THE U. S. G. A., AND THE METHODS OF THE BUSINESS-MAN GOLFER, WITH A
REMARKABLE DEVELOPMENT OF MUNICIPAL GOLF.
People in England or Scotland do not quite understand what a splendid
thing for American golf is the United States Golf Association. It is so
absolutely necessary for the game in America that I am sure there would
be little that is like golf there now if there had been no U. S. G. A.,
with its loyalty and attachment to St. Andrews. There would be few
Americans coming to play on the links of the homeland of the game, and
there would be no British golfers wandering happily among the American
courses. American golf would have become as much like the old game as
American college football is like the football that is played at Oxford
and Cambridge, which is to say that it is not at all like it. America is
not a country small in space like our own happy islands. There it is in
its millions of miles, new everywhere, and with little communities of
golfers so far apart as New York and San Francisco, Massachusetts and
Arizona, and isolated golfers in the loneliest places trying to bring
others to their pastime for the matches they would have. What should all
these people, away from all the influences of the home of the game, hot
with the spirit of freedom, unrestrained by laws and conventionalities,
eager to do things better than they have been done before--what should
they care for St. Andrews and traditions, and the preservation of the
unity of the game? As sure as eagles fly, and stars are bright, they
would have made it to suit themselves in every community. Here they
would have abolished the stymie, in another place they would have
changed the size of the hole, away in Texas they might have permitted
the introduction of the "mechanical contrivance," and soon there would
have been a hundred golfs in the States, and not a real one among them.
Just when this possibility, without being an immediate probability, was
arising the U. S. G. A. came into existence. It joined all the golfers
of America together in a republic for the preservation of the unity of
the game, and for the promotion of its welfare in the spirit that the
game had been cultivated in the homeland. And being thus given power, it
has ruled with a strong hand. It has kept American golf in order as
nothing else could have done, and as a governmental machine, I who have
made some close examination of it, regard it as perfect, which is not to
say that we need such a thing in Britain. In America I have had the
pleasure of the intimate acquaintance of Mr. Robert Watson, Mr. Silas H.
Strawn, Mr. G. Herbert Windeler, Mr. William Fellowes Morgan, Mr. Harry
L. Ayer, Mr. John Reid, junior, and many others of the leaders of the
Union, and better men for the direction of such a game as golf, in whose
hands it is quite safe, there could not be. They hold the right spirit
of the game, and they are wise men, conservative in their golfing ways.
Mr. Windeler indeed is an old British golfer like Mr. Macdonald, who was
one of the original gathering that established the U. S. G. A. In the
December of 1894 the representatives of five of the leading clubs met
and framed the constitution of the U. S. G. A., and Mr. Theodore A.
Havemeyer, of the Newport Club, was chosen president.
The constitution of the U.S.G.A. is an interesting study. There are two
classes of members, active and allied, and the difference is that the
active members, who exercise control, are clubs that have been steadied
by age and experience, and have acquired dignity. The definition in the
constitution is made thus: "Any regularly organised club in the United
States, supporting and maintaining a golf course of at least nine holes,
and whose reputation and general policy are in accord with the best
traditions and the high ideals of the game, shall be eligible to
election as an Active Member." Then, as to the Allied Members, it is
said that--"Any regularly organised club of good reputation in the
United States shall be eligible to election as an Allied Member." There
are far more allied members than there are active members, and the
former are only admitted to the latter when they have thoroughly proved
their worth. Thus the allied clubs have always an ambition before them,
and they can only achieve it by conducting their golf on the best and
oldest plan. At every meeting of the Association each active club is
entitled to be represented by one voting delegate whose appointment has
to be certified in advance by his club to the secretary of the
Association. Allied clubs have no voting privileges, but all members of
active and allied clubs have the right to attend all meetings of the
Association, and to participate in the discussion of any question. The
active clubs pay thirty dollars a year for subscription, and the allied
clubs pay ten. Article IX. of the Constitution gives the Association its
power and authority. It says: "The acceptance of membership in the
Association shall bind each club to uphold all the provisions of the
Constitution, bye-laws, and other rules of the Association; and to
accept and enforce all rules and decisions of the Executive Committee
acting within its jurisdiction. Any club failing in its obligations as
above set forth may be suspended or expelled by a two-thirds vote of the
Association, or by a two-thirds vote of all members of the Executive
Committee; provided such club shall have been given due notice of the
charge or charges preferred against it, and an opportunity to be heard
in its own defence. Any club thus suspended or expelled by vote of the
Executive Committee may appeal from its decision to the delegates at any
annual or special meeting of the Association."
