HOW MEN OF WESTWARD HO! WENT ADVENTURING IN THE NORTH
In the year 1875, I having then arrived at the advanced age of sixteen,
and being admitted as a member of the Royal North Devon Golf Club, in
the autumn committed the blazing indiscretion of winning the scratch
medal which carried with it the Captaincy of the club. How glaring the
indiscretion was may be gathered from the fact that this Captaincy, thus
conferred, entailed the obligation of taking the chair at the general
meetings. I do not know that I made a much bigger hash of it than any
other boy forced into the same unnatural position would have done. It
had not been contemplated, apparently, that a schoolboy was likely to
beat all the reverend seniors, and one good effect was that the
regulation was altered, and winning this medal did not much longer
confer on a person who might be the least fitted for it the function of
presiding at the meetings. But it had given to me a dignity which could
not be changed by legislation. At the spring meeting of that very same
year I had received no less a handicap than twelve strokes, so I must
have been very much of that nuisance to the handicapper, the "improving
player." I became a "scratch player," however, from the autumn of that
year. In those days, before handicaps were fixed, golfing society was
divided into two classes--those who were scratch, and those who were
not--and there was no idea of such a thing as a penalty or _plus_
handicap. Some of the so-called "scratch" players of the day were
exceedingly scratchy ones, and only supported their dignity at a
considerable expense: there was one in particular of whom it was said
that it cost him three hundred a year to be a scratch player or, that is
to say, to play all and sundry amateurs on level terms.
Beside this event of my winning this medal, which was no doubt an affair
of more importance in my eyes than in those of anyone else, the autumn
of 1875 was big with great issues, under the management of the
enterprising "old Mole," who went up to Scotland with his three sons in
search of adventure and with a great programme before them. Captain
Molesworth had been playing a good deal with Mr. (later Sir) W.H.
Houldsworth, and gave the challenge that he would bring up his three
sons and play Mr. Houldsworth and any three Scots amateurs that Mr.
Houldsworth should choose in single matches, the side that won the
largest aggregate of holes to be the winner of the stakes. Now the Mole
had the better of Mr. Houldsworth: that was really, though no doubt
tacitly, acknowledged on both sides. Arthur Molesworth was likely to win
his matches, no matter who was brought against him. But George, the
second brother, though a brilliant player at times, was very uncertain,
and Reggie, the eldest, and slightly lame, was the weakest vessel of the
three. Say that the Captain and Arthur should gain some holes, it was
the hope of Scotland that an equivalent number, at least, might be
hammered out of the other two brothers. Unfortunately for Scotland it
was the former part of the calculation which was realized more fully
than the latter. The matches were played at St. Andrews and Prestwick. I
think there is little doubt that at that time, as indeed for many years,
Leslie Balfour (later Balfour-Melville) was the strongest amateur player
in Scotland; and at St. Andrews Mr. Houldsworth's team was himself,
Leslie Balfour, Dr. Argyll Robertson and J. Ogilvie Fairlie. Arthur
Molesworth won two holes only (they were thirty-six hole matches) off
Leslie Balfour, and Argyll Robertson took seven holes from George. But
then Reggie rather upset calculations by beating Ogilvie Fairlie by two
holes. Lastly came in the father of the flock with nine holes to the
good, and that settled it. At Prestwick, Mr. Syme, a minister of the
Kirk, and Andy Stuart took the places of Dr. Robertson and Leslie
Balfour, and here Ogilvie Fairlie got back his own with interest from
Reggie Molesworth, winning by seven holes, and Mr. Syme beat George by
two, but Arthur knocked six holes to the family credit out of Andy
Stuart and the Captain came in again with his big balance--ten up on Mr.
Houldsworth.
So they carried through that adventure with credit and renown, and, I
suppose, some profit, and then later in the same year, Arthur
Molesworth, with his father as backer and henchman, went up to St.
Andrews again to do battle on his own account.
This adventure came about owing to an idea very prevalent, though I
hardly know whether it had existence in fact, that Young Tommy had a
standing challenge open to back himself at odds of a third against any
amateur. Captain Molesworth took it up on behalf of Arthur, and to St.
