THE COURSES OF THE EAST LOTHIAN AND
EDINBURGH.
There is probably no other golfing centre that is quite so good as
=Gullane=, in the East Lothian. If the golfer can only get up early
enough in the morning, and has the strength to do it, he can play on
seven courses on one long summer's day. At his very door is a trinity
of courses--Gullane, New Gullane, and New Luffness--which, to the eye
of the stranger, are indistinguishable the one from the other. From
Gullane Hill to the Luffness Club-house is one huge stretch of turf,
and such turf! the finest, smoothest, and most delicate that ever was
seen. It has been said of various people--I do not know who was the
original subject--that nobody could be so wise as so-and-so looked;
likewise, it might be said that no greens could be so good as the
Gullane and Luffness greens look. Nevertheless, they are very good
indeed, and so is the golf.
Till quite lately there was a marked distinction between the two
Gullane courses. The new course was long, testing, and difficult;
the old course was a place of divine putting greens and pretty
pitching shots; but it made no great demands on the athletic powers
of its devotees. There was no more delightful course in the world for
those whose game consists, to quote the _Golfer's Manual_, written
in 1857, in "Spooning a ball gently on to a table of smooth turf,
when a longer shot would land them in grief." Now all this has been
changed--the course has burst forth into new life and length, and its
older and gentler and, possibly, more lovable qualities have gone. It
was inevitable that there should be some to regret the change, but
the result is now that the visitor to Gullane has two really fine,
difficult courses at his own front door, both over 6000 yards long. The
old course runs right down to the sea, and there are fine views of the
Firth of Forth, while, from the new course, we look at another charming
view in Aberlady Bay.
Close to the two Gullane courses, a little further in the direction of
Aberlady, is New Luffness, another admirable course. Here we must keep
most particularly straight, for the fairway is narrow, and there is
plenty of rough at the sides, including some particularly pernicious
objects (I am no botanist, and do not know their names) which have
tall, wiry stalks and sadly impede the club.
It is really a beautiful bit of natural golfing country, and we are
far enough away from the houses of Gullane to enjoy a perfect sense of
peace and quietude. Not far off, again, is Kilspindie, on the west side
of Aberlady Bay, another charming spot where we may play golf that is
good without being too desperately difficult.
[Illustration: GULLANE
_The sixth green and seventh tee_]
We must get back to Gullane, however, where at the far end of the
village, on the road to North Berwick, is a course of greater fame
than any of those I have mentioned--=Muirfield=, the home of the
Honourable Company of Edinburgh golfers, and one of the select band of
championship courses. =Muirfield= has had rather a chequered career
in regard to public estimation, and has been at different times very
violently abused, partly because the Honourable Company, in leaving
Musselburgh, took the championship with them away from its ancient
home: partly on account of the intrinsic merits or demerits of the
links. The Open Championship was for the first time played at Muirfield
in 1892, and it is possible that the course was hardly good enough or
long enough for a championship course. Certainly the score with which
the championship was won was phenomenally low for those days of gutty
balls. It was altogether a memorable championship, for several reasons;
it marked the beginning of the decline of Musselburgh, it was played
for the first time over 72 instead of 36 holes, and it was won by an
amateur, Mr. Hilton. That change from one to two days' play may be
said to have robbed another great amateur of the honour of being open
champion, for at the end of the first day Mr. Horace Hutchinson had a
handsome lead. On the second day, alas! an unfortunate encounter with
that fatal wood at the very first hole was the beginning of a series
of disasters. There is always something bitterly hard about being the
first to suffer through a reform, however excellent it may be in the
abstract, and I have always felt dreadfully sorry for Mr. Hutchinson.
However, one amateur's loss was another's gain, and Mr. Hilton, after
being eight strokes behind on the first day, came away with a wonderful
game on the second, nearly doing the first hole in one, holing two
pitches, and racing so fast round the course as nearly to be the death
of an ancient partner. It is interesting to read in Mr. Hilton's
reminiscences that it was only two days before the event that he
decided to enter for this momentous championship, and that his course
of training consisted of three rounds in one day immediately following
a night journey. Here is a fine chance for a confusion of thought
between cause and effect.
