although it is with the greatest reluctance that we deny the charge of
greatness, we still deny it. Of course, dear reader (presuming that you
have been sufficiently interested in our tennis career to read thus
far), if you didn't know anything about tennis and were to see us
smashing out some of those brilliant drives of ours which always land
just a few inches out of the court, or getting that meteoric service
over the net--sometimes we rully do, rally!--you might think we were
great. But 't is not for us--you understand the delicacy of our
position.
As a matter of fact, we did begin to suspect that we were a winner. Not
that we got into the habit of bragging about our playing at all, but
occasionally we would tell our ladifrens that we thought Norman Brookes
and McLaughlin were greatly overrated, and that we wished our club would
send us over to Wimbledon to take part in one of the tournaments. They
would always assure us that they felt we must be a very fine player, for
we were so well built for tennis, so tall and active and such a long
reach. Nice girls!
Just when our self-confidence was at its height, we spent a week-end at
a place on the Lake where they had a good court. They also had a couple
of pretty girls in the family. There was another chap, too, a weedy
little Englishman with a blond moustache and a tenor voice that was
almost a soprano. The conversation turned on tennis--we believe that we
brought it around to that point ourself--and we gave a dramatic account
of an awful beating we had handed out to a fellow at the club only a day
or so before. We even contributed living pictures of several of our most
deadly strokes.
"You play tennis, too, don't you, Mr. Blyth?" asked one of the girls,
more by way of bringing him into the conversation than anything else.
He blushed and said he did--a little. Then nothing would do them but
that he should play a match with us. He seemed very unwilling, and the
more unwilling he was, the more anxious we became to play. Finally we
gave our word of honor that we would not drive very hard. He said it
was awfully decent of us, and he borrowed one of the girls' rackets,
while we drew our gold-medal beauty from its nifty leather case.
Did we drive hard? No, we didn't drive hard. We didn't get a chance.
His first ball paralyzed us. Then that little blond brute would get
into the middle of the court, and he would place the ball just an inch
inside the left-hand line. If we got it back--by a miracle we
occasionally did--he would place it just an inch inside the right-hand
line, varying the programme with smashes which a man twenty feet tall
couldn't handle. He had a service which broke in all directions except
where our racket was; and he could pick the ball off the ground or jump
ten feet in the air and kill it with equal ease. He drove till our
knees wobbled and our head swam; and then he popped over little lobs
with a cut on them, which made us look like a cinnamon bear trying to
catch butterflies.
We could hardly eat any dinner that evening. For the rest of the
week-end the girls sat at that little bounder's feet and begged him to
show them how to "serve," how to hold their rackets for the back-hand
stroke, etc., etc.
Later we learned he was champion of half a dozen English counties.
[Illustration: THAT GLORIOUS FIRST DRIVE]
*That Glorious First Drive*
Safety lies only in complete absence--we hope the printer won't make
this "a couple of absinthes," though they might help if one could get
them. But, remember, if you really wish to escape the infection, stay
away from golf-courses. Touch not a single club, not a blooming ball.
Above all, resist that desire to swing one of the darn sticks--"just to
see how it feels." That way madness lies. As soon as you touch the
leather end of the thing, the malignant animal magnetism gets to work
and you are lost. After that there is nothing for your family to do but
appoint a guardian for you.
Do as we say, don't do as we did. For we, who write this in sack-cloth
and ashes--we speak metaphorically, of course, though we do notice a
little cigar-ash on our vest--we neglected this simple precaution and
are suffering accordingly. We let ourself be lured to the links. We
picked up a driver and waggled it about a few times, and now we are
suffering from an acute and very distressing form of the disease. This
is how the calamity occurred.
An old and esteemed friend of ours, for whom we feel the respect which
one able man feels for another, said to us not long ago: "Doing anything
Saturday afternoon, old man?" He spoke with an affected carelessness,
but we have since had reason to suspect that his casual manner covered a
seething ocean of vindictive purpose. It was his intention to infect us
with the virus of _dementia golfiana_.
