AN HISTORIC MATCH AND AN HISTORIC TYPE
Willy Park, always a man of some practical ingenuity, as well as a
magnificent golfer, had lately invented and patented a peculiar type of
putter. He had also invented, by way of an advertisement of this
crooked-necked club of his, the dictum that "the man who can putt is a
match for anybody."
Now Park, besides his other fine qualities, was a very gallant golfer.
It had been his way for some years, as soon as some man--be it Douglas
Rolland, or any other--had come to the top of the golfing tree, so that
everybody was talking about him and saying what a fine fellow he was, to
challenge this fine top bird of the roost, and back his challenge with a
L50 or L100 stake. There may have been a tinge of advertisement about
it, for Park was a good man of business and the first of the
professionals to realize what money there was in establishing golf
shops, but chiefly, I think, he played these matches for the pure sport
of the thing.
So now, Harry Vardon, being beyond dispute, at the tree top, Park must
issue a challenge to play him for a money stake, a home and home match,
two rounds at North Berwick and two at Ganton. Now you have to realize
that in those days Harry Vardon was so great a man, there was so much
keenness to see him play, that when he went out the gallery followed
him, they watched his every stroke, and they paid no more attention than
if he had no existence at all to the poor wretch who chanced to be
partnered with him. They would trample on this unfortunate creature's
ball without the slightest remorse: he was rather lucky if he were not
thrown down and trampled to death himself by the throng.
[Illustration: The Amateur Side at Sandwich in 1894.
Standing (from left to right): A. Stuart, S. Mure Fergusson, John Ball,
F.G. Tait. Sitting: H.G. Hutchinson, Charles Hutchings, A.D. Blyth, H.H.
Hilton.]
[Illustration: The Professional Side at Sandwich in 1894.
Standing (from left to right): Willie Park, A. Simpson, A. Kirkcaldy, W.
Auchterlonie. Sitting: J.H. Taylor, A. Herd, D. Rolland, W. Fernie.]
[Illustration: "Fiery"--Willie Park's Caddie.]
Willy Park was a shrewd Scot. He was not going to have any of this
nonsense when "the man who could putt" set out to prove, for money, that
he was a match for anyone, even for Harry Vardon at his best. The match
opened, therefore, at its very second shot, on the note of comedy. Park
had gone a little further off the tee than Harry Vardon, toward the
bunker guarding Point Garry Hill. That meant that Harry Vardon had to
play first, and after his play of the second shot the gallery made a
start to dash in, in their accustomed manner, quite regardless of the
other partner to the match. Park proceeded to teach them their lesson at
the outset. He did not hurry, like a guilty thing, to play his shot, as
most of the others who played with Vardon used to do: instead, he left
his ball altogether, with "Fiery," his faithful caddie, standing guard
over it. The people crowded forward as far as Fiery, but they were not
at all likely to go beyond him, most faithful henchman, and rather
truculent watch-dog, with round Scotch bonnet and streamers floating
behind, the clubs loose held, out of the bag, beneath his arm--I rather
think he would have called it his "oxter"--because he had for years
carried clubs before bags came into use, and the fine smoothness and
polish of the club handles was apt to be spoilt by dragging them in and
out of the bag. I never heard nor cared what other name he had than
Fiery, of which the propriety was written in flaming colours on his
face. So he stood, facing and keeping back the crowd from the ball--a
subject not unworthy of an historical picture and by no means to be
disregarded as a point in the golfing story of the last fifty years,
because he was a type, and nearly the last, of the old Scottish caddies,
and because this match was among the last of those of the old style.
Park's school was really a generation behind that to which belonged the
modern triumvirate.
So Park walked on, having left his ball; he walked on to the foot of
Point Garry Hill; then he ascended it, with great leisure, quite
regardless that the people raged together, and he looked at the flag,
which he did not in the least desire to see. All he did desire was to
teach the gallery their lesson, that he, Park, meant to count for
something in this match, that Harry Vardon was not the only player; and
when he had thus taught the lesson, which it were better that the people
should learn first than last, he came back leisurely to his ball again
and played it.
They took their lesson well--a Scottish crowd is not slow at the up-take
and has its sense of humour. Moreover, Park was their man, being a Scot.
