THE COURSES OF CHESHIRE AND LANCASHIRE.
Of all the links in the north of England, =Hoylake= comes first on
account of its historic traditions, the eminence of its golfing sons,
and, as I think at least, its own intrinsic merits. At Hoylake the
golfing pilgrim is emphatically on classic ground. As he steps out
of the train that has brought him from Liverpool he will gaze with
awe-struck eyes upon surroundings in which the irreverent might see
nothing out of the ordinary.
"Perhaps it was here," he will muse, "that the youthful Johnny Ball
once toddled to school, his satchel on his back. The infant Hilton may
have been wheeled by his nurse upon these very paving stones. Nay,
Jack Graham may even now, perchance, be seen at this identical station
at which I have just got out of my train taking his train to go into
Liverpool every morning."
By the time that these remarkable thoughts have flashed like lightning
through his mind, the pilgrim will find himself wandering down a
straight, dusty, unattractive road, which is flanked by villas of a
comfortable though prosaic appearance, and wondering where on earth
this famous links can possibly be. Then he will discover that what he
thought was another and particularly gorgeous villa was really the
Royal Liverpool Club-house, and dashing upstairs, he will see out of
the smoking-room window the famous links of Hoylake spread out beneath
him.
On a first view they are not imposing. All that appears is a vast
expanse cut up into squares and strips by certain cops or banks, partly
walled in by roads and houses, with a range of sandhills in the far
distance. Yet this place of dull and rather mean appearance is one
of the most interesting and most difficult courses in the world, and
pre-eminently one which is regarded with affection by all who know it
well.
[Illustration: HOYLAKE (1)
_Looking out to Hilbre from the ninth tee_]
That the course is either interesting or difficult all will not agree,
but those who disagree most loudly with the statement will, I venture
to assert, usually be found to be the worst of players. "I call Hoylake
a rotten course: there are no bunkers to get over; the fellow I was
playing with topped all his tee-shots and never got into trouble."
Such is a verdict often heard after a first visit to Hoylake. The
critic should then further be asked his opinion of St. Andrews, and
it will generally be found that he classes St. Andrews and Hoylake
together as the two worst courses he has ever seen. He may forthwith
be treated with silent contempt, and his opinions may be ignored. He
has effectually written himself down an ass. What this person says
is absolutely true; there are very few bunkers in front of the
tee at Hoylake, and the man who tops his tee-shot does escape condign
punishment more often than he would on a golf course designed on
principles of perfect equity. Those short drives, however, though they
do not plunge the culprit waist high in sand, bring their own penalty
by making it practically impossible for him to reach the green in the
right number of shots. Some of the holes that we are supposed to reach
in two shots are desperately long, and with a top from the tee all
hope is straightway gone. At least if Hoylake does not demand that the
ball should always be hit into the air--a matter that is not after all
of very great importance among the reasonably competent--it does make
very exacting demands in the matter of length and straightness. How
fiendishly narrow is the third hole, with that fatal cop on the left
and rushes on the right. How we do have to press if we are to hit far
enough at those last five holes--'Field,' 'Lake,' 'Dun,' 'Royal,' and
the home hole; what splendid names they have, and what splendid finish
they provide for a match--surely the most exhausting finish to be found
on any links in the world.
Then, too, there is always a rich reward at Hoylake for the man who
can play his approaches really straight and with a firm, sure touch.
There are some courses where the greens are always helping us and the
ball is always running to the hole. We may play a most indifferent
iron shot on to the outskirts of the green, and behold! a kindly slope
has intervened on our behalf, and the ball finishes within comfortable
putting range. Hoylake is emphatically not one of those easy and
enervating places; there the greens are always fighting against the
player, and he must hold his shot straight on the pin from start to
finish. If he does not, the chances are that the ball will take a
vindictive leap, and his next shot will still come under the category
of approaching. There is none of your smug smoothness and trimness
about Hoylake; it is rather hard and bare and bumpy, and needs a man
to conquer it. The game, as I have said, is not made easy for us,
and this is true--a little too true, alas!--of the putting greens.
