THE FIRST GOLF IN AMERICA
In the autumn of 1887 I did a very foolish thing: I went to America. I
do not by any means imply that it is not an essential part of a liberal
education to visit that great country, nor do I mean that it would be
any act of foolishness on the part of a golfer to go there now, but I do
mean that in my own golfing circumstances, and in the golfing conditions
of the States at that time--which was a condition of no golf at all--it
was very silly of me to go away from golf for so long. For that is what
it involved. I was abroad for several months. At that date there was no
golf in the States. I did not touch a club while I was there; and after
I came back, after this long while of letting the hand grow unfamiliar
with the club, the game never came so easy to me again. From that
experience I believe that it may be taken as a maxim by all golfers who
have learnt the game as boys, that they run a risk of losing a measure
of skill and confidence, which they may never regain, if they do not
touch a club for many months together. You see, this game that a man has
grown up with, learning it as his muscles grow, so that it is more or
less literally true that he has "grown into it," is rather different
from the game that he learns later, after his muscles have set. The
effect of going away from golf for a long time is that you lose some of
these lessons that you have acquired as you grew; you have then to
re-learn them, so far as you may, as if they were a new acquisition that
you had to take possession of after you have finished growing; and you
never acquire quite the same unconscious and instinctive grasp of them.
I went to America again the following year. But it did not matter then.
The harm had been done; the first and best lessons, or a large number of
them, were lost--their teaching laboriously and only partially to be
regained. And on that second visit I actually did take out some clubs.
It is a condition of things hardly to be realized now, but at that time
there was not, to my knowledge, such a thing as a golf club or a golf
ball in the United States. Canada had its established Clubs and courses
at Quebec and Montreal. Probably somewhere, in secret places, some few
Scots were pursuing their national pastime, on very "natural" courses,
in the States too: it is impossible to think that it must not have been
so. But probably their sanity was shrewdly doubted, and they did not
court the public eye. As for "natural" courses, the whole boundless
prairies at certain seasons invite the knocking of the golf ball about
on them.
On this my second visit to America it had been suggested, I think by Mr.
"Bob" Purdey, with whom I stayed near Meadowbrook, on Long Island, that
I should bring some clubs over and show the people what sort of a game
golf was. But I went first to Mexico and subsequently to California,
leaving the clubs in New York the while, and when I came back sundry
members of the Meadowbrook Club turned out on a certain Sunday to see
me give an exhibition show. We cut some holes in the soil, probably with
carving knives, and I proceeded to instruct them, by precept and
example, as to what golf meant. I cannot think that my exposition was
very effective. They did not seem to think that it meant very much. They
tried shots for themselves, and the result of those trials was not such
as to give them a very exalted opinion of golf. The most favourable
criticism that I can recall was that "it might be a good game for
Sundays." I do not think it was extravagant praise.
I believe that was the first time golf was ever played in the States,
though there may, of course, have been these secret Scots, as I have
said. However, the Meadowbrook people were so far impressed as to ask me
to send them out some clubs, when I got back--which I did, from the shop
of Peter Paxton, then at Eastbourne. But what became of those clubs I
never heard. Neither they nor my excellent example inspired America with
golfing zeal. That great country had to wait before awaking to a true
sense of the merits of the great game. But time has its revenges and the
awakening has come. Also, at the moment of writing, it has the effect of
making England conscious that she must "Wake up"; for that
twenty-year-old Mr. Ouimet has just taken the American championship, in
a manner that has made history, out of what seemed the securely holding
hands of either Ray or Vardon.
I think it was in 1888, soon after I came back from America, that I had
my first match of any public note with Johnny Laidlay. I think it was
the Town Council or some other people anxious to attract golfers to
North Berwick--is it conceivable now that there should be a desire to
attract more?--that gave some prizes for a scratch tournament open to
all amateurs. Johnny Laidlay persuaded me to enter (he was my host for
the occasion), and he gave me a good hammering in the final bout. For we
both survived till the final, and I remember that, starting out, we both
played badly enough for a hole or two. Then I lighted a pipe and smoked
it, and it is a sign of how times have changed that one of the Scottish
papers, commenting on the match, said, "At this point Mr. Hutchinson lit
a pipe and smoked it and actually did not remove it from his mouth while
playing the strokes--a thing never seen before in a big match." That
seems queer comment at this time of day, when the incense of tobacco
curls perpetually upward from the pipe of champion Ray and when the
cigarette of Harold Hilton is like the fire that is never quenched. But
the soothing of the nerves and accuracy of game that I had hoped to
follow from the lighting of that particular pipe did not ensue. Mr.
Laidlay found his game, while I was still looking vainly for mine, and
he hammered me, if I remember right, pretty easily. The reporters were
fairly out after me that day. They criticised the pipe unfavourably, and
then one of them recorded a painful incident of the game in the
following terse and pregnant sentence: "Here Mr. Hutchinson broke his
niblick, his favourite club." I do not know whether this literary
gentleman had seen me in bunkers and niblicking out of them so
frequently that he inferred the niblick to be the club that I most loved
to have in hand; at all events, that was his comment, and it went home.
I think they must have had a golfing reporter at this time with a vein
of ironic humour about him, for it was then, or nearly then, that one
of them wrote about Captain Willy Burn: "Here the Captain hit one of his
characteristic shots--far into the whins!" Whether it all was irony or
innocence we did not know, for this commentator did his good work by
stealth and we never found him out.
I was in no way surprised at losing that match with Mr. Laidlay,
especially at North Berwick, where he was very strong. But I did lose a
match about this time which I had not thought of losing, and by its loss
did a little towards the making of golfing history. All history is
curiously made. The coming of a little sandy-haired boy from Northam
village to do the work that an odd boy does about our house near Northam
village is not an incident that looks big with history, but when the
little boy's name is known to be J.H. Taylor, the historical importance
becomes evident. He left that "odd boy" work and went as a gardener's
assistant, where, for a short while, we lost sight of him. But then he
was put on as an assistant on the Westward Ho! links in aid of Sowden,
the old Californian Forty-niner, who looked after the green, or left it
to look after itself. We passed the time of day with him, quite as if we
were his equals, with no notion of his future greatness. Then the
Northam village players (I hardly know whether their Club was formally
instituted by that date) said they would like to play the Royal North
Devon Club a match. I was put to play Taylor. I did not think much about
the job. I had hardly seen him play a stroke before. Going to the very
first hole I remember a shot of his with a cleek: it went low; I thought
he had half topped it; but it continued going. It had seemed certain to
fall into the bunker guarding the green. But it carried that bunker and
lay close to the hole. Again and again I found the same deceptive
low-flying shot going a great deal further than I had expected it to. I
began to realize then that it was because of his stance, with the ball
so very far back towards his right. I also began to realize that I was a
hole or two down. I did not play well; really, at that date, I ought to
have beaten him. But he was one up with four to play, and then I laid
him a stimy. He had two for the half. But instead of putting round, as
all ordinary men of experience would, he tried to loft, for the hole,
with his ordinary--and his only--flat iron. He just failed: but he holed
the next putt, though he was not dead. Finally he beat me--I think at
the last hole--and I congratulated him, as in duty bound, adding that
when he knew a little more he would not be trying to loft stimies when
he was one up and had two for the half. So I said, thinking to be wise,
whereas it was I really who did not know--not knowing of what Taylor
even then, and even with a flattish iron, was capable in the way of
putting stop on the ball.