THE INTERNATIONAL MATCH
Certainly the Royal Liverpool Club has deserved well of the golfing
community. It started the amateur championship, and in 1891 or 1892 the
idea occurred to some enterprising genius at Hoylake of the
International Match. What though interest rather waned in it, and it has
been abandoned now, during the years that it was played it was an
interest to many, both of those who played in it and of those who merely
looked on. They called me into their counsels and we roughed out some
such scheme as was ultimately adopted. There was much talk as to whether
it were better to score by match only, or by aggregate of holes won and
lost only, or by a combination of the two. I favoured the combination,
but lost, and "matches only" has always been the scoring adopted.
It is not to be denied that we of England received a very grievous shock
when we learned that Jack Graham was not going to play on our side, but
intended to throw in his golfing lot with Scotland, the country of his
origin. Of course he had a perfect right to do so. He is a Scot,[7] I
believe on both sides, but then the idea had been, in the institution
of this match, trial of the golf learnt in England against the golf of
Scotland, and if Jack Graham himself was pure Scot, his golf was pure
Sassenach, every stroke of it learnt on that Hoylake where he lived. It
is not too much to say that that decision of Jack Graham upset the
balance of forces very materially, for this match was always (save for
one occasion) played before the amateur championship tournament, and
Jack was, and is, a terrible player in the early stages of any meeting.
It is apparently his constitutional misfortune that he is not able to
last through a long sustained trial. Twice certainly, and I think three
times, I have taken one of the bronze medals of the championship while
he has had the other: that is to say, that both of us have survived to
the semi-final heat. But further than that, Jack has never been able to
last, and has been beaten at that point by men to whom he could give
three strokes comfortably in ordinary circumstances and in the earlier
stages of the tournament. He has been a terrible disappointment to us
all, in this way, for a more brilliant amateur golfer never played. It
is his health that has knocked him out every time--a lack of robust
nerves.
This going over of Jack Graham to the enemy, as we regarded it,
introduced another small trouble into the International Match. It was
always said (with what basis of fact I hardly know) that it would cause
too much "feeling" in Hoylake if he were pitted against either Johnny
Ball or Harold Hilton in this match. So the sides had to be so arranged
that this terrible thing should not happen--it was all rather farcical.
As it was, I had to play Jack Graham in the first International Match,
which was at Hoylake, and took a sound beating from him. That first
fight was the occasion of a battle royal between Johnny Ball and Bobby
Maxwell, the former only winning, though it was on his own green, by a
single hole on the thirty-six. During these years Bobby was rather
regarded as the champion of the Scottish amateurs, and the International
Match would be notable, if for nothing else, for the Homeric contests
between these two. The most fantastic of them happened in the year when
exceptionally, as I have noted above, the match was played before, not
after, the amateur championship. It was at Muirfield, in 1903, when I
got into the final, only to be beaten handsomely there by Bobby Maxwell.
We played the International Match the next day, and I had to fight Fred
Mackenzie, who afterwards went as a professional to America and is now
at home again and playing very good golf at St. Andrews. He did not play
very good golf that day, however, though it was good enough to beat me;
for I found myself not tired exactly, but utterly indifferent, after all
the strain of the championship, which I had had to endure up to the
final round, and could not tune myself up to concert pitch at all. But
on Bobby it was very clear that the strain had not told in anything like
the same way. He played extraordinarily. I do not believe that Johnny
Ball played badly at all, yet he was beaten, I think, by more holes than
any other man ever has lost in the International Match. Whenever he did
a hole in a stroke over the right number, Bobby Maxwell did it in the
right number; and whenever Johnny did it in the right number, Bobby
performed a miracle and did it in one less.
One of the most amusing matches I ever did play was with Gordon Simpson,
a few years later, in the International when again it was at Muirfield.
On the first round I was four up at the fourteenth hole; and then I let
him win all the last four holes, so that we came in to luncheon all
even. Then, in the next round, he was four up at the fourteenth, and,
exactly as I had done in the morning, so he, in the afternoon, let me
win all the last four holes. He got a good three at the
thirty-seventh--the hole was in a very "kittle" place and the green was
mighty keen, so that the three was hard to get--and so won the match.
But in the course of that match I did a thing that I never have done
before or since. He laid me a stimy, with his ball so near the hole that
the only chance was to pitch my own ball right into the hole. By a bit
of good luck I did it, but by a bit of unconscionable bad luck, the
ball, after rattling about against the tin inside, came out again and
stood on the lip of the hole. As the match was played, it just made the
difference; but even had I won, it would not have made the difference in
the whole team match. Scotland, as usual, were too good for us and had a
match to spare.
I had played Gordon Simpson once, many years before, in the amateur
championship, when he was a student at St. Andrews' University, and the
circumstances had been amusing. He was the champion of the University,
and when we set forth from the first tee we were accompanied by a
gallery which appeared to me as if it must include all the youth of that
venerable seat of learning. They behaved wonderfully well, with a great
deal of sportsmanlike consideration for my feelings, but at the same
time were naturally so dead keen on their own man that they would have
been something more than human, or older than undergraduates, had they
been able to refrain from a little baring back of the teeth, and just
the murmur of a growl, when I happened to hole a good putt.
Unfortunately things went rather badly for their hero at the start. I
contrived to get a lead of some four holes on him, and hung on to them
till the match was finished. Of course I did my best to win, but I never
in my life won a match which gave me less satisfaction. It was so hard
on the University champion, surrounded by all his best friends. However,
he had his revenge, as said, at Muirfield. But as for this stimy loft,
into the hole and out again, it is quite sure that there was something
not just right about the tins in use in the Muirfield holes at that
time, for it happened to Bernard Darwin to play precisely the same
stroke with precisely the same result in the championship. The fact is
that if the flooring of the tin is set at a certain angle this chucking
out again of a ball lofted in becomes a dynamical certainty. The makers
of the tins ought to see to it that the floor is not set at this angle.
If it is set nearly horizontal the thing does not happen, and it is when
set too vertically that it is almost bound to occur. But, except for
this case of my own ball and that of Bernard Darwin's, I have never
heard of another instance of the kind, though probably golfing history
can furnish many.
The last occasion, before its death of inanition, on which the
International Match was played, it was played in foursomes. I do not
think that was an experiment likely to prolong its life. With all
respect in the world for the foursome as a very pleasant pastime, I
cannot believe in it as anything like the test of golf that a single
provides. To me it is an infinitely more easy form of the game, though
I am well aware there are good judges and good players who think
otherwise. I can only say that for my own part it has always been easier
for me to play well in a foursome than in a single. It is not, I
believe, the common experience.
I am inclined to think it is a pity that the International Match is
dead. There are many who would like it revived. It gave useful practice
to the young players coming on, who thus had a chance, apart from the
championship, of showing what they could do in good company. That was
its value, more than as a spectacle of the two countries set in array
against each other. Scotland nearly always had the better of us. For one
thing they have always seemed to lunch more wisely or more well than we
of England. Perhaps their digestion is more powerful. At all events it
has happened again and again that we have been leading finely at
luncheon, only to be beaten decisively in the end. But if we had had
Jack Graham on our side even this lack of the gastric juices would not,
I think, have turned the day so often against us.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 7: Alas, if writing to-day, in 1919, it is in the past tense
that this and some following passages would need to be phrased. He was
gallant in volunteering, joined a Scottish regiment, and met a soldier's
death.]