THE BEGINNINGS OF THE AMATEUR CHAMPIONSHIP
Golf had jogged along very comfortably up to this time with its one
championship, open to amateurs as to professionals, but never as yet won
by an amateur. Then, in the winter of 1884-5 it occurred to some
original genius of the Club at Hoylake--"why not a championship to be
restricted to the amateurs?" I do not know whose great brain first
flashed out the idea, but they wrote and explained it to me, asked me to
serve on a Committee for the purpose, and gradually the scheme was
licked into something more or less like shape. It was decided to hold,
under the auspices of the Royal Liverpool Club, a tournament, under
match play rules, open to all amateurs. The Club gave a handsome prize,
or, rather, two prizes. I went up to Hoylake a little while before the
affair came off, and there found the Committee in charge in something of
a difficulty. Douglas Rolland had sent in his entry and they did not
know how to deal with it. You see, at that date we had no definition of
a professional, nor of an amateur, and had to decide on the analogy of
other sports. I was all for accepting Rolland's entry then, and I am of
the same opinion now--that it ought to have been received.
His offence was that, having come in second to Jack Simpson in the
previous year for the open championship, he had accepted the second
prize money, thereby violating the law common to several sports and
pastimes forbidding an amateur to receive a money prize when in
competition with professionals. That would have been all plain sailing
but for the unfortunate fact that it was discovered that Johnny Ball,
some years before, and while still quite a boy, had played himself into
the prize list at an open championship and had been offered, and without
a thought about the matter had accepted, a sum that I think amounted to
no less than ten shillings. It was, of course, unthinkable that Johnny
should be deprived of his birthright as an amateur for such a boyish
error as this. There never was the faintest suspicion of professionalism
about any act of Johnny Ball's extraordinary golfing life, but
technically, at that date, his case and Rolland's were very much on all
fours. I saw that the Committee, or a majority of them, were resolved to
reject Rolland's entry. I did not care to be a member of a Committee
which rejected, for a cause I could not quite approve, the entry of one
who would certainly be a very formidable competitor for a tournament
which I had a distant hope that I might possibly win. I therefore asked
leave to resign from the Committee, before the vote was taken on the
point, and did so, with perfectly amiable sentiments all round. I have
been rather long-winded perhaps in this explanation, but I wanted to
make clear to those who are not informed about it the reason why the
present amateur definition is drafted just as it is, with a time limit
beyond which--that is to say before sixteen years of age--a man shall be
held guiltless of having done any action to spoil his amateur status in
playing for a money prize in competition with professionals.
So that was settled, and Rolland's entry disallowed. It passed off with
less trouble than I had expected, perhaps just because Rolland was such
a thoroughly good fellow, whether he were professional or amateur, and
not at all of that small spirit which is apt to take offence where none
is meant.
We set to work to play our tournament. It was considered best not to
entitle it a championship, seeing that it was the installation of a
single club only, and had no official recognition. Funny things began to
happen from the start. It gave much delight to the men of Hoylake that I
should have drawn, as my first foe, my old enemy at Westward Ho! Arthur
Molesworth. Him I managed to beat with tolerable ease. I think he had
even then begun to lose the sting of his game. After that I rather
forget my fortunes until the semi-final heat, when I came up against
Johnny Ball. In a previous heat, by the way, he had committed the crime
of parricide, knocking out his own father, who put up a stout fight
against him, nevertheless. Johnny and I had a great contest, and I
thought he was going to beat me, for he was two up at the turn; but I
began to play rather well from there onwards and beat him by two upon
the last green.
In that tournament we had not the arrangement which was made as soon as
the amateur championship was put on an official footing--that is to say,
in the very next year--of all byes being played off in the first round.
The effect of that was that Alan Macfie, the other semi-finalist, had a
bye in the morning. The final was decided in a single round to be played
in the afternoon. I had been wound up to high concert pitch by that
morning round with Johnny and could not play a bit in the afternoon.
Macfie, on the other hand, putted like a demon and never made a mistake,
so very likely the result would have been just the same if I too had
been idle all the morning. He beat me, I think, by eight holes.