Sometimes they are good enough, though hardly ever easy; but very
often, unless I have been exceptionally unfortunate in my experience,
they are rather rough and lumpy, and make the holing of short putts a
very anxious business. Time was when the greens were the particular
pride of the course, and Mr. Hutchinson wrote in the Badminton Library
that "The links of Hoylake are associated, in the mind of every golfer
who has played upon them, with the most perfect putting greens in all
the world." Since that eulogy was written the building of houses and
the consequent drainage operations are said to have drained some subtle
and beautiful quality out of the greens, and they may now be said to
form the weakness rather than the strength of the course. Even now,
however, they are not so rough as they often look, and the man who has
a delicate and withal a fearless touch of his putter will still be
rewarded at Hoylake.
One more good quality of the holes at Hoylake deserves a word of
mention; it has been called by Mr. Low their 'indestructibleness.'
By this most useful, if inelegant, word, he means that they are good
whether played with or against the wind, and that is very high praise,
particularly as there are few courses on which a change of wind more
completely alters the character of each individual hole. Blessed indeed
is the hole which can keep its good character whichever way the wind is
blowing.
The first hole is so good and difficult that it seems almost a pity
that we are compelled to play it before we have got thoroughly into
our stride. Whatever the wind, it is our duty to begin with a long,
straight drive between the club-house railings on the left and a sandy
ditch and cop on the right. At about the distance of a good drive from
the tee the cop turns at a right angle to the right, and we must follow
the cop, skirting it as near as we dare. The wind cannot be either
with or against us for both our first and second shots, and we shall
have a fine opportunity of showing our skill in the use of it. If it
be blowing strongly against us on the tee we shall hardly get home in
two, and our second must needs be played over the corner of the cop
and the out-of-bounds region that lies within it. If it blow behind us
we shall be well clear of the cop with our drive, and may hope to be
home with a low, running second with an iron club, but it must be a
parlous straight one. Altogether there are few finer holes to be found
anywhere, and it would always find a place in my eclectic eighteen
holes.
Passing over the second--good hole though it be--we come to an
unpleasantly narrow one--the third or 'Long' hole. If the wind is
blowing freshly behind us we may aspire to reach the green in two very
long and very straight shots, but as a rule we shall require two
drives and a pitch. Along the left-hand side runs a sandy ditch beneath
a turf wall with absolutely precipitous sides, and woe betide the man
whose ball lies tucked up hard under the face of that wall; he will be
lucky if he can get it out backwards, forwards, or at all. I saw Mr.
John Ball extricate himself from this predicament by an extraordinary
stroke, or so it seemed to me. He stood on the top of the wall, far out
of reach of the ball, then leaped down into the ditch, hitting as he
jumped, and out came the ball most gallantly; it needs something more
than local knowledge to play such a shot as this.
The fourth is a short hole--the 'Cop' by name, so called from yet
another bank that guards it. Then follow two good two-shot holes, of
which the sixth, or 'Briars,' has the distinction of having been halved
in nine in the final of an amateur championship. The tee-shot must be
struck straight and true over the angle of hedge, while anything in
the nature of an attempt to sneak round by the right entails a prickly
death among the whins. Safely over the hedge, we have yet two sandy
trenches to carry, and the green is guarded by rushes and pot-bunkers,
so that if nine be an excessive total, four is a comparatively small
one. Next comes one of the finest short holes in the world, 'The
Dowie,' which is not only very good, but really unique. There is a
narrow triangular green, guarded on the right by some straggling rushes
and on the left by an out-of-bounds field and a cop; there is likewise
a pot-bunker in front. To hit quite straight at this hole is the feat
of a hero, for let the ball be ever so slightly pulled, and we
shall infallibly be left playing our second shot from the tee. Nearly
everybody slices at the Dowie out of pure fright, and is left with a
tricky little running up shot on to the green. The perfect shot starts
out of the right, just to show that it has no intention of going out of
bounds, and then swings round with a delicious hook, struggles through
the little rushy hollow, and so home on the green; it is a shot to
dream of, but alas! seldom to play.
