THE OLD DIGNITY OF LONDON GOLF, AND ITS NEW IMPORTANCE, WITH A WORD FOR
THE CHARM OF INLAND COURSES.
Perhaps in the middle ages of the game some rare old conservative of a
player at one of the great Scottish seats of golf was told by another
that a gentleman had just arrived by the coach from London and would
like a match in the morning, and it is distinctly possible, if he was
the excellent man we picture him, that he ejaculated, "And where, sir,
is London?" The manner would have been Johnsonian, if not the sentiment.
Should any one now be disposed to regard such lack of knowledge--though
I think you would find it was only what might be called judicial golfing
ignorance--or narrowness, or whatever it was, as merely stupid or a
little culpable, he may hesitate. The pride of dignity, arising from
conscious strength and superiority, was a fine thing among the Scottish
golfers, and certainly was to be admired. That spirit, that sturdy
consciousness of personal value, have helped to the making of a British
empire. And sometimes a golfer would wander in the north and be
discovered by the players there to have a wooden club with a brass sole,
and thereupon he might be good-humouredly mocked for being the
Blackheath golfer that he was, since it was on the famous course by
London that the brassey was first used. Since then London has given
other good things to golf, including many courses that are unequalled
among their kind and a number of players of high championship rank. And
sometimes there is more golf played in a day within twenty-five miles of
Charing Cross than there is in the whole of Scotland in a week, and much
of it is very good golf. But this is not a place for comparisons, and
particularly it is not meant for one in which the English gratitude to
Scottish benefactors for the gift of this remarkable game is to be
lessened from the full. It is only suggested that London golf is now a
thing of great account. That is coming to be understood; but one doubts
if the Londoners properly realise that the game in the metropolis has
rich history and traditions which make a match for those of nearly any
other place. Except that the great players of the game of different ages
were so little acquainted with it, Blackheath has golfing land as
historic as any, and the Royal Blackheath Club, with its origin in 1608,
is the oldest in the world. That is London. Some time since there was a
fashion for open-air shows of pageantry, and if the golfers had then
been so disposed they could have put forward a pageant of London golf
that would have embraced most picturesque and impressive tableaux. There
is King James the First of England and the Sixth of Scotland, keen
golfer indeed, playing the game at Blackheath in the company of some of
his nobles when the court was at Greenwich, and there is a charming
scene to be imagined in which the monarch gives his royal sanction and
authority to the Society of Golfers that is established at this place in
1608, as it is well believed to have been, and in varying forms to have
maintained its existence ever since, being to-day the Royal Blackheath
Golf Club, and highly respected. I think we should regard this King
James as being the very first of our London golfers, and he makes a
fine figure of a player for the distinction, keen enough in all
conscience. Five years before the reputed beginning of the Society at
Blackheath he appointed William Mayne to be the royal clubmaker, and a
few years later gave one named Melvill a monopoly of ball-making at four
shillings a time. Altogether this makes a good scene of golf.
Here in the earliest days the course of Blackheath consisted of but five
holes, which was then considered the proper number, and was the same as
the Honourable Company had at Leith. Later there were seven holes
arranged, and though they are played in a different order, those seven
remain much the same to-day. It is to the discredit of London golfers as
a body, those golfers who make the most reverential pilgrimages to
northern shrines, that they have not, to the extent of one in a hundred,
ever been to the scene of the old Blackheath golf, or played a game
there on this hallowed ground, as they may at their will. It is the
story again of the prophet in his own country, the same failing as that
by which the majority of Londoners might be condemned for never having
visited the Tower of London. I believe I have met more golfers in
America who have been to Blackheath than I have met in England, for I
have encountered several who told me they had not cared to sail back
home until they had made the short journey down from Charing Cross to
the famous common.
Apart from the sense of history and the sentiment of pilgrimage,
Blackheath, as a practical golfing proposition still surviving, should
interest every golfer intensely. Surely it is one of the most
interesting courses, one causing the deepest reflections, and one which,
even by play upon it, might have some good effect on a man's game. For
it is a chastening course, is our old Blackheath; one that makes
humility if course ever did, and one that gives us the best contentment
with our modern lot. Men who have played at Blackheath do not so
constantly complain of the weak effort of their greenkeeper, and his
governing committee, at their most favoured club. A little while since
the cry was raised that golf had become too easy--too easy! It was said
that the improving of the fairways and the smoothing of the putting
greens had taken all its early viciousness from the game. Conditions
have certainly changed, but when champions tell me that this maddening
game from time to time brings their nerves to the state of piano wires,
it may be reckoned as sufficiently difficult for the ordinary mortal.
