Golf Seminar: The Book of Golf And Golfers- Horace G. Hutchinson

Contents

The Book of Golf And Golfers- Intro
Text

The Book of Golf And Golfers- Intro

“Horace G. Hutchinson began his golfing career at an early age playing on Royal North Devon, a course founded in 1864. By the age of sixteen, he won the club medal championship and, by club rules, became its Captain. That was fine with horace because he was completing his preparatory education and heading to Oxford University. At the school he made his mark immediately playing number one on the golf team and leading them to victory over arch rival, Cambridge. Always during his years at Oxford, he would spend vacations at home playing the Royal Devon course accompanied by a young caddie who was employed by the Hutchinson family as a houseboy. His name was John Henry Taylor, better known to golfdom as J.H.. He would go on to win five British Open Championships.”

-data courtesy United States Golf Teachers Federation
http://usgtf.com/articles/father.html

To better understand the golf terminology of the era, here is an explanation of classic golf club names:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsolete_golf_clubs

More golf resources:
Golf Prints and Gifts

The Simple Golf Swing

How To Break 80

The New 4 Magic Moves of Winning Golf

The Golf Swing Test

The 5 Keys To Distance by World Long Drive Champ Eric Jones

Text

THE BOOK OF GOLF
AND GOLFERS

HORACE G. HUTCHINSON

WITH CONTRIBUTIONS BY

MISS AMY PASCOE
H. H. HILTON, J. H. TAYLOR, H. J. WHICH AM

AND

MESSRS SUTTON & SONS ‘

WITH 71 PORTRAITS

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK AND BOMBAY

1899

1918

PREFACE

It may well be said that of the making of books about
golf there is no end, that we have had enough of them —
maybe too many — already. Partly that is true, and partly it is
on account of its truth that the writer ventures to essay yet
another book on the great and inexhaustible subject. It is
not because it is inexhaustible that this book commends
itself to the indulgence of the public, but partly because so
much has been said about golf in so many books, so that it
seemed time for some book to pick and steal from all these
diverse sources and gather grain into one book ; and partly,
this book is inspired — ^let no one rashly cavil at the term, for
there are founts of inspiration both celestial and the reverse
— by a desire to set forth golf ‘ as she is played ‘ under a new
guise — ^not aiming at the purely didactic ends of elementary
instruction which are the professed aims of several previously
published volumes, but rather aiming to set before the world
a gallery of golfing pictures, exhibiting eminent players
engaged in those strokes which seem to be most charac-
teristic and to have served them best in attaining that
eminence. From a study of these pictures, and from the
observations that the writer has permitted himself thereon,
it is to be hoped that both instruction and amusement —
Sandford-and-Merton-like phrase! — may be reaped; for if
we can find out exactly how it is that these eminent fellows

vi GOLF AND GOLFBBS

arrived at their elevation, what in the world is to prevent our
joining them there ?

A goodly portion of the book is thus occupied. For the
rest we are indebted for most valuable assistance, first, in
courtesy, to Miss Pascoe ; and in this regard let a word be
said to those golfers of the Tory school who object *on
principle ‘ to ‘ women on the links.’ Their objection, accord-
ing to their lights, is a perfectly sound one. It is their lights
that lead them astray. These lights seem to show them
woman on the links as a talkative, irresponsible person,
without real knowledge of the game or real interest in it,
treating the solemn matter as if it were a mere affair of a
game of croquet at a garden party. This may have been
the light in which women on the links really appeared in the
generation of the Tory golfer ; but that generation is passing
away, and being succeeded by another in which woman
yields nothing in golfing interest and knowledge to the most
crusted golfer of the other sex. Her enthusiasm even passes
his ; she is as keen and alert in regard to every point of the
game as any male golfer ever can be, and in point of execu-
tion she is often quite the equal of some of those who would
have her removed from the green. As for talking or moving
‘ on the stroke,’ such an enormity is quite unthinkable for
her. In fine, she is capable of being as good a golfer, in the
most complete sense of the phrase, as any man.