* * * * *
After this about the machinery of American golf, consider the men. There
are three classes of golfers in the United States, corresponding to some
extent to similar classes in Britain, but they are rather more sharply
defined than with us. There is the class that regards the game as a
sport for competition, almost as a form of athletics, being mainly but
not exclusively the younger class; there is the business-man class that
believes in it as the ideal, and indeed the only recreation satisfying
the needs of the times as a relaxation from the strain of life and work,
and a means of promoting physical and mental efficiency, such people
being as with us the largest section and the mainstay in one sense of
the game; and there is the humbler class who play upon the public
courses.
I do not believe after the closest observation and most impartial
consideration that the best American golfers are yet quite so good as
ours, but in recent years they have been rapidly lessening the gap that
has existed, their thoroughness, determination, and efficiency are most
wonderful, and if they had our courses and climate they might become
better than we are. They think they will anyhow. As it is they are
handicapped by lack of full-blooded seaside courses, and a climate that
is by no means ideal for the game; and although by their zeal they have
to some extent discounted that handicap, I feel that they can only
neutralise it altogether and go beyond it by the production of the
occasional genius. The good Americans seem to me mostly to play what we
could call a plain, straight game. American courses are for the most
part without any sharp undulations; there is nothing in America like our
rolling seaside links. Therefore the players are not taught or induced
to be making allowances for this and that in all the days of their golf
from their youth upwards, and they have not the sea-coast winds to lead
them in the same way as we have. So they have good reason to play
straight to the hole, and never to depart from doing so without the most
obvious and pressing cause. It follows from this that the American
players have fewer "scientific" or "fancy" strokes at their disposal,
and those who have visited this country have been remarked upon for the
plain simplicity of their iron play. They seem to standardise their
shots. But assuming that this is their principle or their system, it
enables them to concentrate keenly and with fine effect on accuracy.
Delicacy of touch, splendid judgment of distance, and perfection of
execution are strong characteristics of the American players, who do not
need to be reminded that there are no bunkers in the air. It is the
straight game of the Americans with all its accuracy that is paying in
their matches against us. At the same time I think that the comparative
weakness of the Americans in wooden club play is a serious handicap to
them, and their courses need to be tightened up to improve it. That
"American hook" of theirs is a dangerous thing sometimes, and their
round flat swings are looked upon by some of our best British
authorities with much suspicion.
But there is one most important way in which they are scoring over us.
They are beating us in temperament, concentration, and determination,
and in the capacity to make the very most of their own game, so that not
a shot of it is wasted. This means very much. A man may be plus five,
but of such a temperament and such ways that he habitually wastes two or
three holes in a match through negligence or slackness. The Americans do
not waste holes in this way. They waste nothing. The game of which they
are capable is produced nearly every time at full quality and is made as
effective as it possibly can be. The utmost pains are taken over every
stroke; the man blames himself for nothing after it is made. His
concentration is enormous; he is often inclined to race through the
green, but his capacity for being slow and meditative, when necessary,
is great; and most noticeable again is his persistence, which is another
way of making the most of a game that a man possesses. Of course all
these remarks are applied to the two classes of players in a very
general way. There are many exceptions among the Americans and there are
many among our players, but that they do indicate the tendencies in the
two countries I am certain. The American game may not be as scientific
and complete as ours, but its more serious exponents do make the most of
it as ours do not, and probably the high importance that is attached to
the numerous first-class tournaments they have over there has something
to do with it. They believe in competitions more than we do.
* * * * *
This matter of consideration and concentration is one to which every
player should give closer attention. His success is largely dependent
upon it. He may think he concentrates enormously as it is, more than on
anything else, but often he deceives himself. Not one man in ten gets as
much in effect out of his game as it is capable of. He walks to his ball
and plays some kind of a shot, with a more or less hazy idea of what it
is that he wishes to do. When he finds his object has not been
accomplished he suddenly remembers something, and it is a case of "I
should have known," or "If I had only thought," or "What a pity I did
not look." With such people a round of golf is a succession of regrets,
and it is the simple truth that the majority could do far better with
their game if they did not waste so much of it by carelessness,
thoughtlessness, and a sort of distraction which allows their minds to
wander to other things than the stroke in hand, and sometimes by their
conversation too. When a man has played a stroke he has quite sufficient
to occupy his mind for the next minute or two in considering how he
shall play the next one, and the many features of the case that will be
presented to him.
It is a remunerative resolution to make at the beginning of the season,
to think deeply upon all the points of match play, and then exploit the
art of it with some thoroughness. It is not difficult. All who have
attended the Amateur Championship meetings and have been close observers
of what happens there can remember how even players of the very first
class in this most important of tournaments let themselves get beaten by
inferior players simply because they do not make the most of their game.