But Blackheath is extraordinary and most educative. It is certainly hard
enough, though the modern bunker scientists have done nothing with it,
and in the ordinary sense it has no bunkers. New theories of bunkering
and the changing necessities of new kinds of balls trouble the
Blackheath golfers not at all, for the course belongs to London and not
to themselves, and they cannot do any engineering work upon it, as is
being accomplished continually on other courses. Of the seven holes that
are played the shortest is 170 yards, there is another of 230, a third
of 335, another of 380, another of 410, a sixth of 500, and the longest
is 540. The two very long holes come together, and though they are
virtually bunkerless you may be assured that they take an uncommon
amount of playing, and that he who gets them in five strokes each is
skilful and fortunate too. Here, as nowhere else, is one made to feel
that inferior shots bring their own punishment with them without any
artificial hazards.
The common is quite flat, but it is intersected by various roads and
paths, and the greens are generally near to these walking ways. Variety
is given by the great gravel pits which are here, as they have been for
ages, although they are now smoothed and grassed over, and the biggest
of them has to be played through at both the long holes. What is known
as "Whitfield's Mount," a little clump of enclosed trees, is almost the
only relief from the bareness and flatness of this golfing common. The
lies are better than they used to be, but however kindly they may think
of them at Blackheath--and we must respect them for doing so--they are
not good. How could they be? The common is open for the children of
London, or any other place, to play upon, and for the grown-ups to
lounge about or walk over, which in abundance they do. It is primarily a
public common and only secondarily a golf course, and the vast majority
of those who walk upon it know nothing of the great game, except what
they occasionally see as they pass along. The golfers have no rights.
They have the greens, as they are called for compliment, smoothed a
little and made in some way to resemble greens; and there are holes of
sorts but not generally with flags in them, and there are no teeing
boxes. The fairway is as hard as might be expected, and consists for the
most part of bare places and tufts. There is no smoothness and evenness
of proper golfing turf about it. But one does not say this in an
unappreciative way. Not for a million balls or a permanent increase of
drive would we have Blackheath anything but what it is, for if it were
changed the charm would be gone.
Let us go there and try the game. We must decide in advance that, like
Vardon, Braid, and Taylor we can play our real game before any gallery
in the world, and let our nerves and self-confidence be braced
accordingly, for those who play at Blackheath must undergo great
ordeals. A number of children, usually accompanied by a small dog,
discover us soon after our appearance on the course, and gather close
while our stroke is being made, very close. There is a little boy,
perhaps, one or two little girls, the baby, and the dog. We consider
most the baby at Blackheath. The boy, occasionally relieved by the elder
girl, is the spokesman of the party, and in tones indicative of complete
sympathy with the objects of the expedition, which are to strike the
ball and project it in the direction of the holes, he explains to the
remainder what is about to be done, what is done, and how we fail to do
what was intended. He corrects himself whenever he finds his information
to have been wrong. Willie having told little Liza something about the
performance that is pending, the child inquires about what will happen
if the gentleman does not hit the ball, and the gentleman, hearing,
develops fear. At this moment the dog, which has been lingering quietly
within a yard of the ball, shows signs of becoming restive, and is
inclined to smell at it. Finally it favours only a disconsolate bark.
Somehow we despatch that ball at last, and then Willie, Nell, Liza,
baby, Towser, and selves move on some way towards the hole, but not so
far as we should have done, because the ball happened to strike a
lamp-post; and on the way Liza desires to know if a golf ball would kill
anybody if it hit them, and wishes Willie to buy one some day. And a
human sweetness there is in these little Blackheath urchins after all!
This early innocence is a sublime and splendid thing, and when in like
circumstances you would scowl, you gentlemen from London, remember, if
you please, that Liza called you one, and she thinks you are.
