FIRST DAYS AT ST. ANDREWS
I have always had, and always shall retain, a very lively and grateful
recollection of the kindness with which all the local members of the
Royal and Ancient Golf Club and others at St. Andrews received me when I
first went up there, a Sassenach among the Scots. I was very fortunate
in my host, Logan White, and found there also others that I had known in
the South, Harry Everard, most keen of golfers and best of all judges of
the game, Victor Brooke, most eager, most charming and most Irish of
Irishmen, and many others who had been old friends of my boyhood at
Westward Ho! Besides, there were many who retained a memory and an
affection for my Uncle Fred, whose locker, with his name upon it, was
still in the big room. I took possession of it as a heritage, though he
still had many good years of life left in him at that date. I well
remember, too, that at one of the first dinner parties I went to at St.
Andrews, at the most hospitable house of Captain "Dan" Stewart, Mr.
Wolfe-Murray greeted me warmly, saying that he had known my grandfather
who, as he affirmed, was in the habit of declaring that he had "the best
left leg in Bond Street, and," added Mr. Wolfe-Murray, "I think my left
leg is better than my right." He was gloriously arrayed in the dining
dress of the Queen's Archers, which permitted a display of legs; but
this story of a day when legs were so draped as to be critically admired
in Bond Street took the mind's eye back a long way. The point of my
grandfather's claim, however, as to the beauty of his left leg, was that
the symmetry of the right had been somewhat spoilt by a French musket
ball.
And the kindliness that I met with, from many who had not any of these
special links, was not to be forgotten--Mr. Gilbert Mitchell Innes, Mr.
Balfour, the father of Leslie--now Balfour-Melville--Mr. Whyte-Melville,
to whose surname the former succeeded, and very many more. Gilbert Innes
was still, I think, the best golfer of all those named, and David Lamb
and Jim Blackwell were about the best of the actual residents. Leslie
Balfour came over from Edinburgh and I had many good matches with him.
But on my first arrival there I found that a match had already been made
for me by Victor Brooke, that I should play Tom Kidd, at that moment
thought to be playing the best game of all the professionals at St.
Andrews, receiving the odds of a third from him. Tom Kidd had been
champion some ten years before, but, champion or no, I had no idea at
that time of day of being beaten by anybody, professional or otherwise,
at odds of a third. Besides, I had come rather fresh from a small
triumph at Westward Ho! Somebody had made up a little purse for the
three Allan brothers to play for, and in order to make an even number I
had been asked to play with one of them. The prize was for the lowest
score, and I was a proud man when I came in with the best score of the
four. We had no formal definition of an amateur in those days, but in
any case I should not have wished to take the prize, which, indeed, I do
not suppose would have been given me. But this small victory put me into
fairly good conceit with myself in respect of this match against poor
Tom Kidd, who was certainly not as good a golfer as Jamie Allan; but the
truth is that the Scots were rather sceptical in those days about the
golfing ability of any Southerner. It was not very long before that
young Tommy had given Arthur Molesworth a third and a beating, as
recorded in a previous chapter. How that could have come about I could
not, nor can now, conceive; but at any rate Tom Kidd was not Tommy
Morris. I remember that I went out the first nine holes in 42. It does
not sound very grand nowadays, but it was respectable then, and
sufficiently good to work up Tom Kidd into elaborate explanations as to
how impossible it was to give a third to a score of that kind. When a
man gets into that explanatory mood it is generally all over with him;
and of course it was not to be thought, if I could play anything of a
game at all, that he could give such odds. I won an easy and inglorious
victory, which would not be worth mentioning except to show the estimate
likely to be made at St. Andrews at that time of the probable form of an
English amateur in comparison with that of one of the native
professionals.
Just about that time, that is to say 1883, Old Tom, who had been playing
for him very poorly, began to enjoy a delightful Indian summer of his
golf, which gave the old man and all the many who were fond of him
immense delight. I do not mean to say that I suppose him to have played
anything like the game of his best days. I could generally beat him,
but he would always play me level and liked to gamble heavily.