They forget things, do not think enough, and play strokes carelessly
because at the time of doing so they seem to feel it does not matter. No
stroke should ever be played as though it were not the most important of
the game--as it might turn out to be. The old maxim that if a thing is
worth doing at all it is worth doing well, applies with tremendous force
to match-play golf. Many a time when the result of a stroke played
exactly as intended, is not what was anticipated, through some of the
circumstances not having been taken into consideration, the mistake that
was made is obvious then. The man excuses himself by saying that he
cannot see and think of everything, but nine times out of ten he should
have seen. The most fatal mistake, however, that many players make in
the early part of the season when their match-playing qualities have not
been properly revived, is in their letting matches slip, in not pressing
home advantages that they gain, and, above all, being too indifferent
upon the future in the early part of a match, and too careless when they
get a lead. All this sounds very simple, very obvious, but it often
takes the best part of a season to drive the lessons home into the minds
of golfers who are losing matches through their weakness in fighting
quality.
Now here are one or two samples of points in regard to which the golfer
constantly neglects to display his cunning and is the loser thereby.
Assuming that in the general way you can get as much length when it is
wanted as the other man, always try to make him play the odd to you. You
do so naturally with your tee shots and many of the others, but are not
really thinking at the time that you are wanting him to play the odd.
The man who is playing the odd, even from a very little way behind the
other, is at a much greater moral disadvantage than is often suspected,
and if the other man always noticed things as much as he should, he is
at a greater practical advantage than he realises, for if his opponent
fails he can see the cause of it, this remark applying especially to
what happens in the short game. How many putts have gone wrong that
never need have done had the man who made them watched what happened
when his adversary putted first! Then, again, on this point of making
the other man play the odd the case is constantly recurring where both
men are obliged to play short of some hazard, or to take a particular
line to a hole which is not the straight one. The man who goes second
will find it very much to his advantage if he tries to squeeze so
closely up to the point of danger as to be just nearer to it than the
other, the latter then having to play the odd and being then more
inclined to press with it and perhaps to miss it. The man who is playing
the odd is in a sense taking a shot into the unknown; the other man
knows everything. That is just the difference. Another stupid mistake
that many men make is to try experimental or fancy shots, perhaps with
clubs that are unfamiliar to them, just because the other man has played
two more. How many thousands of holes have been lost through that! The
experimental shot fails, the other man makes a good one, the
experimenter suddenly finds he has to fight for it, and a minute or two
later is watching his adversary take the honour from the next tee.
Again, what matches could have been won that were lost if the players
had only shown half the sense that Mr. Hilton did in the Amateur
Championship of 1912 at Prestwick, in picking his places for putting, as
it were, always, whenever possible, running up so that he would have to
putt uphill instead of down, the former being far the easier kind of
putting. Nowadays there are inclines on every green and round about the
hole, and a flat putt is a comparative rarity. But the average man never
thinks of these inclines until he has to play along them. The time for
most thinking about them is when making the stroke before, so that the
putt may be along the easiest line to the hole. This is not a question
of skill; it is simply one of sense. A man can play short of the hole
or past it, or to the right or left, and there will be one point from
which the putting will be easier than the other. It may often happen
that it would pay better to be four yards past the hole than two short
of it, for you will not only have had the chance of holing, but the putt
back may be an uphill one.
But with it all, the habit must be cultivated of thinking as much as
possible in advance--thinking quickly and acting with decision.
Questions of the value of practice swings have arisen lately. We have
seen rather too much of these practice swings in some quarters. We may
believe in the practice swing--just one or at most two. A man may be an
experienced golfer, and he may have played a certain stroke nearly a
million times before, but golf is essentially a game of fears and
doubts, and apart from just setting the right muscles in a state of
complete preparation for the task in hand a practice swing gives one a
little confidence. The shot is shaped; there is nothing to do but repeat
the stroke that has been made; it can be done. To that extent the
practice swing may be thoroughly recommended. But some members of the
young American School go farther than this, and it is questionable
whether they are wise. For one thing the delicate muscles and the
nervous system that are concerned with the stroke in hand are easily
tired, and if the shot is a long one needing power the odds are against
its being done so well after five practice swings as after one. Show me
the man who can drive his best and straightest after five practice
swings on the tee. Then there is the hesitation and doubt that are
induced. I believe that in most cases these players are really waiting
for an inspiration. They are not ready for the stroke they have to play.
Jack White in once confiding to me some of the secrets of his
successful putting, said that when he went about on the green examining
the line back and front, he was simply trying to gain time and nothing
more. "I want to feel that I want to putt," he said, "and while I am
waiting for that feeling coming on I can hardly stand motionless on the
green or look up at the sky." It is that way with these Americans; they
are waiting for an inspiration. But it does not always seem to be
responsive, and they wait too long. A moment must come when they are as
ready for the shot as ever they will be in their lives; if they let it
pass nothing but doubts and hesitations can follow, and that is the
danger to the player of excessive slowness. He begins to fear his fate
too much. And also one round of golf played like this makes a fearful
mental strain, and how often do we see that men who win their morning
matches by such methods look very tired and lose easily in the
afternoon.
