting into
the edge of the green and to the right is a strong factor, especially
when the pin is behind it; and if the hero does not place his tee-shot
to the left, and within a very little space there, too, he will be
sorry. It is 6335 yards round the course. In the club-house over the
tea-cups, on the occasion of my first visit, I pondered upon the
marvellous excellence of Duncan's record round, and paid some most
sincere compliments to Mr. Leeds for the quality of the golf
architecture of Myopia, for it is he, after close study of the best
British models, who has been chiefly responsible for it.
A day and night at the Brae Burn Country Club at West Newton, near
Boston, left a warm glow lingering in my mind. Here if anywhere in
America there is country charm and social delight. Nowhere is the idea
of the complete and happy social community of the country club better
developed. The course is a fine one, and here also, at the time of my
first visit, extensive works were being carried out, and some splendid
new holes over heaving land were in the process of formation. They have
since been completed and the course has now risen to the highest
standard. The putting-greens are in the nicest and most beautiful
places, belts of trees line the fairway at several of the holes; there
are others in open country, and the short ones are uncommonly good. A
new one that they were making then, calling for a drive from a height
down to a pocket-handkerchief kind of green is one that I hope to be
puzzled at in the play within a few weeks of the moment when I write. I
had the happiness then to nominate the situation of a new bunker at one
of the new holes, and sure I am that a momentary vexation will be the
result when I play that hole, for I, too, in America, have found that I
develop the American hook, which seems to be in the climate and the
soil. It was on this course that Harry Vardon in his all-conquering tour
in America in 1900 sustained his only defeat. Our dinner-party in the
club-house in the evening is an unforgettable reminiscence. It was a
good-fellowship golfing party such as this game only can bring about.
Mr. Harry L. Ayer, Mr. E. A. Wilkie, Mr. George Gilbert, Mr. C. I.
Travelli, good Anderson and self talked our golf, British and American,
to the full extent of a good ability. One of the topics was club
captaincy, and the discussion we had may lead to the creation of the
office at Brae Burn and elsewhere, for it is a curious thing that the
American clubs have never thought of creating captains, and this
community was rather pleased with the idea. It is an office that a golf
club needs. If the captain is the right man, if he is chosen for his
past service, for his present strength, and for his tact and quality as
man and golfer, he can do much for a club, and his appointment is a
recognition that a club needs for its best and most faithful men.
* * * * *
The country round about New York abounds in interesting golfing places,
and if inclination were followed there should be descriptions given of
Nassau, of Apawamis (not forgetting the rock to the right of the first
green there which an English ball most usefully struck when the
thirty-seventh hole was being played in the final of the American
championship, Mr. Fred Herreshoff, finalist, being loser thereby), of
Garden City, Baltusrol, and many other good golfing places in these
parts. Garden City is a name familiar to golfers in Britain, because it
is the place where Mr. Walter J. Travis came from when he won the
championship at Sandwich. If it lacks some of the boldness of feature of
some of the later American courses, yet this is a fine testing course,
thoroughly--and so deeply!--bunkered, and with splendid putting-greens,
and all the place round about is very pleasant. And now I am very
anxious to see Piping Rock, as I soon expect to do.
There are good reasons for making a journey by the Pennsylvania railroad
from New York to Washington. One must pay the visitor's homage to the
seat of American government and experience the feeling of being at the
heart of the States, with its magnificent buildings and its historical
remembrances. It is an intensely interesting place. At the White House
there is Mr. President Wilson who is a golfer, as ex-President Taft was,
and remains one of the keenest in the land. Mr. Taft will write
enthusiastically about the game, and make speeches about it when he
thinks it proper. "My advice to the middle-aged and older men who have
never played golf," he says, "is to take it up. It will be a rest and
recreation from business cares, out of which they will get an immense
amount of pleasure, and at the same time increase their physical vigour
and capacity for work as well as improve their health." And he also
says, "Preceding the election campaign in which I was successful, there
were many of my sympathisers and supporters who deprecated its becoming
known that I was addicted to golf, as an evidence of aristocratic
tendencies and a desire to play only a rich man's game. You know, and I
know, that there is nothing more democratic than golf, and there is
nothing which furnishes a greater test of character and self-restraint,
nothing which puts one more on an equality with one's fellows--or, I may
say, puts one lower than one's fellows--than the game of golf. If there
is any game that will instil in one's heart a more intense feeling of
self-abasement and humiliation than the game of golf, I should like to
know what it is." One who was in office there told me something of his
enthusiasm for the game. I asked him how often Mr. Taft had played when
he was there in the golfing season. The answer was that Mr. Taft used to
play every day, positively every day, and some of those who played with
him indicated to me what a very thorough and determined golfer he was.
