IRELAND.
There is no country where the golfers are more keen or more hospitable
than in Ireland, and the friendliness with which the inhabitants
welcome their guests is only equalled by the earnestness with which
they endeavour, and very often successfully, to beat them. It is a
fine country for a golfing holiday, and this fact is now so thoroughly
appreciated that Englishmen and Scotsmen pour over to the Irish courses
every summer, and more especially to the particular course on which
the Irish Championship is being played for. At this meeting may be had
fierce golf, tempered by a proper measure of cheerfulness, on which
those who have played in it--sad to say I am not one of them--are never
weary of descanting. My own very delightful experience of Irish golf
has come to me chiefly as one of two marauding bands, the English Bar
and the Oxford and Cambridge Golfing Society, who periodically batten
upon the hospitality of Dublin.
The chief Dublin courses are two--Dollymount and Portmarnock--though it
would be unfair to omit some mention of Malahide--'the Island'--where
there is golf to be had, which may legitimately be called sporting in
the best sense of the word. Dollymount and Portmarnock are both also
island courses in the sense that we have to cross the water to get to
them. At Portmarnock this perilous feat is performed by car or boat,
according as the tide is low or high; but at Dollymount there is a long
causeway, and the worst possible sailor need not blench at the prospect.
I have a very great affection for =Dollymount=. I have played some
very strenuous and delightful matches there, and, save possibly at St.
Andrews, I feel as if I had been in more bunkers at Dollymount than on
any other course. This seems to be _the_ feature of Dollymount, the
amount of low cunning, if I may so term it, with which the bunkers are
placed. In writing that sentence I find that I have been guilty of a
criminal pun without meaning it, because Mr. Barcroft, the secretary,
is a great disciple of Mr. John Low in the matter of bunkering. He has
saturated his mind in that most charming and instructive of books,
_Concerning Golf_, and then he has gone forth valiantly with his
shovel. The result is that there are many pitfalls, which are worthy of
Mr. Low's definition of what a bunker should be. "Bunkers, if they be
good bunkers and bunkers of strong character, refuse to be disregarded,
and insist on asserting themselves; they do not mind being avoided, but
they decline to be ignored." There are some fine, towering hills at
Dollymount, but it is not these that make the player's knees to knock
together; it is the little pots of innocuous aspect that most
emphatically decline to be ignored.
[Illustration: DOLLYMOUNT
_The first tee, looking towards Howth_]
A first glance at the course produces much the same effect on the mind
as does Hoylake. It looks a little flat, and bare, and even dull; we
do not see where the holes are and whence and whither the players
are going and what they are trying to do. As at Hoylake, the first
impression is utterly wrong, as we soon discover when we begin to play,
more especially if we have been maltreated by the Irish Channel on the
previous evening. The first thing that strikes us is that we ought
to be beginning with a nice symmetrical row of fours, and that ugly
disfiguring fives will insist on creeping in. At the first we really
ought to do a four, but still there are a variety of things to prevent
such a consummation: a pot-bunker to catch a pulled tee-shot, a bunker
in the right-hand side of the green, and a considerable possibility
of taking three putts on a green which is as good as it is usually
fast and difficult. At the second the trouble is of a bolder and, in
a sense, a more commonplace character, a large and ravenous bunker,
which must be carried with a good second shot, and then turning back
towards the club again we play a hole where almost meticulous accuracy
is necessary if we are to get the perfect four, wherein the fourth
shot consists of our opponent saying, contrary to the recommendations
of the Rules of Golf Committee, "That will do." Crooked driving may be
definitely punished by pot-bunkers, or, if we are lucky, it may only
entail the most difficult of approach shots, in which we may have to
try a pitch of really desperate difficulty over flanking bunkers. Only
if we drive with absolute accuracy we shall be properly rewarded by
being able to play a pitch and run shot straight--or let us hope so at
least--up to the flag.
