LONDON COURSES (2).
Now leaving the heather, we must turn to some of the other substances
upon which Londoners play their weekly golf. On the course of the
Mid-Surrey Golf Club in the Old Deer Park at Richmond there are
probably more rounds of golf played throughout the whole year than
on any other golf course in the three kingdoms. You may go down to
Richmond on any day of the year, on which it is not snowing, and be
sure of finding a good many people who have managed to get a day
off and are spending it in playing golf. The business of the world
presumably goes on in spite of their absence, and indeed the week-day
crowd on a golf course points the moral that we are none of us
indispensable.
The =Mid-Surrey= course is in a park, and must therefore be classed
among the park courses, but it is hardly typical of its kind. The trees
stand for the most part as occasional and isolated sentinels guarding
the edges of the rough. We do not drive down whole avenues of them,
nor, as on some courses, do they play the part of gigantic goal-posts
through which we must direct the ball. The country is more open and
more sparsely timbered than the typical park, but, if the big trees
only interfere with us now and then, there are several peculiarly
odious little spinneys which are almost certain to thrust themselves
upon our notice.
The Old Deer Park is a pretty spot, but the course does not at first
sight look attractive; its disadvantages may be summed up in two
adjectives--'flat' and 'artificial,' nor do the course's enemies forget
to make the fullest use of them. Flat it is--as flat as a pancake, as
may be seen at a glance, and the bunkers, which are now innumerable as
the sands of the sea, have been raised one and all by the hand of man.
So much is certain, and on such a course there is a limit to our powers
of enjoying ourselves; we cannot hope for the exhilaration that is born
of sea and sandhills and, in a minor degree, of fir-trees and heath.
On the other hand, of the joy that comes from a well-struck brassey
shot--a joy that has been sadly diminished on most courses by the
rubber-cored ball--we can taste in abundance. The last nine holes in
the Old Deer Park repay really long straight play with the wooden clubs
almost as well as any nine holes that can be mentioned, wherefore the
Mid-Surrey course, if it be not quite 'the real thing' itself, provides
at least an admirable training ground.
[Illustration: MID-SURREY
_The tenth hole_]
There is but one thing lacking for the player's perfect education in
brassey shots, and that is an occasional bad lie or bad stance; he
will constantly be taking his wooden club through the green, but the
ball will always be sitting up on a perfect lie and obviously
requesting to be hit, while his stance will be of the smoothest and
flattest. When he leaves this smooth and shaven Paradise and fights the
sea breezes amid hummocks and hollows, he will find that considerably
more is asked of him, and may possibly re-echo the dictum of the
celebrated Scottish professional, that it is necessary to be a goat in
order to stand to his ball, and a goat, moreover, qualified with no
uncertain epithet.
In this matter of perfect lies and stances Mid-Surrey is apt to pamper
and over-indulge its devotees; and the same may be said of the greens,
for they are as near perfection as anything short of a billiard-table
could possibly be. Much care and money and a transcendent genius among
green-keepers, Peter Lees, have combined to make them a miracle of
trueness and smoothness. Some greens that are extraordinarily good,
true and easy, yet afford no particular pleasure, since they are too
slow and soft; a perfectly true Turkey carpet might lead to the holing
of many putts and yet the player would soon long for some barer,
harder, more untrue substance. The necessity of hitting our putts very
hard covers many little deficiencies in our execution, but it is poor
fun compared with the art of stroking the ball up to the hole.
The Mid-Surrey greens are open to none of these reproaches, since they
combine perfect trueness with plenty of pace, and we must strike the
ball a delicate, subtle blow; the methods of the bludgeon are equally
unsuitable and disastrous. There are plenty of little ripples and
ridges and hollows in the greens, though few bold slopes, and there is
therefore scope for considerable nicety of putting; above all, there is
the cheering knowledge that a putt has but to make a good start in life
to ensure its turning neither to the right nor to the left and ending a
blameless career at the bottom of the hole.