It might be said of the ex-President that he has spent more time in
bunkers than most citizens, because he has generally insisted on playing
out, no matter how many strokes have been needed. He has been playing
now for sixteen years, and is quite one of the oldest American golfers
in point of service to the game. Nothing can take away from him the
distinction of having been the first President of the United States to
play what they have determined shall be their national game.
* * * * *
I had a happy experience when one day I left New York, where it was most
swelteringly hot, and went up into the Green Mountains of Vermont for
golf at the Ekwanok Country Club. A friend, Mr. Henry W. Brown of
Philadelphia, who had played with me at my favourite Brancaster in
Norfolk once, had heard I was somewhere in America and sent a letter to
me directed to a chance address, which, being a golfing kind of
address, found me with little delay. "Come," said Brown, "to
Manchester-in-the-Mountains in Vermont. You ought to see our quite
famous Ekwanok course, and I can promise you some fine mountain air,
good golf, and a hearty welcome. If you will tell me what train you will
come by, I will meet you with the car at Manchester Station." A moment's
hesitation dissolved in firm decision and action, which took the form of
a taxi-cab to the New York Central Station, and the north-bound train
which left at twenty minutes to one in the afternoon. Then along we went
by the Hudson river, up which I had sailed from Albany a year before,
past the Palisades, past Poughkeepsie and the Catskill Mountains,
through Troy and Albany, and as the daylight waned we were mounting
upwards through the hills of sweet Vermont. At a quarter to eight the
train reached Manchester, Brown and his car were waiting there, and we
sped along the main street to his home.
It seemed that the silver moonlight was shining not upon an earthen road
but glistening on snow. Little villas like chalets and chateaux of
Switzerland lined the way and the people living in them could be heard
in their laughter and song, for the dinner time was just gone by and
yellow light shone from the windows, making that happy contrast with the
coldness of the moonshine, that speaks of home and comfort. We passed
the great hotel where five hundred people are constantly gathered
together in the summer time from all parts of the States, and indeed
from places far beyond the States, for there are Britons in numbers
here, and travellers from Africa and the deep southern lands, making
such a cosmopolitan gathering of its size for drawing-rooms and bridge
parties and the usual orderings of social gatherings as is not easily to
be matched. And there is an amazing vivacity among all these people, for
two reasons, one being that the American spirit at its best pervades,
and the other that it is Ekwanok, the heartening, the vigour-making, the
youth-restoring. In New York and Chicago at the end of the day one is a
little apt to think of the wear and tear of life and the fading capacity
of a good constitution; high up in the mountains of Vermont, in the
shadow of the hills of Equinox, one revels in fresh youth again and has
no more envy for the lad of twenty. And that again is a reason why
Ekwanok is not like the other golfing places of America, and another
following upon it is that this is, so far as I have discovered, the only
truly golfing holiday resort in all the States, a place to which people
go for the pleasure of the happy game and for hardly anything else, a
place that lives and thrives on golf. From far and wide the Americans
come to it and leave all their work behind, and are happy and leisurely
as you rarely see them at other times. In Britain we have a very large
number of resorts that are for holiday golf alone, and more are coming
all the time, but this is a feature of golf that America in general has
yet to know. If it comes to that, Manchester-in-the-Mountains is not so
very high (that is a rather curious association of English
ideas--Manchester and mountains, dingy streets with the smoke-thickened
atmosphere of the Lancashire city and the big bold hills of God), but
here is the mountain scent, enlivening, heartening. The house of my
host, Breezy Bank as it is called, is set at the foot of one big
mountain and looks across the green valley, where the golf course lies,
out toward another--a delightful abode. A log fire burned red on the
big hearth, a kind hostess gave us welcome, and after a supper that
embraced fresh green corn (it is the essence of the enjoyment of green
corn that it should be taken quickly from the growing to the kitchen),
we talked, over cigars and coffee, golf from one end of the game to the
other, and right across it, and handled clubs, until bedtime came. Brown
is keen, and he has sound views on the influence of the game on national
character.
