THE FIRST AMATEUR CHAMPIONSHIP
The first amateur championship, as by law established, was played at St.
Andrews, and started for me, as I suppose did most things at that time
of life, on the note of comedy. It must be understood that this
institution meant a great gathering of clans and of clansmen not very
well known to each other. I dare say some of us had our own ideas that
no one was likely to be unearthed from the dark places able to upset
reputations more or less established; but everything was possible. I
had, carrying for me, one of the numerous family of Greig at St.
Andrews; I presume some connection of the fine golfer of that name and
of his brother, the lion-voiced starter. Of course, the prospects of the
championship were the great subject of discussion, and during my first
match of the tournament--I think things must have been going fairly
easily, and that I had my opponent pretty well in hand--he said to me,
"There's a mon Fogie, frae Earlsferry, and they say he's gaein' tae win
the chompionship. He's a terrible fine player an' he daes na' mind the
gallery a dom." This was terrific news to me. By "the mon Fogie" I
understood him to mean a Mr. Foggo of Earlsferry, whose name I had
noticed on the list of the draw, and had noticed further that this Mr.
Foggo would be my own fate in the second round of the tournament. That
is, of course, always on the assumption that he and I both survived; and
of his survival, after Greig's remarks, I had no doubt. When I came in I
heard to my surprise, as well, I may say, as to my relief, that this
terror of Earlsferry had actually been defeated and knocked out on the
last green by Dr. McCuaig. Of Dr. McCuaig I did not know very much; and
then, on the evening of that day, it was reported to me that he had
said, "I shall beat Horace Hutchinson to-morrow. I believe he is a good
player, but he is a young player. You'll see; I shall beat him." This
was retailed to me, and whether it were a true saying of the doctor's or
whether the retailer had merely invented it to see how I should take it,
and to raise my ire, I do not know to this day; but I do know that it
did raise my ire, and that I went out in the morning with a very grim
determination to play my hardest. I had no idea of any amateur starting
out with the expectation that he was going to beat me, unless, indeed,
it were Johnny Ball. I played steadily; the doctor was not at all at his
best, and I won--I think it was the first seven holes. At all events, it
was such a number as made the match a very comfortable one. The doctor
took his beating in the best of spirits, and bore no ill-feeling
whatever.
Altogether that was a comfortable championship. After the first thrill
of the terror inspired by the reputation of "the mon Fogie," it went on
oiled wheels. Mure Ferguson, I remember, whom I met in a later heat, was
a hole up going to the eleventh, and I was a little anxious, but he let
me win in the end, though only by a hole, and then it looked very much
as if I should have to play Johnny Ball in the final--which was never to
be regarded as a holiday. But the unexpected happened. In the semi-final
he had to meet Henry Lamb. Henry Lamb was a beautiful golfer. It was he
who invented the "bulger," that club with its convex face, off which the
ball flew with a straightness that was a revelation. You see, before the
bulger was invented, the faces of our wooden clubs, by the perpetual
contact and hammering of the hard "gutty" balls, always got worn away,
so that instead of being flat, they were very decidedly concave. And you
may understand what the effect of that gradient of face would be--to
emphasize and aggravate every sin of heeling or toeing to which golfing
flesh is heir. Therefore, the good influence of the bulger was not
really so much in introducing the first convexity, though that in itself
helped the ball to go straight off it, but it also corrected that fatal
concavity which all clubs soon assumed of which the faces were flat to
start with. Instead of being concave, after much battering, the face of
the bulger became merely flat.
So it was a blessed invention; and as to its inventor, he was not only a
player of a very fine and graceful game of golf, but he was also the
most delightful fellow to play with that could be imagined. He had a
temper which in its perfect serenity was a most valuable golfing asset
to himself, and also most valuable in the charm of the companionship
which it brought into a round of golf with him. His mode of addressing
the ball was remarkable, for he stood as if he were going to drive at an
angle of at least forty-five degrees to the right of the hole. I
remember, at some inland course in the South, where his strange method
was not known, a caddie calling out to him as he was on the point of
driving from the first tee: "Stop, stop, you're playing to the wrong
hole." Henry Lamb gave the boy one of his sweetest and most lamb-like
smiles, and proceeded to drive the ball two hundred yards straight down
the middle of the course--to square leg. He used to swing round so far
as he came down that really it was to the cricketer's square leg that he
drove; and yet his style was a singularly graceful one, which seems as
if it could not be. It was a singularly effective one no less, and he
was a medallist on most of the courses then known to the golfer. Still,
he was not a Johnny Ball. On that day, however, he proved himself a
greater than Johnny Ball, who was far from being at his best, and when I
came in from my own semi-final effort I learned, with a breath of even
deeper relief than I had given to the shade of the defunct "mon Fogie,"
that Henry Lamb and not Johnny was my man for the final. Neither of us
started well in that final round--it was only of eighteen holes in those
days; but I began to get going after the fourth hole, and Henry Lamb
was, I think, a little done after his match with Johnny. At all events,
he let the holes slip away very quickly, and I had an easy win, on which
he was the first to offer his congratulations--a very courteous
gentleman!
The intelligent student of golfing history up to this period might very
well note, and with some surprise, that whenever reference is made to
Johnny Ball it always seems to be as of one disappointing expectation.
And that, in truth, was very much the case. Men of Hoylake used to come
to me almost with tears in their eyes, because they knew that they had
my full sympathy and understanding. They knew that I knew what a terror
Johnny Ball really was on his own course and when playing his right
game. But what afflicted them almost to hysterics was that he never
seemed able to produce this wonderful best of his when he went away to
play anywhere else than at home; and the consequence of that was that
the other folk, the Scotsmen, laughed at them, saying: "This local idol
of yours has feet of very poor clay"--or gibes to that effect. They took
it very badly. It is hardly to be believed now, when we know what a
brilliant lot of victories in all fields Johnny has to his credit, that
he had to wait a very weary while, and to suffer a number of
disappointments, before he began to come to his due. When he did come,
he was not to hold nor to bind.
Johnny Laidlay did nothing effective in this first championship. He,
too, had to "bide a wee" before he did all that was expected of him; but
I made his much better acquaintance about this time and acquired the
greatest respect for his game, especially for the accuracy and delicacy
of his approaches with the mashie. It was a new club to me, and
something of a revelation in its possibilities. For it would, of itself
and without any special effort of the player, do all to the ball that
might be done with our old irons only after a deal of cut had been
carefully put on. I do not at all regret that labour; it was an
excellent education; but there is no doubt that the mashie simplified
the approaching problems. It made an easier game of it. I have been
looking up the details of this championship, and find one of its
"points" to have been the meeting of Johnny Ball and Johnny Laidlay, the
first of very many encounters of its kind, resulting in the English
Johnny's win by three and two. So that was the fate of the Scot; he fell
by no unworthy hand. There is always consolation in this reflection.
Henry Lamb, as I read on the same record, had fought his way to the
final over the corpses of some stout foes. The first round gave him a
bye; but then he had to meet Mr. Charles Anderson, forgotten by golfers
of to-day, but a stalwart in his time. Next, Harry Everard fell to him;
and then he had a bigger man than either, especially at St. Andrews, in
Leslie Balfour. He beat Leslie at the last hole. Then, in the
semi-final, he beat Johnny Ball by no less than seven and six to play,
and it was by the same sufficient margin that I defeated him. What
Johnny can have been doing I hardly know. That he must have been playing
some game widely different from his real one is very certain.