Transcriber's Note
This version of the text is unable to reproduce certain typographic
features. Italics are delimited with the '_' character as _italic_.
Bold font is delimited with the '=' character as =bold=. Words printed
using "small capitals" are shifted to all upper-case.
The illustrations were each presented with a full page caption, and
were separated from the text by blank pages. In this text, these
illustrations were moved to fall at paragraph breaks and appear as,
for example:
[Illustration: SUNNINGDALE
_The tenth hole_]
Please consult the transcriber's notes at the end of this text for any
additional issues.
THE GOLF COURSES OF THE
BRITISH ISLES
[Illustration: ST. ANDREWS
_Looking back from the twelfth green_]
THE GOLF COURSES
OF THE
BRITISH ISLES
BY
BERNARD DARWIN
ILLUSTRATED BY
HARRY ROUNTREE
LONDON
DUCKWORTH & CO.
3 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN
_All rights reserved_
_Published 1910_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. LONDON COURSES (1) 1
II. LONDON COURSES (2) 23
III. KENT AND SUSSEX 44
IV. THE WEST AND SOUTH-WEST 68
V. EAST ANGLIA 93
VI. THE COURSES OF CHESHIRE AND LANCASHIRE 111
VII. YORKSHIRE AND THE MIDLANDS 130
VIII. OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE 147
IX. A LONDON COURSE 158
X. ST. ANDREWS, FIFE, AND FORFARSHIRE 165
XI. THE COURSES OF THE EAST LOTHIAN AND EDINBURGH 181
XII. WEST OF SCOTLAND: PRESTWICK AND TROON 202
XIII. IRELAND 215
XIV. WALES 231
INDEX 250
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
ST. ANDREWS _Frontispiece._
SUNNINGDALE _To face p._ 4
WALTON HEATH " 12
WOKING " 18
MID-SURREY " 24
STOKE POGES " 28
CASSIOBURY PARK " 30
SANDY LODGE " 32
NORTHWOOD " 34
ROMFORD " 36
BLACKHEATH " 38
WIMBLEDON COMMON " 40
MITCHAM COMMON " 42
SANDWICH " 44
SANDWICH ("HADES") " 46
DEAL " 50
PRINCE'S " 54
LITTLESTONE " 56
RYE " 58
EASTBOURNE " 62
ASHDOWN FOREST " 64
WESTWARD HO! " 70
BUDE " 78
BURNHAM " 80
BROADSTONE " 84
BOURNEMOUTH " 88
BEMBRIDGE " 90
FELIXSTOWE " 94
CROMER " 98
SHERINGHAM " 100
BRANCASTER " 102
HUNSTANTON " 106
SKEGNESS " 108
HOYLAKE (1) " 112
HOYLAKE (2) " 116
FORMBY " 120
WALLASEY " 122
LYTHAM AND ST. ANNE'S " 124
TRAFFORD PARK " 126
GANTON " 130
FIXBY " 134
HOLLINWELL " 138
SANDWELL PARK " 142
HANDSWORTH " 144
FRILFORD HEATH " 148
WORLINGTON " 154
ST. ANDREWS " 166
CARNOUSTIE " 178
GULLANE " 182
MUIRFIELD " 184
NORTH BERWICK " 190
MUSSELBURGH " 196
BARNTON " 200
PRESTWICK " 204
TROON " 212
DOLLYMOUNT " 216
PORTMARNOCK (1) " 220
PORTMARNOCK (2) " 222
PORTRUSH " 224
NEWCASTLE " 228
ABERDOVEY " 232
HARLECH " 238
PORTHCAWL " 244
SOUTHERNDOWN " 246
CHAPTER I.
LONDON COURSES (1).