Next morning, with sunlight and breeze, we went along to the course, so
near that a ball could have been driven to it from the lawn of Breezy
Bank, where the master has been known to practise mashie shots by
moonlight, and I was joined in foursome with Mr. Walter Fairbanks of
Denver, Colorado, against B. and his son Theodore. What then happened is
of no consequence; the tale may be told in Colorado but not in England.
But the course--it is splendid, and reflects an infinity of credit upon
Mr. James L. Taylor, the first in command, who has for the most part
designed it, has constantly improved it, and has made it what it is. All
the holes have abundant character. They are up and down, straight and
crooked, interesting always, with a good fairway that gives fine lies to
the ball, and putting-greens of the smoothest sort. We drove first down
a hill with a slanting hazard that made awful menace to a slice, then up
again and away out to the far parts, with some very pretty short holes.
The gem of the collection of eighteen is the seventh, which has been
called, and with some fitness, the King of American Holes. A great,
fine, lusty piece of golf it is, 537 yards from the tee to the green,
and every shot has to be a thoughtful, strong, and well-directed shot,
with no girl's golf in it anywhere. It is a down drive from the
high-placed tee, and the land below heaves over in a curious twisted way
that demands very exact placing of the ball. Then there is a strong and
straight second to be played over a high ridge in front into which big
bunkers have been cut. Afterwards there is plain country to a
well-protected green. It is a great hole, a romantic one, and is well
remembered. Some of the drive-and-iron holes that follow are splendid
things, and this course was very well chosen for the Amateur
Championship Meeting in 1914. When we were leaving it at the end of that
day, the sun had just gone down behind big Equinox Hill, but presently
and by surprise he sent a last good-bye. Round the mountain side a
golden bar of light was cast, and it spread along the olive-coloured
hill across the shadowed valley like a clean-cut shining stripe or a
monotinted rainbow. These were the glorious Green Mountains of Vermont!
We tarried until the sun went right away, and took with it that parting
beam, and, sighing, we passed along.
* * * * *
I have left to the last of these few remembrances, what is in many
respects the greatest of American courses--the National Golf Links at
the far end of Long Island. In recent times it has probably been more
discussed than any other course on earth. A while since a number of very
wealthy, ambitious, and determined golfers put their heads and their
money together, and decided on the establishment of something as near
perfection as they could reach. In pursuit of this idea they have so
far, as I am informed, spent about two hundred thousand dollars, and are
in the act of spending many more thousands. They have their reward in a
magnificent creation, as great in result as in idea, or nearly. All the
people in the golf world have heard by this time of this National Links,
and have no doubt wondered upon it, and the extent to which the
extraordinary scheme that was developed a few years ago has been
realised. It has been referred to as "the amazing experiment," and "the
millionaires' dream," and so forth. Undoubtedly in its conception it was
the grandest golfing scheme ever attempted. It came about in this way.
America, with all its golf and money and enthusiasm, was without any
course which might be compared with our first-class seaside links, the
chief reason for her deficiency being that nowhere on either of her
seaboards could be discovered a piece of land which was of the real
British golfing kind. But at last a tract was found nearly at the end of
Long Island, about ninety miles from New York, which was believed to be
nearly the right thing. It was taken possession of by a golfing
syndicate, and they determined there to do their very best. The question
of expense was not to be considered in the matter. A member of the
syndicate, Mr. Charles B. Macdonald, an old St. Andrews man, and one of
wide golfing knowledge and experience, went abroad to study, photograph,
and make plans of the best holes in Great Britain and on the continent.
The whole world of golf was laid under tribute to assist in the creation
of this wonder course. After exhaustive consideration a course was
decided upon which was to embrace, in a certain reasonable measure,
features of such eminent holes as the third, eleventh, and seventeenth
at St. Andrews, the Cardinal and the Alps at Prestwick, the fifth and
ninth at Brancaster, the Sahara at Sandwich, the Redan at North Berwick,
and some others. The scheme was modified somewhat as the work
progressed, but in due course the National Golf Links, a string of
pearls as it was intended to be, was opened. Many different reports have
been circulated as to the quality of the course, and the extent to which
the object has been achieved. It has been described both as a failure
and as a magnificent success.