There is to be no pitching or running at the fourth--not at any rate
with the second shot--but a fine, high carrying stroke with a wooden
club to take us home on to a green that lies well protected by hollows
and hummocks; a really good four this time, and we must do a man's
work to get it. These first four holes always run together in my mind
partly because of their uniform excellence and partly because we now
branch off into somewhat different country, a country of bents and big
sandhills. The fifth is chiefly notable for what I may call a typical
Sandwich shot from the tee, and then comes a region that I know only
by sight, for there have lately been some new holes made there. It is
a region of rolling dunes and bristling bents; I am told the new holes
are long and difficult, with narrow and exacting greens, and knowing
the country and Mr. Barcroft I can well believe it.
Of the other holes on the way out I must spare a special word for the
eighth--it was old seventh--one of the very best 'round-the-corner'
holes that I know. The whole face of nature bids us slice from the tee,
and the wind generally encourages us to do so, and yet we must pull
resolutely out to the left in order to open up the way for our approach
shot on to a green that nestles among the hills. If we fail to pull,
or if we are tempted to use the wind too freely, we may have a very
long drive on which to plume ourselves, but shall have an impossible
second, and we shall take five to the hole.
It seems to me that the first few holes on the way home are not so
good as the outgoing ones, save that there is a fine tee-shot to be
played at thirteen, between the marsh on the one side and a series of
pot-bunkers on the other. The sixteenth, however, is good, with the
green lying in a long, narrow hollow; and the seventeenth is really
very good indeed. It is long and narrow and all the more frightening
because there is hardly anything in the way on the straight line to the
hole. There are bunkers at the side, however, and more alarming still
is the fact that we are always playing along a hog's back, with marsh
to the right and rough to the left. Finally, there is a green not very
fiercely guarded, but full of terribly difficult curves and angles,
wherein the holing of the very shortest putt is a matter for much
prayerful 'borrowing.' I cannot help regretting the old eighteenth,
which has now disappeared. That tee-shot, with the chance of breaking a
club-house window, tempted one very strongly to the taking of a cleek,
and that is a testimonial in itself. However, on high days and holidays
the general public congregated there so freely that the death of one of
them was probably only a matter of time, and so the hole had to go. The
old seventeenth now promoted to being the home hole is a very fine hole
if there is much adverse wind, for then there is a fine long second to
be played over the corner of a territory, which is out of bounds, and
those shots in which the ball has to leave the limits of the course for
part of its career are never pleasant, when it comes to a pinch.
The last few holes are all quite sufficiently unpleasant, when the
struggle is a keen one; worst of all, of course, when a lead that once
seemed thoroughly satisfactory is fast vanishing away. I have vivid
recollections of two such matches--one with Mr. Cairnes and one with
Mr. Lionel Munn--and I can still very well remember two odious, curly,
short putts on the seventeenth green--it was the sixteenth then. Heaven
be praised! the ball on both occasions trickled in somehow, but I still
shudder at the recollection.
I also feel just a little uncomfortable at the thought of the last
occasion on which I crossed over from Portmarnock to the mainland. When
the tide is low, one can drive across an expanse of soft, wet sand
while clinging ungracefully but tenaciously to an outside car, but on
this occasion the tide was not low, and we had to make the journey by
sailing boat. A snowstorm was raging intermittently, and the wind blew
piercing, cold and strong, reminding one with its every blast that on
the morrow all the horrors of the Irish Channel had to be faced. On
such a day the causeway at Dollymount is infinitely preferable; but, on
the other hand, when the weather is pleasant, the necessity for this
crossing in miniature gives to Portmarnock a fascination of its own.
There is an element of romance in playing golf even on a temporarily
sea-girt island.
[Illustration: PORTMARNOCK (1)
_The second shot at the eighteenth hole_]
Perhaps the outstanding beauty of =Portmarnock= lies in its putting
greens. They are good and true, which is a merit given to many
greens, and they are very fast without being untrue, which is given
only to a few, and is a rare and shining virtue. For a worse than
indifferent putter to praise keen greens shows him to be a nobly
impartial critic, for there is nothing that finds out so quickly the
bad putter, that sifts so surely the wheat from the chaff. Most of
us fare passably well as long as we are on a slow and velvety lawn,
but with increased keenness comes an enormously increased difficulty
in hitting freely and firmly--those two cardinal points of putting
skill--and behold! we are entirely undone.