Some dozen or fifteen years ago the historian of the London golf
courses would have had a comparatively easy task. He would have said
that there were a few courses upon public commons, instancing, as he
still would to-day, Blackheath and Wimbledon. He might have dismissed
in a line or two a course that a few mad barristers were trying to
carve by main force out of a swamp thickly covered with gorse and
heather near Woking. All the other courses would have been lumped
together under some such description as that they consisted of fields
interspersed by trees and artificial ramparts, the latter mostly
built by Tom Dunn; that they were villainously muddy in winter, of an
impossible and adamantine hardness in summer, and just endurable in
spring and autumn; finally, that the muddiest and hardest and most
distinguished of them all was Tooting Bec.
All this is changed now, and the change is best exemplified by the
fact that although the club has removed to new quarters, poor Tooting
itself is now as Tadmor in the wilderness. I passed by the spot the
other day, and should never have recognized it had not an old member
pointed it out to me in a voice husky with emotion. The ground is now
covered with a tangle of red houses, which cannot be termed attractive,
and such glory as belonged to it has altogether departed. Peace to its
ashes! it could never, by the wildest stretch of imagination, have been
called anything but a bad course, and yet it held its head high in its
heyday. Prospective members by the score jostled each other eagerly on
the waiting list, and parliamentary golfers distinguished the course
above its fellows by cutting their divots from its soft and yielding
mud. I still recollect the thrill I experienced on first being taken
to play there; it was a distinct moment in my golfing life. It was
exceedingly muddy, but it was not so muddy as the course at Cambridge
on which I usually disported myself, and on the whole I thought it
worthy of its fame; people were not so difficult to please in the
matter of inland golf in those days.
Tooting is no more, but there are many courses like it still to
be found, most of them in a flourishing condition, near London.
Meanwhile, however, a new star, the star of sand and heather, has
arisen out of the darkness, and a whole generation of new courses,
which really are golf and not a good or even bad imitation of it,
have sprung into being. Here are some of them, and they make an
imposing list--Sunningdale, Walton Heath, Woking, Worplesdon, Byfleet,
Bleakdown, Westhill, Bramshot and Combe Wood. The idea of hacking and
digging and building a course out of land on which two blades of grass
do not originally grow together is a comparatively modern one. The
elder 'architects' took a piece of country that was more or less ready
to their hand, rolled it and mowed it, cut some trenches and built
some ramparts, and there was the course. They did not as a rule think
of taking a primaeval pine forest or a waste of heather and forcibly
turning it into a course; if they had thought of it, moreover, they
would not have had the money to carry it out. Now the glorious golfing
properties of this country of sand and heather and fir-trees have been
discovered; its owners too have discovered that they possessed all
unknowingly a gold mine from which can be extracted so many hundreds of
pounds an acre, and the work of building courses out of the heather and
building houses all round it goes gaily on.
These heathery courses are, for the most part, very good, and so
indeed they ought to be. They have, in the first place, the priceless
gift of youth. Those who have laid them out have been able to study
both the merits and the faults of the older courses, and then, with
the advantage of all this accumulated mass of knowledge, have set
themselves to the work of creation. This science, for so it may now
be fairly called, of the laying out of courses on carefully discussed
and thought-out principles, is itself comparatively modern; the very
expression 'a good length hole,' which is now upon all golfers' lips,
is of no great antiquity. Those who laid out the older links did not,
one may hazard the opinion, think a vast deal about the good or bad
length of their hole. They saw a plateau which nature had clearly
intended for a green, and another plateau at some distance off which
had the appearance of a tee, and there was the hole ready made for
them; whether the distance from one plateau to another could be
compassed in a drive and a pitch, or in two drives, or perhaps even two
drives and a pitch, did not, I fancy, greatly interest them. In some
places nature, being in a particularly kindly mood, had disposed the
plateaus at ideal distances, so that a St. Andrews sprang into being;
but people as a rule took the holes as they found them, and were not
for ever searching for the perfect "test of golf."
