EAST ANGLIA.
Of the many good courses in East Anglia, I have the tenderest and most
sentimental association with =Felixstowe=, because it was there that
I began to play golf. Till quite lately, however, I had not seen the
course for a very long while, and my recollections of it were those of
a small boy of eight or nine years old. The small boy wore a flannel
shirt, brown holland knickerbockers, and bare legs, from which the
sun had removed nearly all vestiges of skin. He used to dodge in and
out among the crowd, hurriedly playing a hole here and there, and
then waiting for unsympathetic grown-ups in red coats to pass him.
Willy Fernie was the professional there in those days, and in the
zenith of his fame; it was not long before that he had beaten Bob
Ferguson for the championship by holing a long putt for a two at the
last hole at Musselburgh. Occasionally also another great golfer, Mr.
Mure Fergusson, would come down from London to shed the light of his
countenance upon the course and be breathlessly admired by the small
boy from a respectful distance.
As far as I can remember, my best score then was 70 for one round of
the nine-hole course, and so I always pictured Felixstowe to myself
as possessing longer holes and bunkers infinitely more terrible than
those to be found on any other course. Felixstowe revisited appeared
naturally enough to have shrunk a little; the Martello tower that
stands on the edge of the first green is not quite so tall as I had
pictured it, and some of the holes are quite short, but I still found
it one of the most charming and interesting of courses. I came back
to it on one of the most perfect of winter golfing days, with the
sun shining on the sea and the red roofs of Baudsey in the distance;
it was a day to accentuate every romantic feeling, and it was with a
perceptible thrill that I teed my ball in front of the very modest
bunker, the carrying of which had once been among my wildest dreams.
As far as I could see, the course was almost exactly the same as
it always had been. One or two of the bunkers had been rather more
abruptly 'faced' with walls of turf; and the little hut, which once
served Fernie for a shop, and whence he used to issue in a white apron
and with a half-made club in his hand, had become a ladies' club-house;
but otherwise the whole nine holes appeared entirely unchanged. Their
names came back to me as I played them--the 'Gate,' the 'Tower,'
'Eastward Ho!' 'Bunker's Hill,' the 'Point'--and the only thing as to
which I felt doubtful was the position of a certain bunker that used
once to be known as 'Morley's Grave,' and was faced, if I remember
rightly, with black timbers that have now vanished.
[Illustration: FELIXSTOWE
_General view of the course_]
Looking at the course as impartially as possible, it seems to me now to
possess a striking mixture of very easy and extremely difficult shots.
There are several tee-shots, for instance, where one may hit out in a
very gay and careless spirit and with but the very smallest fear of
disaster; there are other shots, and especially second shots up to the
greens, where the ball has to be played to a very exact spot, and where
no other spot will do. The thing, however, that in a great degree makes
the golf at Felixstowe is the truly magnificent finish. With a breeze
against the player, as it was when I was there, it is hard to conceive
two more splendid and exacting holes than the eighth and ninth,
'Bunker's Hill' and the 'Point,' and--here is one of the advantages of
a nine-hole course--we have to battle with them four times in one day's
golf. At the risk of exaggerating, I will boldly assert that I have
never seen two such fine holes coming consecutively at the end of any
golf course.
Those two I will keep till their proper place, and we will begin at the
first with a drive over a sandy hollow into open country. A bad slice
may see us labouring upon the seashore, but if we keep well to the left
there is no great difficulty, and a firm pitch over a cross-bunker
should land us safely on a big open green--it is, in fact, a double
green--between the hut and the Martello tower. The second, or 'Gate,'
is a short hole with a very billowy green; indeed, one little valley,
in which the hole is sometimes placed, is shaped for all the world
like a horse trough, and the ball will always come rolling back from
its steep sides, and must almost infallibly end very near the hole.