I preferred to go there alone and see things for myself without
explanations and influences. A certain penalty had, however, to be paid
for this enterprise. I shall not soon forget my journey to the
Shinnecock Hills out at the end of the Island, nor the journey back
again. It was on a glorious Sunday morning in October that I went to the
Pennsylvania station and took train there for Shinnecock, which was a
three-hours' journey along the line. In getting out at Shinnecock I was
nearest to the course, but there were no cars waiting there, and the
tramp that had to be made across country for two or three miles was one
that might have suited an Indian brave better than it suited me,
although I have an instinct and a desire always to find things and ways
out for myself rather than be told and led. It was nearly noon; the sun
was high, and it was burning fiercely. The so-called path was something
of a delusion. It was more of a trail through a virgin bush country with
a tendency to swamp here and there, and occasionallv one was led to a
cul-de-sac. I could see the National Golf Links a little way ahead all
the time. There was a big water cistern standing out against the
sky-line, and there were some smoothly laid out holes, but grapes were
never more tantalising to any fox than those holes are to the wanderer
who tries to get there from Shinnecock along a route over which a crow
might fly, and who determines that he will discover the elusive secrets
of the National Links, however dearly the expedition may cost him.
However, the enterprise succeeded, and the journey back from the course
to the Southampton station was also accomplished despite the prevailing
difficulties, and, with the sense of something having been attempted and
done, we rode home on the Pennsylvania, and were back in New York by the
same night--about the hardest day's golf business I have ever done.
A certain disappointment is inevitably threatened when one visits a
course of this kind about which one has heard so much beforehand. An
ideal is established in the mind which cannot possibly be realised, and
it is the fault of nobody. We do not know exactly what it is that we
hope to see, but it is something beyond the power of man and Nature to
achieve. But the National is a great course, a very great course. It is
charmingly situated, most excellently appointed, and bears evidence of
the most thorough and intelligent treatment by its constructors. Any
preliminary disappointment there may have been soon wears away as the
real excellence of the course and its difficulties are appreciated. Had
we heard nothing of this copying, and did we not make comparisons
between new and old in the mind, through which that which is new does
not often survive, we should glory in the National at the first
inspection of it. And the fact is, that the comparisons we suggest ought
never to be made, though I, for one, was not aware of that till
afterwards. Absolute copying was never intended; only the governing
features of the British holes, the points that gave the character and
quality to them, were imitated so far as could be done. That has been
done very well, and some of the holes are very fine things. Those the
design of which is based on such gems as the sixth at Brancaster and the
eleventh at St. Andrews are very well recognisable. I should like to
write much more about this course; it is a strong temptation. If I
thought less of it and did not realise its greatness as I do, I should
yield to the desire, and yielding, might rashly criticise as well as
praise. But there is an imperative restraint. Upon a moderate course, or
even a very good one, you may sometimes, if sufficiently self-confident,
judge in one day's experience. But there are courses which, not because
they grow upon you as we say, but because they command a higher respect
at once than is given to others, which do not permit of such
presumption. I saw the National on one day only, though I hope to see it
many times again, and to gain courage for comment upon it. Now, with cap
in hand, I can only signify my respect and full appreciation that here
is something that is by no means of an ordinary kind, the accomplishment
of a magnificent enterprise, and no doubt the achievement of a great
ideal. But I shall say, at any rate, that a links more gloriously
situated than this one in Peconic Bay, with pretty creeks running into
the land here and there, and hill views at the back, could hardly be
imagined. The view as I beheld it from different parts on that peaceful
sunny Sunday afternoon is one that I never shall forget. It is the ideal
situation for a national course.