And the caddies! At Blackheath they have the most wonderful of all
caddies. The ways and manners and the character of the St. Andrews and
Musselburgh caddies are inferior. These Blackheath fellows are not like
the usual thing. They lean against the wall of the club-house and offer
their services to the stranger, declaring that it is a nice day for the
game, when a storm is gathering over the common. Generally the caddie
is given to laziness; they are a shiftless company. But see, though the
Blackheath caddie looks as indolent as any to begin with, he is in truth
one of the most active fellows within a hundred miles of Charing Cross,
as you very soon discover, after beginning the round with him. The old
red flag of traction-engine law obtains at Blackheath still. The golfer
is a dangerous person, death lurks in his flying ball, and so a man with
a scarlet banner must walk before the player to warn all people that he
is coming on. But we make the caddie do the ordinary work of carrying,
and teeing up, and red-flagging also, and he contrives in effect to be
in two places at the same time. He tees the ball, lays down the driver
by the side of it, and then runs ahead with a coloured handkerchief,
which is the red flag, and he waves it while on the run and the golfer
follows. So the caddie, leaving near the ball the club that is needed,
goes on again, and is always a shot ahead. Reaching the green he stands
by the hole until the golfer comes near enough to see it, and then the
man hurries away to the next tee, sets everything in a state of
preparation (and he carries a supply of sand in his pocket), and at once
is off again to the distance of a drive before the player has holed out.
The weakness of this system is that the caddie, by force of
circumstances, can know little or nothing of the progress of the match,
he is not one of the party, and he cares nothing at all about our good
shots. He lacks the sympathy of the real caddie, but he is marvellously
efficient all the same. If it is true, as we always say, that golf is
the same all over the world, I would suggest that if there is a place
where it is not the same it is at Blackheath, and that is why every one
should go there, and it should cease to be the fact that more London
golfers have been to Fifeshire than have been to play upon that historic
course.
* * * * *
Take a glimpse into the rich past of Blackheath golf. Look into the old
bet-book of the club and see some entries there, and do not forget that
all bets were made on the understanding that all members of the club had
a share in the gains of the winner no matter whether the bets were made
in cash or kind. On Saturday, July 9 1791, "Mr. Pitcaithly bets Captain
Fairfull one gallon of claret that he drives the Short Hole in three
strokes, six times in ten--to be played for the first time he comes to
Blackheath--after the annual day. Lost and paid by Mr. Pitcaithly, the
10th September." A little while later "Mr. Christie bets Mr. Barnes one
gallon of claret that he drives from the Thorn Tree beyond the College
Hole in three strokes, five times in ten, to be decided next Saturday."
Mr. Christie in due course performed his driving feat and won his bet.
Then "Captain Welladvice, having left the company without permission of
the chair, has forfeited one gallon claret"; and "Mr. Turner bets Mr.
Walker one gallon claret that he plays him on Wednesday, the 12th inst.,
four rounds of the green, and that Mr. Walker does not gain a hole of
him." Again, "Mr. Longlands bets Mr. Win. Innes, Sen., that he will play
him for a gallon of claret, giving Mr. Innes one stroke in each hole.
Four rounds on the green. Out and in holes to be played." One may well
understand that all the good claret that was thus available from these
gallant bets, together with what was bought and paid for in the ordinary
course, had a heartening effect upon those old golfers, with the result
that in the fine fancies that floated in the dining-hall of the "Green
Man" after dinner, drives seemed all endowed with unusual length, and
direction was always good. Again it is recorded that on an evening of
June "Captain MacMillan bets a gallon with Mr. Jameson that Captain
Macara in five strokes drives farther by fifteen yards than any other
gentleman Mr. Jameson may name of the Golf Society now present, to be
determined next Saturday"; and no sooner had Captain MacMillan
registered his bet than there came along Mr. Callender, who "bets Mr.
Hamilton one gallon that Mr. R. Mackenzie drives in five strokes farther
than Mr. H., to commence at the Assembly Hole and go on five strokes
running." Then Mr. Innes gets into a sporting mood, and he "bets Mr.