"Oh, nothing special," we said, after pausing for a few moments to give
the impression that we were mentally conning over a long list of
important social engagements. "Oh, nothing special"--fatal words!
"Good! Come on down and walk around the course with me at
Barborough"--that isn't the name exactly, but it will serve--"they're
getting it into nice shape now. It'll do you good to get out into the
country a bit. Will you come?"
He spoke with an appearance of cordial good-fellowship. We believed in
the entire friendliness of his intentions--alas, ours has always been a
trusting nature! We said we'd go.
"All right--catch the two-fifteen radial. I'll be waiting for you at
the club-house. You can't miss it."
We caught it, along with two hundred and sixty-seven children, women,
and men, who were likewise wooing the country breezes at points along
the road. Several of the children made the trip in our lap. The little
dears seemed to know instinctively how much we hated it. When we got
there our trousers had a large number of creases, in addition to those
which our valet puts in them. But fortunately we were wearing our other
suit.
When we had walked back half a mile or so from where the curmudgeon of a
conductor put us off, we discovered the club-house. It is a very
handsome building, impressively combining the characteristics of a
munition-magnate's bungalow and a summer hotel. Obviously it had been
built long before Prohibition became a serious menace.
We looked all about for our friend. He was nowhere in sight. Several
gentlemen in soiled negligee roamed aimlessly about the grounds,
dragging what looked at a distance like short lengths of drain-pipe. We
discovered afterwards that they were golf-bags and these gentlemen were
doing their own caddying--the caddies, we presume, being all engaged as
bell-hops in the club-house.
Finally, a very hot and dusty and particularly disreputable gentleman,
dragging a reluctant bag by the nape of the neck, came towards us. We
recognized our friend. He looked tired and unhappy, and his eye had the
dull stare of a somnambulist. We have since learned it was merely a
mild form of golf-face.
"Come on over to the tee," he said.
We brightened up at once--our throat really was rather dry. But that
wasn't the sort of tea he meant. Instead, he took us over to a little
square terrace. Gouging a handful of damp sand out of a box, he made a
tiny mound and set the ball on top of it. Somehow or other it looked
very small and pale and pitiful--especially as it was already pretty
badly scarred up. Then he wiped his hands on his trousers--in view of
their condition perhaps it would be more accurate to call them
pants--and drew out of his bag a long stick with a wooden head about the
size of a small cocoanut. It was certainly an awesome weapon.
Stepping up to that miserable ball, he carefully assumed one of the most
awkward positions we have ever seen a human being adopt. His feet were
about a yard apart and his toes were pointed with elaborate care. Then
he laid the cheek of that murderous club alongside the ball, waggled it
a few times, gazed long and earnestly at a point in the landscape a mile
or so away, and finally brought his eye back again and fixed it on the
ball with a hypnotical glare. We thought we could see the ball tremble.
Our own heart was palpitating frightfully. We had no idea of the strain
of watching a man play golf.
Slowly that ponderous club arose. Higher and higher it went. But never
for a fraction of an instant did our friend cease to glower at that
unfortunate globule. Then, just as the strain was about to become
unendurable, he swung. The mighty knob on the end of that stick
shrieked through the air. It made a complete circle and a half and
nearly threw our friend off his feet. We have since learned to recognize
this as the "follow-through."
So interested were we in our friend's extraordinary movements--we had
never seen him act like this before--that it was almost a full minute
before it occurred to us to look for the ball. It was still there.
Missed? Could it be that he had really--but no!
"I always make a trial swing," he said with a smile decidedly wan and
unconvincing. "Helps a fellow to get the force into it, you know." We
didn't know, and we had strong suspicions, in spite of our entire
ignorance of golf.
Once more he went through the performance, waggles and all. Once more
the big club swung up, and once more it came down. This time it hit the
ball--hit it with a vengeance. Tearing a nasty gash in the top of that
miserable pellet, the club sent it bounding in agony along the ground
for about forty yards.
Our friend grew violently red in the face, and he said--but, on second
thoughts, it doesn't really matter what he said. There are times when
even the best of men.....
