OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE.
The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge are rich in many things, but
are very decidedly poor in the matter of golf courses. I should be more
precise if I said poor in their own courses, for in Frilford Heath and
Worlington (or as it is often called, Mildenhall) they are lucky to
possess hospitable neighbours, who provide them with very delightful
golf indeed.
The courses of Cambridge I know very well indeed, having played over
them at intervals during the greater part of my life. With those of
Oxford I have only, comparatively speaking, a bowing acquaintance,
founded on the annual match between the University and the Oxford and
Cambridge Golfing Society. Before turning to Frilford there is a word
to be said of Cowley, Radley, and Hinksey, the latter of which has now
ceased to exist. Cowley, so I have heard my friend Mr. Croome declare,
is now rather a good course, and as I have never seen it, I most
certainly will not venture to contradict him; but I can take my oath
as to both Hinksey and Radley that they call for some other epithet.
=Hinksey= was certainly amusing, and I have spent some not wholly
unpleasant afternoons there squelching through the mud and trying
vainly to hole putts by cannoning off alternate wormcasts. There was a
short hole--the fourth, I think--where one played a pitching shot into
the heart of a wood which was distinctly entertaining, but on the whole
it was not a good test of golf, or, if it was, then I would rather have
my golf tested in some other way.
When Hinksey ceased to exist =Radley= came into being, and it is most
decidedly a longer and more difficult course, but I am not certain
that it is such good fun. It is a good deal longer; indeed a great
many of the holes are of a very good length. There is a really good
seventeenth, where one skirts a wood on the right, and granted a good
lie--a thing which rests upon the knees of the gods--one may hit two
really fine shots and get a fine four. I imagine, however, that no one
will be prepared to deny that it is muddy--I will go so far as to say
extremely muddy--and in these days we are so pampered with beautiful
sandy inland courses that we no longer suffer mud at all gladly. So if
we are at Oxford I think we had better throw economy to the winds and
charter a 'taxi,' which shall take us up Cumnor Hill to Frilford Heath.
[Illustration: FRILFORD HEATH
_Approaching the ninth green_]
=Frilford= is only seven miles from Oxford, but it might be a hundred
miles from anywhere. It lies on a little unfrequented by-road, and is
as utterly rural and peaceful a spot as could be found anywhere. Here
is sand enough and to spare--a wonderful oasis in the desert of mud.
The sand is so near the turf that out of pure exuberance it breaks
out here and there in little eruptions on the surface or flies up in a
miniature sand-storm as the ball alights. The ground is for the most
part very flat, and there are fir trees and whins scattered here and
there. There is also a pretty wood of firs and birches, over which we
have to drive at the third hole, of which more anon. The greens are a
little rough as yet, and some of the bunkers have still to be made, or
at least had not been made when I last played there; but time alone
is wanted to make Frilford a very fine course indeed. It is already a
wonderfully charming one.
The first two holes remind one a little of Muirfield, since there is a
stone wall over which a pulled ball will inevitably vanish. The second
is a fine long two-shot hole, and at the first, which is somewhat
shorter, a highly ingenious use has been made of a solitary tree, which
forces the player to drive close to the stone wall if he is to have
an open approach. Then comes the third before mentioned, which is a
one-shot hole. The wood rises pretty steeply in front of the tee, and
the shot is made the more difficult because a cleek is hardly long
enough, and so we have to take a wooden club. Many a shot that would
under ordinary circumstances fill us with a mild degree of conceit will
only send the ball crashing into the forest. It is no hole for the 'low
raker' which we regard with complacency at Hoylake and St. Andrews. We
must hit a fine high towering shot, and then we may hope to find our
ball on the green--a pretty little green which nestles close under the
lee of the wood on the far side. After this come some long open holes
in a country of scattered whin bushes. Exactly how long they are I am
not prepared to say. I played them in the company of Mr. A. J. Evans,
and he appeared to regard them justifiably enough as two-shot holes,
but personally I found myself taking by no means the most lofted of my
iron clubs for my third shot. There is a pretty little pitching hole
over a stone wall--the seventh--which has a flavour of Harlech about
it; and the ninth, which brings us close to the club-house again,
is surely one of the most alarming holes in existence. The drive is
simple enough, but my goodness, what a second! In front of the green
is a mountain, and on either side of the green are deep pits, towards
which the ground 'draws' most unmistakably. Then the green itself is
quite small, and has in its centre a copy of the aforesaid mountain in
miniature. The approach shot, moreover, is by no means a short one, but
is for the ordinary driver a good firm iron shot, so that a four is
really an epoch-making score for the hole.
