WEST OF SCOTLAND: PRESTWICK AND TROON.
Gullane is usually cited as the headquarters from which it is possible
to play the largest number of rounds in one day, each round being on a
different course, but it is by no means certain that the distinction
which is thus given to East Lothian does not really belong to
Prestwick and Troon. As one approaches Prestwick, the train seems to
be voyaging through one endless and continuous golf course--Gailes,
Barassie, Bogside--I write them down pell-mell as they come into my
head--Prestwick, St. Nicholas, St. Cuthbert, Troon, and several more
beside. Moreover, Troon "surprises by himself," a prodigious assemblage
of courses. There is the course proper, and there is the 'relief'
course; there is another course, which may be termed the 'super-relief'
course; and there are various practice grounds consecrated to
women and children. The turf is something softer--at least in my
imagination--than that of the East Coast courses, and the greens are
wonderfully green and velvety, and looking as if they get plenty of
rain, as in fact they do.
Of all this galaxy of courses, =Prestwick= is first and foremost. It
is the original home of the Open Championship, one of the championship
courses of to-day, and admittedly one of the best of them. A man is
probably less likely to be contradicted in lauding Prestwick than in
singing the praises of any other course in Christendom. There are
probably more people who would put St. Andrews absolutely at the
top of the tree, but, whereas nearly everyone would rank Prestwick
in the first three, the Fifeshire course has a certain number of
bitter enemies who rank it very low indeed. One might almost say that
Prestwick has no enemies; everyone admires it, though, naturally, with
slightly different degrees of enthusiasm. To say of a human being that
he has no enemies is almost to insinuate that he is just a little
bit colourless and insipid; but those adjectives have certainly no
application to Prestwick, which has a very decided character of its own.
Nowhere is to be found a more beautiful stretch of what is called
"natural golfing country." The ordinary golfer, whose head is not
too full of modern architectural ideas, would jump with joy on first
beholding Prestwick. There is nothing subtle or recondite about it;
it has a beauty which explains itself. There are the great sandhills
bristling with bents and the little nestling valleys beyond them, a
rushing burn and a stone wall, and it is perfectly clear that man was
meant to hit the ball over them. All the ground on the near side of
the wall, which is the ground of the old twelve-hole course, is of
this glorious 'natural' character. "Hullo," says the player, "here's
a hill: let's drive over it." Yet, although it is a little blind
and has a measure of what Mr. Hutchinson has euphemistically termed
"pleasurable uncertainty," it is for the most part incontestibly fine
golf. "Like Sandwich, only much better," I have heard it described;
but I dislike this slandering and backbiting at poor, dear Sandwich.
In one respect, however, it may be permissible to make a comparison
very much in favour of Prestwick, that is in the size of the greens. On
both courses we hit the ball over a high hill, but whereas at Prestwick
we must hit it straight, unless we wish to be left with the trickiest
and hardest of little pitches, at Sandwich a far more than reasonably
crooked shot may yet land the ball on the edge of a vast green, where a
bang with the wooden putter will make up for our deficiencies.
When once the wall is crossed, and what was once called the new ground
is reached, the character of the ground changes considerably. There
are, it is true, two blind and mountainous tee-shots over the famous
'Himalayas,' but they appear rather esoteric than otherwise. The holes
on the far side of the wall are in their nature essentially flat, and
in one or two instances a little artificial. As one plays the eighth
hole alongside the railway by Monkton Station, one cannot repress the
feeling that one might as well have stayed inland. Well bunkered and
difficult enough is that particular hole, and yet so utterly lacking in
the least breath of the sea, and the fairway is just a smooth avenue
mowed out of a big field. Still some others of these flattish holes--I
shall come to them in their proper places--are undoubtedly very
fine holes, and if anyone likes to say that they are in reality better
golf than those within the wall, we may still respect his judgment and
regard him as a man and brother. Equally we may form a low estimate of
his appreciation of the beautiful and romantic, and remain perfectly
steadfast in our own allegiance to the 'Alps,' the 'Cardinal,' and the
'Sea-He'therick.'