Thus we have perfect lies, stances, and greens, and it is clear that
we shall have none but the most futile excuses for our errors. If we
hit the ball we ought to do a good score, and, especially on the way
out, nothing but our own folly should prevent a long and gratifying
sequence of fours; that is to say, we ought to do six fours, two threes
at the short holes, and a five, which we may fairly allow ourselves
at the second. This green can be reached in two shots; Robson did
reach it in two in the _News of the World_ tournament, but to have
seen him do it was enough to prevent our own vaulting ambition from
o'erleaping itself once and for all. They were indeed two stupendous
shots, and if we carry the big cross-bunker safely in two and then
play a nice straight run-up on to the green, we shall have done all
that can be reasonably expected of us. Of the other holes on the way
out the third is perhaps the most engaging, since we must employ our
heads as well as our clubs. There is a spinney--a detestably, almost
mesmerically attractive spinney--to the left, and if we pull our drive
we shall be confronted with a shot wherein the ball must rise abruptly
to a considerable height and at the same time traverse a considerable
distance. If, however, we have pushed the tee-shot well out to the
right, we shall have our reward in a simple approach shot, a steady
four and a consciousness of virtue.
As far as the turn, then, we may progress in an average of fours, but
we shall be lucky if we do not considerably exceed it on the way home;
we shall need a series of lusty second shots and even so shall be
none the worse for a wind behind us at all the holes, which is alas!
impossible. There is no one hole that stands out particularly from its
fellows, but the one we are likely to remember best is the twelfth, not
so much for its intrinsic merits, which are considerable, as for a fine
cedar tree, which fills us with joy till it has entirely and hopelessly
stymied us from the hole.
The bunkers are many and cunningly devised, and there is also rough
grass, but the lies in the rough are not very bad, and if we are going
to make a mistake we shall be well advised to do it thoroughly; thereby
we shall be so crooked as to avoid the bunkers, while brute force and
a driving iron may extricate us from the rough with but little loss.
This, of course, is not as it should be, but the difficulty is an
insuperable one on many inland courses.
Not far off are two nice courses, Sudbrook Park and Ashford Manor, but
from Mid-Surrey we will voyage to another park course, the newest of
its kind, at =Stoke Poges=. Stoke Park is a beautiful spot, and there
is very good golf to be played there; the club is an interesting one,
moreover, as being one of the first and the most ambitious attempts in
England at what is called in America a 'Country Club.' There are plenty
of things to do at Stoke besides playing golf. We may get very hot at
lawn tennis or keep comparatively cool at bowls or croquet, or, coolest
of all, we may sit on the terrace or in the garden and give ourselves
wholly and solely to loafing. The club-house is a gorgeous palace, a
dazzling vision of white stone, of steps and terraces and cupolas, with
a lake in front and imposing trees in every direction, while over it
all broods the great Chief-Justice Coke, looking down benignantly from
the top of his pillar and gracefully concealing his astonishment at the
changes in the park.
Never was there a better instance of the art of forcibly turning a
forest into a golf-course than is to be found at Stoke Poges. The
beautiful old park turf was always there, cropped from time immemorial
by generations of deer, who little knew what service they were doing to
the green-keeper, but in every direction there stretched thick belts of
woodland, and yet a golf course was going to be made and opened in less
than no time. I saw the place in its pristine state, and the holes,
as they were pointed out to me, with an eye of but imperfect faith.
Thousands of trees, as it seemed, bore the fatal mark that signified
their doom, and yet the thing appeared almost impossible. One hole was
particularly impressive. All that was then to be seen was a pretty
little brook running innocently between its banks, which were thickly
covered with trees, while on one side the ground sloped gently upwards
to a path through the woods. It was a spot to conjure up visions of
dryads or fairies, "Green jacket, red cap and white owl's feather"; of
anything in the world except a narrow, catchy, slanting green and
a half-iron shot. Yet an inspired architect had fixed on it as the site
of one of his short holes; the trees were to be cut down, the sloping
bank was to be turfed and the brook promoted to the fuller dignity of a
burn. I went my way full of admiration--and of doubt.