Gradually, however, the more thoughtful of golfers evolved definite
theories as to what were the particular qualities that constituted
a good or bad hole, and longed for an opportunity of putting their
theories into practice. One such great opportunity came when it was
discovered that heather would, if only enough money was spent on it,
make admirable golfing country, and the architects have made the
fullest use of it, lavishing upon the heather treasures of thought,
care and ingenuity which the non-golfer might say were worthy of a
better cause. Nothing can ever quite make up for the short, crisp turf,
the big sandhills and the smell of the sea; seaside golf must always
come first, and inland second, but the best inland golf can no longer
be reproached with being a bad second.
[Illustration: SUNNINGDALE
_The tenth hole_]
Of all these comparatively young courses, the two best known are
probably Sunningdale and Walton Heath. Sunningdale was designed
by Willy Park, who is an architect of very pronounced characteristics,
though Sunningdale is not perhaps quite so clearly to be recognized
as his handiwork as are some of his other courses, such as Huntercombe
or Burhill. It was laid out in what proved to be the last days of the
gutty ball, though there was then no whisper of the revolution that was
coming to us across the Atlantic. It was a long course--really a
fearfully long course for an ordinary mortal. The two-shot holes were
doubtless two-shot holes--for Braid, but they had a way of expanding
themselves into two drives and a reasonable iron shot for less gifted
players. I cannot help thinking that the coming of the "Haskell" was
a blessing for the course, and that it may be said of Sunningdale, as
it can be said for perhaps no other course in Christendom, that it was
improved by the rubber-cored ball.
The holes are still quite long enough, and if we accomplish any
considerable number of them in four strokes apiece we shall be
justified in a modified amount of swagger, but we need no longer risk
an internal injury in trying to reach the green with our second shot.
Of all the inland courses Sunningdale is perhaps the richest in really
fine two-shot holes, where a brassey or cleek shot lashed right home on
to the green sends a glow of satisfaction through the golfer's frame.
Almost as surely as the two-shot holes constitute its strength, the
short holes are the weakness of the course. Really good and interesting
short holes add a crowning glory to a golf course, and that, I think,
Sunningdale lacks. It resembles in that respect another fine course,
Deal, where the longer holes are admirable and the short holes are
almost totally wanting in distinction. The short holes at Sunningdale
are, however, much better than they used to be, for there was a time
when they might have been rather scathingly dismissed as consisting of
two practically blind shots on to artificial table lands, and a third
entirely blind shot on to a bad sloping green; but this third reproach
at least has now been entirely wiped away.
Let us now begin at the first tee and duly admire the view over a vast
expanse of wild, undulating, heathery country, with more houses on
it now than anyone except the ground-landlord would like to see, and
clumps of fir-trees here and there, one especially on a little knoll,
which makes a pleasant landmark in the distance. The next thing to do
is to hit the ball, which should be a comparatively easy task, for
there is plenty of room at this first hole, as there always should
be, and nothing but an egregious top or a wholly unprovoked slice is
likely to harm us. It is really, from the point of view of the greatest
happiness of the greatest number, a wholly admirable first hole, since
not only is there no great opportunity for disaster, but the hole is
a long hole and so enables the couples to be despatched quickly and
without undue irritation from the tee. It is just a steady, easy-going
five hole--two drives and a pitch--a mere prelude to the beginning of
serious business at the second.
This second is a really good hole. The tee-shot has to be played at an
unpleasantly difficult angle, and if we slice it we may find ourselves
in some innocent householder's front garden, while in endeavouring to
avoid such a trespass, we shall most probably pull it into a region
of ruts and heather. If we avoid both forms of errors, we have still
the second shot to play, long and straight and of an aspect most
formidable, for the avenue of rough down which we drive narrows as it
approaches the green, and there is an indefinable temptation to slice.
Altogether a fine hole, and on the easiest of days we may be thoroughly
pleased with a four, a figure we ought to repeat at the third. This
third is of no vast length, but is an excellent example of those holes
whereat there is much virtue in the placing of the tee-shot. There is
a bunker that "pokes and nuzzles with its nose" into the left-hand or
top edge of the green, and he who pulls his drive ever so slightly will
have a most difficult pitch to play over this bunker on to a somewhat
slippery and sloping green that runs away from him. On the other hand,
the man who has had the courage to skirt the rough on the right-hand
side of the course--very bad rough it is, too--will be rewarded by a
fairly simple run up shot, and moreover, the slope of the green makes a
cushion against which he may play his shot boldly.