Appearing, therefore, in this new light she has no need
to ask for sufferance, she has only to claim her right to play
on the links with the best. If she be not as long a driver as
some men we know, she is at least as long as many of those
that are described as ‘ good partners in a foursome,’ and she
is herself often as ‘ good a partner in a foursome ‘ as any of
her critics. With this justification, therefore — it would be
incorrect and impertinent to speak of it as an apology — the

PEEFACE vii

chapter on ladies at golf may safely stand on its own merits.
It is only to open the Tory eye to the dawn of the new light
that the justification is necessary— certainly not ^^ that the
golfing ladies’ cause, through any weakness of »^its own,
requires it.

The merits and qualifications of the writers who have
aided in this work are too well known to need more than the
barest mention. Miss Pascoe is a late winner of the ladies’
championship. Mr. Hilton has twice won the open
championship, which only one other amateur has ever won.
Taylor has also twice won this great distinction, twice in
succession ; and in the third successive year was only beaten
by Harry Yardon after a tie. Mr. Whigham is ex-amateur
champion of the United States, though by birth and golfing
education a true Scot, and if the opinions of those who have
proved their worth in golf so fully as these have proved it
are not worth hearing, for whose opinion shall we wait ?

It may be said that there is too much of England and too
little of Scotland in this book of Scotland’s national game —
that it is mainly English, whereas it should be mainly
Scotch — only one Scotsman, indeed, bearing a hand in it,
and his handiwork dealing with American, rather than
British, golf. But this is surely rather narrow criticism.
We of England are very ready to subscribe ourselves British
rather than English, embracing Scotland with a good heart
— ^we are all grateful to Scotland for giving us her game ;
we have no national jealousy in the matter. Why should
she ? Has she ? We believe not. It is not Scotsmen, but
only those who take on themselves, with little right, to speak
for Scotsmen that would claim it for her.

An apology we do owe to America for the comparatively
brief notice of her golf — a notice that we cannot admit to be
inadequate in kind, but only in degree inadequate — altogether

viii GOLF AND GOLFEES

too meagre, and in point of length quite unworthy of its
subject. Unfortunately our own selfish British point of view
has engrossed us so as to leave only too few pages for the
golf in tiie States, to which we should have wished to devote
many more. An apology is all that we can offer. It is our
loss, ra&er tiian America’s, that we have not space to repair
the deficiency.

Messrs. Sutton & Sons, the celebrated seedsmen of
Beading, have been kind enough to write a chapter on the
proper treatment and la}ring out of greens on di£Eerent soils,
with the different grass seeds appropriate to each, and
possibly J. H. Taylor’s chapter on practical club-making will
turn the thoughts of many to the advantage and interest of
making their own clubs.

H. G. H.

March 1899.

CHAPTER PAOK

I. mSTOBICAL 1

Bt H. G. Hutchinson

IL GOLF AS A GAME 89

Bt H. H. Hilton

UL APPBOACHING . . …. 58

Bt J. H. Tatlob

IV. HOW TO PBACTISE 68

Bt H. G. Hutohinson

V. A POBTBAIT GALLEBY 83

Bt H. G. Hutchinson

VI. GOLF IN THE UNITED STATES . … 206

Bt H. J. Whioham

VIL LADIES 223

Bt Aut Bennet Pascox

VIIL METHODS OF PLAT 248

Bt H. G. Hutchinson

IX. PRACTICAL CLUBMAEING 259

Bt J. H. Tatlob

X. CLUBS AND BALLS 275

Bt H. G. Hutchinson

XL LAYING-OUT AND UPKEEP OF GBEENS . . . . 301
Bt Mbssbs. Sutton A Sons, of Beadinq

INDEX 313

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Seprodueed bp the Swan Eleetrie Engraving Co,

MR F. G. TAIT, AT FINISH OF SWINQ …. ProntUpiece
From a photograph bp Herbert Bieterton, Fentonvtlle Rood,

GOLFERS OF THE DUTCH TILE PERIOD .’ . to face p. 91

MR. H. H. HILTON, AT TOP OP SWING, SHOWING
POSITION OF HANDS ,,42

From a photograph bg Herbert Biekerton,

MR. H. H. HILTON, AT TOP OP SWING FOR HALF
BRASSEY APPROACH „ 44

From a photograph bg Herbert Biekerton.

MR. H. H. HILTON, AT FINISH OF HALF BRASSEY
APPROACH „ 46

From a photograph bg Herbert Bieterton.