After the turn it seems to me that the golf shows a distinct falling
off. The holes are still long enough and difficult enough, and Mr.
Evans still seemed to require one stroke less to reach the green than
I did, but for the most part they lack the indefinable charm of the
first nine. There is, however, certainly one exception to this general
criticism, and that is the really fascinating seventeenth, which is
emphatically the right hole in the right place. There is a wood and a
stone wall to carry, and the angle at which we play is such that there
is a very real reward for the long ball which is judiciously hooked.
A good as opposed to an ordinary drive may make all the difference
between a four and a five, for the green is full of undulations, and
the nearer we are to it when we take our iron in hand the better.
Taking it altogether the golf is both good and difficult, and besides
that Frilford is essentially one of those places where it is good
to be alive with a golf club in one's hand--even if one uses it
indifferently--and whither one looks forward to returning with a very
keen enjoyment.
The undergraduates of Cambridge, when they have not the time to go to
Worlington, now play golf at Coton, a pleasant little village enough
that lies off the Madingley Road. I must spare a word or two, however,
for the old course at =Coldham Common=, because I am quite sure that it
was the worst course I have ever seen, and many others would probably
award it a like distinction. The way to Coldham was suggestive of the
pleasures that awaited one there, for it led down that most depressing
of Cambridge streets, the Newmarket Road, and through the most
unattractive slums of Barnwell. After voyaging for some distance along
the Newmarket Road, one turned down a particularly black and odorous
lane, crossed a railway bridge, and reached a flat, muddy expanse of
grass, of which the only features were a railway line and some rifle
butts. I should also perhaps include among its features a particularly
pungent smell, which we always believed--I know not with how much
truth--to proceed from the boiling down of deceased horses into glue.
On arriving outside the precincts of the club-house one was at once
surrounded and nearly swept from one's legs by a yelling mob of
caddies of most villainous appearance, who were supposed, quite
erroneously, to be under the control of a well-meaning but deservedly
superannuated policeman. Anyone who played there regularly soon found
himself made over, body and soul, to one of these ruffians, and then
exchanged the solicitations of the general mob for the unceasing
importunities of his own particular henchman in the matter of cast-off
clothing.
In addition to the regular corps of caddies there was an irregular
body of younger depredators who had no official position, and earned
a precarious livelihood by stealing or retrieving balls. They enjoyed
considerable opportunities, because there were on the Common a good
many muddy ditches--the only natural hazards--and along the edges of
these ditches the youth of Barnwell took up strategic positions at
stated intervals. Sometimes considerations of policy dictated that
they should retrieve the errant ball, and return it to its owner for a
penny. Sometimes they would dexterously stamp the ball into the mud,
pretend to hunt for it with a great show of energy, and pocket it at
their leisure when the owner had abandoned the search. This was an easy
matter enough, for the mud was of the softest and thickest, and the
ball would frequently bury itself on alighting without any help from
the human foot. How our visitors from Blackheath and Yarmouth could
bear it I now find a difficulty in understanding, and it says much for
their enthusiasm and friendliness that they came to play against us
year after year. They put up with it manfully, and very jolly matches
we used to have. Indeed, to quote J. K. S., "the smile on my face is
a mask for tears," and I could almost wish to strike another ball
at Coldham. I must admit to having enjoyed myself very much there,
almost as much as on another course of woeful greens and superlative
muddiness--the old Athens course at Eton.
Coton I do not know well, but though an enthusiastic captain of
Cambridge once told me that the greens were as good as the best seaside
ones, I am disposed to think he was romancing. There is another
flourishing course on the Gog-Magog hills, where there is at least a
charming view, and twelve or thirteen miles away is Royston. Here there
is a truly splendid view over miles and miles of the flat country, for
the course lies on a piece of breezy downland perched high above its
surroundings. A very jolly place it is whereon to play golf, though
the golf perhaps is not of the highest class. It is a course of steep
hills and deep gullies, and there is much climbing to be done and much
putting on perplexing slopes. Some of these gullies form wonderful
natural amphitheatres, and I always like to think that in one of them
was fought the battle for the championship of England between Peter
Crawley, the 'Young Rump Steak,' and Jem Ward, 'the Black Diamond.'
That the fight took place on Royston Heath we know from _Boxiana_, but
the exact battlefield has become obscured by the mists of time.