We followed meekly as he strode after the offending spherule with a
homicidal gleam in his eye. Hurling his bag of clubs to the ground,
after he had picked out a thing with an iron head which no man should be
allowed to carry around in a law-abiding country, he sneaked up on the
ball and hit it a clout which drove it clear out of sight over an
intervening hill.
"Ha! ha!" he said, with a chortle of maniacal glee, "that's better.
That's more in my style." But personally we felt as though we had aided
and abetted a murder.
Then we both went and looked for that blessed ball. We hunted under
every bush and blade of grass, but it had crawled away wounded to die
alone. Fifteen minutes later he decided to drop one on the edge of the
green. He finally got it into the hole all right after several lovely
putts.
We have no intention of giving a minute description of our friend's
game. We have since found reason to believe that it was not exactly an
awe-inspiring exhibition. But, as he explained to us several times in
the course of play, we should have been there earlier to see his work
during his first round. So far as we could judge from his description,
it would have made Harry Vardon jealous enough to quit the game and get
a job delivering meat.
"You should have seen my shot from the third tee--the Devil's Drive, we
call it. It was a lallapaloosa! By the way, what is the record drive?
I've forgotten for the moment."
We told him not to ask us, as we wotted not of such things. He smiled
at us with what seemed an expression of great relief, as though he felt
he could speak with confidential frankness.
"Well, whatever it is," said he, "mine was at least three hundred and
sixty yards! How about that?"
We said that it was very fine; and no doubt it is. But we noticed that
he lowered his voice as he spoke--perhaps because of the impressive
nature of the statement, perhaps because he was afraid someone would
overhear him, someone who knew better.
As we said above, it is not our intention to enter into the details of
our friend's game, or to give a verbatim report of the language he was
led to use on several regrettable occasions. Our whole purpose in
writing this article is to tell what we ourself did in a moment of
recklessness. We are telling it to serve as a warning to others who
still are unbitten by the dread microbe of "gawf."
We had gone right around the course, and had finally got back to the
club-house and the first tee. We had duly admired the scenery of the
grounds, which were really far too beautiful to be delivered over to a
lot of feeble-minded golfers. Our friend threw down his bag of clubs
with a grunt of relief.
"Better take a shot or two," he said, "while I slip into the office to
have a word with the secretary."
That was the moment of doom. That was the time when, breathing a brief
prayer to such of the saints as we still have a pull with, we should
have sprinted down the road to the car-line. We should have begged our
friend to take the things away with him. We should have broken every
stick in the bag and burned the pieces. We should have thrown ourself
down in a fit. We should have done anything rather than run the risk we
actually took. Alas, we knew not what we did.
Heedless of impending doom, we laid our new hat on the ground. We
playfully extracted the big club with the swollen head and the brass
bottom. We clawed out of the box a handful of wet sand and made with it
a neat little pyramid, on the top of which we carefully placed the ball.
Then we stepped back and contemplated it. It was a very pretty thing--a
nice little pyramid and a nice little white ball. It looked shamefully
easy.
The club felt rather queer, and it wobbled in our grasp. If we had
recognized the omen, there might still have been hope for us. But we
were cheerfully, idiotically irresponsible. No time was lost on the
proper "stance." We stood any old way. Our only desire was to knock
that ball off that silly little pile of sand; and we simply made a swipe
at it--crack!
Did we hit that ball?--O Lord, did we hit it! The birds around
Barborough must still tremble when they think of the way that blessed
ball went whizzing among the clouds. Don't ask us how we did it. We
don't know. We just swung the club as hard as we could at the ball,
heard a nice, crisp crack, turned around two or three times, almost
putting our legs out of joint in the process, and then recovered in time
to see that locoed spheroid sailing along like a racing aeroplane, a
mile high and going due north. Just missing a crow, it vol-planed to
earth and lay shimmering like a diamond in the sun. How far away? We
won't tell you--you wouldn't believe us if we did.
"Some drive!" said a voice at our back. It was the club professional!
Our cup of pride filled up with a rush and slopped all over our soul.
Hastily seizing an iron, we ran after the ball. We didn't hit it hard.