Muirfield has been a good deal altered since then, and, if it will
never be among the most prepossessing of courses, it is now both sound
and interesting, while, given any appreciable amount of wind, it is
thoroughly difficult. It is curious that it has but little outward
attractions. There is a fine view of the sea and a delightful sea
wood, with the trees all bent and twisted by the wind; then, too, it
is a solitary and peaceful spot, and a great haunt of the curlews,
whom one may see hovering over a championship crowd and crying eerily
amid a religious silence. All this is charming, but there is a fatal
stone wall that runs round the course, giving the impression of an
inland park, and it is, I believe, this purely sentimental objection
that has brought Muirfield so many detractors. Not that there are
not or have not been other objections of a more practical kind. The
course has twice had to be lengthened, and there was, moreover, a
time when the ground near the edges of the greens was very spongy
and uncertain in character. The greens are rather small--this is
entirely a virtue--and, consequently, there are many little chips
and running shots to be played; these, when the greens were hard and
the surrounding country was soft, were apt to travel upon the wings
of chance, and there were many lamentations. Now, however, the ground
has hardened considerably, and at the last Amateur Championship there
were no complaints on this score, although the greens themselves were
difficult and, indeed, almost tricky.
[Illustration: MUIRFIELD
_The fourth and fourteenth greens_]
On a calm day it may be urged that there are not enough long second
shots, and that there are too many holes of rather similar length,
which can be reached with a drive and a moderate pitching shot.
Certainly, on the very still, warm days that preceded the Amateur
Championship of 1909, the golf appeared rather easy, and every
self-respecting person was coming in to lunch having done his 75 or 76,
but as soon as any breeze sprang up, there was a very different story
to tell. For one thing, the tee-shots in a wind impose a continual
strain. Sunningdale, Walton Heath, Worplesdon, and other inland courses
have their endless avenues of heather and fir trees, but at none of
them, I fancy, is the fairway quite so narrow as at Muirfield, and a
whole round without a single tee-shot going astray into the rough is
something to be proud of. I have heard one of the most accomplished of
wooden club players confess that a week at Muirfield had frightened him
out of his driving, and only the ampler spaces of North Berwick gave
him back his courage.
The rough consists of thick, coarse grass, and there is, of course, a
measure of chance in the lies that one may get; one may be able to use
a brassey, but a niblick is infinitely the more likely club. When Mr.
Herman de Zoete played so finely in the championship of 1903, it was
said, mainly as an argument against the rubber ball, that he was never
on the course at all, but it must be remembered that he was holing out
quite wonderfully well, and he is, moreover, gifted with exceptional
powers in the way of moving mountains of long grass. For weaker
brethren many excursions into the rough are almost certain to be fatal.
Muirfield is one of the comparatively few courses that begin with
a one-shot hole, with the result that the starting of a round is
rather a slow business, since there is wood to the left and some
alluring bunkers to the right, and the erratic are likely to be an
unconscionable time a-playing. Never was there a greater necessity to
resist the temptation to pull than there is at the second; instinct
keeps calling in our ears for a glorious, long hook, and there is
nothing so likely to prove fatal. It is one of those puzzling shots
where we drive at a wide angle on to a narrow fairway, whence, if
all goes well, a good iron shot will land the ball on to a very
well-guarded green, fast in pace and billowy in conformation. It is
a capital four-hole, and so is the third, which is really a splendid
example of how good a hole of no particular length can be. In the first
place, we must hit straight, and we must also be exceedingly careful
not to hit too far. If, indeed, we can send the ball flying like an
arrow from the bow, we may make for the little narrow neck, where
safety lies; but it is far more probable that our ball will trickle
gently down hill to the left, where a stream and a surrounding marsh
await it. Save, therefore, when with a strong wind behind we may hope
to get over all our troubles with one vast blow, we must play prudently
from the tee with an iron club, and we shall still be able to reach the
green very comfortably in our second. It is a slippery, elusive, and
vindictive sort of green, however, full of unexpected quicknesses and
slownesses, and it is one thing to be there in two and quite another to
be down in four: altogether a very interesting hole to see played by
somebody else.