[Illustration: STOKE POGES
_The sixteenth hole_]
A few months after I returned to find that the romantic little wood
had vanished, and there was a short hole in its place--a hole that
any course might be proud to own, and a putting green that the deer
might have grazed for centuries. I never saw a more daring bit
of architecture, except perhaps at Stonham, the new course near
Southampton, where Willy Park has actually built a putting green over
a stream. Apart from this one hole, belts of wood had disappeared in
all directions as if by magic, and had been replaced by turf; yet
there were so many trees left that no one could reasonably complain.
There was the course ready to be played on, and a very good course it
is--long, difficult, and for the most part entertaining.
The turf is good and springy, and where it is intended that the player
should get a good lie, he gets an excellent one; where it is intended
that he should be in trouble there is likewise no mistake about it. He
may lie in a wood, though this is only the penalty for a very heinous
crime, and the trees are for the most part kept skilfully in reserve
as a second line of defence. He may at one or two holes lie in a lake;
and he will often, if he be crooked, lie in a compound of bracken and
long grass, which will adequately test his powers of recovery. There
are also bunkers, though these, with commendable wisdom, have been put
in but sparingly at first, and, at the moment of writing, the foozler's
cup of anguish is not yet filled to the brim.
As is increasingly becoming the fashion with modern courses, there are
a good many one-shot holes; there are, to be precise, four, or, if
we can drive a quite abnormal distance, we may include the tenth and
say there are five. Of these the seventh hole over the brook before
mentioned is the best: indeed it is quite one of the most charming of
short holes. Its special virtue is to be found in the fact that we have
to approach it at a peculiarly diabolical angle, so that the green
becomes exceedingly narrow; a slice takes us into the brook, a pull
into a road, and, in short, nothing but a good shot will do. Of the
other short holes the most superficially terrifying, to those at least
who sometimes drive a little lower than the angels, is the sixteenth,
where we must stand on a little peninsula that juts out into the lake
and carry some hundred or more yards of water.
[Illustration: CASSIOBURY PARK
_The new eighteenth hole_]
Of the longer holes, all need sound and straight play, and some are
thoroughly interesting. There is perhaps just a tinge of monotony about
the sequence of long holes that begin after the eleventh; they are all
good holes, but we might reasonably yearn for a little break in the
middle. The twelfth is perhaps the best of them, since not only is it
narrow, but it has the peculiar quality, granted to some holes, of a
terrifying appearance. There is really plenty of room; the trees and
the lake to the right are, in fact, a long way off, and ought to be
omitted from our calculations, but it is hard not to keep one eye
on them--and off the ball. The seventeenth is another difficult hole,
especially as it comes on us before we have fully recovered from the
watery terrors of the sixteenth. There is a fine carry for the second
over a stream that runs just in front of the green, and the brave man
goes for his four, and haply takes six, while the coward plays his
second with an iron and a measure of contemptible prudence, trusting
thereby to secure a steady five; let us hope that he hits his pitch off
the heel of his club and takes six after all.
Of all the race of park courses, it would scarcely be possible, in
point of sheer beauty, to beat =Cassiobury Park=, near Watford in
Hertfordshire. Neither by laying too much emphasis on its beauty do
I mean to cast an oblique slur upon the golf itself, a great deal of
which is very good. Of course you will not think it good if you hate
trees, because there are a great many trees; and you will probably be
at least once or twice hopelessly stymied by them in the course of the
round. Even the most confirmed tree-hater, however, might find his
heart softening, because these particular trees are so very lovely.
There are the most glorious avenues, elms and limes and chestnuts and
beeches, that stretch across the park, and a fine day at Cassiobury
comes within measurable distance of heaven. It is even beautiful on a
wet day, and the last day that I spent there was wet, quite beyond the
ordinary. I remember it very well from the circumstance of having to
wade breast high into drenching nettles after a ball which my wretched
partner had put there. This occurred at the third hole--a hole which
is rather a remarkable one in itself, and was never more remarkably
played than on that occasion.