Wilson a gallon (a guinea) that he beats him, allowing Mr. Innes the tee
stroke with his wooden club, and after with his irons. Out and in--four
rounds." All these were in the latter days of the eighteenth century,
and all the time the happy golfers were filling up the bet-book of the
club, not with golfing bets any more than, or as much as, with bets
about events of the great war that was in progress; as, for instance,
when Mr. Satterthwaite "bets Mr. Callender a gallon of claret that
Admiral Nelson's squadron does take or destroy the French transports in
the harbour of Alexandria, or the major part of them."
In the Knuckle Club and the Blackheath Winter Golf Club, forerunners of
the Blackheath Golf Club, the same happy state of affairs prevailed. The
Knuckle Club was a very remarkable institution. In form it was a secret
society. Each member had to be initiated, and had to learn certain signs
and answers to questions by which he would know brother members from
strangers. Also, the members wore orders or a kind of regalia, and there
were heavy fines if they allowed themselves to be seen outside the
club-rooms with these special tokens of their community about them. On
one occasion we have a member, named James Walker, heavily fined in
claret for being so thoughtless as to take home his order. The holder
of the golfing gold medal for the year was termed the Grand Knuckle, and
was the chief of the club, which boasted also a "Registrar," and various
other officials of much dignity of title. As the mystic element of the
club decreased, so the golfing strength and enthusiasm of it increased,
and it was by this process of evolution that in course of time the
mystery lapsed and the name was changed. Before the competitions of the
club took place advertisements were always inserted in the _Times_ and
the _Morning Chronicle_ of the period, and it must be remarked that play
in these competitions was usually conducted on the strictest lines. One
record in the minutes reads: "28th March, 1795. Medal Day. It being
stated to the club that Mr. Innes, one of the candidates for the medal
played for this day, lost his ball; the opinion of the club was desired
whether the loss of the ball put an end to the candidate's chance for
the honours of the day." The club determined that it did. So more than a
hundred years ago their medal rules were stricter than ours, in this
matter at any rate. "Scrutineers" always examined the medal cards after
dinner, and announced the winner. In the early part of last century
there seems to have been rather less of betting and a little more of
feasting. There were gifts of venison and turtle from the members, and
the supply of claret, varied now and then by champagne and choice
spirits, was very copious. Each time a child was born to a member, he
contributed a pound's worth of claret to the weekly or monthly dinner;
and whenever a member was married, the same thing was done. The golf of
Blackheath, and all connected with it, was then a highly picturesque
thing. The course was yet only a five-holes affair. The clubs of the
players were carried by pensioners of the Royal Naval Hospital,
Greenwich, in their quaint uniforms, and an allowance of beer was
regularly made to them by the club until 1832. The pensioners were
caddies until 1869.
The Royal Blackheath Club was, and still is, most original and
interesting in many points of its constitution and government. To be
captain of this club, small one comparatively as it is now, is to fill a
high office, the honourable nature of which is duly impressed upon the
holder at the time of his election and installation, for he is elevated
with much ceremony and in much the same way as the captain of the Royal
and Ancient Club. The retiring captain sits in his chair at the meeting
for the last time, and thanks are offered to him by grateful members for
the good things he has done in his year. And then the captain-elect is
called by name by the secretary, who takes in his arms the silver club
which is the equivalent of the mace in Parliament, the symbol of power
and active authority, and places himself at the head of a procession
which is formed. The field-marshal, conducting the newcomer to the
chair, follows behind, and so they make their way to the head of the
chamber, where the field-marshal presents the new captain to the old
one. There are various little forms of ritual to be gone through; the
new captain makes a solemn declaration of loyalty and fidelity to the
club and his office, and, particularly, expresses his anxiety to
maintain its dignity, and then he commits himself irrevocably and
awfully to an undying oath--he kisses the club! All this is to-day just
as it was in the ancient days. Mention has been made of the
field-marshal of the club; no other club boasts a field-marshal, who
fills an office of most ineffable and incomparable dignity. Captains may
come and go, year by year; they do their work well; and they lay down
the club. But the field-marshal is above all captains, and he is in
office till he dies. He is a prince over captains. He is essentially a
golfer--not a mere ornament--and a good golfer, and one strong in the
true spirit of the game. Because a good field-marshal is not easily
found, he is made much of. The installation of a new one is a fine
ceremony. There is a solemn gathering, all the famous trophies and bits
of regalia are furbished up; there are speeches, forms, declarations,
questions, answers; and if it were a very coronation the thing could
scarcely be more serious. The silver club is held before the
field-marshal elect, and he is presented with the special medal of his
office, when he is finally addressed thus: "We expect and ask that you
will wear this medal at all golf meetings as your predecessors did; and
we have further to ask that you will in all time coming, while you are
spared in health, do all that in you lies to maintain and support the
rights and privileges of this ancient club; to maintain the honour and
dignity of the club; and should any attempts be made to interfere with
the rights of the club, that you will aid the executive in endeavouring
to put down such interference, so that the club may maintain the high
and honourable position that it ever has done, since its institution in
1608. Kiss the club!" The field-marshal kisses it, and thus he is
exalted among the highest in the whole world of golf.