The fourth is a short hole on a plateau green some way above the
player. The plateau is reasonably small and well guarded, and the shot
in a cross wind is sufficiently difficult, but the bottom of the pin is
out of the player's sight, and he needs much local knowledge to be sure
whether he is ten yards short or stone dead; a better hole than it
was, maybe, but not quite worthy of Sunningdale yet.
The fifth and sixth are beautiful holes, and the tee-shot to the fifth
sends the blood coursing more briskly through the veins. There is an
exhilaration in driving from a height and rushing thence down a steep
place on to the course which cannot be gainsaid. The more scientific
may point out that there is no justification for such emotion and that
we have far less on which to plume ourselves than if we had struck our
tee-shot from the flat. The fact remains that hitting off a high place,
if it be not done too often and we are not too scant of breath, is
wholly delightful; the difficulty is that we are so intoxicated with
the situation that we hit much too hard and the ball totters feebly
down the hill-side, suffering from a severe wound in the scalp.
The drive from this particular high place having been safely
accomplished, there is an accurate second shot, which varies greatly
in length according to the wind, to be played between a pond on the
right and a bunker on the left. Some will pitch it and pitch into the
pond; others will run it and run into the bunker, and Mr. Colt will
play a peculiar low, scuffling shot straight on the pin and win it from
us in a four, which will very nearly be a three. Another wonderfully
good two-shot hole is the sixth, where the green lies in the angle of
a wood, and we must hold our second shot well up to the left so that
the ball shall trickle slowly down the sloping green towards the hole;
that is supposing we have hit a straight tee-shot, a thing by no means
certain, for there is a horribly attractive clump of fir-trees to the
left which catches many and which once proved particularly fatal to
Jack White in a big match against Tom Vardon.
The seventh is a bone of contention, some averring that it is a fine
'sporting' hole, while others have no names too bad for it; when not
alluded to with profanity it is generally known as the 'Switch-back'
hole. Those who like a blind tee-shot and a blind second will admire
it, and those who don't wont, and there is the whole matter in a very
small compass. The eighth is quite a good short hole now (it used to be
bad and blind and stupid); and the ninth we may skip, although there
is a fine straight tee-shot needed, and then from the tenth tee we
drive down another steep place into the lower country. Those who make
a loud outcry when they drive "a perfect tee-shot, sir, straight on
the pin," and find it in a bunker, may here have cause for annoyance.
There is no bunker on the straight line, but there are bunkers to right
and left and a somewhat narrow space between, and a shot that is very,
very nearly well hit sometimes finds a resting-place in one or other
of them. It is a poor thing, however, to demand perfect immunity for
any respectable drive, and the shot that is placed where it ought to
be gives the chance for a really fine second shot between more bunkers
on to a green of fascinating but fiendish undulations. At the back of
the green is a hut, where live ginger-beer and apples and other things,
and he who has done the hole in four fully deserves them. This tenth
hole will be celebrated in golfing history for a truly tremendous
second shot played by Braid out of the left-hand bunker in the final
round of the _News of the World_ tournament, his opponent being Edward
Ray. Braid calls it in his book the most remarkable bunker shot that
he ever played, and that is praise indeed. Poor Ray! He had a perfect
tee-shot and a perfect second, laid his third stone dead, and yet lost
the hole, for Braid, having driven into the left-hand bunker from the
tee, gallantly took his iron for his second, reached the green with a
terrific shot, and completed the roll of his infamies by holing his
putt for a three.
