THE MAKING OF INLAND COURSES
The first architect of the inland courses, when golfers began to learn
that inland courses might, in some large measure, give them the game
that they wanted, was Tom Dunn. He went about the country laying the
courses out, and as he was a very courteous Nature's gentleman, and
always liked to say the pleasant thing, he gave praise to each course,
as he contrived it, so liberally that some wag invented the conundrum.
"Mention any inland course of which Tom Dunn has not said that it is the
best of its kind ever seen."
His idea--and really he had but one--was to throw up a barrier, with a
ditch, called for euphony's sake a "bunker," on the near side of it,
right across the course, to be carried from the tee, another of the same
kind to be carried with the second shot, and similarly a third, if it
was a three shot hole, for the third shot. It was a simple plan, nor is
Tom Dunn to be censured because he could not evolve something more like
a colourable imitation of the natural hazard. A man is not to be
criticized because he is not in advance of his time.
Moreover, these barriers had at least the merit that they were
uncompromising. You had to be over them, or else you found perdition,
and if you only hacked the ball out a little way beyond the first
barrier with your first shot you could not carry the second barrier
with your third. You were like a hurdle racer who has got out of his
stride.
The course, constructed on these lines, on which I used to play most,
from London, was Prince's at Mitcham--the most convenient of access of
all, before the days of motors. I used to have great matches here with
Jack White, before Sunningdale was made and he went there in charge.
Subsequently the mantle of Tom Dunn, as course constructor in chief,
fell on the shoulders of Willy Park, and his ideas were more varied. He
was also a good deal more thorough, more elaborate and more expensive in
his dealings with the inland courses. He was the first to advocate the
wholesale ploughing up of the soil of the course, and the re-sowing. He
architected Broadstone, Sunningdale and a host more, and when he had
finished with the Sunningdale green he had certainly produced the best
thing in the way of an inland course that up to that time had been
created. He did his work well, but it was not entirely or even mainly
due to him that Sunningdale was so good. The soil was more light and
sandy, more like the real seaside links, than that of any other inland
course.
They had done wonderful things at New Zealand, where Mr. Lock-King, with
Mure Ferguson aiding and abetting, had fastened mighty engines to pine
trees and dragged them up by the roots, fashioning a golf course out of
a pine forest.
That was pioneer's work in a double sense, for it not only engineered
this particular course where the trees had covered all the land, but it
also showed to other people how possible it was to make a course out of
forest in other places. It is not only possible, but it is also a good
deal less laborious, to grub up the forest trees than it is to get rid
of a very dense growth of smaller undergrowth, such as there was to deal
with at Le Touquet, in France, for instance. Then the soil in all this
pine forest country, such as we see about Woking and Byfleet, is very
light and sandy, as the inland soils go, so that it was fine natural
material for golf when once the trees had gone. The latest construction
of the kind is at St. George's Hill, near Weybridge, where the trees had
been much better cared for for generations and in consequence were far
larger and more difficult of up-rooting than at New Zealand. There they
had to blast the boles of the trees with dynamite before they could get
them out of the ground. But of course the bigger timber was of greater
value and helped to pay the labour bill.
These forest courses have done another thing for us, they have taught us
the value of a tree as a golfing hazard. Our forefathers would have
scoffed at the idea of a tree on a golf links, although there was for
many a long year opportunity for the golfer to find trouble in the trees
which came out threatening the course at a certain point at North
Berwick. But then they did not have their actual roots in the soil of
the links itself. They were outside it, over the boundary wall. But as
for the opportunities which the tree hazard gives for those subtleties
of slicing and pulling round, or of cutting the ball up with a very
vertical rise, let those who have seen Harry Vardon on a course of this
tree-beset kind bear witness. And the tree has at least this virtue:
that it is permanent. It does not get trodden down and hacked out of
existence by a niblick as the faint-hearted whin does.
At Woking the natural trouble on the ground was heather rather than
trees, and a fine course they have made of it. But of all, that at
Sunningdale has always seemed to me just about the best of the inland
ones--certainly the best of the earlier made ones. Then I was at Walton
Heath, as a guest of Mr. Cosmo Bonsor's kindly hospitality, when that
great inland green was opened. Harry Colt had by that time gone to
Sunningdale, and was making improvements on the original plan of Willy
Park, but Walton Heath was a monument to the skill of that other of our
amateur course constructors, Herbert Fowler. He made a very good thing
of it, as the wonderful success of that Club has testified since. But it
soon passed out of the hands of Mr. Bonsor, and for how much the energy
of Sir George Riddell, who acquired the chief interest in it, counted in
its popularity it would be very hard to say. Assuredly it counted for a
great deal. Then they had James Braid, importing him from Romford, and
his attractive personality and great fame helped the Club. Another like
him, our old friend Taylor, was by this time established at Mid-Surrey,
and the Club there was a power, by reason of the goodness of its green,
its numbers and the strong players belonging to it.
It would be a very dull and futile business to go into all the
development of the inland golf which went on during these years. Enough
has been said. But you could not draw anything like a full picture of
the golf of the last fifty years without noticing this development. The
inland Clubs, and especially those about London, have become a force. As
their members go forth to play from the big City which is the common
centre they are the better able to make their opinion felt; and their
word has become of importance in modern golf. It is possible that it is
destined to have a larger importance yet. But I have no business with
prophecy.
And also there are big inland Clubs, which have already brought weight
to bear on golfing counsels, in the Midlands. They have associated
themselves into a Union, as have several other clusters, and all these
help in the forming and expression of opinion. But, apart from all this,
the great reason why they attract members and why they are able to carry
weight at all is that their courses are so good. The course constructor
has been learning, and so has the greenkeeper. I had a delightful letter
from Peter Lees, the famous greenkeeper to the Mid-Surrey Club. He
writes: "When I find the worms too numerous, I reduce them." The worm
used to be the great trouble and despair of the guardian of the inland
putting green in the old days, but here we have Lees writing of dealing
with them as it were by the very nod of Jove. When he finds them too
numerous, he "reduces them." The mode of reduction is so well known and
so easy that he does not think it worth while to waste a word of
explanation on it. We have the nice story of a certain greenkeeper of
the olden school being asked, "What kind of grass is this?" the inquirer
referring to a sample that he had just picked up from the course. "Oh,"
came the puzzled reply, "there's only one sort of grass--green grass."
That is a reply that is almost typical of the "green-ness" of the
greenkeeper in the earliest days of the management--if that is the right
word for it--of the inland greens, but the modern keeper has to
"discourse in learned phrases" of such varieties as fescues and poas,
and hardly thinks himself entitled to full respect unless he can fire
you off all the Latin names of the varieties of grasses that occur on
our inland greens and courses. The keeping has really become quite a
science.
And at their best, that is when the weather is treating them kindly,
there is not that vast difference in quality between the best of our
inland greens and the seaside greens which our forefathers have led us
to suppose. The big merit of the seaside links, which the inland can
never hope to match, is that it is such a good all-weather course. With
its porous soil it does not become so water-logged in the wet years, nor
does it become so dessicated in the dry. It is a more perpetual joy. But
the days are long past when men could say that the seaside links were
the only ones worth playing on, or that the seaside Clubs alone were
worthy of attention.