There are many eras with marked features to be noted in the history of
the club. Even now many of those features are still perpetuated. Dinners
are still held; dignity still is high. We have now heard much of the
old-time Blackheath golfers; but an era of vast consequence, not only to
Blackheath but to the game, is one that can still be remembered by some
old golfers, that of great activity which began just before the middle
of last century, and is only just now reaching its climax in the great
and universal "boom" in golf. It has already been suggested that
Blackheath led the way, and led it most effectively. For long after it
had done so it was still the premier club in England, and in playing
strength was the best. The club itself has few solid possessions--just a
few fine old club heirlooms--but many great memories. In a very modern
sense it is poor, having a comfortable but not a magnificent club-house,
and no splendid links of eighteen holes. But the Royal Blackheath Golf
Club is like a fine old English gentleman of the very best kind,
ignoring all new ways of thought and life, eschewing all sordidness,
clinging to the fine simple principles of wise fore-fathers. That is
just what it is, the fine old English gentleman whom the age has
outstripped. It is the Colonel Newcome of the clubs.
* * * * *
And in that pageant of London golf that we suggested there are many
other picturesque and significant scenes. If we cannot be sure of the
places where the holes were cut, nor of the situation of the teeing
grounds, it is still certain, from documentary evidence, that a golf
course that was made at Molesey Hurst was only second, in point of
seniority, in England, to Blackheath itself, and it was very high up in
the list of the golf clubs of the world. Manchester came next in 1818.
There are concerned in the only existing record two people of no less
credit and renown than David Garrick, the actor, and the eminent Dr.
Alexander Carlyle, of Inveresk, who witnessed the Porteous riots, saw
the fight at Prestonpans, and amid these many excitements cultivated his
game to a fine point, was one of the keenest golfers of the eighteenth
century, and won the Musselburgh medal in 1775. Carlyle was like many
others of the Scottish parsons of those good times and the present, who
would take their golf clubs with them wherever they might wander, on the
chance of opportunity presenting itself. He came to London, and knowing
of Blackheath, the clubs came with him. Garrick at that time had a house
at Hampton which in recent days was occupied by the late Sir Clifton
Robinson, the organiser of the London electric tramway system. Garrick
asked John Home and a number of friends, including Carlyle, to dine with
him at Hampton and bring their golf clubs and balls with them that they
might play on the course at Molesey Hurst. When the six of them, who
were in a landau, passed through Kensington, the Coldstreams, who were
changing guard, observed their clubs, and gave them three cheers "in
honour of a diversion peculiar to Scotland."
There might be a railway train in the pageant of London golf, one of the
early trains with engines of the Stephensonian style. The period would
be just after the accession of Queen Victoria, and there would be two
gentlemen travelling together from London to Aldershot, one of them
being Sir Hope Grant, a keen golfer, a member of the Royal and Ancient
Club, who held a military appointment at Aldershot, while the other
would be the Duke of Cambridge. It has been recorded that in matter of
companionship this journey was a very dull affair, for Sir Hope Grant
was moody, and failed to respond to the well-meant attempts of the Duke
to open conversation. He seemed troubled. But suddenly after long
silence he jumped up from his seat, rushed to the window of the
compartment and opened it. At this stage the Duke of Cambridge felt that
things could not be well with his companion, and jumping up after him,
grabbed him by the tails of his coat. A moment later they both sat down,
and looked at each other. "Well," said Sir Hope Grant, in the manner of
a man recovering from a great surprise, "that is a thing that you
seldom see near London; there were two men playing golf in a field out
there."
