THE COMIC COMING OF THE HASKELL BALL
In 1891 my brother-in-law, returning from a visit to America, came down
to stay and to play golf with me at Ashdown Forest, and brought with him
a dozen or two of a new kind of ball which, he said, had lately been
invented in the United States and was the best ball in the world. The
balls were called, as he told me, Haskells. We went out to play with
them. He, as it happened, played very badly, and in a very short time he
was perfectly ready to go into any court of law and take his oath that
they were the worst balls in the world. I had formed my own opinion of
them, much more in accord with the verdict with which he had first
introduced them to me than with that condemnatory one which he passed on
them after two days of being off his game; but I refrained from
expressing my opinion too emphatically, with the result that when he
went away he said that, as for the remnant of the balls, he was not
going to be bothered "to take the beastly things away," so that I found
myself the possessor of a couple of dozen or so of excellent Haskell
balls--being, as he had said, in the first instance, the best balls in
the world--at a time when no one else in Great Britain had such a ball
at all!
[Illustration: Old Leather Ball.]
[Illustration: Hand-hammered Gutty.]
[Illustration: Machine-marked Gutty.]
[Illustration:
Duncan.
Taylor.
Braid.
Vardon.
Gutty _v._ Rubber Core.]
It is quite true that some months previously, at North Berwick, I had
been given to try, by a professional who had just returned from the
States, a ball which I now recognized to be the same, in some of its
essentials, as these Haskells which my brother-in-law brought over. It
was the same, except for one external but extremely important
essential--its nicks were ridiculously too light and slight, not nearly
enough indented. So I tried that ball and found it wanting--it would not
fly at all. But what I did not realize at the time was the reason why it
did not fly; or, if I did realize, as one could not fail to do, that the
nicks were not emphatic enough, I had not a suspicion of the merit of
its interior qualities. I had not appreciated that it was an amazingly
good ball if only this slight matter of its exterior marking had been
attended to. I had taken no more thought or notice of it.
Armed with these new weapons I prepared to go out to Biarritz, where the
annual foursome match against Pau was just impending. My partner was to
be Evy Martin Smith, and as soon as I arrived I told him that we must
use these new balls for the match. He strongly objected, being a firm
Conservative, tried the balls, with every intention of disliking them,
and disliked them accordingly. The fact is that I was, at this moment,
just the last man in the world to appear on any scene as an advocate of
a new ball. Only a year or two before I had taken an unfortunate
interest in a patent substance called "Maponite," of which, in addition
to a thousand and one other things for which gutta-percha and
indiarubber are used, golf balls were to be made. And wherein exactly
was the weak point about the stuff as a material for golf balls I never
knew, for the trial balls that they made for us were excellent--I
remember that I won an open tournament at Brancaster with them--but as
soon as ever they began to turn them out in numbers they were useful for
one end only--for the good of the club-makers--for they were hard stony
things which broke up the wooden clubs as if one had used the clubs as
stone hammers.
So I was not a good apostle of a new ball--rather discredited in
fact--but I did induce Evy Smith to play with the ball finally, under
deep protest, and we justified its use by winning. Meanwhile the balls
were beginning to filter from America into England. It was difficult
indeed to get people to appreciate their merits: the balls were not
numerous, and were still hard to obtain. At Johnny Low's request I sent
him one for trial. He was writing at that time in the _Athletic News_.
He wrote a most amusing article about the ball--said that he had tried a
stroke or two with it in his room, and had found it so resilient that it
went bounding about the room like a fives ball in a squash court and
finally disappeared up the chimney and was never seen again.
In fine, he gave the ball his banning, "not because it was an expensive
ball"--it is to be remembered that it was rather a shock to be asked to
pay two and sixpence for a golf ball, whereas before we had paid a
shilling as the normal price--"but because it was a bad ball," meaning a
ball "singularly ill-adapted for the purpose" of golf. So difficult is
it for even a clever man and wise in the royal and ancient wisdom, as
Johnny Low undoubtedly is, to keep an unprejudiced judgment about any
new thing.