Of the next few holes, the fifth is perhaps the outstanding one, on
account of its length: the others are all of them good and all of them,
as regards length, much of a muchness. We remember a different feature
at each of them--the big carry over the boarded bunker at the sixth,
the pond at the seventh, and the tall sandhill, rising rather abruptly
in front of the tee, at the ninth--but we generally have the same
iron club in our hands for the second shot. At the eleventh, however,
we come to a really splendid hole, at which each shot has infinite
terrors. The tee-shot has to be played down a narrow spit of land, with
thick, rough grass on the right, a bunker encroaching on the left, and
a continuation of the same bunker straight ahead of us. Nor must the
ubiquitous wall, also on the left, be entirely despised. The very least
hook will plunge us into the left-hand end of the bunker, a slice means
the long grass, and a very long, straight ball may go too far and
meet a sandy fate. The shot is so narrow and frightening that it is no
sign of cowardice to take a cleek, but then a very long second shot is
necessary, unless the wind is strong behind, in order to get home. This
second shot, too, is fraught with almost equal perils, for the wall to
the left comes very decidedly into the range of practical politics, and
there is a long bunker to the right. It is a hole at which one need
never despair, and I wish I could remember accurately the exact number
of balls Mr. Harold Hambro hit over the wall in 1903 and yet won the
hole from Mr. Edward Blackwell.
The twelfth needs a high carrying second over a deep bunker; and the
thirteenth has one of the most terrifying tee-shots that I know along
a narrow strath, with bunkers on either side. Moreover, not only is
it necessary to hit straight, but it is intensely profitable to hit
a long way, for if we can only hit far enough, we may play a running
shot on to that sliding, sloping green, whereas if we have to pitch
on to the slope over the corner of the right-hand bunker, a five is,
to put it mildly, far more likely than a three. The fifteenth, again,
is a beautiful drive and pitch hole, with a number of alternative
routes, all of which want accurate hitting, and all leading up to a
most difficult approach shot. At the sixteenth we play short of a huge
cross-bunker in our second, unless we are taking serious risks; and at
the seventeenth our second shot is once more a tricky pitch on to a
sloping green. I do not think I ever saw a hole better played than Mr.
Maxwell played this seventeenth in the final of the championship of
1909, when he stood one down with two to play. The only way in which
he was in the least likely to get the three, that he needed so sorely,
was to play his pitch along a certain gully that led to the hole. In
order to get at that gully, he had to play his tee-shot well away to
the left, keeping as close as he dared to the left-hand rough. He
played the shot perfectly, 'pinching' the rough successfully, and was
left with a pitch straight up the gully: played that perfectly too: was
left with a putt of some four feet, and holed it. The strokes were so
clearly intended, and so bravely played, and in all human probability
they made the difference between Mr. Maxwell winning or losing the
championship.
Finally, the last hole is a good, honest, two-shot hole straight up
to the club-house, with a trench bunker right across the course. In
respect to this hole, golfing history gives rather an interesting
example of the difference between the gutty and the rubber-core. When
Vardon won his first championship, he was left, at this hole, with a
four to win and a five to tie with Taylor. He debated long over his
second shot, and then played short with his iron, got his five, and
made sure of the tie--a tie which, as all the world knows, he won.
Nowadays, comparatively modest hitters often get home with iron clubs,
and it would need a very stiff wind to deter Vardon from attacking that
big bunker with his second. It is rather salutary for us sometimes to
be reminded of how much we owe to the rubber-cored ball, and Muirfield
is a course that is continually dinning the fact into our ears. There
are so many holes there that would be so much harder for the moderate
driver if he had to drive a solid ball; he could be dreadfully out of
conceit with himself at the end of the round.
