THE SECOND AMATEUR CHAMPIONSHIP
In 1887 we were back, for the amateur championship, on that Hoylake
links which was the arena of the preliminary trial trip that Macfie won
in 1885. I see that Arthur Molesworth was in that tournament of 1887,
and survived until the fourth round, where he was beaten by J.G. Tait,
eldest brother of poor Freddy. Another name of note is that of a small
boy, appearing in such big company for the first time, Harold Hilton. He
was beaten in the third round by Mr. John Ball, "old John Ball," as we
called him for many years, although when I first went to Hoylake he was
only John Ball the second, his father and Johnny's grandfather being
still alive. One of the most remarkable points in the championship of
the year was the game that Johnny's father put up all through it. It
never was a showy affair at all, that game of his, but it was wonderful
how effective it was on the Hoylake course which he knew as well as the
inside of his own pocket. He beat Hilton, as noted, then he knocked out
J.G. Gibson, the Black-heathen, who had been going strongly and had
defeated Henry Lamb the round before; and in the fifth round, which was
the semi-final, I came up against him. I had only survived the previous
round by the skin of my teeth, and remember all about it well. It was
against Mr. Gregor Macgregor, a sound player, and a Scot, as his name
suggests. I was getting on fairly comfortably with him, with a hole or
two in hand, when he played a stroke in which I was morally sure that he
hit the ball twice. I did not know whether to claim the point or not,
and, not being possessed of the ideally equable temperament, was upset
by the incident and played the last holes very badly, halving the round
and being rather lucky to win the nineteenth hole. I forget whether, in
point of fact, I did claim that foul, which I knew that Mr. Macgregor
was quite unconscious of making, but what I do know is that I received
from him afterwards one of the very nicest letters ever written, saying
how sorry he was that anything of the kind should have happened, and
that I should have been upset at all. So the conclusion of that
nineteenth hole left me with John Ball, the elder, to play in the
semi-final; and meanwhile that other John Ball, whom we distinguished as
Johnny, was knocking Jack Tait out in the other semi-final. They were
playing ahead of us, and as we went to the seventeenth (now the
sixteenth) hole old John Ball was one up on me. And I had not played at
all badly; only he had played in the most gallant way and had really
hardly made a mistake. He was one up sheerly on the merits.
Then he said to me, as we walked after our second shots to the
seventeenth hole and an emissary came back to say that Johnny had beaten
Jack Tait, "It would be a funny thing if father and son had to play it
off together." It was an innocent remark enough, and yet it nettled me a
little, and I said in answer, "Wait a bit, Mr. Ball: you haven't done
with me yet." Perhaps I ought not to have said it: it was rather a
boastful answer. I can only plead the excuse of comparative youth. I
sincerely hope it was not that reply which put him off his next stroke,
but something bothered him as he played it. I saw him look up once, as
he addressed the ball, at the legs of the people standing (or not
standing as still as they should have been) opposite him. Anyone who
knows Hoylake will know the stroke he had to play--to pop the ball over
the cross bunker before the green, of the then seventeenth and now
sixteenth hole. What happened was that he took his eye off and popped
the ball into the bunker instead. I lofted mine over all right and won
that hole. Then, by a lucky approach and a good putt, I got the last in
three; and that was a stroke better than the hole ought to be done in
and one too good for Mr. Ball.
