For the benefit of golfers who depend on this department exclusively for
their tips on the game, we have engaged Mr. Donald MacBawbee, the famous
professional at Prairie Dog, as first aid to the helpless, and we feel
safe in promising that he will add delightfully to the complications of
the sport.
Mr. MacBawbee is 5 feet 11⅜, and carries the conventional clubs, with
the addition of two implements which he calls a soakum and a pushum. The
first is a bludgeon of wood, and is employed for dispatching the ball
from the tee; the second is an iron for push shots. The grip of this
iron is tapered to a point at the end, so that when the hands are pushed
forward, which Mr. MacBawbee claims is the proper way to make the shot,
the chance of the hands slipping is reduced to an irreducible minimum.
The Prairie Dog pro is committed to heavy clubs, and consequently he
prefers lignum vitae to the conventional hickory. Concerning the length
of the implements he has very decided opinions. No golfer, he says,
should attempt to wield a club taller than himself or shorter than his
golf bag. A happy medium, he suggests, will prove most satisfactory.
Mr. MacBawbee lays much emphasis on the matter of stance. Two ways of
confronting the ball, he says, are the ramrod stance and the cab-horse
stance. The first is to be avoided, as several cases are recorded of
players who have broken a leg in swinging. The cab-horse stance is easy,
graceful, and relaxing. As an arch is stronger than a straight line, the
firmest of all stances, says Mr. MacBawbee, is the hoop stance, but this
is possible only for very bowlegged golfers. For this stance he advises
that the feet be placed rather near each other.
* * * * *
Says Mr. Jock Hutchinson, who is illuminating the arcanum of golf for the
benefit of the Dub Family Robinson, “I am 5 feet 10¼ inches in height,
weigh 137 pounds, and carry twelve clubs.” That bag would bar him from
the Lincoln Park Country Club.
Hon. Jock’s arsenal of irons includes one which he calls a “stopum.”
Percy Hammond’s bag includes a peculiar instrument which might be called
a “topum.”
* * * * *
Besides a “stopum” every bag of golf clubs should contain a startum,
a topum, a sliceum, a hookum, a sclaffum, a killum, and, for general
utility, a dubum.
* * * * *
Doc Hammond’s golf bag has two new clubs in it besides his topum—a
lose-um and a wet-um.
* * * * *
Home-bound from the links, we were thinking, for the somethingth time,
that golf was a great waste of time and money, when we observed a citizen
starting out to break a few hundred clay pigeons. Everything is relative,
as Box remarked to Cox.