"Got that?" he said. "September thir--Oh, I was forgetting! Add
September twelfth, corner wheat. September thirteenth, marry Amelia."
"Marry Amelia," I echoed, moistening my pencil.
"Where do you play this--what's-its-name--golf?"
"There are clubs all over the country. I belong to the Wissahicky
Glen."
"That a good place?"
"Very good."
"Arrange today for my becoming a member."
* * * * *
Sandy McHoots arrived in due course, and was shown into the private
office.
"Mr. McHoots?" said Vincent Jopp.
"Mphm!" said the Open Champion.
"I have sent for you, Mr. McHoots, because I hear that you are the
greatest living exponent of this game of golf."
"Aye," said the champion, cordially. "I am that."
"I wish you to teach me the game. I am already somewhat behind schedule
owing to the delay incident upon your long journey, so let us start at
once. Name a few of the most important points in connection with the
game. My secretary will make notes of them, and I will memorize them.
In this way we shall save time. Now, what is the most important thing
to remember when playing golf?"
"Keep your heid still."
"A simple task."
"Na sae simple as it soonds."
"Nonsense!" said Vincent Jopp, curtly. "If I decide to keep my head
still, I shall keep it still. What next?"
"Keep yer ee on the ba'."
"It shall be attended to. And the next?"
"Dinna press."
"I won't. And to resume."
Mr. McHoots ran through a dozen of the basic rules, and I took them
down in shorthand. Vincent Jopp studied the list.
"Very good. Easier than I had supposed. On the first tee at Wissahicky
Glen at eleven sharp tomorrow, Mr. McHoots. Hi! You!"
"Sir?" I said.
"Go out and buy me a set of clubs, a red jacket, a cloth cap, a pair of
spiked shoes, and a ball."
"One ball?"
"Certainly. What need is there of more?"
"It sometimes happens," I explained, "that a player who is learning the
game fails to hit his ball straight, and then he often loses it in the
rough at the side of the fairway."
"Absurd!" said Vincent Jopp. "If I set out to drive my ball straight, I
shall drive it straight. Good morning, Mr. McHoots. You will excuse me
now. I am busy cornering Woven Textiles."
* * * * *
Golf is in its essence a simple game. You laugh in a sharp, bitter,
barking manner when I say this, but nevertheless it is true. Where the
average man goes wrong is in making the game difficult for himself.
Observe the non-player, the man who walks round with you for the sake
of the fresh air. He will hole out with a single care-free flick of his
umbrella the twenty-foot putt over which you would ponder and hesitate
for a full minute before sending it right off the line. Put a driver in
his hands and he pastes the ball into the next county without a
thought. It is only when he takes to the game in earnest that he
becomes self-conscious and anxious, and tops his shots even as you and
I. A man who could retain through his golfing career the almost
scornful confidence of the non-player would be unbeatable. Fortunately
such an attitude of mind is beyond the scope of human nature.
It was not, however, beyond the scope of Vincent Jopp, the superman.
Vincent Jopp, was, I am inclined to think, the only golfer who ever
approached the game in a spirit of Pure Reason. I have read of men who,
never having swum in their lives, studied a text-book on their way down
to the swimming bath, mastered its contents, and dived in and won the
big race. In just such a spirit did Vincent Jopp start to play golf. He
committed McHoots's hints to memory, and then went out on the links and
put them into practice. He came to the tee with a clear picture in his
mind of what he had to do, and he did it. He was not intimidated, like
the average novice, by the thought that if he pulled in his hands he
would slice, or if he gripped too tightly with the right he would pull.
Pulling in the hands was an error, so he did not pull in his hands.
Gripping too tightly was a defect, so he did not grip too tightly. With
that weird concentration which had served him so well in business he
did precisely what he had set out to do--no less and no more. Golf with
Vincent Jopp was an exact science.
The annals of the game are studded with the names of those who have
made rapid progress in their first season. Colonel Quill, we read in
our Vardon, took up golf at the age of fifty-six, and by devising an
ingenious machine consisting of a fishing-line and a sawn-down bedpost
was enabled to keep his head so still that he became a scratch player
before the end of the year. But no one, I imagine, except Vincent Jopp,
has ever achieved scratch on his first morning on the links.
The main difference, we are told, between the amateur and the
professional golfer is the fact that the latter is always aiming at the
pin, while the former has in his mind a vague picture of getting
somewhere reasonably near it. Vincent Jopp invariably went for the pin.
He tried to hole out from anywhere inside two hundred and twenty yards.
The only occasion on which I ever heard him express any chagrin or
disappointment was during the afternoon round on his first day out,
when from the tee on the two hundred and eighty yard seventh he laid
his ball within six inches of the hole.
"A marvellous shot!" I cried, genuinely stirred.
"Too much to the right," said Vincent Jopp, frowning.
He went on from triumph to triumph. He won the monthly medal in May,
June, July, August, and September. Towards the end of May he was heard
to complain that Wissahicky Glen was not a sporting course. The Greens
Committee sat up night after night trying to adjust his handicap so as
to give other members an outside chance against him. The golf experts
of the daily papers wrote columns about his play. And it was pretty
generally considered throughout the country that it would be a pure
formality for anyone else to enter against him in the Amateur
Championship--an opinion which was borne out when he got through into
the final without losing a hole. A safe man to have betted on, you
would have said. But mark the sequel.
* * * * *
The American Amateur Championship was held that year in Detroit. I had
accompanied my employer there; for, though engaged on this
nerve-wearing contest, he refused to allow his business to be
interfered with. As he had indicated in his schedule, he was busy at
the time cornering wheat; and it was my task to combine the duties of
caddy and secretary. Each day I accompanied him round the links with my
note-book and his bag of clubs, and the progress of his various matches
was somewhat complicated by the arrival of a stream of telegraph-boys
bearing important messages. He would read these between the strokes and
dictate replies to me, never, however, taking more than the five
minutes allowed by the rules for an interval between strokes. I am
inclined to think that it was this that put the finishing touch on his
opponents' discomfiture. It is not soothing for a nervous man to have
the game hung up on the green while his adversary dictates to his caddy
a letter beginning "Yours of the 11th inst. received and contents
noted. In reply would state----" This sort of thing puts a man off his
game.
I was resting in the lobby of our hotel after a strenuous day's work,
when I found that I was being paged. I answered the summons, and was
informed that a lady wished to see me. Her card bore the name "Miss
Amelia Merridew." Amelia! The name seemed familiar. Then I remembered.
Amelia was the name of the girl Vincent Jopp intended to marry, the
fourth of the long line of Mrs. Jopps. I hurried to present myself, and
found a tall, slim girl, who was plainly labouring under a considerable
agitation.
"Miss Merridew?" I said.
"Yes," she murmured. "My name will be strange to you."
"Am I right," I queried, "in supposing that you are the lady to whom
Mr. Jopp----"
"I am! I am!" she replied. "And, oh, what shall I do?"
"Kindly give me particulars," I said, taking out my pad from force of
habit.
She hesitated a moment, as if afraid to speak.
"You are caddying for Mr. Jopp in the Final tomorrow?" she said at
last.
"I am."
"Then could you--would you mind--would it be giving you too much
trouble if I asked you to shout 'Boo!' at him when he is making his
stroke, if he looks like winning?"