It is quite a short drive--not with a club--from Muirfield to =North
Berwick=, but there is none of that resemblance between the courses
that one might expect between such near neighbours. Muirfield may be
called a narrow course of soft turf; North Berwick an open course of
hard turf. Moreover, one may chance to have Muirfield to one's self
and the curlews, whereas at North Berwick are to be found all the
advantages or disadvantages of a fashionable watering-place. Whatever
may be thought of their respective merits from a strictly golfing
point of view, it can hardly be gainsayed that North Berwick has the
best of it in point of looks. No golf course could look lovelier than
North Berwick on a bright summer's day, when the Bass rock, the home
of many gannets, is shining brilliantly white in the sunshine and only
holiday-making man is entirely vile.
[Illustration: NORTH BERWICK
_The second tee_]
No course has ever undergone a more complete metamorphosis, for whereas
it is now long enough for any reasonable person, it was once noted for
the abnormal number of threes that could be done in one round. Mr.
Hutchinson wrote in the Badminton of the "sporting little links of
North Berwick," and added "You might just as well leave your driver
at home. If you are even a medium driver, it is scarcely ever in your
hand." Incredible scores were recorded by Mr. Laidlay and Bernard
Sayers, perhaps the most astounding being Mr. Laidlay's 33 for the
first ten holes. Such a course was almost bound to produce a race of
wonderfully adroit pitchers. Of the older generation, Mr. Laidlay and
Sayers are still almost as good as ever, and the race of fine pitchers
is not extinct, for amongst others there is Mr. Maxwell, whose obvious
power rather blinds the unobservant eye to his beautiful short game;
and Mr. Whitecross, a player much less well known, but a wonderfully
deft wielder of the mashie. Mr. Whitecross's pitching at Muirfield
in 1909 more nearly approached the supernatural than anything I have
ever seen. If I remember aright, he actually holed two pitches in his
matches with Mr. Angus Hambro and Mr. W. A. Henderson, and laid the ball
several times on the lip of the hole; one shot in particular against
Mr. Hambro, wherein the ball trickled very slowly down the steep slope
of the seventeenth green and lay absolutely dead, was the most perfect
shot conceivable, and was played, besides, at an intensely critical
moment.
It would seem, therefore, that though North Berwick is no longer short,
it is still an exceptionally good school in which to learn the art of
approaching. There is even now a good deal of approaching to do, and
the man who is driving well may hope to reach the green fairly often
with pitching shots of varying length. For these shots not only is
plenty of skill essential, but a measure of local knowledge is also
useful, and the unaccustomed stranger is apt to think and say that
it is possible in two successive rounds to play the approach shots
equally well with vastly different results.
Personally, I have a considerable respect for North Berwick, born
of fear and conscious incompetence. I always have that respectful
feeling towards a course where the ground is a little hard and bumpy.
Given soft, velvety turf, one should be able, to a certain extent, to
disguise one's weakness, for it is then an easy matter to get the ball
well into the air, and the short putts may be firmly hit. When the
turf is bare, one has to do all the work one's self, and though North
Berwick has not the uncompromising hardness of St. Andrews, neither
has it any of the kindly and flattering qualities of Sandwich. The
unheeding multitude cut out many divots and leave a good many difficult
lies behind them, and the ball will very easily run away from one on
the putting green; indeed, at Point Garry, it is apt, if too vigorously
struck, to run into the sea.
It is a terrible place this double green of Point Garry, worn,
bare, and sloping down to the rocks and the beach, and we come to
it, besides, at two of the most agitating moments of the round;
at the first hole, when we have not had quite enough golf, and at
the seventeenth, when, if the match has been a fierce one, we have
perhaps had too much. Our terror is perhaps less acute at the first
hole, because we are then playing on the part of the green that is
furthest from the sea; but even so great trouble may befall us. I
always remember a newspaper account of Mr. Balfour, when he was Prime
Minister, playing in a medal at North Berwick. "The premier," so it
ran, "made an unfortunate start: put his second on the rocks and took
eight to the hole." We ought, generally speaking, to do better than
eight; indeed, we may hope for a three--that is to say, if we are
playing from the forward tee, and the wind is not against us. Then we
carry the road and reach the green in one most excellent shot, but if
the circumstances are at all unfavourable, we shall doubtless do better
to play short from the tee with an iron club and be well content with a
four.