The case of Mr. Ouimet, who has so suddenly become a great power in
American golf, has already been considered, and Mr. Walter Travis's high
position was established long ago. Apart from these two, the new star
and the old one, and the young professional M'Dermott, there are two
others who hold a higher place in the opinion of the golfers of their
own country and ours than any other players do, and those are Mr.
Charles Evans, junior, of Chicago, and Mr. Jerome D. Travers, foremost
players of the west and east as they respectively are. In every way Mr.
Evans is a very delightful golfer. When we saw him at Prestwick in 1911
he was even then a brilliant player, and one who impressed British
golfers as no other had ever done since Mr. Travis had won at Sandwich,
and he had then an advantage which the winner of our championship had
not--he had his whole golfing life before him. Since that time he has
undoubtedly improved. He has become physically stronger, experience has
helped him, and he has greater resource and skill. And despite the fact
that he has not yet won an American championship, there is this to be
said for him, that in the sense of accomplishment, in variety of stroke,
perfection of it, in playing the game as it was meant to be played, as
we say, he is still, for all his failures, the best amateur golfer in
the United States at the present time. But Mr. Evans is a man of very
keen and somewhat too sensitive temperament. He is inclined sometimes to
fear his fate unduly. Yet whenever we are inclined to judge him a little
harshly for his temperament, let it be remembered that fortune has dealt
him some cruel hurts, and that it is not a quality of human man to bear
himself indifferently to perpetual adversity. When he was the last hope
of his country at the championship at Sandwich in 1914, and striving
gallantly, his opponent went to the turn in a record score of 31. To be
merely sorry for "Chick" in such circumstances is inadequate; along with
him we smiled at the absurd extent to which his ill-luck spitefully
pursued him then. Even though it had to be counted, it was unreal. He
must be a champion some time.
One of the greatest tragedies of his life, so far, was that he suffered
in the appalling Amateur Championship at Wheaton, Illinois, in
1912--appalling by reason of the terrible heat that players and all
others, including my unlucky but still deeply interested self, were
called upon to bear. It has come to be nearly a settled understanding in
Britain that the championships must be attended by weather quite
ridiculously and most uncomfortably unseasonable. Thunderstorms and
lightning, gales and floods--these are the accompaniments of the great
golf tournaments of the year in the summer months of May and June, and
matters seemed to reach a climax in 1913 when the progress of the final
match of the Amateur Championship at St. Andrews had to be suspended
because of the terrific storm which flooded the putting greens until
there were no holes to putt at, and when in the Open Championship at
Hoylake shortly afterwards Taylor had to play his way to victory through
a gale against which ordinary people could hardly stand up. Almost does
it appear that the American climate is disposed to follow the bad
British example in times of championships, seeing what happened at
Brookline in the same season; but it was very different at Wheaton in
the year when Mr. Hilton failed to retain the American Amateur
Championship he had won the season before at Apawamis, and when Mr.
Travers beat Mr. Evans in the final by seven and six. Mr. Norman Hunter
and some others, Americans, were burned out of that championship by a
temperature which at times was more than a hundred in the shade, and
while some players conducted their game beneath sunshades that they
carried, most of them had towels attached to their golf bags for
body-wiping purposes. There was no escape from the heat anywhere, night
or day, and no consolation in anything, unless it were that in the city
of Chicago a few miles distant the people were reported to be even worse
off than we were, and deaths were numerous. Well did we call that the
blazing championship, and when I am asked, as is often the case, which
of all championship experiences I recall most vividly, my remembrances
of events in Britain, far more numerous as they are, give way to an
American pair, the hot one at Wheaton in 1912, and the wet one of the
British debacle at Brookline a season later. But the sun at its worst
could not diminish the enormous interest that there was in that Wheaton
final, for the draw and the play had brought about the ideal match, from
the spectators' point of view, and even that of the players too, Mr.
Travers of the east and Mr. Evans of the west, and finely did the
Americans show their appreciation of what had come to pass by wagering
incredible numbers of dollars upon it and watching it in thousands. That
time it was thought that Mr. Evans would win, and he was three up at the
turn in the morning round, but he lost two of the holes before lunch,
and I am sure that the reason why he fell such an easy victim to Mr.
Travers in the afternoon was that he grieved too much for the loss of
those holes, and feared his fate when he need not have done. I know that
Mr. Travers in that second round played golf of the most brilliant
description that nobody could have lived against; but did Mr. Evans
encourage him to do so? This matter of temperament might seem to be a
fatal consideration for ever, being one of Nature and seemingly
unalterable, were it not that we have had cases of fine golfers with
weak temperaments who, perceiving their desperate state, have resolutely
and with patience changed those temperaments, or curbed their influence
as we should more properly say. The best modern instance of such a
change being made is that of George Duncan, and never fear but that
"Chick" will soon come to his own as well.