Provided we do not top our tee-shot into a formidable sandy bluff, the
eleventh should be done in four, with a chance of a three; and the
twelfth should be another four, if only we can be straight enough from
the tee. This is a hole to be approached warily and in instalments, and
the prudent man generally takes a cleek or a spoon from the tee, and
even then breathes a fervent thanksgiving if his ball lies clear, since
the fairway narrows down to a horribly small point.
The thirteenth, as I said, was once one of the very worst holes in
the world, and is now a thoroughly attractive one; the player must
produce some stroke whereby the ball shall sit resolutely down on a
slanting green surrounded by bunkers, and stay there. The fourteenth is
a two-shot hole for Mr. Angus Hambro, and rather more for most other
people, save under favourable conditions. Then comes another short
hole--I should have said there were four and not three--but this is
a long short hole; a wooden club shot is often needed, and when that
wooden club shot has to be held up into a stiff right-hand wind, the
difficulties of the situation are not easily to be overrated.
Then we face homewards with three good long holes, all of which may be
done in fours, though most people would thankfully strike a bargain
with Providence for two fours and a five. The most difficult of the
three, as is only right and fitting, is a seventeenth hole, and here
Mr. Colt has worked a great transformation and turned a hole that once
possessed no merits whatever into a thoroughly good one, with a most
difficult second shot--one of those shots which produce an instinctive
and fatal tendency to slice. After that two good, straight, steady
shots should get us safely on to the home green, and we have finished
at last; if we have done a score which is perceptibly lower than 80, we
have done well. If we have not been too frequently 'up to our necks'
in untrodden heather--nay, even if we have--we ought to have enjoyed
ourselves immensely.
From Sunningdale we go to =Walton Heath=--a thing far easier to
accomplish in the imagination than by a cross-country journey, and
there we have another fine, long slashing course laid out in the grand
manner, especially to suit the rubber-cored ball.
The course is the work of Mr. Herbert Fowler, who is perhaps the
most daring and original of all golfing architects, and gifted with
an almost inspired eye for the possibilities of a golfing country.
He is essentially ferocious in his methods, and there is no one else
who is quite so merciless in the punishing of shots that are quite
respectable, that are in fact so nearly good that the striker of
them, in the irritation of the moment, calls them perfect. This fell
design he will accomplish either by trapping the long shot that is
almost straight but not straight enough or by planting his green amid
a perfect network of bunkers. The result is that there will always
be found some to call down maledictions upon his head, and in truth
some of his devices are almost fiendish, but they are nearly always
interesting.
The trend of modern golfing architecture is all against the
old-fashioned cross-bunkers, which used as a matter of course to be
dug at regular intervals across the fairway, but, curiously enough,
the cross-bunker plays a not unimportant part at Walton. Two holes in
particular come to mind, the long seventh and eighth, where bunkers
have to be crossed and cannot be circumvented, while the crossing of
them in the proper number of strokes is a very essential matter, since
the necessity of playing short often involves the loss of a whole
stroke.
Wild and bleak and merciless the course looks--a vast tract of
wind-swept heather. In truth it is a very long one, and the casual
visitor often brings against it a charge of monotonous length, but when
he has played there more often he will probably discover that each
of these long holes has a very distinct character, and that each is
interesting in a way of its own. Some courses impress themselves very
quickly on the memory so that each hole stands out quite distinctly,
while others leave only a vague and blurred recollection, nor is it
merely a question of the holes being absolutely good or bad. When a
man has once played the first six holes at Sandwich he is likely
to remember them all the days of his life, even if he has avoided
the Sahara and the Maiden; whereas he may retain only the haziest
recollection of St. Andrews after two or three days' play. So it is
with the long holes at Walton Heath; they have in reality plenty of
character, but it is hard at first to distinguish one from another.
[Illustration: WALTON HEATH
_The second shot at the seventeenth hole_]
The short holes, on the other hand, make a vivid and lasting
impression, and, as I think at least, give to the course its chief
distinction. There are four of them, and all four are good. Of these
four the sixth is by common consent the best and most difficult; so
difficult as sometimes to be paid the high compliment of being called
'impossible.' When the professionals were playing at Walton in the
_News of the World_ tournament, and playing with their wonderful and
monotonous accuracy--shot after shot clean, long, and straight as an
arrow through the wind--it was pleasant to find that there existed in
the world quite a short hole which could show them to be vulnerable.