[Illustration: HOYLAKE (2)
_The twelfth tee_]
A long and reasonably narrow eighth hole takes us to the confines of
West Kirby, and we turn our faces once more towards the club-house in
the far distance. Two perfect shots that turn neither to the right nor
to the left but keep down a narrow valley between two ranges of hills
may see us safely on the ninth green, and we have reached the turn
possibly, but by no means probably, in some 38 shots. The tenth is
another longish hole of no particular features, but the eleventh hole
consists of one big feature--the mighty Alps over which we must hit our
very best shot if we are to gain a three. In the Amateur Championship
of 1898 this hole was done in one in a rather singular way, the ball
going full pitch into the bottom of the hole and staying there. The
'Hilbre' we may hope to reach with a drive and a cunning run up, and
then we have a chance of another three at the 'Rushes.' Here we have
nothing to do but play quite a short pitch over a cross-bunker and a
little wilderness of rushes, but the hole is very close to the bunker,
and the green is hard and full of unkind kicks, and a three is not to
be despised. This is undoubtedly the last chance of a three we shall
have, for from now onwards to the finish it will not be surprising
if we have an uninterrupted run of fives. First comes the 'Field,'
where the hole is most cunningly guarded by a triangle of rushes. A
very respectable five is the 'Field,' and so is the 'Lake,' even if we
go as straight as a die for the hole through 'Johnny Ball's Gap.' So
again is the 'Dun,' where for two shots we have to keep clear of our
old enemies, the cop and the sandy ditch, before playing a deft little
pitch over a cross-bunker. At the 'Royal' we may hope for a four, since
we have a fine wide expanse for the tee-shot, and a really accurate
iron-shot should do the rest. There is plenty of room at the last hole
again, but we shall need two absolutely clean-hit shots if we are to
get home, and once more there is a cross-bunker in front of the green,
at just such a distance from the hole that even if we get out in one we
are likely to take three putts. And so at last we have finished those
last five strenuous holes, and may go to the particularly excellent
lunch provided by the Royal Liverpool Golf Club. They are not much to
look at, those last five, but they are horribly good golf, and if you
are only all square at the thirteenth with one of the Hoylake champions
your chances of ultimate success are exceedingly small. As I write
about Hoylake I can see it all with a misty and sentimental eye. There
are the white railings in front of the club; and Mr. Janion is standing
in the porch in benignant contemplation, and Mr. Ball is wandering anon
from the seventeenth green with his red-topped stockings, chipping
the ball along with his iron as he goes; and I, knowing that somebody
is going to beat me by seven up and six to play, yet long to be back
there again.
* * * * *
Next in fame to Hoylake comes =Formby=, and there are many to be
found who prefer it to the Cheshire course, though personally I do
not consider their judgment a sound one. Formby is at any rate a most
delightful course, and with that let us leave comparisons alone.
There is a particularly clear-cut distinction between the two parts
of the course, which is in that respect a little like Sandwich. There
is the country of the plains, on which the round begins and ends, and
there is the country of hills wherein are all the middle holes. There
is no doubt which are the prettier and more popular; the sand-hills
would come out easily first in a general poll, but I have an uneasy
sort of suspicion that the flat holes supply perhaps a better test of
golf. There are, for instance, few better seventeenth holes than that
which is to be found at Formby; just at the most crucial part of a
hard-fought match it is as long and narrow and nerve-wracking as can
be. Yet it is as flat as a pancake, and might from its appearance be
a great many miles away from the sea. Still it is impossible to get
over its intrinsic merits. There is the tee and there is the hole in
an exact straight line, distant about two full shots away, and there
is literally nothing in the way. That sounds terribly dull, but there
would be nothing in the way if we drove down a Roman road, and yet it
would be far from easy to keep on the course. To the right is a dreary
tract of out-of-bounds, which is, to the morbid imagination, white
with the countless balls that have been driven there. To the left is a
narrow little ditch, and beyond the ditch rough and tussocky grass. To
hit the tee-shot with reasonable accuracy ought not to be beyond our
powers, but the second shot is undeniably a beast. We are undecided
whether to aim out to the right and try for a hook or to the left for
a slice, since for some reason it is horribly difficult to play a
perfectly straightforward shot down a straightforward road of turf.