After this come three thoroughly good two-shot holes--the 'Bank,' the
'Tower,' and 'Bent Hills'--at all three of which the tee-shot is quite
easy, and the second shot both interesting and difficult; at both the
fourth and fifth there is an old-fashioned, honest cross-bunker, which
has to be carried if we are to get near the hole, and if the wind is
adverse and the ground slow, nothing but a really good brassey shot
will suffice. At the sixth--'Eastward Ho!'--a drive and a running shot
with the iron takes us close up to Baudsey Ferry and another Martello
tower, and then we turn homeward for the 'Ridge'--a drive and a short
pitch; at both these holes we should be hoping and trying for threes,
and they are neither of them possessed of any particular difficulty.
So far we may have done very well, and our score should not greatly
exceed an average of fours, but now comes Bunker's Hill, to be played,
as we will imagine, against a fair breeze. The drive is comparatively
simple, but for the second we must hit a very full shot as straight
as an arrow; the green is quite a small one, guarded on the right by
a road and a wilderness of thick grass beyond, while in front and to
the left is sand in abundance. To play short is the act of a coward,
and there will be a certain splendour even in our failure, for it
will be failure on a grand and expensive scale. This is true, even in
a greater degree, of the 'Point,' a hole that must have wrecked the
hopes of many a prospective medal winner; nay, there cannot be such a
thing as a prospective medal winner at Felixstowe till he has played
the second shot to the Point for the second time. There is some chance
of trouble from the tee, for besides the bunker immediately in front,
there is a long tongue of sand that stretches inwards from the road at
such a distance that it may well catch a fairly well-struck ball. We
will assume, however, that we are safely on the crest of the hill, with
the ball neither very far above or below us--this latter a considerable
assumption. The flag is fluttering in the distance close to the first
tee at the range of an absolutely full shot, and on the very narrowest,
most tapering strath imaginable. To the right is a field, which is out
of bounds; to the left is a hollow of broken, sandy country; close
to the hole is the seashore, but that we shall hardly reach against
the wind. Here, if our score be good or our adversary in trouble, we
may play short without much shame, but even so we shall have to play
very short and very accurately, and the third shot will not be without
peril. It is a grand four--something more than a steady five, a likely
six; really a tremendous hole with which to end. Everybody must long to
go back to Felixstowe, solely in order to master the Point thoroughly,
but they will never do it; it is a hole of such transcendent quality
that is must beat us in the end.
There are four courses in Norfolk, which naturally divide themselves
into two groups of near neighbours, Cromer and Sheringham, Brancaster
and Hunstanton. The two former are of the type which may be not too
respectfully denominated inland-super-mare. The sea is there, and very
nice it looks. The courses are close to the sea--so close that they
spend some of their time, especially at Cromer, in falling into it;
but the turf is not the crisp and sandy turf of the links. It is the
down turf, such as we find at Eastbourne or Brighton, very pleasant
and springy to walk on, but--not quite the right thing. There is a
considerable family likeness between the two courses. Both are situated
on the top of a cliff; both have fine, bold sweeping undulations and
hillsides dotted here and there with gorse bushes, and both are to a
large extent dependent on the artificial bunker.
=Cromer=, like Felixstowe, makes me feel a very old golfer, because,
when I first played there, there was a little ladies' course along the
edge of the cliff, which has many, many years since toppled peacefully
over into the German Ocean. Later on I saw an excellent seventeenth
hole share the same fate, and I suppose the poor first hole must go the
same way some time. It is particularly sad, because the holes on the
down land near the cliff constitute the most attractive part of the
course. The holes inland, which were added later, are long and well
bunkered, and have doubtless all the Christian virtues, but they are
just a little agricultural and uninspiring.
It is certainly to the old holes that the memory returns most fondly.
The club-house stands in the bottom of a deep hollow, with hills rising
pretty steeply out of it on three sides, and the first tee-shot has to
be driven straight up a gully between two of them. Then comes a shot
demanding the agility of a chamois and a maximum of local knowledge.
With the left foot a good deal higher than the right we play an
iron-shot into the distance, and if all goes well, shall find the
ball on a green which is walled in by cops and bunkers. If all goes
ill, it is possible that we lose it over the cliff, but for such a
disaster we shall need hooking powers of no mean order.