I stood on the first day watching a succession of couples play this
sixth hole, and though there was usually one ball safely on the green,
there were never two; it was really a most cheering and satisfactory
spectacle.
Even on the stillest of still days the shot is one which can scarce be
approached without a tremor. The distance can be compassed with a firm
pitch with an iron club of moderate loft, and the green is undeniably
of adequate size, but it is ringed round, save immediately in front,
with a series of bunkers very deep and horrible, and, to increase
our terror, the ground 'draws' unmistakably towards them. Often as we
stand on the tee in a frenzied attitude, trying to steer the ball to
safety with vain gesticulations of the club, we see it light upon the
turf, and breathe a sigh of relief. Alas, we were too hasty! The ball
trembles and totters for a moment or two, in a state of indecision, and
then, as if magnetically drawn towards Scylla on one side or Charybdis
on the other, slowly disappears from our sight. Once in the bunker
there is nothing to do but employ the 'common thud' of Sir Walter
Simpson, and we ought with ordinary fortune to get out in one, but the
ball must be made to drop wonderfully dead and lifeless, scattering
showers of sand as it goes, or else it will run quite gently and
deliberately across the green into the bunker on the other side. It is
one of those holes at which, were the fates amenable to a compromise,
many a stout-hearted player would write down four on his card and
proceed to the next tee with the ball in his pocket.
Another hole of similar character, but a degree or two less formidable
and by just so much the less fascinating, is the twelfth. Perhaps it
would be just as terrible were it not that the prevailing wind is here
behind the player, whereas at the sixth it seems to blow persistently
across. With the wind behind the hole is brought within the compass of
an ordinary, straightforward, inartistic thump with a mashie, and that
shot, which is the _bête noire_ of all but the truly great, the push
with the iron, is not brought into requisition.
The other two short holes, the fifth and the tenth, are never very
short, and, when the wind blows strong in our faces, too long for us to
entertain any great hopes of reaching the green. In any case, unless
the ground be abnormally hard and fast, we had better behave with due
humility and take a wooden club. At the fifth our chief care must be to
hold the ball well up to the right, a task usually made more difficult
by a strong pulling wind. There are many chronic and many occasional
slicers in the world, but there are few who can deliberately hit the
ball to the right and make it hold on its way when they want to:
wonderfully few who can do so without a disastrous loss of distance.
It is the chief beauty of the hole that it calls imperatively for this
most difficult of shots, since the slope of the green is from right to
left and a series of graduated horrors await the pulled ball: a mere
bunker for the moderate sinner, a tract of wet ruts and hoof-marks
for the rather more criminal, and a waste of heather for the utterly
depraved. Nor is it sufficient merely to hit the ball somewhere out to
the right. Good intentions by themselves are not enough, and there is a
bunker lurking on the right-hand edge of the green; if we go so far to
the right that this bunker lies between us and the hole, we shall have
to employ all the arts of a Taylor if we are to be within reasonable
putting range next time.
Now we must leave the tenth, though an excellent hole, especially as
played by Braid with a vast, low skimming cleek shot, and look at some
of the longer holes. Of these there are three which fix themselves
in the memory, the second, seventeenth and eighteenth. A hole more
satisfactory to do in four than the second it would be hard to
imagine, since both the drive and the second must be long and straight
and the second must almost inevitably be played from a hanging lie.
We may, if we like, approach it in cowardly instalments and play our
tee-shot deliberately short of the sloping ground; if we do, we may
possibly escape a six, but by no means shall we get a four. It is the
hole for a man brave and skilful who can use his wooden club when the
ground is not flat, neither is the ball teed.