Expensive as the ball was in the beginning, it was soon found that it
was far more economical than the solid "gutty"; both because it lasted
in playable condition far longer and also because it did not knock about
the wooden club to anything like the same extent. But within a very
short while there came such a demand for those balls, so greatly in
excess of the supply, that there was a time when as much as a guinea
apiece was paid for them, and numbers changed hands at ten shillings.
That was round and about the time of the championships, both open and
amateur being held that year at Hoylake, and both these championships
were won with the Haskell balls.
I am calling these balls Haskells, because that is the name by which
they were known and spoken of, after their American inventor, at this
time. The reluctance of players to use them, and the gradual overcoming
of that reluctance, had many comic incidents associated with it.
The amateur championship that year was full of wonders. It was won by
Charles Hutchings, he being then a grandfather and fifty-two years of
age. He knocked me out, among other better men, beating me at the last
hole. And then he beat that brilliant and greatly to be regretted young
golfer, Johnny Bramston. In the final he had to play Fry, and
established a very big lead on him in the first round. He had about six
holes in hand with only nine to play, and then Fry began to do conjuring
tricks, holing putts from the edge of the green, and so on. In the event
Charles Hutchings just won by a single hole after one of the most
remarkable final matches in the whole story of that championship. And it
is to be noted that these two finalists, who proved themselves better
able than most others to adapt themselves to the new touch of these
livelier balls--for nearly all the competitors used the Haskells--were
extremely good billiard players. Fry had won the amateur championship of
billiards more than once, and Hutchings was quite capable of such
atrocities as a three-figure break. I think the sensitive fingers of
these billiard players helped them to get the touch of these livelier
balls which were so "kittle" for the approach and putting.
After the amateur came the open, in which I did not take a hand, but I
heard a great deal of the preliminary discussions about it. Of course,
if the amateurs were difficult to convince about the merits of the new
balls, the professionals, who had their vested interest in the old, and
did not know how these were to be affected by the coming of the new,
were harder still to convince. However, the balls were too good to be
denied. Andrew Kirkaldy, a shrewd man, and one, besides, who had no
interest in the sale of balls, solid or rubber cored, was one of the
first and most enthusiastic converts. "The puggy," he declared, "is a
great ba'." He called it "puggy," which is Scottish for monkey, because
it jumped about so. "Ye canna' tak' eighty strokes to the roun' wi' a
puggy--the puggy will na' gae roun' in eighty strokes." However, on the
morrow of making that brave statement, he contrived, even with the
"puggy," to take several strokes more than eighty to go round the
Hoylake course for the championship. Alec Herd was one of the most
uncompromising opponents of the new ball until the very day of the
championship. He had declared that he hoped everybody else would play
with the Haskell, but that for his own part he meant to stick to his old
friend. And then, on the day of the play, behold Herd, who had said
these things, teeing up a Haskell himself on the first tee, and
continuing play with it until he had won the championship! It was a bit
of luck for him, hitting on the truth about the merits of the ball just
at the right moment. I do not think he would ever have won the
championship save for the Haskell ball. At the same time it is only fair
to him to say this, that he was--at least I think so--quite unlucky not
to win the championship two years previously. It was the year that
Taylor won at St. Andrews, and at that date, and for some little while
before the championship, Herd had certainly been playing the best golf
of anybody. Then the weather changed, just on the eve of the
championship. There came abundance of rain, which put the greens into
just the condition that Taylor liked. He won that championship, and
Herd, I think, was a little unfortunate not to win. But fortune restored
the balance of her favours by giving him this win at Hoylake with the
new ball long after we had ceased to think him a likely champion. Thus
once again, "justice has been done." Therewith the Haskell ball made its
reputation and came to stay. There was a talk of ruling it out, by the
Rules of Golf Committee, but Hall Blyth, then chairman, agreed with me
and others that it had won its way too far into popularity to be made
illegal, and the idea of legislating it out was dropped.