Generally there was a dozen of balls on the match, and a dozen on the
score, for we used to keep the scores too, and often a dozen that I
didn't, and another dozen that he didn't, go round in some set
figure--say 87. A dozen balls meant only a dozen shillings, in those
days, but the number he was owing me soon arrived at huge figures.
However, I used to knock the debt off his playing fee, and he was
perfectly happy, and so was I, in the arrangement. He was very
methodical, invariably half-filling the bowl of a short-stemmed and
ancient clay pipe as he hit off to the Short Hole Going Out, and
knocking out its ashes as we came to the Short Hole Coming In: and that
was all the smoke he ever took till the match was over.
On the occasion of this, my first visit to St. Andrews, I was not a
member of the Club, but they did me the honour to elect me by next
spring, and three of us tied for the first medal at the not very clever
score of 91. Mr. Willie Wilson was one, I forget the other; and Wilson
won on the play off. I remember that all went well with me till the
sixth hole in the tie, where I got into a small bunker from the tee,
took two to get out and left some of my temper behind in it. I had to
take second honour then, but I won the first medal in the autumn, though
I think it was rather that the rest played worse than that I played very
well.
And then, immediately after the medal, came a message from Elie and
Earlsferry--"Would any pair at St. Andrews give a match in a foursome to
a couple of stonemasons from Elie?" Leslie Balfour asked me if I would
play with him against them. I knew I was not in good form, and I do not
think that he was, either, but still we said we would play them. They
came over and seemed very nice young fellows indeed. The name of one was
Douglas Rolland, and that of the other Jack Simpson. We had never heard
of them before. We continued to think them very nice young fellows until
the ninth hole, at which point we were two up. The truth is the masons
had not got their hammers going at all. But we did not know that. On the
way home we began to doubt whether they were as nice as we had thought.
Rolland began hitting the ball to places where we had never seen it hit
before, and Simpson so followed up that they were reaching with a drive
and an iron holes that it was at that date scarcely decent to approach
in this metallic way. They were "gutty" balls, mind, which did not fly
away off the irons like the rubber-cores. They finished that round to
the good of us, and in the afternoon made us look very foolish indeed. I
do not think that Leslie or I ever got over that match till we read the
result of the open championship, played very shortly afterwards at
Prestwick. It went "Jack Simpson first, Douglas Rolland second." After
that we could make a better reply when we had to listen to the very kind
and pointed enquiries of friends as to "What sort of golfers are the
stonemasons of Elie? Are they any good?"
I think, but am not sure, that it must have been in the interim between
that match of ours and the championship, that there was a great home and
home match, with something of a Scotch and English flavour about it, got
up between Douglas Rolland and Johnny Ball. Captain Willy Burn wrote me
an account of the first part of the match at Elie, which he went over
from St. Andrews to see, and one of the phrases in it I remember now:
"Both men drove like clockwork." It seems that Rolland, for all his
great hitting, had nothing the better of Johnny--who was a very fine
driver in his youth--in that respect, but hole after hole went from
Johnny on the putting green. He came to Hoylake, for the second half of
the match, no less than nine holes to the bad. The local people said
that he would pick it all up on his own green. But he did not: on the
contrary he lost more holes. Then, on the following day a second match
was arranged--of thirty-six holes, all to be played on his own Hoylake.
Of course he must have started with the moral effect of his previous
hammering still deeply impressed upon him, but his friends still had all
confidence in him. And he seemed to justify it grandly, playing such a
fine game that he was five up and six to play and the match was
virtually, as probably Rolland himself deemed, over, when suddenly he
struck a very bad streak, lost hole after hole until all the lead was
gone, and Rolland, winning the last hole too, actually won this
extraordinary match. It was a very sad day for Hoylake, and that is the
aspect of the match which seems to have impressed everybody. But, after
all, there is another aspect--perhaps well realized at Elie--what a
first-class fighting man that Rolland was! Johnny Ball had in fact to go
through a very long baptism of fire before he was able to bring his
wonderful powers and skill to their full use at the moment they were
most needed.