Hope springs eternal in the human jar;
Man never is, but always to be par.
* * * * *
“Let firmness combined with ease be your motto,” advises George O’Neil.
Or, as Horace suggested to Maecenas, on the links of Ancient Rome, “Otium
cum dignitate.”
* * * * *
Woman’s place, as Socrates said, is in the home. One of her appeared on a
public golf course yesterday in so transparent a skirt that four members
of a foursome topped their approach shots, and one of them left his ball
on the green.
* * * * *
Golf would be a perfect game if it were not for the golf gabble; and
this must be accepted as inevitable. If a person who is conscious of the
absurdity of golf gabble is unable to quit it, how hopeless is the case
of the unconscious gabbler.
Here’s an example of it: We bring off a good iron shot, and instead of
ascribing it (silently) to chance or happy circumstance, we must announce
to our companion that at last we have solved the secret of the iron shot.
And so we gabble our way around the course, till the sound of our own
voice is wearisome to our own ears.
It’s a Scotch game. We borrowed it from the Scotch, but we added the
gabble.
* * * * *
Olds Grant Rice and Bill Hammond of the N. Y. Mail and Sun respectively
came out and golfed with ye Scribe. Grant is a regular player, but Bill
is kind of irregular.
* * * * *
The Saturday Review says that the fascination of golf is understandable,
but “the wicked hate of the non-player is less easy to grasp.” Nobody
objects to the game itself; it is the incessant gabble about it that
bores one to tears. Tie a non-player to a bench in the locker room of any
golf club and he would go mad within the hour.
Golf is a gabby game because it is so stuffed with ifs—“if I hadn’t
hooked,” “if I hadn’t looked up,” “if the ball hadn’t hit the bunker,”
etc. And it is all a great waste of breath, nobody is interested in your
“ifs,” not even the man you are playing with.
* * * * *
Hon. Brand Whitlock, staff correspondent for the _Line_ at Brussels,
advises us that there is a good golf course there, and that the Flemish
caddies touch their caps politely and do not seek to draw players into
intimate and animated conversation.
* * * * *
In Wilmette, we gather, the goats are those who play golf on Sunday, and
the sheep are those who go to church. This classification is flattering
to neither flock.
* * * * *
Curious golfers who may follow the learned arguments on “what constitutes
a good hole” must conclude that the purpose of the architects is not to
make the game easy for democracy. Par figures mean nothing to the average
player; they are for the few gifted beings who participate in national
tournaments. As courses are now laid out, there is a “short way to the
green,” calling at the outset for a carry of, say, 190 yards. The next
thing will be to station a policeman at the bunker, to chase off the
course a player so unlucky as not to carry the hazard.
* * * * *
“Golf is the pastime of small men with large incomes, who are too old to
play tennis and too dull to talk to women.”—WALTER PRITCHARD EATON.
It is also the pastime of large men with small incomes, who vary golf
with tennis, and who are too busy to hang around a samovar discoursing
the drayma.
To be entirely fair to Mr. Eaton (although one is under no compulsion to
be fair to a dramatic critic), he put the sniffy remarks about golf into
the mouth of one of his short-story characters. Tennis players should
not scorn Golf. We have discovered that playing golf improves our tennis
game at least fifty percent. Golf compels deliberation in striking; and
waiting for a tennis ball, instead of leaping at it, is the secrecy of
accuracy; not to mention the turn of wrist when the racquet (or golf
ball) is taken back. This is what keeps the tennis ball out of the net
and the golf ball out of the rough.
* * * * *
Of course you know that Lady Brassie is a champion golf player in England.
* * * * *
A golfer in Rockland, Me., has a cat which chases the ball and sits by
it until the player arrives. This is interesting chiefly as being the
solitary reason for a cat’s existence.
* * * * *
“Each caddy should be at his ball by the time the player arrives.”—Indian
Hill note.
But what happens is: “Hurry up, kid! I’ve found the ball.”