We shuffle with our feet, become thoroughly uncomfortable, and--the
precise form of disaster must be left to individual fancy.
The sixteenth, at which we traverse the same flattish country, is
no bad hole either; nor are the first two or three, where we drive
straight ahead, with plenty of cops and bunkers to keep us on the
straight and narrow path. In old days there used to be an attractive
tee-shot to the fourth hole over the corner of a group of trees,
which seemed to be for ever heeling over under the force of the wind
and mesmerically luring the slicer to his fate. That is changed now,
however, and we go straight on to the old fifth green, and make
our entry into the mountainous country rather earlier. Our first
introduction to the hills comes at the old seventh, where there is
a blind second shot into a big crater--a type of hole not now so
favourably looked upon as it was once. Then comes a hole which we shall
always remember, along an ominous gorge with frowning hills on either
side of us. There is something romantic and mysterious about it, and if
we retained the imagination of our childhood we should inevitably play
at being an invading army, with the enemy's sharp-shooters hidden
in crevices among the hills.
[Illustration: FORMBY
_The old seventh green_]
After this comes the new country which has lately been taken in,
and there are some fine two-shot holes--so fine that they will be
three-shot holes for some of us--and some that are less strikingly
excellent. We continue to dodge about among the great hills, roughly
speaking, until we reach the fifteenth hole, but before that we shall
have played another and particularly excellent hole along a narrow
gully--the thirteenth. The last four holes lie on flatter country,
although there is still every opportunity of getting into sand, and
we finish with a good two-shot hole on to a fine big green in front
of a fine big club-house. The greens are beautifully green; they are
likewise very true and keen enough, without ever being bare and hard.
The lies, too, are excellent, and it is altogether one of those courses
where the player's fate is entirely in his own hands. If he plays well
everything will conspire to help him on his way, but he has got to play
really well--good, sterling, honest golf: there is no mistake about
that at Formby.
* * * * *
=Wallasey=, where we come back to Cheshire again, is another course of
mighty hills: indeed I do not think I have ever seen a course on which
the contour of the hills and valleys was so infinitely picturesque.
At several of the holes we play, or try to play, in the trough of two
great waves of sand that tower on either side of us, and feel rather
overpowered by the vastness of our surroundings. There was a time when
Wallasey, though amusing enough, was too short and blind and tricky
to be taken very seriously, but all that is changed now, and, with the
addition of heaven knows how many hundreds of yards, the course is a
long and punishing one. It is still perhaps a little too blind for
those of very rigid and spartan views, but whatever the exact place
which may be assigned to it on the day of judgment--and this sort of
question will never be settled at any earlier date--it is undoubtedly
good golf.
[Illustration: WALLASEY
_The fifth green_]
Certainly the first hole is the blindest of the blind. Wallop the
first, and the ball vanishes over a hill; wallop the second--this time
with a mashie--and it flies over another on to the green. This is not
the best of beginnings, but the second has a much more interesting
tee-shot, where we try to hug a bank covered with a particularly
pestilent form of bush, and then at the third we are in the country
of hills and valleys. The view at the third, as we look down the long
winding gully that leads to the hole, is one of the most charming in
golf; and the fifth is another wonderfully picturesque hole, with a
terrifying second shot. After the seventh we leave the sandhills for
a while, and play backwards and forwards for a spell along some flat
holes that seem to radiate from one solitary house that stands alone
in the middle of the course. They are very good holes some of them,
and the ninth, eleventh, and thirteenth especially need long, straight
hitting, but the last four or five holes take us back to the more
characteristic country, and the finish comes in a blaze of glorious
sandhills. A rather blind, and to the stranger a puzzling, tee-shot
should land us safely on the table-land, and then far away and
rather below us to the right we see the promised land, the seventeenth
green, and with a good shot the ball will swoop away for an apparently
incredible distance, and finish by the hole side. The eighteenth, too,
is full of charm, and when we have successfully carried the spur of a
big hill and played our second over some more bold and broken ground,
we can hole out in a deep hollow, with the eyes of the whole club
watching us from above as they sit in front of the club-house. It is
quite likely that we have played very far from well, since this country
of mountains and deep dells is always difficult for the stranger, and
our host has probably ways and means of reaching the green that we are
apt to regard as ways of darkness, but we shall have found the golf
infinitely pleasant and exhilarating.