* * * * *
To Mr. Macdonald thus belongs the credit for the initiation of what we
may call the higher golf in America. In the last few years this movement
has made strides as long and rapid in the United States as it has done
in England, and above all other countries in the world America, which is
so much dependent on her inland golf, having scarcely any other, is the
country for this movement to be carried to its ultimate legitimate
point. The day for very plain and purely and obviously artificial
construction of inland golf courses is gone, the original inland system
in all its stupidity and its surrender to difficulties has become
archaic. It has come to be realised in this business that man may
associate himself with Nature in a magnificent enterprise, and only now
is it understood that this golf course construction is, or may be, a
really splendid art. Landscape gardening is a fine thing in the way of
modelling in earth and with the assistance of trees and plants and
flowers and the natural forces, while engineering across rivers and
mountains is grander perhaps; but in each of these the man takes his
piece of the world from Nature and shovels it and smashes it, and then,
according to his own fancy and to suit his own needs, he arranges it all
over again. But in the making of a golf course, while we have indeed to
see that certain requirements of our own are well suited, knowing how
particular and hyper-critical we have become, yet we wish to keep to
plain bold Nature too, and we want our best work to be thoroughly in
harmony with her originals. I believe that if we could express it
properly to ourselves, we wish now to make our golf courses look as if
they were fashioned at the tail-end of things on the evening of the
sixth day of the creation of the world--just when thoughts had to be
turning to the rest and happinesses of the seventh. And so the great
architect now takes a hundred acres or more of plain rough land and
forest, hills and dales among it, and with magnificent imagination
shapes it to his fancy. The work he now does will endure in part, if not
in whole, for ages hence, and so it is deeply responsible. It is a
splendid art; I do not hesitate to say it is a noble art.
Mr. Colt, with his great thoughts and his splendid skill, has done fine
work in several parts of the United States. The new courses of the
Mayfield Country Club, and of the Country Club of Detroit, are splendid
things. But Mr. Macdonald's creations--for more of them now follow upon
the original at Southampton--are destined to be leading influences in
the new American golf course construction. I have had some interesting
talk with him upon these matters, and am glad to find that he is artist
and creator enough to have the full strength of his own original
opinions in this matter, especially as in some ways his ideals differ
from those commonly accepted in Britain. I have been so much interested
in his views, and I think that these views are destined to have such an
enormous influence upon American golf in the future, that I have asked
him for some brief statement of them, an enunciation of his creed as an
architect of courses, and he has kindly made it to me in writing, as
follows:--
"To begin with, I think the tendency to-day is to overdo matters
somewhat, making courses too long, too difficult, and with too much
sameness in the construction of two-shot holes. To my mind a course over
6400 yards becomes tiresome. I would not have more than eight two-shot
holes, and in constructing them I should not follow the ideas or fancies
of any one golf architect, but should endeavour to take the best from
each. While it is the fashion now to decry the construction of a hole
involving the principles of the Alps or seventeenth at Prestwick, I
favour two blind holes of that character--one constructed similar to the
Alps, and another of the punch-bowl variety of hole some fifty yards
longer than the Alps. It is interesting now to read the 'best hole'
discussion that took place in 1901. The leading golfers of that time
were almost unanimous in pronouncing the Alps at Prestwick the best
two-shot hole in the world. The eleventh at St. Andrews and the Redan at
North Berwick were almost unanimously picked as the best one-shot holes.
"To my mind there should be four one-shot holes, namely, 130, 160, 190,
and 220 yards. These holes should be so constructed that a player can
see from the tee where the flag enters the hole. The shorter the hole
the smaller should be the green, and the more closely should it be
bunkered. The most difficult hole in golf to construct interestingly is
a three-shot hole, of which I would place two in the eighteen, one 520
yards and the other 540. The putting greens at these holes should be
spacious.
"This leaves us four drive-and-pitch holes--280, 300, 320, and 340 yards
in length. These should have relatively small greens and be closely
bunkered, one or two of them having the putting greens open on one side
or corner so as to give a powerful, long, courageous driver, who
successfully accomplishes the long carry, the advantage of a short run
up to the green. The size and contour of the putting green and the
bunkering should depend upon the character and length of the hole. The
principle of the dog's hind leg can be made a feature of several holes
advantageously. The gradients between the tee and the hole should be
made use of in bunkering. Whenever it is possible it is best that the
bunkers should be in view. A number of the holes should be built with
diagonal bunkers, or bunkers _en echelon_, so constructed that the
player who takes the longer carry shall have an advantage over the man
who takes the shorter carry. The hazards for the second shot should be
so placed and designed as to give a well-placed tee shot every
advantage--in other words, should make a man play his first stroke in
relation to the second shot. There should be at least three tees for
every hole, to take care not only of an adverse or favourable wind, but
also of the calibre of the player. It is necessary on a first-class golf
course to have short tees for the poorer players, otherwise they are
everlastingly in the bunkers. The lengths which I give should be
measured from the middle of the middle tee to the middle of the putting
green."
There is so much knowledge and good suggestion in this statement, and
the matter is of such high consequence, that every player of the game
should think well upon it.