Mr. Jerome Travers is undoubtedly one of the strong men of golf to-day,
a big piece of golfing individualism. At twenty years of age he won the
American Amateur Championship, in 1912 I saw him win it for the third
time, and the following year he won it again at Garden City. In his own
golfing country he must be one of the hardest men in the world to beat.
He plays the game that suits him and disregards criticism. He began to
play when he was nine years old. A year later he laid out a three-holes
golf course of his own at home--first hole 150 yards, second 180, third
apparently about the same, back to the starting-point. There were no
real holes--to hit certain trees was to "hole out." For hour after hour
this American child would make the circuit of this little course, and
day after day he would work hard to lower his record for these three
holes. At thirteen he started playing on a proper nine-holes course at
Oyster Bay. At fifteen he became attached to the Nassau Country Club,
and there, chiefly under the guidance of Alexander Smith, to whose
qualities as tutor he pays high tribute, his game improved. His swing
was wrong at the beginning. "Shorten your back swing, and take the club
back with your wrists. Swing easily and keep your eye on the ball." That
was Smith's advice to him, and he says it served him well. He began to
place the right hand under instead of over the shaft, and that added
more power to his stroke, and then he discovered that taking the club
back with his wrists or starting the club-head back with them, increased
its speed and gave him greater distance. Then it was practice, practice,
practice for an hour at a time at every individual stroke in the game.
He would play the same shot fifty times. He putted for two hours at a
stretch, placing his ball at varying distances from the hole, trying
short putts, long ones, uphill and downhill putts, and putts across a
side-hill green where the ball had to follow a crescent-like course if
it had to be holed out or laid dead. During the championship at
Apawamis, when he was playing Mr. Hilton, he had what everybody declared
to be an impossible putt of twenty feet, downhill over a billowy green,
and he holed it because he had practised the same sort of putt before.
In the next championship at Wheaton he did an "impossible" bunker shot
and laid the ball dead from the foot of the face of the hazard because
he had practised that shot also. Next to the Schenectady putter
belonging to Mr. Travis his driving iron is, or should be, the most
famous club in all America. It is a plain, straight-faced iron with a
round back, and is heavy, weighing sixteen ounces. It has a long shaft
and a very rough leather grip, and was forged at St. Andrews. This and
his other irons are kept permanently rusty. He carries very few
clubs--five irons, a Schenectady putter, a brassey and a driver, but, as
Mr. Fred Herreshoff, who turns caddie for him in the finals of
championships, says, the two latter are for the sake of appearances
only. He believes in the centre-shafted Schenectady putter, illegal here
but allowed in America, as in no other. He calls for a very low tee, one
that is only just high enough to give him a perfect lie, "the duplicate
of an ideal lie on the turf." He plays his drives off the right foot,
which is about three inches in advance of the left, the ball being just
a shade to the right of the left heel, because in that position he finds
it easier to keep the eye on the ball without effort, and in the strain
of a hard match or competition every simplifying process like this is
valuable.
But the most remarkable thing about his preparation for driving is his
grip, which is unique. He does not employ the overlapper. He likes the
right hand to be under the shaft; but this is the main point--that the
first fingers are almost entirely free of the shaft, with the tips
resting on the leather, curled inside the thumbs. Both thumbs are
pressed firmly against the sides of the first joints of the second
fingers, forming a locking device which prevents any possible turning of
the shaft. He is an utter believer in this detaching of the first
fingers from the club, and declares he could not play in any other way,
his theory being that it permits better freedom of the wrists and
enables him to get greater power into the stroke without deflecting the
club-head from its proper sweep in the swing to the ball. With his
driving iron he is a supreme master, and with it alone he has played a
round of a difficult course in America, Montclair, in 77. When I
watched him win his third championship I decided that in whatever else
he might excel he had a finer temperament for match play than almost any
other player I had seen. Silent, imperturbable, not a trace of feeling
in his countenance, he seemed to be mercilessly forcing his way to
victory all the time. Only once since he became established as a
champion kind of golfer have his nerves ever failed him, and that was on
an occasion of supreme importance, and yet one when the strain upon
nerves was not, or should not have been, unduly severe. I saw him lose
his match to Mr. Palmer at Sandwich in 1914, and there was something
nearly as mysterious about that occurrence as there was about the
victory of Mr. Ouimet at Brookline--far more than there was about the
defeat of the latter at Sandwich by Mr. Tubbs, for then Mr. Ouimet
simply played a poor but not a timid game. But in the Palmer-Travers
match the American for the first time for years was afraid. Half way
round, all the watchers were saying so, saying his nerves were catching
at his shots. Knowing the man, having seen so much of him in America, I
could not believe it then; but before the round was ended the truth was
clear. His nerves had failed, and it was responsibility that had caused
them to do so. He could not possibly have played so poorly otherwise. It
was not the real Travers who played that day.