[Illustration: CROMER
_The sixteenth tee_]
The third is another spirited hole, where we plunge down a steep hill
between two lines of bracken to a green in the bottom of the valley.
Then we retire to a vantage point on the left, and fire over the heads
of our immediate successors on the putting green. After some little
dodging about among gorse bushes, we dash down hill again--a very long
way this time--and then play an adroit little pitch up to a plateau
cut out of the face of the neighbouring mountain. Then we leave the
nice down turf to pass for a while on to undisguisedly inland holes,
which stretch away towards Overstrand. As I said before, there is
nothing very thrilling about these holes, but we shall need good,
honest flogging if we are to cope with them successfully. I prefer to
come back to the sixteenth, which, with a strong wind blowing, as it
not infrequently does, takes a great deal of playing. There is more
plunging to be done--down into one valley with precipitous sides,
then up a long hill, and finally on to a green that sits perched on
the crest; there are also cross-bunkers, and there is bracken to the
left and the mighty ocean to the right. Finally, for the last hole we
drop down once more into the deep hollow from which we started our
mountaineering. No more than a nice firm iron-shot is needed, and we
shall be holing out in a comfortable three in front of the club-house;
but the distance is infinitely deceitful, so much so that once--on the
occasion of an exhibition match--Herd taking his brassey, and relying
on the misleading advice of his caddy, carried not only the green, but
the club-house as well.
From Cromer to Sheringham is but a few miles, and we may play a
morning round on one course and an afternoon round at the other. At
=Sheringham= we shall be called upon to do only a moderate amount of
climbing and some of the very stoutest hitting with the brassey that
has ever been required of us. The theory of the good-length hole has
been carried almost to its ultimate limit there, and unless the wind
be favourable and the ground uncommonly fast, cleeks and driving irons
will be no manner of good to us. Strenuous punching with the brassey is
the order of the day, and even so, unless we have been hitting the ball
as clean as a whistle, we shall say to the long-suffering Mr. Janion,
"Hang it all; you never ought to have put the tee back at the ninth
hole. Braid himself with a Dreadnought could not get there in two."
Some of these two-shot holes at Sheringham are really of extraordinary
splendour, and give the lie to those who say that with a rubber-cored
ball golf is no longer an athletic exercise. There are the second and
fourth, for example, which run parallel to one another, so that by no
means can we hope to have the wind with us both ways. The fourth needs
a particularly long second, for there is a deep cross-bunker in front
of the green. It is just a little like the last hole at Muirfield,
and we must pick the ball well up--no scuffling and scrambling will
do--and hit a ball with a long, swooping carry that shall fall spent
and lifeless on the green beyond. After this hard work we are let
down more easily, and a drive and a pitch should suffice at the fifth
and sixth. The latter is a very attractive hole, with the most glorious
tee-shot from a high hill, a fine view of the sea, and a fascinating
approach-shot at the end, which we can pitch or run according as seems
best to us.
[Illustration: SHERINGHAM
_Out of bounds (on the way to the seventh hole)_]
At the eighth we carry a lifeboat house from the tee--an unique hazard
in my experience--and play a long second shot full of interest and
possible disaster. Then, alas! we have to leave the sea, which we
have been keeping on our right-hand side, and go further inland. All
the home-coming holes are good and difficult, but we miss the sea
terribly. It is so pleasant to have it there as a reminder that we are
really playing on a seaside course and not inland. The finish is a
particularly good one, the seventeenth, especially against a breeze,
being quite one of the best on the course, since there is a railway
which terrifies us into a hook just when we must go straight if we are
to get the requisite distance.
All this time I have been talking of nothing but long holes, and that
is to do the course an injustice, for there are some very pleasant
short ones. The third is a hole that one might expect to find at
Hoylake--a pitch over the angle of a field, which is bounded by walls
of turf; it is one of the remnants of the old nine-hole course, and
therefore regarded with a jealous and quite justifiable affection. The
greens are excellent throughout the course, and the number of people
who drive off between sunrise and sunset on a summer's day shows that
Sheringham does not suffer from a lack of popularity.