Better than all these courses, however, is =Worlington=, the home
of the Royal Worlington and Newmarket Golf Club, who kindly allow
the University to use their course and play their matches there. To
get from Cambridge to Worlington is rather a serious undertaking,
for although the station, Mildenhall, is but a little over twenty
miles away, the progress made by the infrequent trains is of the most
leisurely. Still, we do get there in time, passing poor deserted
Coldham Common on the way, and the golf is good enough to repay us for
all our trouble. Worlington is not unlike Frilford in appearance, being
extremely solitary, flat, and sandy, and dotted here and there with
fir trees. There are only nine holes, but of these several are really
excellent, and none can fairly be said to be dull. One curious feature
of the course is that one may play a round there which shall be made up
almost entirely of fives and threes. This was conspicuously the case
in the days of the gutty ball, for there were four holes that could be
reached from the tee, although the second hole certainly required a
very long shot, and five which were beyond the range of two full shots,
save for colossal drivers. Whoever laid out the course clearly had no
great opinion of Mr. Hutchinson's doctrine as to the length of a hole
being some multiple of a full drive, and had no objection to two drives
and a pitch. Nowadays with the rubber ball some of the old-time fives
have become fours, but they are difficult fours requiring in one or two
cases fine long-carrying second shots, and fives are still likely to
preponderate.
[Illustration: MILDENHALL
_The result of a bad slice at the sixth_]
Of all the courses that I know well, none shows so well as Worlington
the difference between the solid and the elastic ball, and a particular
instance, which is historic in a very small way, may be given.
The third hole is an extraordinarily good one, wherein the green
lies just beyond a marshy ditch and is also well protected by
pot-bunkers. After the tee-shot, one has to carry ditch, bunkers and
all, but a weak drive necessitates playing short, and the shot is an
extremely difficult one, because the ball has to be placed on a narrow
neck of grass which slopes down on either side to a ditch and other
horrors. Just before I went up to Cambridge there had been a great
foursome between Douglas Rolland, Willy Park, Hugh Kirkaldy, and Jack
White, who was then the professional at Worlington; and a certain
shot of Rolland's was spoken of with bated breath as being something
altogether superhuman. With a fair breeze against him, he had actually
reached the third green with his second shot. The hole is still the
same length: the tee is back as far as it will possibly go, and yet one
can as a rule get home with an iron club of no inordinate power, while
it takes a very strong wind indeed to make it necessary to play short.
This third is a wonderfully good hole still, but it was more heroic in
the old days.
A hole that does to-day require two heroic shots is the sixth; indeed
the green can only be reached in two with a favouring wind. Along
the whole length of the hole, on the right-hand side, runs a belt
of fir trees, while in front of the green is a ditch. If one clings
very closely to the firs with the tee-shot, and then plays a big,
high-carrying brassey shot, one may hope to see the ball just clear the
last fir tree and drop down close to the hole. Another hole that nobody
is ever likely to forget is the fifth. One may reach the green with a
pitch from the tee, but what a difficult pitch it is. The green is
something in the shape of a hog's back; immediately on the left of it
is a stagnant pool of water, and on the right is a stream, complicated
by overhanging willows. To reach the green is one distinct feat; to
hole out in two putts, when one has got there, is another. For the most
part the whole course is delightfully dry and sandy, in spite of the
presence of many ditches, and the greens, when they are good, are very
good, though they have sometimes a tendency towards getting a little
bare and tricky.
It is no small thing for the Cambridge teams to have this admirable
practising ground, and this alone should make for an improvement in
Cambridge golf. University golf, however, has naturally improved a good
deal in the last few years. Twelve years ago a freshman who should
come up to either University and show himself to be already a good or
even a goodish golfer was something of a phenomena. Nowadays thousands
of school boys play golf, and consequently there is nearly always a
supply of freshmen who can play a good game when they first come up.
In the last century--to use a formidable expression--there was usually
a considerable gap between the first two or three men and the last. In
the very earliest days Oxford had two very fine players in Mr. Horace
Hutchinson and Mr. Alexander Stuart, while Cambridge had Mr. Welsh,
now a tutor at Jesus, and the possessor of a monumental reputation at
Machrihanish. The other members of the side were generally of a very
different calibre, and some of them would be badly off nowadays with
any handicap under eighteen. Later on in the early nineties Cambridge
had some fine sides, with Mr. Low, Mr. Colt, Mr. Eric Hambro, and
other good players, and to this day probably the best University side
that ever played was the much quoted Oxford side of 1900, of which Mr.
Mansfield Hunter was the captain.
On the whole, however, the general standard of play is higher to-day,
and personally I was enormously struck with the golf in the match at
Hoylake in 1910. For one thing, the driving was wonderfully steady and
good, and some of it very long, and all the play was well worth the
watching, which is more than could have been said for some of it not so
very, very long ago.