* * * * *
The middle-aged business-man golfer is an important individual in the
general golfing scheme of things in the United States. He is that
elsewhere, but he stands out most in America. Well enough does he know
how the game is good for him. The early American golfers (those of from
ten to twenty years ago) adopted the game enthusiastically, because it
answered exactly to certain requirements they had in mind in regard to
creating and preserving physical fitness. The American business man
leads a quick life and a hard one and, in recent years particularly, his
pursuit of this physical fitness has become something of a craze with
him, for the reason that through it he seeks to bring the human machine
to the highest point of working efficiency and, at the same time, enable
the human man to derive more enjoyment and satisfaction from the
pleasures of life. This is not a vague, subconscious idea in the
American; it is a clear, definite scheme, adopted by thousands and
thousands of those who have devoted themselves to the game. Hence their
generous support and excellent enthusiasm. The country swarms with men,
two-thirds way through an ordinary lifetime, who have only been playing
the game for five or six summers and no winters--for in very few places
in the northern parts of the United States is any play possible between
the late fall and the spring--and who can play a good six-handicap game,
British reckoning, for in America they have a system of handicapping
according to which scratch is the lowest, and their six handicap is
about equivalent to our two or three. The majority of our middle-aged
men seem to resign themselves to the idea that in no circumstances can
they ever become really good players, and they pretend they are
satisfied to make their way round the links merely for the sake of the
health and exercise that they obtain from so doing. Perhaps in a sense
they are wise, but still it is certain that more than half of the joys
and pleasures of golf are missed by those who never feel any improvement
being made, who never rise above a steady mediocrity, and who never feel
the thrills of playing above their ordinary form.
The business-man golfer is seen at his best at the country clubs near
to the great cities. There is nothing elsewhere which for its healthy,
honest pleasures and the satisfaction it yields is comparable to the
American country club and the life that is pursued there. It gives to
the busy man the ideal relaxation he could not obtain in any other way.
I spent several days at one of these country clubs, a railroad journey
of an hour or so from Chicago, and the experience was illuminating. The
American business-man golfer works in the city for part of the day in
the summer and spends the rest of his time at the country club, where
the predominating features of the life are golf, rest, and sociability.
These country clubs are provided with a large number of bedrooms, and
are surrounded with cottages, nicely equipped, which generally belong to
them and are let for periods to the members. The vitality of the man of
whom we are thinking is enormous. He is out of his bed at the club at
about six o'clock in the morning, and goes through a process of shower
baths, with which the establishment is splendidly appointed. By seven
o'clock he is dressed in the thinnest flannels, and sits down to
breakfast with thirty or forty other members at 7.15. At this time he is
jacketless, and all in white. A large glass of iced water is laid before
him to begin with, and then the half of a grape fruit or a cantaloup,
with a piece of ice stuck in the middle, is presented as the first
course. These things, as we get them in America, are very delicious. At
once an argument begins round the table about the qualities of different
balls and clubs, and I am closely questioned about the way we do things
in England. Next, there is oatmeal porridge laid before us, with tea or
coffee, and the men begin to match themselves for the afternoon round.
Mr. A says he will play Mr. B for a certain stake, but the latter finds
he is already engaged to play Mr. C for a higher one. Eventually,
Messrs. A, B, and C agree to play a three-ball match for still more
dollars. Such extensive wagering is not the rule, but it is frequent.
After the porridge, bacon and eggs, calf's liver and bacon, or something
of that kind, is served with a baked potato, a little more iced water
may be called for, and there is marmalade with toast and sweet cakes,
and, then at a quarter to eight, all get aboard the club motor-omnibuses
and are whizzed away to the railroad station, light jackets very likely
carried on their arms.
Before nine o'clock they are hard at work in the big city. Some early
birds were even there by eight o'clock. They work very hard, no dawdling
of any kind, and by one or two o'clock they have finished for the day
and are off back to the golf club as fast as they can go. Frequently
they are back in time to lunch there. Soup, some meat done in American
fashion, an American salad, blueberry pie, iced water, and a glass of
cold tea with a lump of ice in it and a piece of lemon, finishing up
with a large supply of ice cream, and then a big cigar, are what the
American golfer goes out to play upon. The caddie whom he takes out to
carry his clubs costs him tenpence an hour--always paid by the hour,
during which he is in the golfer's service, and not by the round. By
this time the player is in thinner and lighter clothes than ever, and he
has been cooled down by more shower baths. His round is played very much
as it might be done in England. He is very keen on his game. But he
takes a little more time on the consideration of his stroke when once he
has reached his ball than we do, and he is most deeply painstaking.