And then in the pageant there would be represented the starting of golf
at Wimbledon in 1865, with the Blackheath emissaries all on fire with
the zeal of their enterprise. Wimbledon with its Royal Wimbledon and its
London Scottish, its famous holes and its windmill, and all the rest of
it, has played no small part in golfing history. At the beginning seven
holes were made as they had them at Blackheath, and did you ever hear
that at Wimbledon once there was a round that consisted of nineteen
holes, the longest round in number of holes in the world? Tom Dunn, who
was responsible for the extension of the course about 1870, told the
story, and so far as I am aware he only told it in America. We may
repeat it here in the words he used. The committee had asked him whether
he thought they might make a full-sized course on their land, and,
coming to the conclusion that they might, he was told to go on with the
work, and eventually was satisfied that he had made a good job of it.
The secretary of the period is said to have been somewhat imperfectly
acquainted with the game in general just then, and went to Dunn with the
inquiry as to how many holes they had on the old course at St. Andrews,
and was told. "The secretary thought a moment," said Tom, "scratched his
head and began to look wise. Then he approached very closely, and
nodding his head for me to bend my ear, he whispered in a hoarse voice,
'Tom, let us have one more!' 'Oh, that is impossible,' I replied. 'It
cannot be, for eighteen is the orthodox number.' 'I care not for that,'
replied the secretary, who was accustomed to have his own way, 'we will
have one more!' I was very young at the time and I would do anything
rather than offend the gentleman, for he had much influence, and I
wanted his goodwill; so I reluctantly submitted to the demand. The
committee met the next day, and I was asked if I had succeeded in making
an eighteen-holes course. I replied, with some hesitation, that I had
made a nineteen-holes course, and explained why I had done so. Well, you
never in your life saw a more excited lot of men. There was an uproar in
a moment, and all made a dive for the poor secretary, who never heard
the last of it."
* * * * *
Within sight of Wimbledon now there is Coombe Hill, one of the best and
most recent achievements in the new metropolitan golf. Here is a
contrast indeed! One may sometimes wonder how those ill-tempered people
who grumble that golfers in these days take their game, and all about
it, too richly, and that fine club-houses do not make plus players--such
complainers still being eager for all the most modern comforts
themselves--would like to live their golfing lives for a season after
the early Wimbledon manner in all its great simplicity. The first
club-house those golfers ever had, if you would call it by the name, was
the old iron "shooting house," and it measured only eight yards by six.
It served the purposes of club-room, clothes-room and others. If its
floor space was small, its roof was high, and the members' clothes were
hung up on hooks, to the very top; and were lifted up to their proper
places, and reached down again by a pole. Most of the numerous members
had their private hooks, and a boy who worked the pole had a most
marvellous memory for the garments and their proper owners, so that when
a member, coming in suddenly, called for his jacket and his stockings,
up went the pole, and down came the goods without a moment's delay, and
all correct. This remarkable young person has his proper and
highly-developed successor in Gibbon, the house-steward at the present
Mid-Surrey club at Richmond, who, though he has nearly a thousand
members to consider, knows so well the particularities and possessions
of them all. Tom Dunn had his workshop in this iron shooting house, and
here he kept a fair stock of clubs and balls, and did his own repairs.
Presently some of the members suggested to him that it would be
agreeable if he stored some eatables and drinkables in his shop for
their sustenance and comfort, before and after rounds; and so he laid in
a stock of wines and spirits, sandwiches and eggs, and so forth, which
had of necessity to be laid out on his bench where there were varnish,
shavings, sawdust and pitch as well. Behold here the early London
golfer! It is an interesting historical fact, that when a few years
after its establishment, and just before the Tom Dunn era, the club
first thought of engaging a professional, the committee set it on record
that "they took a very favourable view of young Tom Morris's application
for the post."
