HOW I LOST THE CHAMPIONSHIP AND PLAYED THE MOST WONDERFUL SHOT IN THE
WORLD
In 1888 I lost the amateur championship at Prestwick, and I lost it
badly. I do not mean by that that I lost it to a bad player. It was Andy
Stuart who knocked me out, and for his game I have always had a high
respect. But I do not think that either of us played very well in that
match. I know that I did not. For one thing (or for two things) I topped
two tee-shots running, and one of them was going to the "Himalayas
Coming In," which, as all who know Prestwick will realize, is not a good
place to choose for a tee-shot "along the carpet." He was three up and
five to play, and I worried him down to one up and two to play, but he
did the seventeenth hole better than I and finished by laying me a
stimy. But I do not think I should have holed the putt anyhow--I was by
no means dead--and at all events he won the hole and so the match.
And then the next morning, when he was stropping his razor, he cut his
hand so severely that it was against the doctor's advice that he played
at all, but play he did, and seeing that he was far from his best by
reason of this damaged hand and that it was Johnny Ball that he had to
play, it is no great wonder that he was defeated; and he had all my
sympathy. He had my sympathy by reason both of his damaged hand and of
his defeat, but still I did think that if he were going to cut his hand
at all, it would have been as well that he should have done so the
morning before. In that case I, and not he, might have been up against
Johnny on the morrow.
I have no reason to look back on that match with pride, but I remember
it with special interest, because it had one of the most extraordinary
incidents in it that ever did happen in any match at golf. And this
notable incident was as follows. Going to the hole after the Himalayas
going out, which was much the same then as it is now, save that the
green was not levelled up and that the tee-shot probably did not run as
far, I sliced my second very badly, right over the hillocks on the right
of the green. I went over the ridge, with my caddie, to play the ball,
and pitched it over, with a loft, to the place where I thought the green
to be. Then I ran up to the top of the ridge, and looked, but could see
no ball. I asked then, as I came down over the ridge, where the ball
was. There was a small concourse of perhaps a score of spectators. "Oh,"
they said, "the ball has not come over." "Not come over!" I repeated,
filled with astonishment. "Why, I know it has!" As a matter of fact it
had been lofted high into the air and both I and the caddie had seen it
with the most perfect distinctness. Still, it appeared that it was not
there; it almost seemed as if the ordinary operations of Nature's laws
had been suspended and the solid gutty had been dissolved into thin air
in mid flight.
Then, as we all were looking about, in much surprise, a man spoke up. He
was a Mr. Kirk, a townsman of St. Andrews and a fine golfer. He took
part in the first amateur championship when it was played at St.
Andrews, but he had come to this one as a spectator only. He said,
"Well--I did think I felt a tug at my pocket." (By this time we all were
very much intrigued to imagine what could have happened to the ball.)
And at that he looked into the outside breast pocket of his coat; and
there the ball lay, on his handkerchief, like an egg in a nest.
Has a more wonderful thing ever happened at golf? I, at all events, have
never heard of any more extraordinary series of small marvels ever
taking place. In the first instance it was wonderful enough that the
ball should thus plump down so cleanly and neatly into the pocket at
all; then that none of the score or so of watchers should have seen it;
next, that not even the man into whose pocket it thus plumped should
have noticed it as it came down, imperilling his very nose and eyes;
and, finally, that it should have landed so gently that he did not
actually realize that anything had struck him--only "fancied he felt
something tug at his pocket." Naturally, if it were not for the cloud of
witnesses, I should never have ventured to tell the tale. My own
character, if I have any, for veracity is not nearly high enough to
stand such a strain.
These are the facts; and then of course arose the question as to what
should be done with the ball. As it happened, it did not arise in a form
very acute, because Andy Stuart was well on the green in two and I, in
Mr. Kirk's pocket, standing on the edge of the green, in three. We
agreed finally that the pocket should be emptied where the pocketer
stood, and from there I played out the hole and lost it. It is almost a
question whether such a shot as this did not deserve to win the hole.