The green can be reached easily enough with one honest blow, but there
is a huge tree immediately to the right of the green, and a still more
huge and infinitely more alarming pit immediately under the tee. The
pit is very deep and its sides precipitous, and it is altogether a very
formidable affair. Our opponents drove off, I remember, and perpetrated
an ordinary 'fluff' or foozle, which left the ball on grass, it is
true, but at the very bottom of the pit.
"Now," said I to my partner, no doubt foolishly, "here is our chance."
By way of answer he struck the ball violently on some portion of the
club that lay far behind the heel. The ball dashed away at a terrific
pace in the direction of square leg, came into collision with the
branch of a tree some fifty yards off the line, whence it bounded back
into the bed of nettles before mentioned. By some miracle the ball was
dislodged from the nettles, and joined its fellow at the bottom of the
pit. Then began a game the object of which an intelligent foreigner
would probably have imagined to be the hitting of the ball up the bank
in such a way as it should roll down exactly to the place whence it
started. Ultimately, for I must pass over the intervening events, I
missed a short putt to win the hole in eight.
[Illustration: SANDY LODGE
_The first green, looking towards the club-house_]
If this third hole is the most terrifying to the habitual foozler, the
more mature golfer will be a great deal more frightened of the fourth
and tenth, which were really very good holes indeed. That drive at
the tenth down a pretty glade between the trees is, as far as
appearances go at least, one of the narrowest I know, and the second
shot is a good one too, though by no means so long as it used to be,
with a gutty. After this tenth comes another capital 'two-shotter,'
which has been made by the expedient of running two poorish holes into
one, and in this case two blacks have emphatically made a white, for
the second shot over another pit, only a little less disastrous than
the first, is excellent.
There are several more long, slashing holes on the way back, and at
one of them I recollect that our adversaries in this same adventurous
foursome lost their ball within four yards of the tee, and, in spite
of the most arduous and unremitting search, had to give up the hole.
I must add that the drive was neither a high nor a straight one, and
that the grass at the edge of the course, or as I once heard an Irish
green-keeper call them, the 'sidings,' were distinctly long.
One good point about Cassiobury is the smooth and velvety surface of
the green. They are a little slow and easy perhaps, but very true and
soothing to putt upon, and have been wonderfully improved of late
years. Time was when the very springy park turf seemed determined never
to settle down into a good putting substance, but unremitting care and
hard work has changed all that. Finally, I ought to add that owing to
the taking in of some new land and the abandoning of some of the old
holes, the course is practically in a transition stage, and so I must
be pardoned if I have used the antiquated numbering of the holes.
Of the courses to be reached from the Baker Street end of London,
such as =Northwood=, Chorleywood, Harewood Downs and Sandy Lodge,
Northwood is perhaps the best known, and there we come upon a somewhat
different kind of golf; perhaps it would be more accurate to describe
it as a mixture of two different kinds of golf. There are holes among
the gorse, and there are holes of a more agricultural character among
the hedges and ditches. Regarded in the abstract, gorse-bushes, or,
as I ought to call them, whins, are not an ideal hazard. It is often
impossible to play the ball out of them, and still more often unwise
to make the attempt without a suit of armour, while the local rule, to
be found on some courses, that the ball may or even must be lifted and
dropped under a penalty is thoroughly unsatisfactory.
If, however, whins are from their nature a bad hazard, they have
nevertheless very distinguished sanction. They are to be found on links
of undoubted eminence, and were found on many more till they were
literally hacked and hewed out of existence by the niblick shots of
their infuriated victims. Moreover, say what we will, they are rather
entertaining, and the very fact that a serious error will almost ruin
us gives a poignancy which is lacking in any but the most desperate of
sand-pits; we trifle pleasurably with our terrors and snatch a fearful
joy. Certainly there is a great deal of amusement to be extracted from
the Northwood whins, and our achievements or disasters among them
are those that remain graven on the memory. Yet there is one hole in
the county of ditches and hedges (such colossal hedges as those
at Northwood were surely never seen before) that leaves as vivid an
impression on the mind as the spikiest of gorse can leave elsewhere.