Towards the end of the match he may develop an idea for playing the
enemy for a number of dollars a hole for the remainder of the round, and
when it is all over, everybody is quite satisfied with everything. More
shower baths, a lounge, and a cigar, and then a long American dinner,
with vegetables very fancily done, corn cobs, sweet salads, plenty of
iced water, ice creams, "horses' necks"--ginger ale with lemon and
ice--and so forth. Long arguments on the verandah upon the respective
merits of British and American golf, and at ten o'clock this busy golfer
of the United States gets himself off to bed. He never sits up late. He
sleeps, of course, with his windows wide open, with a wire netting
arrangement to keep out the flies and mosquitoes, and as he falls away
to his slumber he feels that golf is the best of games, that America is
the chief of countries, and that this is the most agreeable of all
possible worlds. Here I have been writing in general terms, but I should
add that each and all of my details are taken from the life, from
personal experience at one of the best of these country clubs.
* * * * *
There are some interesting characters in American golf as everywhere,
and the very wealthy golfer in the States is often to be considered. Mr.
John D. Rockefeller, the "Oil King," is, as all of us know, an extremely
rich man. He is also a business man, if ever there was one. And he is
extremely fond of golf. His case may have as little to do with the
matters just discussed as you may think, but I shall present it as I
found it out. A few years gone Mr. Rockefeller, who has a capacity for
giving advice of a very shrewd and worldly character, announced his
intention of retiring from the presidency of the Oil Trust and of
devoting a fair part of the remainder of his life to playing golf. Since
then he has discovered that it is easier to make a million dollars than
to hole a five-yard putt, for the Rockefeller millions now make
themselves and the putts are as unholeable as ever. His methods of
playing, and his moralisings on the game, are not like those of any
other man. Readers must judge for themselves as to whether they have
anything to learn from them; I think they may have something. Take this
case for an instance. One day when playing the game he made a very good
shot on to the green, and, ever ready to draw a moral from the game of
golf which would apply to the greater game of life, turned to his
companions and said: "Waste of energy I regard as one of the wanton
extravagances of this age. Rational conservation of energy and
temperance in all things are what the American nation must learn to
appreciate." Mr. Rockefeller is now seventy-five years of age, and he
was nearly sixty before he first began to play. He became an enthusiast
at once, and, as with most other men, his golf aggravated him, goaded
him, tantalised him, and made him ambitious and determined. He began to
find things out and to invent new ideas as rapidly as any of us have
ever done. He said the game changed his life. Made him happy. Brought
back his youth to him. His friends when they played with him declared
that he was not a cantankerous old man, but a really charming fellow.
Golf was doing him good. It was making a new man of him, as it does of
all others. But he did not get on at it as quickly as he thought he
ought to do. He found that there were rather more things to remember in
a very short space of time when making his shot than he had ever had to
remember before, and that for the first time in his life he was liable
to forgetfulness on the most important occasions. Then he acted on the
business man's principle of getting others to do things for him. He got
others to do the remembering. For a time whenever he went to play a
match he had three caddies attending on him; even now he generally has
two. He employed them for other purposes than carrying clubs. When he
was about to make a stroke No. 1 Caddie stepped up to him and said
respectfully but firmly: "Slow back, Mr. Rockefeller, slow back!" He
might otherwise have forgotten to take his club slowly back from the
ball at the start of the swing. This adviser having moved away, Caddie
No. 2 went forward and said: "Keep your eye on the ball, Mr.
Rockefeller, keep your eye on the ball!" Then, in turn, Caddie No. 3
advanced and spoke warningly: "Do not press, Mr. Rockefeller, do not
press!" So, reminded of the common faults, the Oil King made his stroke
and did not commit them, but was guilty of several others, and realised
a little sadly when the ball did not travel as it should that he needed
a hundred caddies for warning, and not three. Still, there is some good
sense in this method, and the man who made it a strict rule to say to
himself always, just before a stroke, what Mr. Rockefeller hired the
boys to say to him would make fewer bad shots than he does.
Mr. Rockefeller has a very nice course of his own on undulating land at
Forest Hill, on the edge of Cleveland, Ohio, and there he has parties to
play with him constantly. He is fond of cycling, and instead of walking
after his ball when he has struck it, he takes his cycle on to the
course with him, jumps on to it, and wheels himself along to the place
from which the next shot must be made. By this means he not only saves
much time, and gets more golf in an hour than we do, but considers that
he derives more physical benefit from the combination than he would from
golf and walking. More than this, he knows exactly how far he has hit
the ball every time, for he counts the number of turns of the pedals he
has to make in cycling from point to point, and calculates accordingly.
He does not lose his temper when he makes a bad shot or a series of
such, as some have suggested, but he is quite ecstatic when he makes a
good one; and, despite his seventy-five years, has been known to leap
high into the air when the result of his efforts has been specially
good. He is a most thoughtful player, and takes the utmost care always
to note effects and to try to attach causes to them. "Now gentlemen," he
has said, "that was really a very good stroke that I made then. You
observe that I am learning to make better use of my left arm. It was
that Scotchman who told me of the trick, but somehow I have never been
able to use it advantageously until now." He has a large number of clubs
in his bag, including all the most usual implements, while two or three
have been made according to his own special ideas. One of his caddies
also carries a large sunshade to hold over him while playing when the
weather is uncomfortably warm, and it is the duty of this boy also to
give a hand at pushing the bicycle when the line to the hole is uphill
and Mr. Rockefeller finds the pedalling too much for him unaided. So you
see that there is nothing that is conventional about Mr. John D.