The second and third are both fine holes, and at the second we have
an added interest in the possibility of killing some one upon the
sea-shore. With a fine long shot we may hope to carry a portion of the
beach that eats its way into the course, but it is not well to be too
adventurous; anything approaching a slice will leave us playing niblick
shots among the pebbles and nurserymaids, and we can play reasonably
well to the left and yet hope to get home next time with a well-struck
second. At the third, when we carry the wall in our second, we may
be content with a five, though a four is not impossible, and then a
rather unusual hazard awaits us at the hole called 'Carl Kemp.' If we
drive straight we shall have a sufficiently easy pitch to play, but
the green lies in a narrow pass, with rocks on either side, and no one
can predict the fate of a ball that pitches upon a rock; it may bound
incredibly both as regards distance and direction.
Soon after this we get into a country of flat and, if the truth be
told, rather dull holes. Of the holes at this end of the course, it
may be said that they are good enough when the wind is against, but
they never can be very thrilling. Even the quarry and the eel burn,
though they help to fix them in the mind, cannot make us love them very
passionately; and as for the ninth, when we drive down to the edge of
a cross-bunker and then chip over on to the green, that, I vow, is a
thoroughly commonplace and uninteresting hole. It has some compensation
to offer, in that it is the chosen pitch of a purveyor of ginger beer;
it was here that the famous Crawford used to abide, and no hole could
be entirely dull with Crawford on the tee.
It is not till we reach the wall that we come to a hole that makes a
very strong appeal to the imagination. Here we shall have to play a
cunning little pitch in our best North Berwick manner, for the green
lies immediately beyond the wall, and we must contrive to stop the ball
reasonably dead with our mashie. We can, however, make the shot more
or less difficult, according as we drive well or ill. If we can hold
the ball well to the left--close, but not too close under the wall--we
shall have more room to pitch, and may hope for a putt for three; but a
drive pushed far out to the right makes it almost impossible to stop at
all near the hole next time.
'Perfection' and 'The Redan' are two very famous names, and the 'Redan'
is one of the select holes, the features of which have been more or
less faithfully reproduced on the National Golf Course on Long Island,
U. S. A. First of the two comes 'Perfection,' the fourteenth, a very fine
two-shot hole. With the tee-shot we must hug as closely as we dare
the side of a big hill on the left, and if we fall into the opposite
extreme, we may slice our ball among the rocks of 'Carl Kemp.' All
being well, we have a reasonably easy second over a bunker; but we
cannot see where we are going, and have the uncanny feeling that we
are hitting straight into the sea. The 'Redan' is a beautiful one-shot
hole on the top of a plateau, with a bunker short of the green to the
left and another further on to the right, and we must vary our mode of
attack according to the wind, playing a shot to come in from the right
or making a direct frontal attack.
At the sixteenth we cross the wall once more, and may hope to reach in
two shots the 'Gate' hole, standing on another plateau--an exceedingly
diminutive one, by the way--close to the high road. Now we arrive at
that most destructive of holes, 'Point Garry,' and even if we do not,
like Mr. Balfour, make an unfortunate start, we are very likely to
make an unfortunate ending. In our second shot we shall have to decide
whether or not to carry a bunker that stretches across our path, and
then comes the crucial shot, the approach on to that dreadful green
that slopes right away from us to the sea--without the ghost of a
charitable back wall. It is so frightening that we are strongly tempted
to approach it on the instalment system, and it is really wonderful how
many instalments may be necessary, as with limbs palsied with terror,
we push and poke the ball over that treacherous and slippery surface.