So then the next, and the final, problem was the worst--Johnny! I dare
say I was a little lucky in that match: I know I had one rather lucky
shot. I got into the bunker just before the green, going to the short
hole, called the Cop. I dug the ball out, pretty near the hole, and
holed the putt. It was fortunate, but I have always contended that with
practice, the judgment of the strength with this dig shot is not nearly
so difficult as it seems to the uninitiated, and at Westward Ho! there
was every opportunity for initiation, in the shape of bunkers close to
the hole. Moreover, in those days, there was no rule forbidding you to
test the consistency of the sand by a trial dig into it before the real
shot. I have always thought the rule which forbids the testing dig a
very bad one, because a clever bunker player ought to have the advantage
of his cleverness, and this prohibition takes away much of the
advantage and puts him more nearly on a level with the man who has no
idea of judging strength with this shot. Then, two holes from home,
Johnny broke his brassey. I see that Mr. Everard, speaking of this
incident in the Badminton Book, described it as "the very bad luck to
break his favourite brassey." That is interesting to note now, as a sign
of the times. It indicates an importance belonging to a brassey which it
certainly would not have now, when a full second shot with a wooden club
is hardly ever wanted. But of course it was hard luck then, and perhaps
it was due to that that I got dormy one up. Then Johnny obligingly
topped his tee shot going to the last hole. I did not play the hole very
bravely, and had to hole rather a good putt to get a four. I do not
think Johnny troubled to putt out. He was a little nearer than I was,
but not stoney. Anyhow, that was the conclusion of a lucky championship
for me.
This reference to the far greater importance, in those days, of the
brassey reminds me of a queer notion that Johnny Laidlay had. If he had
a big match to play he always bought a new brassey for it. His theory
was that he could play better with one that was strange to his hand. If
this paradox is at all to be explained it must be by psychic, rather
than physical reasons. I take it to mean that, just because the club was
strange to his hand, the strangeness subconsciously suggested to him the
need for a closer keeping of the eye on the ball. And the subconscious
suggestions are always the best. I may be quite wrong, but that is the
only explanation I can find for it. But in this again we see the vastly
greater importance of the brassey in the days when the gutta-percha
balls were used. It was equally important with those eclipses with which
I won both these championships. Johnny Ball and Johnny Laidlay always
stuck to the gutties, I think. Certainly the latter did, and so would I
too, had the old short course at North Berwick been my chief golfing
haunt; for there the value of the pitch shot was out of all proportion
greater than on the larger courses elsewhere. But as for the reason why
the brassey was so much more in vogue then, it has been rather
misunderstood. It was not because you drive so much further off the tee
with the rubber-cored balls than with the gutties--if both are hit dead
true there is not a mighty difference in this. But it is because you can
drive the rubber-cored balls so very much further with the iron clubs
than you could the gutties. That is the great difference. Ironing range
means a considerably longer distance with the rubber-cores than with the
solid balls, and the distance gained by taking a brassey instead of a
driving mashie or a cleek is as nothing compared with what it used to
be.
It is very difficult to draw a correct comparison between these courses
of St. Andrews and Hoylake, then and now, in respect of the difficulties
that each presented to the golfer. The whins at St. Andrews encroached,
on what is now either the clear ground of the course, or is dotted only
with occasional trappy bunkers amongst which the ball often finds quite
a good lie, in such a dense mass that a wandering ball was hardly worth
the trouble of looking for among them. At Hoylake the little rushes,
which are now scarcely to be regarded as a hazard at all, used to be
very dense too, and in the summer and autumn a tough long grass grew
among them, so that your ball lay as if in a plover's nest, and
sometimes it took you several strokes to get out. It was a horrid
hazard. Then at some of the earlier and later holes of the course the
remaining posts and rails of the disused racecourse were very vexing. To
find yourself tight up against a post was only a little less annoying
than to hit it with a full shot and to find your ball come dancing back
to you or flying past your head as if it meant to brain you. All these
things happened. Then the rabbit holes were more numerous and came
farther out on the course. It was about this time that I was moved to
much fury in course of a match by seeing my ball lying at the bottom of
a burrow, where I could not reach it, and, when I was on the point of
dropping another ball with loss of stroke (as was specifically permitted
by the local rule regarding rabbit holes), being told, "You mayn't do
that--it's a lost ball." "Lost, be d----d," I said. "What d'you mean by
lost? Why there it is: you can see it for yourself." "Yes," said the
other, "but a ball is lost unless you can garther it"--he was a Scot,
with a patriotic accent, and he spoke of the ball as if it were a daisy
or other flower. I concluded the round under protest and a cloud of
wrath; and, what made the cloud blacker--the Committee upheld the view
of the "gartherer." Possibly they may have been right, but certainly I
did not think so at the time.