I glanced at my opponent out of the corner of my eyes. The man was
suffering. Beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead.
His play had become wilder and wilder at each hole in arithmetical
progression. If he had been a plow, he could hardly have turned up
more soil. The imagination recoiled from the thought of what he would
be doing in another half hour if he deteriorated at his present speed.
A feeling of calm and content stole over me. I was not sorry for him.
All the viciousness of my nature was uppermost in me. Once, when he
missed the ball clean at the fifth tee, his eye met mine, and we stood
staring at each other for a full half minute without moving. I believe
if I had smiled then, he would have attacked me without hesitation.
There is a type of golfer who really almost ceases to be human under
stress of the wild agony of a series of foozles.
The sixth hole involves the player in a somewhat tricky piece of
cross-country work. There is a nasty ditch to be negotiated. Many an
optimist has been reduced to blank pessimism by that ditch. "All hope
abandon, ye who enter here," might be written on a notice board over
it.
The professor "entered there." The unhappy man sent his ball into its
very jaws. And then madness seized him. The merciful laws of golf,
framed by kindly men who do not wish to see the asylums of Great
Britain overcrowded, enact that in such a case the player may take his
ball and throw it over his shoulder. The same to count as one stroke.
But vaulting ambition is apt to try and drive out from the ditch,
thinking thereby to win through without losing a stroke. This way
madness lies.
It was a grisly sight to see the professor, head and shoulders above
the ditch, hewing at his obstinate Haskell.
"_Sixteen_!" said the professor at last between his teeth. Then,
having made one or two further comments, he stooped and picked up his
ball.
"I give you this hole," he said.
We walked on.