This is the eighth, which rejoices, I believe, in the appropriate name
of 'Death or Glory.' It supplies a standing refutation of the theory
that a hole cannot be a good one if it is of that mongrel length
known as 'a drive and a pitch,' or, as it has been brilliantly though
indelicately expressed, 'a kick and a spit.'
[Illustration: NORTHWOOD
_'Death or glory' (the eighth hole)_]
We walk to the very brink of destruction without knowing it, for there
is nothing particular to mark the drive; we have but to hit moderately
straight, as it appears, over a flat and somewhat muddy space towards
a bunker in the distance. Then as we walk up to the ball the full
horror of our situation bursts upon us. We have to pitch over a bunker
straight in front of the green, but that is mere child's play, and
only the beginning of our task. On the left-hand side, eating its way
into the very heart of the green, is another bunker, very deep and
shored up by precipitous black timbers, and the very slightest pull on
our approach shot will land us in it. The obvious thing to do would
appear to be to push our approach out to the right at any cost, but
that will not do either, for on a bank on the right hand side grows a
perfect thicket of thorn bushes, where there is very snug lying for
the ball and great scope for the niblick. It is surprising and rather
humiliating to find how difficult it is to play a perfectly ordinary,
straightforward mashie pitch, if only there are enough difficulties
to strike terror into the soul. Were there more holes like this, the
reproach implied in the term 'a drive and a pitch' would very soon
disappear.
From Liverpool Street Station the municipal golfer of London takes
his way either to Chingford, where he plays in a red coat under the
auspices of the Corporation, or to Hainault Forest, where the County
Council has recently made a playground for him. The best known,
however, and probably the best of these Essex courses is =Romford=,
which was for a good many years the home green of the great Braid.
Indeed even now 'J. Braid (Walton Heath)' looks just a little
unfamiliar to me; I still feel as if Romford ought to be the word
inside the brackets. I recollect that almost the first time I played at
Romford was in an open amateur competition, for which there was a very
good and representative entry of London amateurs. I think it shows how
much the general standard of amateur golf has gone up, that the winning
score was 164 (84 + 80) by Mr. Mure Fergusson. Certainly Mr. Fergusson
was not in his best form, but this score was good enough to win, and
to win quite comfortably. There was, as far as I can remember, nothing
amiss with the weather, and even making every allowance for gutty
balls, it does seem extraordinary that so many people should play so
supremely ill. It would be far less likely to happen to-day.
[Illustration: ROMFORD
_The sixth green_]
Nevertheless Romford is not a course that one would choose for the
doing of a low score, for it is neither short nor easy, and is a great
deal better golf than it looks. Its appearance is not particularly
attractive, because in the first place it is flat, and in the second
there are hedges and trees to be seen. Braid himself speaks of
it in Nisbet's _Golf Year Book_ as a "very good park course." The
adjective may well be allowed to pass, but to call it a 'park' course
conveys a wrong impression, to my mind at least; it is too open for the
description to be quite appropriate, though I admit I can think of no
better word.
If a course has really good putting greens and demands that the ball
should be hit consistently far and straight, then there is a good deal
to be said for it, and these virtues must be conceded to Romford. You
must hit straight or you will be in a bunker, or 'tucked up' behind
a tree; you must hit far or you will not get up to the green in the
right number of strokes. The fourth and fifth are two as long holes
as come consecutively on any course, except Blackheath, and the fifth
is an especially good one. Better than either I like the seventh with
its narrow tee-shot between the trees and that out of bounds territory
that comes creeping in to catch you on the right. It is a hole that, in
colloquial language, 'wants a lot of playing.'
There are really quite a lot more fine holes--the tenth, for instance,
with a tremendous carrying second over a pond, and the fourteenth,
where the player is fairly hemmed in with trees and hedges, and must
drive as straight as an arrow. When Braid was there he accomplished
some ridiculous scores in the sixties, but ordinary people will find
that anything in the seventies is quite good enough for them, and that
many a hole that ought to be done in four will, in fact, be done in
five or more. Especially is this the case when the going is at all
heavy, for Romford can on occasions be just a little soft and muddy.