[Illustration: PRESTWICK
_Looking back at the 'Alps'_]
The first hole is so good that, as with the first at Hoylake, it is
a pity that we have to play it while we are still, perhaps, a little
stiff and nervous. The crime against which we have chiefly to be on our
guard is that of slicing, for the railway runs along the entire length
of the hole on the right-hand side, quite unpleasantly near us. We must
not hook either, for rough country awaits the ball hit unduly far to
the left, and, indeed, the shot is such a narrow one that there are
some strong hitters who advocate the taking of a cleek from the tee.
The second shot may be described on a calm day as a longish pitch, and
there is a big bunker in front of the green, rough ground and a sandy
road behind, the railway to the right, and tenacious undergrowth to
the left. There is apt to be an engine snorting loudly on the other
side of the wall just as we are playing a critical and curly putt,
and the said putt is none the easier from the engine having liberally
besprinkled the green with cinders. Altogether, we shall have done
good work if we get a four, and what a hole to do in three, when it is
the thirty-seventh, as did Mr. John Ball in his great final with Mr.
Tait--as good a hole under the circumstances that I ever saw played in
my life.
The second is quite one of the shortest of short holes on any
first-class course, but it is not a bit easy, for a bunker behind the
green has now been cut to reinforce the one in front, and the green is
generally very keen.
The third is the 'Cardinal,' and has done a vast deal of mischief in
its time. A topped brassey shot into the cavernous recesses of the
bunker was generally thought to have cost Mr. Laidlay a championship
when he played Mr. Peter Anderson; and, to come to more modern times,
it was in this very same bunker that his supporters saw with horror the
great Braid trying to throw away the championship in 1908 by playing
a game of racquets against those ominous black boards. Yet, in the
ordinary way, if we can but hit a reasonably straight tee-shot, we
ought to send our second flying far over the Cardinal's sandy nob and a
good long way on towards the green. Then comes a delicate little pitch
over some hummocky ground, or, if we are lucky, a running-up shot, and
we find ourselves on a small green under the shadow of the wall, and
should obtain a respectable five; a four is, as a rule, the score of
heroes only.
At the fourth we cross the wall with a drive that varies in direction
with our bravery and skill. If we are very brave, and very skilful,
we shall hit a ball with a suspicion of a slice that shall keep close
to the rushing waters of the burn, and shall be rewarded with an easy
pitch, and haply a putt for three. If we do not trust ourselves, we
shall give the burn a wide berth and pull far away to the left, where
we should still get a four--but only by means of a longer and harder
approach shot.
The fifth is the 'Himalayas,' a hole of great fame, but no transcendent
merit. A good cleek shot should see us safely over this big hill and on
to the green on the other side, which is now guarded by pot-bunkers.
All these holes at Prestwick seem to have some tragedy connected with
them, and the 'Himalayas,' in all human probability, lost Mr. Hilton
his third Open Championship in 1898. Just one bad shot--he can hardly
have played another during the four rounds: but he made this one fatal
mistake with a club that was strange to him (he has told the sad story
himself), and took eight to the hole. Yet he finished in the end but
two strokes behind the winner, Harry Vardon, and at one time he had
actually caught him in this terrible stern chase.
After the 'Himalayas' come several holes which do not, like the
earlier and later holes, cry aloud for description. The sixth has a
sufficiently difficult second on to a plateau green, and there is
fierce punishment for the slicer among the bents. The seventh is a long
short hole (this is such a convenient expression that it must pass),
with rushes to catch a slice; and of the eighth, which runs alongside
the railway, I have already said something.
The ninth and tenth are really fine two-shot holes; as far as length
is concerned, there are none better on the course, and they are both
thoroughly difficult into the bargain. The green at the ninth is
especially attractive and difficult, consisting of a little hilly
peninsula of turf that seems to jut out from a mainland of rough
and bents. At the tenth we sidle along parallel with the range of
'Himalayas,' and at the eleventh we cross them with a drive--no cleek
this time--for we have to carry as well the burn that runs beyond them.
Then we turn our noses for home and make for the wall that we left
behind us at the fourth hole. We shall need two full shots, and then
a little chip on to a typical Prestwick green; long, narrow, and well
guarded by lumps and bumps of various shapes and sizes. If, perchance,
the wind is blowing very strongly behind us, we may try to carry the
wall in two, and the ball will very likely light on the coping of
the wall to bounce thence into unfathomable bents, while we are left
lamenting our lack of contemptible prudence.