I should imagine that =Brancaster=, before golf was introduced there,
must have been quite one of the quietest and most rural spots to be
found in England. Even now it is wonderfully peaceful, and has a
distinct charm and character of its own. We get out at Hunstanton
Station, and drive a considerable number of miles along a nice, flat,
dull east country road till we get to the tranquil little village, with
a church and some pleasant trees and an exceedingly comfortable Dormy
House. In front of the village is a stretch of grey-green marsh, and
beyond the marsh is a range of sandhills, and that is where the golf is.
The great defect of Brancaster used to be the thinness and poverty
of the turf. The holes were splendidly conceived, and the carries
blood-curdling; but the sand was so near the surface that the lies
were none of the best, and the putting greens sometimes of the worst.
I retain a vivid recollection of a visit to Brancaster with a somewhat
irascible friend. He greeted me at the Dormy House door with the
depressing words:
"It's utterly impossible to play here. We had better take the next
train back."
"Oh, no," I said cheerfully. "As we have come here, I think we had
better play."
"Very well," he rejoined. "Of course, you won't mind putting with your
niblick. A mashie is no good at all."
We stayed, and personally I enjoyed myself; I don't think my
friend did, and certainly the greens were of a surpassing vileness.
All that is changed now, and by some miracle of industry the course
is a velvety carpet, and the greens are as of the greens of Sandwich,
with plenty of good, holding grass upon them. Good greens are all
that Brancaster needed, and now it has got them. Perhaps there is one
more thing needed, and that is a stout man with a spade to dig a few
more bunkers; but that want, I believe, is in course of being or has
actually been remedied by now.
[Illustration: BRANCASTER
_The ninth green and tenth tee_]
In the days of the gutty it was most emphatically a driver's course,
since nobody could get over the ground without exceptionally honest
hitting. Even now, when the pampering Haskell has noticeably reduced
its terrors, it is still a driver's course, in the sense that it is one
on which one derives the maximum of sensual pleasure from opening one's
shoulders for a wooden club shot. Moreover, long driving does pay--for
the matter of that, it pays anywhere--because there are several second
shots which are enormously more formidable, when they have to be played
with something like a full shot. There is, for instance, the ninth--a
hole of which men used to speak with the same reverential awe with
which they alluded to the 'Maiden' at Sandwich. Certainly that bunker
in front of the green is sufficiently desperate, and to be compelled
to approach the hole with a brassey may well inspire fear, but a good
drive on a calm day should leave us little more than a firm half-iron
shot to play, and then we can afford to treat the bunker almost with
contempt. The same remark applies in a measure to the fourth hole, and
likewise to the fourteenth. There are beautifully guarded greens and
alarming bunkers, and just the extra yards gained by a good drive make
a world of difference in easiness of the approach.
Few things are more terrifying than the first hole at Brancaster on a
cold, raw, windy morning, when our wrists are stiff and our beautiful
steely-shafted driver feels like a poker. There is a bunker--really
a very big, deep bunker--right in front of our noses, and stretching
away for a hundred yards or so, and the early morning 'founder' that
would send the ball ricochetting away for miles at the first hole at
Hoylake or St. Andrews brings us to immediate grief. There is nothing
very thrilling about the second shot, and the next two holes, although
good enough, must remain unsung. At the fourth, however, we come to a
thoroughly entertaining hole; the second shot has to be played from a
plain, over a hill, and on to something that one might call a plateau,
were it not that such a term hardly does justice to the curliness of
the green.