It is probably, like a great many other inland courses, at its best in
spring or autumn, for then the putting greens are really a pleasure to
putt upon.
Now we come to the links of the Royal =Blackheath= Golf Club, which
is very justly proud of the fact that it was instituted in 1608.
That is indeed a great record, and, as we hack our ball along with a
driving mashie out of a hard and flinty lie, narrowly avoiding the
slaughter of a passing pedestrian, we feel that we are on hallowed
ground. Moreover, though we may speak flippantly of the bad lies and
the numerous live hazards on the course, the golf is good golf--far
better and more searching than is to be found on many smoothly shaven
lawns covered with artificial ramparts. If we desire to test our real
sentiments about any particular course, it is no bad plan to imagine
that we have to play a match over it against some horribly good
opponent--an enemy whom, even in the moment of our most idiotic vanity,
we admit to be our superior. Out of this test Blackheath comes well,
for I can hardly imagine that anyone would choose to play a match with
Braid, for example, over those famous seven holes if he had any other
battle-ground open to him.
[Illustration: BLACKHEATH
_Signalling 'all clear'_]
There are but seven holes; but of those seven, two are of a truly
prodigious length, and, to make the matter worse, they are consecutive.
Some idea of the length and difficulty of the course may be gleaned
from the record score for the twenty-one holes, which constitute a
medal round. People have been struggling round since the reign
of James I., and the record stands at 95, which, according to my
arithmetic, is eleven over an average of four a hole. The record of
nearly every other well-known course in the kingdom is under an average
of four. To accomplish a score of under 100 at Blackheath is something
to be proud of, and in the gutty days, in which I sometimes struggled
round the historic course, an average of five a hole was considered,
not without reason, quite good enough to win one's match against highly
respectable opponents.
They let us down easily to begin with at Blackheath with quite a short
first hole, only a good cleek shot being required to carry a sort
of shallow pit that has very poor lying at the bottom of it; so we
ought to have one three to reduce the average of the sixes and sevens
that are sure to follow. The second and third are longer, but yet not
hideously long, and we play them reasonably well, if we do not come
into collision with public highways and the posts and rails that guard
them. We may possibly have to thread our way through two teams of small
boys playing football, and there are almost certain to be a nursery
maid or two in the way, or an old gentleman sitting on a seat, blandly
unconscious that his position is one fraught with peril to himself and
annoyance to us. However, as we are forcibly clad in red coats for a
danger-signal and preceded by a fore-caddie, as if we were traction
engines, we may with luck and patience do fairly well.
After the third we are confronted with the two long holes, and the
piling up of our score begins. It is now some time since I played them,
and they are, besides, too long to describe in detail. I have a vision
of reaching, after several shots on the flat, a deep hollow on the
left, and spending some further time in hacking the ball along its hard
and inhospitable turf, finally to emerge on to the flat again and reach
the green in a score verging upon double figures. The fifth hole may be
described as the same, only not quite so much so, and the round ends
with two holes of a somewhat milder character, but neither of them in
the least easy. Then off we go over the pit again for our second round,
and there is yet another one left to play. To play three rounds over
Blackheath on a cold, blustery winter's day is a man's task.
It is sad that there was no contemporary chronicler to do for the old
golfers of Blackheath what John Nyren of immortal memory did for the
cricketers of Hambledon; but the club has not lacked its _vates sacer_,
and in Mr. W. E. Hughes' book is a store of pleasant and interesting
history. Most golfers know the delightful picture of the gentleman in
a red coat with blue facings, gold epaulettes and knee-breeches, who
stands in so dignified an attitude, his club over his shoulder. It is
dedicated to the "Society of Golfers at Blackheath" with "just respect"
by their "most humble servant Lemuel Francis Abbott," and, like the
artist, we too salute with just respect a venerable and illustrious
society.