Now comes the 'Sea He'therick'--a charming hole with a charming name,
where the ball must be driven for the distance of two very full shots
along a sort of gully or channel between the sand and bents on the
right, and some rough and hillocky country to the left. There is a
narrow little green, with odd corners and angles sticking out and well
guarded by hummocks, so that if we do get a four we shall probably have
to lay a singularly deft little pitch close to the hole. A drive over
the 'Goose-dubs' brings us to a fairly ordinary fourteenth hole close
to the club, and we turn back to play the last four, the famous loop.
The chief characteristic of the fifteenth is that no two persons are
agreed on the best way of playing it. We may lash out for death or
glory with a driver, or play short with the pusillanimous iron: we may
go out to the right, or away to the left, but wherever we try to go we
shall heave a sigh of relief if our ball finishes its agitating career
upon a piece of turf. Neither is the second an easy shot, for the green
is sloping and treacherous, and there are bunkers to right and left.
At the sixteenth--the 'Cardinal's Back'--there is an insidious little
pot-bunker in the middle of the course, and we must drive either to the
right or left of it, or perhaps, wisest of all, aim straight at it in
the sure and certain hope of a sufficient measure of inaccuracy.
Now we come to the 'Alps,' one of the finest holes anywhere, and _the_
finest blind hole in all the world. The drive must be hit straight and
true down a valley between two hills, and then comes the second, over
a vast grassy hill, beyond which we know that there is a bunker both
wide and deep. The ball may clear the hill and yet meet with a dreadful
fate, but there is glorious compensation in the fact that if we do
clear the chasm, we should be fairly near the hole, and may possibly
be putting for a three. With no wind and a rubber-cored ball there is
nothing very tremendous in the achievement, but nevertheless it is of
the tremendous order of holes, and it takes a stout-hearted man to get
a four there at all square and two to play. With a gutty ball it was
really a fine long, slashing carry, and to play short was sometimes
the better part of valour. Old Willy Park wrecked his chances of yet
another championship here in 1861, owing, to quote the appropriately
solemn words of the _Ayrshire Express_, to "a daring attempt to cross
the Alps in two, which brought his ball into one of the worst hazards
of the green, and cost him three strokes--by no means the first time
he has been seriously punished for similar avarice and temerity." It
was in this bunker also that Mr. Tait played his ever-famous shot out
of water, and Mr. Ball followed it with a superb niblick shot out of
hard wet sand, which is not half as famous as it ought to be. Truly the
'Alps' is a hole with a great history.
After this the last hole is easy enough--a flat hole, just a little
too long for the ordinary mortal to reach from the tee, save with a
wind behind him. It can be reached, however, with a very fine shot,
and I shall never forget the scene at the Open Championship in 1908,
when Mr. Robert Andrew nearly holed it in one. It was in the qualifying
competition, and Mr. Andrew, a strong local favourite and a truly
magnificent player, had to do a two to equal Harry Vardon's record for
the course of 72. He struck a gorgeous blow, and the ball sailed away
straight as a die, and finished absolutely stone dead. With one wild
yell of joy the crowd broke away from the tee, and raced down the slope
for the green, even as the British square dashed down the hill after
the flying French guard at Waterloo. It was at once a most thrilling
and amusing spectacle.
So ends Prestwick; and what a jolly course it is, to be sure! What a
jolly place to play, too, for we shall probably have had it reasonably
to ourselves. It shares with Muirfield, among the great Scottish
courses, the merit of being the private property of the club, and that
is a merit that grows greater every year. It is a beautiful spot,
moreover, and we may look at views of Arran and Ailsa Craig and the
Heads of Ayr if we can allow our attention to wander so far from the
game.
Tradition and romance cluster thickly around Prestwick, for it was here
that old Tom Morris came in 1851--a little while after he and Allan
Robertson had had a difference of opinion about Tom having played with
the gutty ball. Here he stayed fourteen years before returning once and
for all to his beloved St. Andrews, and it was here that the immortal
Young Tom was born and first swung a precocious club. Prestwick was
the home of the championship belt, which was competed for there every
year from 1860 to 1870, when it passed into the permanent possession
of Young Tom, who had won it three times running. If by some potent
magic one could summon up the past at will, there is no golfing picture
that I should like to see so much as that of Tommy's third win; 149
was his score for three rounds of the twelve-hole course, and he
finished twelve strokes ahead of the two men who tied for second place.