I have never seen the Portmarnock greens when they are presumably at
their keenest, namely, in hot, dry, summer weather, but even on a raw
day at Easter time they demand that the ball should be soothed rather
than hit towards the hole. I have read somewhere a story of a famous
Scottish professional who declared that on his first visit to the
course he arrived on the first green in two perfect shots, and had
ultimately to hole a four-yard putt for a seven.
To praise the greens too vehemently is very often to cast an undeserved
slur on the rest of the course; it is rather like saying of a man
"He is a good short-game player," for then one is always understood
to mean that in regard to his driving he is one of the great family
of scufflers. I therefore make all haste to say that Portmarnock
does not live by greens alone. Far from it: it is a good, long, bold
course, with plenty of natural features, and, moreover, it has of late
years been considerably lengthened and otherwise altered for the
better. Before the alterations the golf was not, I say it with fear
and trembling, particularly difficult. So long as a man played with a
reasonable degree of accuracy and did not lose himself on the greens,
he might expect to do quite a good score. Now, however, the course has
been 'bolstered up,' if I may say so, in its weakest parts, and in the
region of the sixth and seventh holes the golf is much longer and more
difficult than it used to be.
It is rather characteristic of Portmarnock that at some of the best
holes the player's course lies along the bottom of gullies that wind
their way between hills on either side. Of such is the fourth hole--a
really fine hole--where the gully bends as it goes, so that there is
plenty to be gained by hugging the left-hand side with a judicious
but not a doting affection. The hole is of a good length, needing at
least two shots, and possibly infinitely more, for on both sides of
the little gully are sandy slopes well covered with tenacious bents.
Before, however, we get to the fourth there is a very distinctly
good tee-shot to be played to the third along a strath of turf that
stretches, narrow and hog's-backed, between hills on the one side and
bare sand upon the other.
[Illustration: PORTMARNOCK (2)
_Coming home_]
The fifth, again, has a fine tee-shot over a big bunker, which should
see us safely at the bottom of another gorge between the hills, with a
good second shot to follow. Then follow some of the newer holes amid
a broken country of smaller undulations, and then we come back to the
club-house again for the ninth. The tenth has a very interesting
and difficult second on to a green that lies in a little nook or angle
guarded by a turf wall; and the twelfth is a short hole that may be
deserving of criticism, but appeals to the affections of many. Need
I add that the shot is a blind one, but it is a fascinating pitch,
nevertheless, into a crater green with its concomitant admixture of
hopes and fears. After this the golf, though good, is for a while less
attractive. The land is flatter, and though the holes are long, there
is just that depressing suggestion of an agricultural character such as
we have in some of the holes beyond the wall at Prestwick. The course
ends splendidly, however, with a really fine hole, its green narrow,
well guarded, and difficult to stay upon. The turf throughout is a joy
alike to walk or play on, and altogether Portmarnock is a place to
leave with a very genuine regret, even in a snowstorm.
On leaving Dublin we may betake ourselves southward to the very
charming course of =Lahinch= in County Clare, where, if the holes are
rather unduly blind and put a great premium on local knowledge, the
golf is yet intensely enjoyable. The greatest compliment I have heard
paid to Lahinch came from a very fine amateur golfer, who told me that
it might not be the best golf in the world, but was the golf he liked
best to play. Lest this may be attributed to patriotic prejudice, I may
add that he was an Englishman born and bred. Delightful though Lahinch
is, however, it is rather to the north that we must go to get a variety
of good courses. In Donegal there is Buncrana, on Lough Swilly, a
really good nine-hole course which has nurtured the best player than
has yet come out of Ireland, Mr. Lionel Munn: there is also Rosapenna,
and there is Portsalon, which lies at the far end of the lough, a truly
lovely spot, with a thoroughly entertaining golf course. I must put in
one word for the quaintest and most charming little nine-hole course
at Macamish, also on the shores of Lough Swilly, which can be reached
by sailing across from Buncrana or by driving from anywhere else an
interminable number of Irish miles over a rocky make-shift of a road.