* * * * *
There are other Liverpool courses, Leasowe, Blundellsands, Hesketh,
Birkdale, and Southport, which are fully worthy of more extended
notice, but we must be getting away from Liverpool to the links where
the man from Manchester often plays his weekly golf--the course of the
Lytham and St. Anne's Club. =St Anne's= is not far from Blackpool,
where there is incidentally quite a good course, and after the day's
golf we can, if we have sufficient energy, go and dance in the largest
dancing hall in the world or climb the highest tower in the world, or,
in short, consult the advertisements of Blackpool. This, however, is
not business, and we have to play serious golf at St. Anne's, for the
opposition is very good and very keen, as the members of the Oxford
and Cambridge Golfing Society have discovered to their cost.
[Illustration: LYTHAM AND ST. ANNE'S
_The seventh tee_]
As compared with Hoylake, St. Anne's is very smooth and trim, and just
a little artificial. If the day is calm and we are hitting fairly
straight, the golf seems rather easy than otherwise; and yet we must
never allow ourselves to think so too pronouncedly, or we shall
straightway find it becoming unpleasantly difficult. If there is a
strong wind blowing we shall not even be tempted to think it easy, for
there is plenty of rough grass on either side, and the hitting of a
good straight tee-shot, which seemed so simple and made the holes seem
simple, will be a cause of considerable anxiety. Whatever the weather
and the wind, there is one thing that we ought always to do well at St.
Anne's, and that is putt, for the greens are as good and true as any in
the world, and can even challenge comparison with those in the Old Deer
Park. Given an opponent who is a really fine putter--Mr. Lassen or some
other inhuman fiend--and till he has played two more while our ball
lies stone dead we can never feel quite happy; the truly-struck putt
comes on and on over that wonderfully smooth turf and flops into the
hole with a sickening little thud, and there are we left gasping and
robbed of our prey. There is no kind of excuse for bad putting at St.
Anne's, and in fine weather there is indeed little excuse for any form
of error, for the lies are uniformly good and the stances uniformly
smooth, save perhaps at two holes, where the land lies in ridges and
furrows, and we may need a measure of skill to persuade the ball to
fly from the hanging sides of a ridge. The trouble, besides
rough grass and pot-bunkers, consists of sandhills, both natural and
artificial. To build an artificial sandhill is not a light task, and
it is characteristic of the whole-hearted enthusiasm of the golfers of
St. Anne's that they have raised several of these terrifying monuments
of industry. They are still in their infancy, and look just a little
new and raw, but they will destroy the golfer's card and temper just as
effectively as those that have stood from time immemorial. They are,
moreover, covered with bent grass, which will no doubt increase and
multiply to the greater glory of the hills and ruination of the golfer.
The course begins with a short hole of no particularly coruscating
virtues, but the second and third are both good, and the railway on the
right scares us into a hook: and the hook takes us into a bunker, and
the bunker loses us the hole. The fourth has a very pretty green, well
and naturally guarded by hummocks; and Nature has been very kind again
at the sixth, where there is a deep crater, to be comfortably reached
in two good shots. Indeed these natural craters are rather a feature of
the course, for there is something of the same kind to be found at the
seventh, and a very perfect example at the fourteenth. The worst that
is to be said against them is that they give some encouragement to a
second shot off the back-wall, but the attendant risks are very great,
and the back-wall shot that just misses the mark brings with it a peck
of troubles.
The ninth has a fine tee-shot and a long, difficult, and blind second
shot, in which the stranger always finds that he has aimed at the wrong
chimney pot in a row of houses at Ansdell. The tenth has a hut for
drinks and a tee-shot that fully justifies such an indulgence; while
at the eleventh we must go on driving and driving till we reach the
green, which, contrary to our expectations, we shall ultimately do.