The people who accuse the moderns of being over fond of prizes in
competitions--and a nasty name they call them!--might be told the tale
of the old golfing baronet of Wimbledon, now dead, who once won five
shillings, being his half share of the third prize in the sweepstakes
attached to the monthly medal competition there. It was the first prize
that this keen but unfortunate golfer had ever won, and he begged the
permission of the committee to be allowed to add more money for a richer
keepsake. The consent of the authorities was graciously given, whereupon
the prize-winner purchased for himself a golden-eagle writing stand for
which he gave a hundred sovereigns, adding ninety-nine pounds fifteen
shillings to the prize-money. Friends, not being golfers, who called
upon him had the prize exhibited to them, and they said, "Goodness,
what a fine player you must be!" He felt he was, and that the prize was
worth the money.
When the 'nineties of the last century were reached golf began to spread
in London, and such clubs as Northwood with its "Death or Glory" Hole,
Tooting Bec, and Mid-Surrey laid the foundation for the great London
golf that was soon to come. This Mid-Surrey club with its thousand
members, its financial turnover of thirty thousand pounds a year, its
hundred thousand rounds that are played on that excellent course in
twelve months without its showing hardly the wear of a blade of grass,
the twenty thousand lunches that are eaten by their members, the four
thousand pounds that were spent in one year lately on the improvement of
the course, is, I believe, the busiest golfing institution in the world.
It is well said that there is nearly always a couple driving off from
that first teeing ground near the rails in the Old Deer Park. And one
might add that as a place where golf is played in a plain but excellent
spirit, without any fancy trappings, the club here is one of the best
organised and managed in the world, and is a vast credit to the
secretary, Mr. J. H. Montgomerie, while the course, whose putting greens
are a match for any in existence, is a fine testimonial to that prince
of greenkeepers, Peter Lees, who was lately captured by the Americans
for a great new course on Long Island. Lees has been a great influence
in the development of modern golf in England, and I know that he will
make a great difference to American courses. And there is champion J. H.
Taylor as the club's professional. In a special way Mid-Surrey stands
for London golf.
It has come to this, that we no longer fear to speak and write of the
great excellence of the London golf courses. Sunningdale at the
beginning of the present century opened up a new era not only in London
golf but in golf in general--the period of the inland courses of a far
higher class, better and more interesting in every respect than anything
that had ever been dreamt of before. Sunningdale was followed by
Huntercombe and Walton Heath, of which Sir George Riddell has assisted
to make such a magnificent success. There have come after them
Worplesdon, Burhill, Bramshot, Stoke Poges, Sandy Lodge, Coombe Hill,
St. George's Hill, and many others all belonging to the same class. Many
of us hold to the fancy that Sunningdale, the mother of the new sort of
courses, is still the best and most charming of them all. She is the
Berkshire jewel; magnificent. But comparisons are not easily made, for,
most remarkably and happily, these new modern inland courses that are
setting an example to the world and which the world is following
wherever it can afford it, vary enormously in character, in appearance,
in the precise sort of golf that they present and offer, whereas at the
beginning of inland golf we had the fancy, and the fancy truly led to
fact, that in the main all inland courses must be the same--plain, flat,
one cross bunker here, another there, and then the green. Not only the
architecture, but, far more than that in its beneficial effects, the
greenkeeping has been improved, soils are understood, they are fortified
and seeds are adapted to them, and results are achieved which not ten
years ago would have been regarded as impossible. The result is that we
have fairways and putting greens on some of our best inland courses near
London which are rarely excelled at the seaside, although nothing can
ever give to inland turf that firm springiness--a term slightly
paradoxical but one easily appreciated--which is the characteristic of
good seaside links. No longer is good inland golf to be despised. It has
charms all its own, and it has the distinction that golf as we know it
to-day would never have existed if it were not for the inland courses.
There are fewer hedges on them now than once there were, and no more
ditches than there should be.
* * * * *
To a section of old conservatives it may seem a dreadful thing to say,
but it is the truth that one of the reasons why we love our golf of
London, praise it and rejoice in it, is because of its glorious trees.
We know courses on the coast where there is never a tree or a bush to be
seen, and never one to be avoided in the playing. The golfers who live
and play and die in those parts know nothing of the splendour of trees
and the leaves that come and go, and knowing nothing they will even
sometimes wrongfully say that no golf course ever should have a tree
about it. Golf is a game of Nature; allow it then all the best effects
that Nature can supply. Permit it the trees that the townsmen otherwise
so seldom see; cutting them down, hewing them away will not bring the
ocean nearer nor liken the course more to seaside golf. Trees belong to
the inland game as much as sandhills to the other, and when a question
of removal arises, let constructors and committees reflect that a golfer
can be made in a season and he perishes some time later, that a new hole
can be made in a week and may be altered the week after, that some shots
which are thought of might be hindered by the tree but that only one
shot in a dozen is likely to be of the kind that is considered--and that
the tree has taken ages to grow, and will live ages on, being more of
eternity than many generations of golfers.