It is the most purely amateur course in the world, and also, if more
than two or three are gathered together upon it, the most perilous.
The holes cross and recross each other and everybody aims at his own
particular hole in a light-hearted, pic-nicking frame of mind, and
perfectly regardless of the lives of others. For pure, unadulterated
fun I have yet to see the equal of this course.
However, we must leave the frivolities of Macamish and betake ourselves
for some serious golf to Portrush, in County Antrim. =Portrush= has
many claims to fame, and amongst others is that of having produced a
wonderful race of lady golfers. Considering how keen they are, and
how good are the courses on which they play, the men of Ireland,
albeit there have been some fine players amongst them, have not so far
particularly distinguished themselves, but as regards ladies' golf,
Ireland was for a time supreme. Miss Rhona Adair and Miss May Hezlet
(they are both married now, but the old names sound the more familiar)
used to win the championship one after the other with monotonous
regularity, and close on their heels flocked further and innumerable
members of the Hezlet family.
[Illustration: PORTRUSH
_Coming to the seventeenth green_]
Whether there are any subtle qualities about the course which naturally
tend to the development of female champions I cannot say; I at least
have not discovered them. At any rate it is a very delightful place
in which to play golf, for persons of either sex. The air is so fine
that the temptation to play three rounds is very hard to overcome,
while I may quote, solely on the authority of a friend, this further
testimonial to it, that it has the unique property of enabling one to
drink a bottle of champagne every night and feel the better for it.
Portrush stands on a rocky promontory that juts out into the Atlantic,
and, if I may allude to such trivialities, the scenery of the coast is
wonderfully striking. On the east are the White Rocks, tall limestone
cliffs that lead to Dunluce Castle and the headlands of the Giant's
Causeway. On the west are the hills of Inishowen, beyond which lie
Portsalon and Buncrana and the links of Donegal. It is, however, a
remarkable thing that though golf courses are often in lovely places it
frequently so happens that the beauties of the landscape are to be seen
from anywhere except the course. Who, for instance, ever heard of a
self-respecting sea-side course where one could get a view of the sea!
One may hear it perhaps roaring or murmuring, according to its mood,
beyond an interminable row of sandhills, but save with the artificial
aid of a high tee one never dreams of seeing it. So it is at Portrush,
in accordance with the best traditions, and only two or three times
in the course of the round does a view of the surrounding beauties
threaten our mental concentration on the matter in hand.
Again, according to the most approved Scottish traditions the course
begins, as one may say, in the middle of the town. Thence during its
outward journey it skirts the sandhills on the landward side, and one
or two of the holes are just a little inland in character and not
particularly entertaining. The homeward journey is, on the whole,
the more fascinating, and from the eleventh hole onwards there are
a succession of hills and valleys of a truly heroic character. If,
however, there are one or two dullish holes on the way out, the course
begins splendidly with as good a two-shot hole as can well be; too
good a hole almost to play so early before the match has had time to
develop. A ridge running diagonally and away towards the left calls
for a fine tee-shot if it is to be cleared in the straight line, while
a sandy hill covers half the green on the right-hand side, and repays
the man who has hit a good tee-shot by punishing his opponent who has
not. This first used to be followed by another equally good, if not
better, two-shot hole, but the old second and third have, as before
mentioned, now been run into one, and there are many who say that
one more has been added to that long list of crimes which have been
committed through the desire for length. The fifth is another good hole
on the way out--two reasonable shots for a reasonable hitter to a green
that lies just on the top of a high, swelling slope: one of those holes
where for some inscrutable reason it is very easy to be either too far
or too short, and very difficult to hit off the distance exactly.