Rockefeller and his golf. You would hardly expect it.
* * * * *
Now for the public or municipal golf in America; it is one of the strong
features of the game in the United States that impressed me most. The
average player in Britain, where the municipal golf movement is making
slow headway, may be surprised to know that there is such a thing across
the Atlantic; let him understand, then, that public golf in America is
far ahead of public golf in Britain. Some Americans of great golfing
experience, not confined to their own country, have not hesitated to say
that they will "make America the greatest golfing country in the world."
If we disregard such a challenge, there are yet circumstances and
forces in operation in America of which serious notice must be taken,
and the first of them is this great movement that is progressing in
favour of municipal golf. The whole vast country is taking to it. The
leaders of the people are appreciating the necessity of it and preaching
it. They say that the times are desperately strenuous, that an antidote
is needed, an ideal relaxation for body and nerves, a perfect recreation
and diversion, and that, having tried everything and thought of other
possibilities, they have come firmly and decisively to the conclusion
that golf is the only recreation that meets the requirements of the
times. Therefore they say that it must be provided for everybody, for
the "common people," and given to them absolutely free with every
inducement put forward for them to play it. The result is that public
golf in America is already advanced to such a state as is almost
incredible to those who have not seen it there. I have seen it. In New
York, Boston, Chicago, Kansas, Louisville, Milwaukee, Elgin, Toledo, and
a host of the smaller places, there are good public courses. In the
large cities there are often two or three. Chicago has now three and a
fourth was being made when I was there last, a fine long course in the
Marquette Park. Two of the existing courses are in the Jackson Park, one
being eighteen holes and the other nine. The third is in Garfield Park.
The full-sized course in Jackson Park is quite an excellent thing. The
turf and the putting greens are well tended, the views are pleasant, and
the play is absolutely free to all who obtain the necessary permit from
the Parks Commissioners. The regular player may have the use of locker
and dressing-rooms in the pavilion, and good meals may be obtained at a
reasonable cost. How shall we wonder then that the Americans take kindly
to this game and are becoming overwhelmingly enthusiastic at it, or that
more than a hundred thousand games are played on one single course at
Jackson Park alone in the course of a year? Though for the best part of
the winter there is snow on the ground and play is impossible 105,000
games were played on the long course at Jackson Park during 1912 up to
the beginning of October, and the news just reaches me that on one day
at the very beginning of this season of 1914 nearly 900 tickets were
given out! On a fine morning in the summer there will often be a little
crowd of players waiting at the first tee for their turn to start at the
dawn of day, and as many as two hundred have been counted there at seven
o'clock in the morning. Having finished their game on ordinary mornings
these people go off to their work, and they "hustle" all the more for
the shots that they have played and hope to play again before the
falling of the night. It is the same in the Franklin Park at Boston, in
Van Cortlandt Park in New York, and everywhere. In this matter these
Americans have sense. If public golf in England is ever to be a good and
useful thing we must do as the Americans do, and if we do not the people
will be the poorer, and we shall be sorry. Corporations must provide
free golf, and they must be satisfied with the good done to the people,
and not take the narrow view that the balance-sheet must show a direct
profit apart from the indirect one that is certain. They must also put
their courses in central and convenient places where people will be
attracted to them, and which will not take the greater part of the time
available to reach them. The game must be played in central parks which
will then become more useful than they have ever been so far, and for
the first time will be a real joy to the people who pay for them. I may
be an enthusiast in golf, but I have gone deeply into this matter and
studied it in its every bearing, and I know that I am right.
* * * * *
And the Americans are gaining in another matter--they are bringing their
young boys into the game. I have been to preparatory schools where they
have their own little courses and their school championships. The boys
like it, the masters encourage it, and the grown-up players admire the
youngsters' enthusiasm. This is the way that "prodigies" are produced.
In England we do not encourage the boys to play golf. The head-masters
of schools say that it is a selfish game and that it is bad for them. I
wonder how much these principals have thought of the moral qualities
that must exist in the good golfer who knows how to play a losing match
and perhaps save it, and how long in real argument before an impartial
tribunal the contention would hold that it would be better for the young
boy to stand for hours in the deep field at cricket on a hot summer's
day than for him to learn to play golf and learn to keep a tight hold of
himself when the whole scheme of things might seem to be breaking up.
Cricket and football are great games, and they are splendid things for
boys, but that golf is inferior to them in what it does for character I
deny, and if the comparison is pressed the golfers with me can put
forward an invincible case. Anyhow the fact is there that young America
is getting golf and young England is not, and that will make a
difference some time some way.