So that was the conclusion of it, and really it was most unfortunate for
Macfie that he had not official right to place his name at the head of
the list of amateur champions, for this was in all respects, except the
title, equivalent to a championship. Leslie Balfour was not there, but
Johnny Laidlay was. It was the first time that I made his acquaintance,
though I did not have to play him. He was knocked out at an early period
of the campaign. In fact I am pretty sure that he was not playing as
fine a game then as he developed later. His putting, in particular,
improved greatly, and so did the direction of his driving. His iron play
was always, from the first, unsurpassed. I think that according to the
arrangements of that tournament all ties must have gone on into the next
round, for I well remember that Walter de Zoete tied twice with Macfie
and was beaten by him on their third time of meeting, when Macfie,
amongst other atrocities, did the short hole (the Rush Hole) in one. De
Zoete went very strongly in the tournament. One of his victims was Mure
Ferguson, whom he beat by eight and seven. There must, of course, have
been something wrong here: I am not sure that gout would not come into
the diagnosis.
And somewhere or other, among the crowd of lookers on at that
tournament, with a heart very black with rage against me at my
presumption in daring to beat the local hero, Johnny Ball, would have
been a little boy of the name of Harold Hilton: a name to be heard of in
later years.
[Illustration: John Ball.
(From a water-colour drawing by the late T. Hodge.)]
[Illustration: A.F. Macfie.
(From a water colour drawing by the late T. Hodge.)]
That was the beginning, the preface, the preliminary canter, of the
amateur championship, and it is to the initiative and enterprise of the
men of Hoylake in getting up that tournament and conducting it to
success, that we owe all the fun and all the tears we have had out of
that championship since. No doubt it, or something like it, would have
come sooner or later, whether or no, but it was due to the Hoylake Club
that it came just as soon as it did. In the later course of that year it
was taken properly in hand: the chief Clubs in the Kingdom gave it their
sanction and subscribed to buy a challenge cup for it; rules were drawn
up; the definition of an amateur was framed, and the first amateur
championship meeting on these lines was put on the programme to be held
at St. Andrews the following year.
Now, seeing that this veracious and highly egotistic record aims at
being a serious contribution to the golfing history of modern times, as
well as a sketch of my little personal share in it, it might be worth
while just to note the names of the Clubs which subscribed for that
amateur championship cup. For the subscribers were all the principal
Clubs of Great Britain at that time, and anyone who has not looked over
the list lately may very well feel something of the same surprise that
the little boy experienced when he found himself in Heaven--surprise
both at some of those who were there and also at some of those who were
not there. All the more notable of the great inland golf Clubs, for
instance, are conspicuous by their absence; and for the perfectly sound
reason that they had not yet come into being, nor indeed had inland golf
yet begun to be deemed at all worthy of consideration. There are, to be
sure, the Royal Blackheath and the Royal Wimbledon. These are great in
respect and veneration, but they no longer lead. St. George's at
Sandwich was admitted to the sacred number of contributing Clubs many
years later, when it came into existence and when its merits were proved
well to warrant the inclusion of its course among the championship
greens. And during all the first years of the amateur championship's
existence it was my duty, acting on instructions from the Royal North
Devon Club, to point out how very worthy was Westward Ho! to be the
scene for that encounter, and also (but this was ever received with a
bland smile in which, after a course of years, I began to join) how very
central was its situation and how easy of approach from all directions.
It has taken a lapse of many years and a more moving eloquence than mine
to convince the management of the championship on these so obvious
points; but now that they are convinced they accord the links of the
West all their due recognition. The original subscribing Clubs then, who
gave the weight of their authority to the new championship, were the
following:--Royal and Ancient; Royal Liverpool; Royal Albert, Montrose;
Royal North Devon; Royal Aberdeen; Royal Blackheath; Royal Wimbledon;
Alnmouth; North Berwick, New Club; Panmure, Dundee; Prestwick Club;
Bruntsfield Links, Edinburgh; Dalhousie Club; Edinburgh Burghers;
Formby; Gullane; Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers; Innerleven;
King James VIth, Perth; Kilspindie; Tantallon; Troon; West Lancashire.
Is it not the case, that there are surprises in this list, both in the
form of those who are in it and those who are not?