'Point Garry' safely over, the last hole seems absurdly simple, and, if
we do not top into the road or pull into Hutchison's shop, we should
end with a four; indeed, our putt for a possible three should not be a
very long one. When all is over, we shall almost certainly agree that
the best golf at North Berwick is to be found at the beginning and end
of the course, but we could hardly bear it if all the holes were as
exciting as 'Point Garry.' Those flat holes at the far end serve, no
doubt, a useful, though unobtrusive, purpose.
So much for the East Lothian courses, but while we are within hail
of Edinburgh, we must pay a visit to =Musselburgh=, the home of
the Parks and once the home of the championship, now shorn of its
honour, and little more than a name to English golfers. The way to
Musselburgh lies for the most part through factory chimneys and slag
heaps, nor is the first glimpse of the course much more prepossessing
than the surrounding scenery. It looks like an ordinary common on the
outskirts of a town, rather flat, and devoid of features, rather hard
and rough, not unlike in character that blank stretch of turf at St.
Andrews which lies between the club-house and the burn. Yet if, after
we have played over the course, we adhere to this our first view, we
shall show ourselves to be persons of superficial minds and of little
discernment. It is true that there are comparatively few hazards, and
that we ought, therefore, not to get into many of them; but, at the
same time, it will gradually dawn upon us that nearly every hole has a
governing hazard, to which we must pay due regard--one that will direct
our policy for us whether we like it or not. We must not let ourselves
be lulled into a sense of false security by the fact that we have
occasionally a whole parish to drive into. There is a right line and
a wrong line, and if we are very fortunate, or very highly honoured,
we may have it pointed out to us and our clubs carried for us by Bob
Ferguson, who won the championship three times running, and might have
won it a fourth time if Willy Fernie had not done the last hole at
Musselburgh in two.
[Illustration: MUSSELBURGH
'_Mrs. Forman's_']
There are but nine holes at Musselburgh, and the whole area of the
links is extremely small. The first three holes go along the entire
length of the course on the right-hand side; then comes one hole
across, four down the left side, and then one more across the other
end. Of these nine, the first three are as good holes as you can desire
to meet anywhere, whether you play them with a stone-hard gutty, as
did the reverent pilgrims of the Oxford and Cambridge Golfing Society,
or with the soft and bounding rubber-core. The first rejoices in the
cheerful name of the 'Graves,' owing to the conformation of the putting
green, which, with its many little barrows, is like a grass-grown
burial-ground. Here two good shots should reach the green, and two
very good putts may reach the bottom of the hole. For the second we
shall need a five, although a vast hitter may get home with two of his
very best. The green is a small plateau at the end of a valley that
is long and shallow and narrow, and if we can place the ball with our
second shot on exactly the right place, we should have an easy run up
and a putt for four; if we are not in the right place, we must play
a difficult approach well in order to get a five. Next comes another
hole with a famous name--'Mrs. Forman's'--and we approach Mrs. Forman's
tavern with two shots to the left, followed by a run up, or--more
perilously--by two shots on the dead straight line. By the latter
method we may, indeed, get home in two, but we may also be under the
posts of the race-course or in an electric tram-car, or in a variety of
bunkers, and it may be added that they do not pamper us at Musselburgh
by raking the bunkers or trimming the steep over-hanging cliffs thereof.
The fourth is a long one-shot hole in a seaward direction, and the next
is 'Pandy.' 'Pandy' itself is now a flat, ugly bit of hard, dirty sand,
and if we do get into it, we should lie well enough to get a long way
out again, unless, indeed, we should be so unfortunate as to lie in a
tin-pot or a derelict boot. The green is one of which Willy Park has
made two famous copies--one at the fifteenth at Huntercombe, the other
the eighth at Worplesdon. Whereas, however, there is usually a generous
growth of velvety grass on the Huntercombe green, the original green at
Musselburgh is of a terrifying keenness. The seventh is a shortish hole
of no great interest, and the eighth is the 'Gas Works,' which can be
reached with a drive and a run up, and has a green which, like most of
the others at Musselburgh, seems to accentuate any putting error in an
exemplary fashion. Finally, for the ninth and last, there is another
short hole, having a big plateau green protected in front by a wavy
bank. Some will play to pitch at the bottom of the bank and run up;
others to toss the ball high and boldly on to the green. The latter
is probably preferable for those whose ambition does not soar above a
three, but those who spurn safety and aim at twos will adopt the former
plan. Thus ends Musselburgh, which can be compassed in some 35 strokes
or less, but will probably cost us appreciably more, for neither the
lies nor the greens are easy, and it is extremely easy to drop strokes.