[Illustration: WIMBLEDON
_On the common_]
The Royal Wimbledon Club was founded some two hundred and sixty years
after the Royal Blackheath, and yet golf is still so young a game in
England that the two appear of almost equally hoary antiquity. There is
an old-fashioned air about the golf at =Wimbledon=--an atmosphere
of red coats and friendly foursomes made up at luncheon, which is
exceedingly pleasant--nor is the actual golf on Wimbledon Common by
any means to be despised. It has at least one supreme virtue--that of
naturalness; those great clumps of gorse and the deep ravines where
the birches grow were put there by the hand of Nature herself, who, if
she be not so cunning, is at any rate infinitely more artistic than
any golfing architect. When Mr. Horace Hutchinson wrote the Badminton
volume he wrote of the golf at Wimbledon that it was almost "an insult
to the game to dignify it by the name of golf," adding that he would
rather call it a "wonderful substitute for the game within so short a
distance of Charing Cross." It is perhaps a just criticism, but what
would Mr. Hutchinson say of the hundred 'mud-heaps' that have sprung
up within a short distance of Charing Cross since these days? He would
probably keep silence lest he should fall a victim to the law of libel
and an unsympathetic jury.
Certainly the lies at Wimbledon are not good; they are hard and flinty,
and at certain places, in particular the long second hole, they
have seemed to me at times almost the worst in the world. But there
is this measure of compensation in hard turf, that it always bears
some resemblance, however dim and remote, to the 'real thing'; it is
infinitely more inspiriting than the soft and spongy lawns, which may
be truer and smoother, but are removed by a far wider gulf from the
golf that _is_ golf.
If the Royal Wimbledon golfer dislikes a crowd or a red coat, or
if, being a very wicked man or a very busy one, he wishes to play
on Sunday, he need nowadays only walk out of the back door of his
club-house instead of his front door, and he is on his own private
course at Cæsar's Camp. A wonderful place is this new Wimbledon course,
for as soon as we are on it all signs of men, houses and omnibuses, and
the other symptoms of a busy suburb disappear as if by magic, and a
prospect of glorious solitary woods stretches away into the distance in
every direction. Only at one place, where the new course verges on the
Common, do we see such a thing as a house, and our friend Charing Cross
might be a hundred miles away. Like the egg, the course is good in
parts: very good as long as we are among the whins on the hard ground
which is the ground of the Common: rather soft and muddy when we are
on the meadows lower down. Taking the two courses together, the men of
Wimbledon have much to be thankful for.
There is still one London course that assuredly deserves mention, that
of Prince's Golf Club on =Mitcham Common=. Roads and lamp-posts and,
ugliest of all, tramways have not added to its loveliness. But it is
still a delightful place, with a good deal of solitary beauty left.
There is abundance of gorse here too, but the impression produced is
quite different from that at Wimbledon. The ground is flatter, and one
can take in a greater stretch at one glance; it is not broken up, as it
were, into districts by gullies and ravines, and one misses the pretty
birch trees of Wimbledon.
[Illustration: MITCHAM
_The seventh green_]
Courses that are not protected by a ring-fence of privacy are not
as a rule notable for the goodness of their greens, since every now
and then a cantankerous commoner is apt to drive a waggon across them
by way of asserting his rights. At Prince's, however, they have really
beautiful greens, big and rolling and grassy, which are a joy to putt
upon, and there is a further distinction between Mitcham and other
common courses, that the making of artificial bunkers has been allowed
to supplement Nature in an unobtrusive measure.
There are plenty of good two-shot holes where, if we do not quite need
the brassey for our second shot, we must yet give the ball a downright,
honest hit with some iron club that is not too much lofted.
The first, seventh, fifteenth, and seventeenth--to mention only
four--are all good holes, the drive at the fifteenth being rendered the
more alarming by a pond which traps a hooked ball. The twelfth hole
also has a rather frightening tee-shot over the corner of a garden--a
sort of Stationmaster's Garden in miniature--with the possibility of
slicing into what was once a manufactory of explosives.
Mitcham is essentially a course for the leisured golfer. It is
comparatively useless to the busy man, since he may not play there on
Sunday, and to do so on Saturday is a vexation of spirit. Granted,
however, a reasonably dry day in mid-week, and there is certainly no
pleasanter golf to be found within so short and easy a journey from
London.