There is a fascinating little pitch over a kind of gorge, and on to
another plateau for the fifth; but the hole on the way out is, I think,
the eighth. There is nothing quite like it anywhere else, as far as I
know. I can think of no better simile to describe it than that of a
man crossing a stream by somewhat imperfect stepping-stones, so that
he has to make a perilous leap from one to the other. There are, as
it were, three tongues or spits of land; on the first is the tee, on
the third is the green, and between them lie strips of marsh, a sandy
waste on which we may get a good lie, but are infinitely more likely
to get a bad one. There is a safe, conservative method of playing the
hole, which consists of a second shot along the second tongue, followed
by a hop over the marsh on to the green. On the other hand, there is
a more dashing policy, whereby we go out for a big shot off the tee,
and try to reach the third tongue in our second stroke. The first plan
is reminiscent of the methods of Allan Robertson, who, we are told,
used to play a certain hole at St. Andrews in three short spoon shots;
the second belongs to the more daring methods of to-day. The wind, of
course, has a great deal to say to our tactics, but, however we play
the hole, we have got to hit all our shots as they should be hit, and
that is as much as to say that the hole is a good one.
The ninth I have already spoken of, and with an adverse wind it is
undoubtedly a magnificent hole. With the wind behind it becomes much
more commonplace, but wherever the wind, we are not likely to be quite
happy till we have left it behind in a scoring competition. In a match
we may treat it cavalierly enough, and therefore successfully, but in
a medal there is a chance of an overwhelming disaster as a punishment
for just one bad shot. We may carry the bunker itself, and yet with
a pull we may plunge into a hedge of brushwood or on to the seashore
beyond it. We may be just short with our second--a matter of six inches
perhaps--and we shall be battering the bunker's unyielding face till
our card is shattered and wrecked. If a bunker be only big enough and
bad enough, it is undeniably difficult to treat it with just the right
admixture of contempt and respect.
The first few holes on the way home do not appear to me particularly
thrilling, but when we get to the fourteenth there is a really good
second to be played over a ghastly bunker on to a small well-guarded
green. The sixteenth provides an ingenious example of the plateau hole,
and there is a bunker that takes no denial guarding the home green.
Brancaster is like one or two other courses--Harlech and Sandwich
are those that come into my mind. The golf is not desperately
difficult golf if one is hitting the ball steadily into the air, but
the occasional top which we may allow ourselves with something like
impunity on more difficult courses spells ruin. If the punishment of
the utterly bad shots was the aim and object of all golf, these three
courses would be the best in the world. I don't think they are any of
them quite as good as that, but they all provide the very jolliest of
golf, and Brancaster is not the least jolly of the three.
[Illustration: HUNSTANTON
_Under snow_]
=Hunstanton= is very amusing golf; it is more than that, for it is
for the most part very good golf. Perhaps it is a little unfairly
overshadowed in public estimation by its near neighbour Brancaster,
which is altogether on rather a bigger and grander scale. Brancaster
has the faults which are apt to go with its peculiar virtues; it gives
the player just a little too much rope, an accusation that is not
lightly to be made against Hunstanton. They had a visitation from Braid
at Hunstanton a year or two back, and he left a most destructive
trail of bunkers behind him; wonderfully cunningly devised they are,
so that if we narrowly avoid one we are very likely to be caught
in another or 'covering' bunker, just as we were rejoicing at our
unmerited escape.
The outgoing nine holes at Hunstanton are nearly all good; the
home-coming half is much more unequal in quality. The last two holes
always made a fine finish, but some of the preceding holes were once of
rather poor quality. Braid's bunkers, however, and the stretching of
tees, and a radical change at the thirteenth have worked wonders, and
nowadays a low score at Hunstanton, though perfectly possible, has to
be earned by sound and accurate golf.
We begin just as at Brancaster, with a most terrifying bunker to carry.
It is a magnificent bunker and a very good one-shot hole, but these
caverns in front of the nervous starter do most sadly retard progress
on a crowded green. The second and third are really fine holes both
of them, especially the second, which wants two good shots and a
pitch, with accurate going all the way. The fifth demands two of the
best shots to carry a cop in front of the green; there is, moreover,
a chance of slicing into the river Hun. At the sixth we play a blind
pitch into a kind of amphitheatre among sandhills--a hole which is
picturesque but fluky; but at the eighth we come to a really fine
hole--the best on the course--with a fine slashing second over the
corner of a field that is out of bounds. It is a hole where we must
decide on our own policy on the tee, and either go as close as may
be to the field to begin with or else reluctantly put aside all our
noblest ideals and play pawkily to the left for a five.