We didn't want to break the windows in the club-house. But a couple of
brisk taps dropped it dead on the tee again. We weren't trying to play
the hole, of course, but were merely batting the ball around. If we had
tried to play it, we would probably have done it in about three.
Naturally, we repeated the performance several times. We were in a
fever of delighted excitement. We couldn't miss the ball if we tried.
We had it tamed and domesticated. It would eat right out of our hand,
sit up and beg, and lie dead. And all the time we didn't suspect for a
moment that this exhilaration was merely the first symptom of that
dreadful and incurable disease--gawfitis!
We have since learned that this is not at all unusual with beginners.
Every golfer we have discussed the matter with tells us that he had a
somewhat similar experience. In fact, one fellow assured us that the
first time he ever had a club in his hand he played the first four holes
in par--he was holing putts forty feet long as though there was no place
else for the ball to go. But we didn't know this. We didn't suspect
that the demon of golf lures his victims on. We simply took it for
granted that we were a natural master of the game, and that all we had
to do was to devote an occasional afternoon to it and we would soon have
our room filled with silver cups big enough to bath the dog in.
Our friend came out of the club-house and stood for a few minutes with
the professional watching our work. But the presence of a "gallery" did
not disturb us. We were beyond all that. We had Colonel Bogey down and
were thumping the life out of him. When we had finally and reluctantly
finished--it was time to go in and get something to eat--our friend told
us that the professional had said: "That man has the makings of a real
golfer in him."
It may seem to the reader that it was very nice of our friend to pass
this compliment on to us--especially after the exhibition of golf he
himself had given. But it wasn't nice. It was the refinement of
cruelty. Then and there our doom was sealed. The mid-iron was in our
soul. That glorious first drive had done it. A few days later we went
out with another friend and played our first game. But that is quite
another story.
[Illustration: THAT AWFUL FIRST GAME]
*That Awful First Game*
In a previous article we have told of picking up a friend's golf-club in
a spirit of gay nonchalance and making a glorious drive--our first. How
our friend artfully left us alone with his bag of tools, how we drew a
club out of it, how we carelessly set a quivering little white ball on a
neat little pyramid of sand, how we swung the deadly weapon with serene
insouciance, and how that doomed spheroid tore a shrieking gash in the
atmosphere and lit on a hillside in the next county--all that we
detailed to our friends with a frankness untempered by any feeling of
personal modesty. We were not modest about it. We saw no reason to be
modest. On the contrary, we felt we had every reason to be proud of
ourself, and we were at the time.
Naturally, we were not satisfied to let things go at that. If we had
stopped then and there, if we had refused firmly and with cuss-words
ever to touch a club again, we might to-day be able to go about with the
pleasant conviction that we were a champion in possibility. When people
talked of young Ouimet, as they still do occasionally--it is a great man
who is famous for more than a few months in these bustling times--we
could smile in a thoughtful way and ask casually if we had ever told
them of that time when we had picked up that club and placed that ball,
etc., etc.
Of course, they would probably be bored by the recital--especially after
we had told it a few dozen times--but think of the satisfaction it would
be to us to know that if we turned our giant intellect and steel muscles
to the subject of golf, we would have Ouimet wishing that his parents
had apprenticed him to a grocer or a plumber instead of making him a
little caddy.
Unfortunately, we did not refrain from golf. We allowed ourself to be
persuaded into going out and playing a game--starting a game, that
is--and now whenever we hear the word "golf," we turn a peculiar bright
salmon pink, and get a trembling all over us. That first game of ours
was a thing no man who respects himself could look back on with anything
but agony. Nothing but our passion for truth, even at the risk of
exposing all the weakness of our nature--it is the same determination
with us as with St. Augustine and Rousseau and the other great
confessors--nothing but this could lead us to mention the game at all.
But our favorite motto is, "The whole truth and then some." So with
trembling pen we tear the veil from this crying gash on the milestones
of memory--there seems to be something wrong with this metaphor. But
never mind. On with the tale, let truth be unrefined!