Whenever one is too much inclined to laud the golfers of the present
to the detriment of those of the past, it is always a wholesome thing
to remember that score of 149 round Prestwick. There must have been at
least one very great golfer in those days.
The course at =Troon= is perhaps a little overshadowed by its more
famous neighbour, but it is a very fine course nevertheless, especially
since it has been lengthened of late years. It has, moreover, one
of the finest short holes to be found anywhere. Here dwells Willy
Fernie, and here it was that Braid and Herd went down so memorably
before Vardon and Taylor in the great foursome over four greens. The
Scottish pair left St. Andrews with a small advantage, but in Ayrshire
a terrible thing befell them. Taylor and Vardon won so many holes--the
number was well in double figures--that they came to the two English
courses, St. Anne's and Deal, with a lead that nothing but a second
miracle could take from them--and such miracles do not happen twice; it
was surely one of the most extraordinary day's play in all the history
of big matches. Troon, oddly enough, is one of the last places that one
would expect such a collapse to occur. We know that when the greens
are fast and fiery and not a little rough, a man who becomes afraid of
his putter can lose an unlimited number of holes, but the greens at
Troon are smooth and true, and of an almost velvety consistency that
encourage us to putt above our form. They are certainly one of the
features of the course.
[Illustration: TROON
_The new short hole_]
Another pleasant feature of Troon is that the holes are known not
simply by dull numbers, but each by its own name--'Dunure,' the
'Monk,' the 'Fox,' 'Sandhills'--they are good names; and what is
more to the purpose, they are familiarly and habitually used, and
not merely printed on the scoring cards. The first three holes run
straight forward along a narrow strip of turf, having the seashore on
the right-hand side; while at the third hole there is a small burn to
be crossed. The fourth is 'Dunure,' a good two-shot hole, if the wind
be not too strong against us, with big bunkers to right and left to
catch the crooked tee-shot. 'Greenan' is the fifth--that takes its name
from Greenan Castle on Carrick shore; and then comes one of the
new holes, 'Turnberry' by name, in which the old 'Ailsa' is swallowed
up. Here we need two full shots and a good iron to reach the green,
which lies close to the Pow burn--the same burn that we have been
trying to avoid on the links of Prestwick.
So far we have been going forward and hugging the shore, but now we
turn inland to the left to play 'Tel-el-Kebir,' where is a narrow
sloping green with a face in front of it. We may hope for our first
three at the next, a short hole, that takes us back again towards the
Pow burn; and then, turning inland once more, we come to the 'Monk,'
with an exciting tee-shot over a big hill.
At Sandhills is another blind tee-shot over the sand dunes, followed by
an accurate second into a green that lies close to the railway line. On
the hill straight above the line is 'Sandhills,' the house from which
the hole takes its name and the home of a family of many golfers, of
whom one in particular, Mr. 'Nander' Robertson, is a very fine dashing
player when he has a mind to it. The eleventh is a new hole, when we
sidle along the railway; and then we drive out to sea once more at the
'Fox.' The covert which once gave this hole its name, has now been cut
down, but it is good that the name should remain, though the foxes are
gone. With a drive and a full iron we should reach the green here, but
the prevailing wind blows off the sea, and may very easily elongate the
iron into a cleek-shot. 'Burmah,' an ordinary four hole, and 'Alton,'
which should be a three, give us a little breathing space before
'Crosbie' and the 'Well,' which are both long holes, when we must rest
content with fives--a thing which, in these days of long driving, we
are a little apt to resent as a grievance. At the seventeenth one good
full shot should take us on to a plateau green, tricky and difficult of
access; the hole is called, somewhat singularly, the 'Rabbit,' but we
must not be too hopeful of a low score in reliance of the cricketing
significance of the word. A more or less commonplace four at the home
hole brings a very good course to an end.
The turf is softer than that of Prestwick, and the ball runs but little
after it pitches, so that, although Prestwick is possibly the longer
by the chain measure, there is in the matter of playing length little
difference between the two.