Curiously enough the only other golfer I ever knew who played a ball
into a man's pocket is Andy Stuart himself. He hit a full drive right
into the coat tail pocket of Lord Lee, the Scottish Lord of Session. But
his lordship was very far from being unaware, like Mr. Kirk, of the
pocketing. He was quite painfully aware of it. As Andy was at that time
at the Scottish Bar, it seems to me that it was a very injudicious
stroke for him, as a rising young advocate, to play.
The curiosities of that great shot of mine are not exhausted yet. For a
full quarter of a century I told that story, saying that not a soul had
seen the ball come over the hill, and that, but for Mr. Kirk bethinking
himself of the fancied tug at his pocket, I should have had to treat
that ball as lost. And then, one day when I was waiting before the
Clubhouse at Biarritz, there came up to me one whom I knew by sight
only, Colonel Von Donop, of the Royal Engineers. He introduced himself,
using as the medium of introduction that stroke and that ball. It
appears that he, though I had not known it all those years, had been
standing further along the ridge at a point whence he could see both me
as I played the shot on the one side and the little crowd of spectators
on the other. He saw the ball rise into the air, and also saw it drop,
as he thought even at the time, into a spectator's pocket. He also saw
the discussion and the search which took place when I came over the
hill, and when I replied with some indignation to the statement that the
ball had not gone over also. He was just about to come forward to
explain what he had seen when Mr. Kirk found the ball and the incident
terminated. It was the last and crowning act in the curious comedy, that
I should discover, twenty-five years later, and in the south of France,
that there had been an unsuspected spectator of that funny little
episode in the West of Scotland.
Johnny Ball, thus defeating Andy Stuart, found himself in the final face
to face with that very frequent foe, in this and after years, Johnny
Laidlay. The latter had been playing very finely: he had won a
tournament with a good entry at Carnoustie, and had picked up many
medals in the Lothians, but he could not hold Johnny Ball in that final.
The Sassenach seemed to have the better of the match all the way and won
quite comfortably. The Hoylake folk had comfort at length in the long
deferred fulfilment of their great hopes for the local hero, and
certainly they have not to complain that he has disappointed them since.
There was something very attractive about the Prestwick golf at that
time. Nor has it lost that special attraction since. The West of
Scotland did not then, nor does it now, take the same general interest
in golf as the East, but there was a very zealous and very friendly
society of golfers belonging to the Prestwick club. It was the country
of the Houldsworths, the iron people, who took the keenest interest in
golf. Mr. William Houldsworth, known as Big Bill, was most kind to me
when I was a boy at Westward Ho! He made frequent pilgrimages to that
green. He was my first host at Prestwick, at his house of Mount Charles,
some miles out, and I think looked on it as some disgrace that, coming
from his house, I should lose the championship. At Prestwick itself too,
looking out on the fourteenth green, lived Mr. Whigham, the father of a
family of great golfers, both the brothers and the sisters. And about
the whole course there was, and still is, an air of friendliness. It is
not great golf, but it is exceedingly pleasant golf and also it is
exceedingly difficult golf. In the days of the "gutty" ball it was
great, as well as good, golf, but the golf there has never, to me, worn
the very business-like aspect of the East Coast golf. I do not say that
it is any the worse for that--on the contrary. It lies in a district of
more kindly climate and more rich pasturage than the East, and I
remember one open championship there when Willie Fernie, always a fellow
with a ready jest, came in humorously lamenting that he had lost his
ball twice "on the putting green." It was a sad grassy year that season,
and if you might not actually lose the ball on the putting green itself,
you might, and you did, spend many a minute in search for it only just
off the green. No mowing could overtake the growth. And of course
Prestwick has all the picturesqueness of the Clyde estuary--the Kyles of
Bute, Arran and the rest of the professional natural beauties of that
coast--for its setting.