It is the duty of every golf course to have a good seventeenth hole,
and the seventeenth at Walton certainly need not fear comparison
even with the Alps and the Station-master's Garden. We must begin by
hitting a long, straight drive between bunkers on the right and some
particularly retentive heather on the left, but that is, comparatively
speaking, an easy matter. The second shot is the thing--a full shot
right home on to a flat green that crowns the top of a sloping bank.
To the right the face of the hill is excavated in a deep and terrible
bunker, and a ball ever so slightly sliced will run into that bunker
as sure as fate. To the left there is heather extending almost to the
edge of the green, and, in avoiding the right-hand bunker, we may very
likely die an even more painful death in the heather.
After this glorious hole the eighteenth seems simple enough. Two lusty,
straightforward drives, with a big bunker to carry for the second;
it is a hole that presents few terrors to the professional, since he
always hits his wooden club shots, yet even for him there are some
bunkers at the edge of the green which are not to be despised. For
humbler people everything connected with the hole is very far from
despicable.
Besides the greens, which are big and true and fraught with undulations
difficult to gauge, there is one feature which calls for special
mention, and that is the deepness of the bunkers. It is part of Mr.
Fowler's ferocity that he does not intend us to run through his
bunkers, if he can by any means prevent it, while, when we are in them,
he does not mean us to do more than get out with a niblick. Braid can
sometimes hit prodigious distances out of them, but then he has been
round the course in a score under 70--a thing that no respectable man
should do.
Before quitting the heathery courses, we must take a glance at
=Woking=, which is the oldest and still one of the best of them.
Indeed, although my judgment may not be strictly an impartial one,
I think it is still the pleasantest of all upon which to play, and
the golf is undeniably interesting. It does lack something, however,
of the bigness of Sunningdale or Walton Heath, which have been laid
out on an altogether grander scale. The two-shot holes at Woking do
not always require quite two shots. When the ground is at all hard a
poorish drive does not do a great deal of harm, and a long one means a
comfortable second shot with an iron club. Still, continuous brassey
play is not everything: it is apt to grow monotonous, and whatever
charge can be made against Woking, I imagine that no just critic would
call it dull. The keenest golfer among my acquaintances said to me the
other day that, whatever anybody might say, Sandwich and Woking were
the two pleasantest places for a game of golf, and though there is no
resemblance between the two courses, I think his verdict was a sound
one.
Woking has certain, almost unique, distinctions--or disgraces,
according to one's point of view--among golf clubs. It has but one
medal day a year, and it possesses no Bogey. Any innocent stranger
visiting Woking and enquiring the bogey score for any particular
hole will be greeted with a glare of such withering contempt as
seriously to impair his day's pleasure. Another curious, and I think
a blessed, circumstance about Woking is that the bunkers, which are
many and cunningly disposed, are the work of one benevolent autocrat.
Unconscious of their doom, the members disperse for their summer
holidays and when they return they find that the most revolutionary
things have been done. Upon greens that were formerly flat and easy
have sprouted plateaus and domes and hollows. Hillocks have risen as
if by magic in the middle of the fairway; 'floral' hazards bloom at
the side, and bunkers have been dug at that precise spot where members
have for years complacently watched their ball come to rest at the
end of their finest shots. Even now as I write I believe there is a
gigantic project in view at a certain hole, which I would rather die
than reveal. All these things happen at the instigation of a very small
secret Junta, and after a little grumbling, such as is only right and
proper, the members settle down and admit that the alterations are
exceedingly ingenious and the course more entertaining than ever. It
appears to me to be the ideal way in which to conduct a golf club,
but it is an ideal that can very seldom be attained.