A few days after that famous first drive we dropped into a friend's
office to discuss several important matters of business--such as the
weather and the market quotations in the leading blind-pigs. Our real
purpose, however, was to tell him, quite incidentally, how we picked up
that club and placed that ball, etc., etc., etc.
"Ah, ha, sounds like a pretty nice drive," said Bjones--let's call him
that, anyway--when we had finished our modest little recital of how we
had established a new record for the course. "You must come out and have
a game with me at Boozedale to-morrow afternoon--hope I can give you a
game all right."
As a matter of fact, this friend of ours is a mighty golfer. He's the
sort of player that spends a bad night every time he takes more than
eighty-five to go around in. And when he plays he drags around with him
a leather barrel--or rather, the caddy drags it--containing enough
carnal weapons to arm a division of the Bolshevik army. To see him
coming to a decision between a jigger and a driving mashie, to see him
taking his stance and addressing the ball, would fill the breast of the
least reverent with awe. Napoleon playing his famous approach-shot with
the Old Guard at Waterloo had nothing on our friend Bjones dropping one
dead on the eighteenth green. But, alas, it was only later on that we
discovered all this.
"Hope I can give you a game," said he.
We knew not the irony that lurked in his suave tones. It ran right off
the umbrella of our self-satisfaction. We could see in it nothing but
deference to our huge natural genius for the game. Besides, we were
delighted at this chance to give free rein to our golfing abilities. We
felt that to refuse the invitation would be flying in the face of
Providence, which had obviously designed us for a champion. We did not
accept too eagerly, however. We felt a certain reluctance about taking
a fellow out to his own club and making a holy show of him. But finally
we allowed ourself to be persuaded. The hour was named and the car.
Next day at the appointed time we were on the job. It was a lovely day,
not too warm and not too cold--just the right temperature to call out
the best that was in us. We felt that we would make our previous
driving record look like something that had been done in the palaeozoic
age. When we caught sight of Bjones, however, we felt twinges of
regret. Bjones seemed to look older than usual. And his stoop was more
apparent than ever. We thought we could see lines of anxiety on his
face.
When we made that famous first drive we were, of course, in our ordinary
street-clothes--not that they are so ordinary, you know, not at all--but
still the garb of convention. This time, however, we removed our
civilized habiliments and got into a curious assortment of garments that
Bjones dug out of his locker for us. They must have been in his family
a long time. There was an old khaki shirt, and a pair of lavender
trousers with a tendency to open-work effects. The boots had evidently
been worn for years by a gigantic policeman, till a blacksmith came
along and filled the soles full of horse-shoe nails. Bjones said they
were fine for side-hills. Perhaps they were, but they made us feel like
a touring-car travelling in chains.
After Bjones had succeeded in making us look like a tramp that had just
been run off a farm by a couple of bull-dogs, he led us out to the first
tee--right in front of the verandah where a number of ladies were
sitting. They smiled at us and seemed to wonder if our escape had been
noticed, or if we had been discharged as cured. It was a mortifying
position. We found consolation, however, in the thought that our first
stroke would show them that a champ' is a champ' for a' that.
A couple of men who were ahead of us drove off and hurried down after
their balls into the valley below. After a suitable pause Bjones teed
his ball up and whacked it into space in the general direction of a
little white flag on the other side of the valley. But we waited. We
could see the pair ahead of us putting on the first green, and we
weren't taking any chances of slaughtering a fellow-creature, even if he
did take four to the hole--mentally we allowed ourself about two.
Finally they holed out and disappeared on their way to the next tee.
Carelessly we jabbed down a little lump of wet sand, set the ball on it,
took a good look at the flag in the distance, waggled the club a few
times in a business-like manner, and swung. There was no joyous crack.
We gazed off over the landscape, but could see no ball wildly careering.
"Ahem, you were a little too hurried, old man," said Bjones.
We retrieved the ball. It had rolled about six inches under the impulse
of the wind raised by the club. It was a painful moment, and we
murmured a few words which we hope will not be remembered against us in
the day of final reckoning. Then we erected a slender column of moist
sand, somewhat on the model of the tower of Babel. It was a miniature
campanile. On the top we carefully set the ball.