They may not always be conscious of the fact, but the people who live in
towns and are cooped in them constantly, abiding in flats, working in
gloomy chambers and travelling in underground railways, derive more than
half their golfing enjoyment from the vision of Nature, less adorned
than in the public parks, with which they become associated in their
golf--grass to tread upon, surrounding trees through which soft breezes
croon, and timid clouds creeping slowly underneath the blue. There is
nothing so good as the golf of the true seaside links; there could not
be. In this, the real thing, we have land formations that are impossible
on inland flatness; there are the wildness of dunes and bent that cannot
be reproduced artificially away from the coast; we have the perfect turf
that is ideal for the game and which has never yet been completely
imitated away from shore, and above all, through the rich variety of
situation and possibility, we have the course springing surprises on us
all the time. This is golf in the highest, the stern, cold, enthralling
game. London golf is a gentler thing, a little softer, but it has charms
that are all its own, and they are the charms of green Nature and the
delights of changing seasons. By the sea it is warm or it is cold, and
there is little difference else from the beginning of the year to the
end. But in London the golfer notices the seasons as he does nowhere
else, and they are everything to him and his happiness. And the trees
best tell him of the seasons, and it is then that he might exclaim, as
Ruskin did, "What a great thought of God was that when He thought a
tree!"
In this way the two most beautiful seasons of the year, spring and
autumn, touching nearest the heart, creating inspirations and causing
reflection, the germinal and the fall, are the most splendid times for
golf in London, and at other inland places, and they are surely the best
seasons of all for the enjoyment and happiness of the game. But
particularly they are London's seasons. In the spring there is the time
for preparation, when all golfers are keen in a new life. Then the
leaves of the trees are opened, and are there prettier scenes on any
course than on some of those near London then? There is hardly to be
fancied a better day than could be had at St. George's Hill or on the
New Zealand course at Byfleet when the golden gorse is in bloom and
gives out its rich perfume, while the trees that line the fairway all
about are full to life again. Think, when May is come, of the glory of
Sudbrooke Park, Cassiobury, of Sunningdale, even of Neasden, Northwood,
and a hundred more. Then there comes the holiday time, and the seaside
links, and the golf of London rests until the autumn, and then it is
alive again; and let the faults of London golf be whatever they may, the
players are few who are not happy to return to the old courses of home.
Be they ever so poor they are their very own.
This of all others is the most delightful golfing season. The white sun
of summer has been toned to gold, and the air is sweet and cool; the
turf is moist again. It is soothing; but there is a pathos in it all
that the golfer, sensitive and sympathetic observer as he has become,
must always feel. One may tramp a country lane and notice little, but
the men of this game have been trained to notice. Here present is the
season of the fall, the rest after achievement, when Nature closes in
upon herself and lapses to her sleep. She has done her season's work,
done it wisely, ever well. So the fires of heaven burn low again. Green
of the world turns russet and bronze, with flashes of scarlet and gold.
A smell of earth that is moist with autumn dew rises in the morning air.
When the round begins the sun warmth is not enough to dry away the
little globules of the dew, tears of the sobbing night, and the course
has a glittering sheen upon it. From drooping branches of beeches and
sycamores that half surround a putting green in a corner of the course,
crackling leaves are falling and some must be moved before the intruding
ball can be putted to its appointed place. As the little golfing company
moves along to the adjoining tee more of these spent leaves come
fluttering sadly down. But, a little sad as this may be, the golfer of
the towns, with summer memories of mountains and hills and deep lanes
still lingering in his mind, hearing the crooning of the summer seas and
the lapping of waves near northern putting greens, has his consolations.
He is grateful for the coppery leaves and the early dew, though they may
hinder play a trifle. They are as echoes from the north and east and
west. We see no dew in Piccadilly, and there are no mountains in the
Strand.
THE END
_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.
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