To the English golfer there is something incongruous in the idea of
an inland course in Scotland. He goes there for his holidays, and so
naturally chooses a seaside course; but Scotland possesses a number
of inhabitants who are not always making holiday, and cannot go to
the sea as often as they would like, wherefore the necessity for this
seeming incongruity. Of the inland Scottish courses, probably the best
known is =Barnton=, near Edinburgh, the home of a golf club of great
antiquity and renown, the Edinburgh Burgess Golfing Society, who rank
in seniority second only to the Royal Blackheath Club.
The Barnton estate consists of a fine old house and a park, with
splendid trees, which was once known as Cramond Regis, and was
a hunting seat of the kings of Scotland. From royalty it passed
successively into the hands of several noble Scottish families, till
it fell into those of the Edinburgh Burgesses, when they decided to
leave Musselburgh. That move took place in comparatively modern times,
but before that golf had been played in the park by at least one very
distinguished golfer, Robert Clark, who wrote _Golf: a Royal and
Ancient Game_. He was at one time tenant of Barnton House, and, as I
learn from an interesting article by Mr. James Purves, had some holes
cut, including one which necessitated a drive right over the house.
When he was annoyed with his game at Musselburgh, he would declare that
he had a far better course at his own door.
Whether he would have upheld that pronouncement in cool blood is
perhaps to be doubted, for the best park golf in the world cannot
attain beyond a certain point, and Barnton is pure park golf. Still,
it has undoubtedly many merits, and not least among them is that the
greens are as good and true as any in the world. That at least is the
general opinion, and I see no reason to doubt it. I cannot, on the
other hand, confirm it, because I have only played at Barnton on a
Sunday, and the Scottish conscience, although it will let you play,
will not let the greens be swept for you, and Sunday golf at Barnton,
therefore, involves some encounters with worm casts. It also involves,
or did when last I went there, a drive out of Edinburgh with one's
clubs elaborately hidden under horse-cloths and rugs. The principle,
however, was that of the ostrich who buries his head in the sand, or
rather its exact converse, for the most sedulous burying of the bodies
of the clubs did not prevent the head peeping out and so advising all
church-going Edinburgh of one's scandalous project.
It is easy to see that on week days the course must be in absolutely
apple-pie order, and that it lacks nothing that the hand of man
could do for it. Nearly all the holes want good, straight, accurate
play; but, as is the case with this type of golf, they make no
passionate appeal to the imagination. There is a nice tee-shot from
a height at the ninth, where two really good shots down a valley
should take us home; and the eleventh, sixteenth, and seventeenth all
want long and straight hitting. At the thirteenth a pleasing variety
is introduced in the matter of hazards by two old tombstones, which
may catch a badly pulled ball. These, according to Mr. Purves, are
memorials of an overflow from the parish churchyard at Cramond at the
time of the plague.
[Illustration: BARNTON
_Park golf in Scotland_]
Barnton is a great resort of the lawyers of Edinburgh, and there
is a nice little joke with a legal flavour to it at the end of the
candidate's application for membership, wherein, after declaring that
he is an "ardent admirer and player of the ancient and manly game of
golf," he concludes, "and your petitioner will ever play." What is
more, he has got to play in his club uniform, a red coat and a black
velvet cap--he is fined if he doesn't--and very pretty the red coats
look on a summer day amid the pleasant greenery of Barnton.