Andrews they went again, in the dreary month of November, to bring the
matter to an issue. Altogether they played for six whole days, two
rounds a day, and all through the piece Young Tommy had the better of
it. I cannot believe that in this match Arthur Molesworth did himself
full justice. It is true that during the latter days snow lay on the
ground, so that the greens had to be swept and the game really was not
golf at all, but then it is no less true that Tommy held the advantage
just as consistently in the days when real golf was to be played as on
those when the snow spoilt it. An onlooker did indeed tell me that Young
Tommy showed his skill wonderfully in lofting off the snowy ground to
the small circles that had been swept round the holes. "Molesworth could
loft there just as well," he said, "but Tommy, using his niblick, made
the ball stay there as if it had a string tied to it, whereas
Molesworth's ball was always running off on to the snow on the other
side." But, be that how it may, and crediting Young Tommy Morris with a
full measure of that genius for the game which all who have seen him
reported, I am not going to believe that the golfer ever was born, be
his name Morris or that of any Triumvir, who could give a third and a
sound beating (for it was no less than this that Young Tommy
accomplished) to Arthur Molesworth when he was playing his true
game--and this, with all due allowance made for Tommy's knowledge of his
home green. There was a peculiar pathos attaching to that match and
Young Tommy's triumph, for it was his last. His wife had lately died,
and interest in life, even in golf, had gone out for him. It was in
November that he was thus beating Arthur Molesworth, and on Christmas
Day of the same year he followed his young and loved wife. His memorial,
recording a few of his greater victories--he was four times in
succession open champion--is in the St. Andrews' graveyard. Indisputable
was his genius for the game; impossible to calculate is the comparison
between his skill and power and that of Harry Vardon, let us say,
to-day. Doubtless he was a far better putter, for while he was so good
at all points of the game he was at his strongest of all on the green. I
do not think we shall get a better account than that which Leslie
Balfour gave when an Englishman asked him how he thought Young Tommy
would compare with the heroes of to-day. Leslie thought a moment, and
then he said, "Well, I can't imagine anyone playing better than
Tommy"--and at that I think we had best leave it.
After that year Arthur Molesworth was not so much at Westward Ho! He
went to London, to an architect's office, and at once begun to win
medals at Wimbledon, where Henry Lamb and Dr. Purves were perhaps the
best of the older men. The next year some of them made a match for me to
play him at Westward Ho! and this was a great affair for me, being the
first "big match," as we called these set encounters, for a money stake,
that I ever had a hand in. We started in a bad fright of each other, if
I remember right, and neither played his game, but I had the fortune to
get really going first and won rather easily. About the same time Johnny
Allan, finding his work growing, had down his two young brothers, Jamie
and Mat, to join him in the club-making and the playing. They brought in
a new element of interest, for even as a mere lad Jamie Allan, in
particular, was a wonderful golfer. He had been there but a short while
when Captain Molesworth, always the enterprising spirit, issued a
challenge on his behalf to play any man in the world on four greens, two
rounds on each. Poor Young Tommy being no more, Bob Kirk was the great
man, for the time being, at St. Andrews, and he was chosen as the
Scottish champion. The first part of the match was played at Westward
Ho! We hardly knew how young Jamie Allan would carry himself, in this
his first match of importance, but he delighted us by showing that
faculty of rising to a great occasion without which no golfer, however
fine a player, can win fame. That first round of his remains in my mind
still as an exhibition of just the most faultless golf I ever saw. They
said hard things about poor Bob Kirk afterwards when he came up to
Scotland, and especially to the last stage, at St. Andrews, a beaten
man. I believe that in that last phase his play was contemptible. But
the Scottish critics, who were not there to see, made a vast mistake
when they said that he did not play anything like his game all through
the match. What he did at Hoylake and at Prestwick, whither,
necessarily, they journeyed and golfed, I do not know, but I do know
that at Westward Ho! he played quite a sound game. But a sound game was
not enough to give him a chance of standing up to the sample of golf
that Jamie Allan produced against him. Hole after hole slipped away from
him, just by a stroke each, as they will when the one man is playing
with more than human accuracy. That was the story of that match--it was
won by Jamie's extraordinary golf at the first encounter. But that is
not the way in which the Scotsmen have heard the story told.