The thirteenth is of an unattractive and inlandish appearance, but is
as good a hole as is to be found on the course, and needs the very
straightest of play to avoid a network of bunkers. Out of a puddle in
the bottom of one of these bunkers I once holed a pitch, and have never
played the hole so well either before or since. Then comes the crater
hole, the fourteenth before mentioned; and after that we may hope to
get home with a three and three fours, but the four at the seventeenth
is not a particularly easy one, and there is always a chance of too
strong an approach being bunkered in a flower bed beyond the home
green, to the great amusement of the spectators in the smoking-room
window.
There is nowhere in the golfing world where keener opponents and more
friendly hosts are to be found than in the counties of Lancashire and
Cheshire, and I cannot help saying that I, along with my brothers of
the Oxford and Cambridge Golfing Society, owe them a very deep debt of
gratitude.
[Illustration: TRAFFORD PARK
_The club-house from the eighteenth tee_]
Before finally quitting Lancashire, we must look at one inland course,
namely, =Trafford Park=, which may be accepted as the foremost among
the purely Manchester courses. I was interested and surprised to find,
in reading a little history of the Manchester Golf Club, that golf was
played in Manchester at a date so utterly prehistoric as 1818.
However, a few enthusiasts really did play upon Kersal Moor at that
remote period, and they called themselves the Manchester Golf Club.
They had no imitators till sixty-four years later, when Mr. Macalister
founded the Manchester St. Andrews Golf Club that played in Manley
Park. The birth of this second club happened almost simultaneously with
the death of the first. Kersal Moor, for all its solitary and savage
name, fell a prey to the builder, and in 1883 the original Manchester
Golf Club ceased to exist, and its name was assumed by the Manley Park
Club. Since then, it should be added, it has, happily, come to life
again under the title of the Old Manchester Golf Club.
Meanwhile, Manley Park came to share the fate of Kersal Moor, and a
move was made to Trafford Park, which has now been the home of the
Manchester Golf Club from 1893 to the present time. It has flourished
ever since, and has played a prominent part in the golfing life of
Manchester.
Trafford Park is a good course in spite of the most unpromising
surroundings. All round the fine old park, formerly the home of the de
Traffords, manufactories now raise their hideous heads, while along one
side runs the Manchester Ship Canal, and the man who desires an excuse
for a bad shot may allege that an ocean liner insisted on coming behind
him just as he was playing. These are certainly not recommendations,
but there are compensating advantages in good turf, good greens, good
length holes, and the old mansion-house, which has been converted into
one of the most comfortable and palatial of club-houses.
The turf is excellent. It is certainly not muddy, nor is it precisely
sandy. One who has played much golf at Trafford describes it as
'peaty,' and I will leave it at that. The hazards are of the usual
park description: trees, artificial bunkers, and at one hole a pond,
while the ground is pleasantly undulating for the first nine holes, and
rather too flat for the second.
We begin by driving downhill, which is always a comforting thing to
do, although we ought to have warmed to our work a little in order to
get full value out of a downhill drive. This takes us into the lower
ground, and after a moderate first we have a really good two-shot
hole for the second; well over four hundred yards long, and with a
thoroughly interesting second shot on to a raised green. The third,
which is a one-shot hole--there are four of these in all--takes us up a
hill again, and of the holes that follow the fourth and the seventh are
especially good, the former demanding a long, straight, iron shot on to
a particularly well bunkered green.
Coming home the course suffers a little, as I said, from being too
flat, and, so as with many of these park courses, it is rather hard to
pick out any one hole from among its fellows. Good sound golf will be
repaid, and so will the golf that is unsound and bad, but neither the
rewards nor the punishments are of a thrilling or heroic order. There
is one hole, however, that calls for special mention, the sixteenth,
where two really fine shots are needed to reach the green, and the
only thing to be said against the hole is that it would be better still
if it were number seventeen instead; not that the present seventeenth
is bad, but that the sixteenth is so eminently well adapted to occupy
that critical and important position. Gaudin has been round the course
in 65, but the intending visitor will be disappointed if he imagines
that he himself will necessarily do a particularly low score on that
account. In these days of expanded courses--against which one begins to
see some signs of a revolt--Trafford Park is not vastly long, but it
calls for good, honest golf for all that.