On the way home we have at the tenth an excellent and teasing tee-shot
along one of those narrow necks which every 'architect' must long for,
and a good eleventh as well. Then the course suffers rather a relapse,
but the seventeenth and eighteenth are worth much fine gold. Certainly
there is an element of luck about the lie off the tee-shot at the
seventeenth, but if only we are lucky and the wind be not too strong
against us, we can hit out manfully, and the ball will sail away over
a hill and a prodigious big bunker in its face on to a nice big green.
The last is even better, with its narrow and billowy green, guarded by
a bunker in front, another to the right, and a horrid hard road to the
left. If I add that I once did these two holes in consecutive threes
it is not in a spirit of boasting, but merely to recall a sensation of
exquisite bliss. Hunstanton is very good golf of the most genuine and
sandy kind. If it is not in the highest class, it is at least agreeably
near to it.
[Illustration: SKEGNESS
_The second shot at the ninth hole_]
Now leaving Norfolk behind, we ought to see one course in Lincolnshire,
that of the Seacroft Club at Skegness. =Skegness=, as is well known
to everyone from Mr. Hassall's delightful poster, is 'so bracing,'
and I would not for the world dispute the fact. I had, however, the
misfortune to visit it on one of the most stifling days in July, when
the whole flat expanse of Lincolnshire fen lay panting under a hot
haze, and our progress round the links was quite unlike that of the
gentleman depicted by Mr. Hassall, skimming buoyantly over the ground
with a cooling sea breeze behind him. If, therefore, I have
pleasant recollections of Skegness, it must surely be a good course;
and so it is, lacking, I think, only one thing, a wind that blows from
two places at once. It is one of those courses that runs, roughly
speaking, straight out and home, and the nine holes that we play with
the wind in our face we think really beautiful, while with the wind
behind us we are just a little bit disappointed. This is, of course,
only the impression of a casual visitor; and, moreover, it must often
happen that wind is neither for us nor against us, but blows straight
across the course. Then the golf must be really difficult, for the
fairway is uniformly narrow and the rough wonderfully tenacious;
indeed, I have only met with more clinging rough at Le Touquet, where
is to be found a diabolical undergrowth, which the caddies call by the
name of 'les épines,' and the golfers by a variety of epithets--all of
them unprintable.
The course begins admirably with two narrow and difficult holes, where
it is equally easy to heel the ball out of bounds or to hook it into
the rough before described. The third is blind but exciting--a drive
on to the top of a hog-backed ridge, followed by a little pitch over
the brow of the hill on to a green in a dell. Of the other outgoing
holes, the two best are perhaps those called respectively 'Spion Kop'
and 'Gibraltar,' and of these 'Gibraltar' is the best. Here there is
a really fine second shot to be played over a whole range of sandy
mountains, and if, perhaps with some mistaken idea of making the ball
rise quickly, we impart any cut to the ball, it sails away out of
bounds, and we are left with the sandy mountains still uncrossed.
'Gibraltar' is certainly the most memorable hole on the way out, and
'Sea View' strikes equal terror into the soul on the homeward journey.
Here the hole stands on a small plateau, and in front is a big bunker
in the face of the hill. With a wind behind we may hope to get home
with a high, hard hit with an iron, but on a still day it must need the
very best of brassey shots, and a shot, moreover, that shall soar high
in the air and then fall comparatively straight to earth. Beyond the
green is a waste of sand, and the hole lives up to its name, for there
is a view of a big stretch of sea. The sixteenth is a 'dog-legged'
hole that makes some demand upon our cunning, and we must hit long and
straight along the bottom of a gully for the last two holes, so that
the course ends as it began, very well.
Given straight hitting from the tee, we should return something better
than a respectable score, but the demand for straightness is great,
and, indeed, the constant avenues of rough remind one rather of the
best of modern inland courses. It is genuine seaside golf, however,
with good turf and plenty of sand, and the sea itself, although
we do not often see it. Neither do we see--and this is an unmixed
blessing--the teeming swarms of trippers that come to Skegness to be
braced.