They liked to see him taking himself seriously, and they did not crowd
on him inconveniently again.
And it was a most amusing match to watch, though just a little pathetic
too. Willy Park was most emphatically "the man who could putt." He told
me that he had been practising putting for that match to the tune of
from six to eight hours a day. It sounds terribly dull work; but
certainly Park was rewarded for it, for I never saw such putting, day in
and day out, as he was doing about the time of that match. And in the
match he putted extraordinarily. I speak only of the first portion, at
North Berwick. I did not see the latter end of it at Ganton; but I think
the result, if there ever could be, from the start, a moment's doubt
about it, was virtually all settled on the first thirty-six holes. Park
putted extraordinarily, but he still had to prove his dictum that the
man who could putt was a match for anybody. Vardon as surely could not
putt; but then he played all the rest of the game to a beautiful
perfection, whereas poor Park could not drive. He developed, at its
worst, that tendency to hook his drives which has always been a danger
to him. He arrived on the greens one stroke, or even two, behind Vardon.
But then he put the putt in, whereas Vardon often neglected the simple
precaution of laying it dead. So it went on, Park saving himself again
and again by this marvellous putting, and at last, after he had holed
one of fifteen yards right across the green, a crusty old Scot in the
gallery was heard grumbling to himself in his beard: "The on'y
raisonable putt I've seen the day." What he had come out expecting, an
all-knowing Providence alone can say.
But the strain of those repeated saves of holes apparently lost was too
severe to last. Vardon put a useful balance of holes to his credit even
at North Berwick. The final half of the match was to be played on his
own course of Ganton. There was only one possible conclusion to it. At
the end of the North Berwick contest I suggested to Park that he would
have to re-edit his dictum so that it should run "the man who can putt
is a match for anybody--except Harry Vardon," and he confessed, with a
melancholy grin, that he believed he would have to accept that
emendation.
With the disappearance of the old Scottish caddie, of whom Fiery might
very well stand for the prototype, there passed much of the old order of
golf, making way for the new. These old caddies themselves counted for
very much more in the play of the game than our modern club-carriers,
who are usually beasts of burden (and little beasts at that, just passed
out of their Board School standards) and nothing more. They know the
names of the clubs, so as to give you what you ask for, and that is
about as much as is expected of them. Sometimes they take a keen
interest, and identify themselves with their master's interests; but
such fidelity and keenness are rather exceptional. The ancient caddie
was a grown man: he was not, perhaps, an ensample of all the virtues,
and if he turned up on a Monday morning without a certain redness of the
nose and possibly a blackness of the eye, indicating a rather stormy
Saturday night, of which the intervening day of rest had not wholly
removed the damages, you might admire and be thankful.
But his zeal for your matches was unfailing. He made it a point of
honour to do all that the law allowed him, and all that it did not allow
him, so long as he was not found out, to aid and abet your inefficiency.
He expected that you should consult him about the club that you should
take, about the line on which you should play and about the gradients of
a putt. He was a profound student of human nature, discovered the
weaknesses of your opponent and urged you by counsel and example to
take advantage of them. In my early days at St. Andrews, when I was
playing a match with David Lamb, I was surprised, and more than a little
shocked, by the counsel that one of these sapient caddies gave me: "Let
us walk oot pretty smartly after the ba', sir. Mr. Lamb canna' bear to
be hurried." That was the proposal--that just because Mr. Lamb had a
dislike to playing in a hurry, we should hasten on after the ball so as
to induce him, by the power of suggestion, to hurry also, and so put him
off his game. Needless to say, as soon as my innocence had succeeded in
comprehending the inward meaning of the counsel, I repudiated it with
scorn and rebuked the caddie bitterly for suggesting it; and, equally
needless to say, he thought me both a thankless person and a very
particular species of Sassenach fool for so rejecting it. I have often
thought that had Bret Harte known the old Scottish caddie he would not
have needed to go to the Orient and to the Yellow Race for the type of
mind that he has sketched in his _Heathen Chinee_. Nevertheless there
was very much that was attractive and likeable in these henchmen of a
fervid loyalty and few moral attributes besides, and their
extermination, with that of other strange _ferae naturae_, is to be
regretted.