[Illustration: WOKING
_Looking back to the sixteenth green_]
Over one of the revolutionary things done at Woking controversy still
rages, or rather it no longer continuously rages, but spirts every now
and again into flame. This is the famous bunker at the fourth hole, of
which the traveller may get a fine view as he is being whirled towards
Southampton by the South-Western Railway. This hole was originally
a very ordinary 'drive and a pitch' hole. You drove straight down a
fairly broad strip of turf between heather on the left and the railway
line on the right. Then you jumped over a rampart on to a nice big
green and there you were. The soul of Mr. Stuart Paton, however, soared
far above so lamentably unimaginative a hole, and he set to work upon
it. First he removed large portions of the cross-rampart, so that it
became possible to play a running instead of a pitching shot from
certain positions, and then in the very centre of the fairway, at just
the range of a good drive from the tee, he dug a small but formidable
bunker. In shape it bore a resemblance to the Principal's Nose, while
in position it was rather like that of the bunker which lies in the
middle of the course going to the ninth hole also at St. Andrews. By
means of this bunker a clear-cut and distinct problem has to be faced
on the tee. We must decide whether to drive safely away to the left,
and so have a pitch to play, which is sometimes rather difficult, or
whether to take a risk and lay down the ball between the bunker and
the railway line. The danger of pushing the ball out a little too
much, and so going out of bounds, is considerable, but the reward is
considerable also, for an easy running up shot should give us a putt
for three.
The number of discussions which I have heard as to this one little
bunker would fill a large but not an interesting volume. The form of
the discussion is nearly always the same, and is something like this:
A. "You can't persuade me that it is right to have a bunker bang
on the line to the hole, exactly where a good drive should be."
B. "If there is a bunker there, then that cannot be the line to
the hole. Your drive was not a very good one, but a very bad one."
A. "It was not a bad one. It was a perfect shot--hit in the very
middle of the club."
B. "You should use your own head as well as the club head."
After this the conversation becomes unfit for publication.
There are also some bunkers situated actually in the putting greens
which used to cause annoyance. There is one at the sixth and two at
the seventeenth, one of which is affectionately called "Johnny Low,"
after that sternest of bunker-makers, who invented it. To these,
however, everybody has long been reconciled, and both holes afford good
instances of how much can be done in the way of making a player place
his tee-shot, by digging a comparatively small bunker in the green.
Another clever and interesting piece of golfing architecture is to be
found at the seventh hole. The hole can be reached from the tee with a
moderate iron shot, and in former days, so long as one did not slice or
pull very egregiously, one could recover from a most indifferent shot
by laying a long putt dead on a flat easy green. Now, however, a most
ingenious range of mountains has been introduced, which has had the
effect of dividing the green into two compartments. If a shot be at all
crooked a three is still well within the bounds of possibility, but the
approach putt, instead of being easy, has to be made over a series of
most perplexing curves. The straight player's ball, on the other hand,
is lying close to the hole, for the hills, which are the enemies of the
crooked, are as a rule the allies of the accurate, and have rewarded
his virtuous ball with a kick from their friendly slopes. A somewhat
similar architectural feat has been tried at the other short hole--the
sixteenth, where we have to pitch over a pond--but there, for some
reason, it hardly seems to have been so successful.
I am afraid I may have given the idea that Woking has been laid out
in a spirit of impish mischief, but such an impression would be an
entirely wrong one. There are plenty of opportunities for fine,
straightforward hitting, although wild, erratic slogging will nearly
always be punished. There are some really beautiful two-shot holes,
which are at their best when there is not too much run in the ground.
The fifth, for instance, where there is a wonderfully pretty green
lying in a semi-circle of trees, and the eighth, a really gorgeous hole
when there is any wind against one. Twelve and thirteen again, though
not quite so long, are both beautiful holes, and the fourteenth, which
brings the golfer right up to the club-house and tempts him to lunch
before his time, requires two of the very longest and straightest of
hits.
Taking them day in and day out I think the greens at Woking are the
best that I know to be found inland--Mid-Surrey excepted. They are
often very nearly perfect, and are practically always good. They are
not as a rule alarmingly fast, nor so slow as to convert putting into
mere hard physical exercise, but of a nice, easy, comfortable pace,
that reflects enormous credit on Martin, who is one of the best of
green-keepers. I can only end as I began by asserting that there is no
more delightful course whereon to play golf.