Thence I will make so bold as to skip to the big hills and dales of the
last few holes, which are cast, as I have said, in a distinctly heroic
mould. There is the thirteenth, which is a fine one-shot hole, although
it is a blind; the fourteenth, the famous 'Long Valley,' which was once
knee-deep in soft moss, and is now as hard as St. Andrews in the middle
of a hot, dry August; and the fifteenth and sixteenth, where in each
case a real straight, well-hit drive reaps its due reward.
All these are excellent, but a tear may legitimately be shed over the
old seventeenth, which, like the old second, had to disappear through
the desire for length and the subsequent reconstruction. This old
seventeenth was a splendid one-shot hole, for with this one shot the
ball had to be struck over one of the hugest of bunkers on to a green
of saucer shape. So alarming was this bunker that it is recorded that
two gentlemen of oriental origin, who were playing a match for a stake
of ten pounds, were simultaneously smitten with terror and remorse when
they saw it, that, although the match stood all square at the time,
so they resolved to reduce the wager to the sum of one shilling. It
was surely wrong to do away with a hole that could produce a result so
wholly admirable.
Another very beautiful place with a very delightful course is
=Newcastle= in County Down. Newcastle has lately been altered and
extended, and has consequently risen to a position of greater dignity
among golf courses. It was always looked upon with great affection by
all who knew it, but this was a love a little akin to that which the
frequenters of Burnham used to feel for the many high hills and blind
holes of the Somersetshire course. Everybody liked Newcastle, but they
spoke of it as "a wonderful natural course," or "the best fun in the
world"--expressions which rather begged the question as to its exact
golfing merits. That is all changed, however, and to-day Newcastle
is as long as anyone can desire: indeed, in places almost too long.
I remember meeting a very distinguished player on his return from
Newcastle soon after the alterations had been made, when there was
still practically no run in the new ground, and he solemnly averred
that he had never played so many brassey shots in all his life.
The course lies among the sandhills under the shadow of Slieve
Donard, the tallest of the Mourne Mountains, and so close to the sea
that we may reach the shore with our first tee-shot. No amount of
reconstruction has done away with the original character of the course;
we still have many big carries to compass with the tee-shot, and a good
deal more pitching than running to do with our iron clubs. However,
we must not run away with the idea that we shall have done all that
is demanded of us when we have hit a ball hard and high over a hill
somewhere or other into the distance. Trouble lurks at the sides as
well as in the centre of the fairway, and for all the boldness and
bigness of the hazards it is really a straight rather than a long
driver's course. The greens are good, and sometimes inclined to be
slow; they lie, moreover, in a good many instances, in those pleasing
little hollows which are the most adroit flatterers in the whole world
of golf. The turf on the outward journey is of the ideal sea-side kind,
but on the way home we fancy that we detect something more of an inland
character about it.
[Illustration: NEWCASTLE
_The ninth carry and the club-house_]
Flitting, like arbitrary bees, from one hole to another, we must
pause a moment over the first, which is one of the best of the long
holes, and has an admirable tee-shot. So has the second, while there
is an approach shot of much interest and delicacy to be played at the
third. The sixth again is a memorable hole, of no great length, but
considerable difficulty. We need but one shot to go from the tee to the
high plateau green where the hole is, but the sides of the plateau fall
very quickly away, and there must be plenty of stop on the ball or it
will inevitably overrun its mark.
On the way home, again, there is another arresting hole, the sixteenth.
We mount a high tee on one side of an enormous bunker, and must hit a
sheer carry of goodness knows how many yards on to a green also perched
high in the air upon the further side. It is a distinctly heroic
hole; and the seventeenth and eighteenth, in trying to live up to its
standard, have grown so long as to be just a little bit dull. They are,
however, I believe, to be lopped and pruned of their superfluous yards,
and should then make a fine finish. It should be added for those who
like to play their golf in comfort, that the first tee, the tenth tee,
the club-house and the hotel lie, all four of them, close together; not
that Newcastle really needs these adventitious advantages, for it is
one of the very pleasantest places for golf in all Ireland.