J. H. TAYLOR, APPROACHING WITH MASHIE, AT TOP
OF STROKE „ 60

From a photograph bg Truckle and Sons, South M’imbledon.

JLH. TAYLOR, APPROACHING WITH MASHIE, AT FINISH

“”of STROKE „ 64

From a photograph bg Truckle and JSont^ South Wimbledon,

MR. EDWARD BLACKWELL, AT TOP OF SWING … ,,85

From a photograph bg A, Downiey St, Andrews.

MR. EDWARD BLACKWELL, AT FINISH OF DRIVE . „ 86

From a photograph bg A, Downier St, Andrews,

W. PARK, AT TOP OF SWING FOR FULL CLEEK SHOT „ 89

From a photograph bg John Speneet Musselburgh,

xii GOLF AND GOLFERS

W. PABK, AT FINISH OP CLEEK SHOT ….
Frcm a photograph bp John Spenee, Muuelhurgh.

JAMES BRAID, AT TOP OP SWING

From a photograph b$ W, Sekiahy Fleet Street.

JAMES BRAID, AT FINISH OF DRIVE

From a photograph by W, Sehuth, Fleet Street,

MR. MURE PERQUSSON, AT TOP OP SWING . .

From ag^otograpk lent hjf Edmund Banburp^ Esq.

MR. MURE PERGUSSON, AT FINISH OF DRIVE
From a photograph lent bg Edmund Banbury^ Etq.

MR. MURE FBRGUSSON, ADDRESSING FOR DRIVE . .
From a j^otogrtgfh lent bg Edmund Bat^urtf Eiq,

MR. J. E. TiATDLAY, ADDRESSING FOR APPROACH
STROKE

From a photograph bg WMiam Croote, Edinburgh.

MR. J. E. TiATDLAY, AT FINISH OP APPROACH STROKE
From aphotogre^ bg William Crooke^ Edinburgh,

HARRY VARDON, AT TOP OP SWING

From a photograph bg J. S, Dovcnham^ Scarborough.

HARRY VARDON, AT FINISH OP DRIVE

From a photograph bg J. S. /ToimAom, Scarborough,

HARRY VARDON, ADDRESSING FOR LONG, LOW
APPROACH WITH DRIVING MASHIE

From a photograph bgJ,S, Doienham, Scarborough,

MR. ARNOLD BLYTH, AT TOP OP SWING

From aphotognqfh lent bg Edmund Banburg, Esq.

MR. ARNOLD BLYTH, AT FINISH OP DRIVE
From a photograph lent bg Edmund Banburg^ Esq.

MR. ARNOLD BLYTH, ADDRESSING THE BALL . . .
From a photograph lent bg Edmund BaiAurg^ Esq,

ADDRESS FOB LOW DRIVE AGAINST WIND
From a photograph bg Herbert Bicterton,

tofticep. 90

100

108

105

109

110

118

116

LIST OF ILLU8TEATI0NS xiii

BiB. ElBIC HAMBEO, AT TOP OF CLBEK SHOT . . . tofaoep. 119
From a pkotogrofh lent bp E. A. Hambro, Etq,

BERNARD SAYERS, ADDRESSING FOR A RUNNING
APPROACH SHOT » 120

From a photograph bp A. C. HutehiMon, North BerwUk.

BERNARD SAYERS, AT FINISH OF RUNNING APPROACH

SHOT ,,128

From aphetograph hp A,C, Hutchison, North Berwick,

ARCHIE SIMPSON, AT TOP OF DRIVE „ 126

From a photograph bp E, M. Jfiddleton, Aberdeen.

ABCmE SIMPSON, AT FINISH OF DRIVE …. ,» 137

From aphotograph bp E. M. MtddUton, Aberdeen.

W. FERNIE, AT TOP OF SWING » IW

From aphotograph bp James Maeartnept Troon,

W. FERNIB, AT FINISH OF DRIVE » 188

From aphotograph bp James Maeartnep, Troon,

A. HERD, AT TOP OF SWING „ IM

From a photogranh bp A. Downie, &. Andreus.

A. HERD, AT FINISH OF SWING . . . . „ 186

From a photograph bp A. Downie, 8t. Andrews.

A. HERD, ADDRESSING FOR DRIVE ,,188

From aphotograph bp A. DowuU, St. Andrews,

ANDREW KIRKALDY, AT TOP OF SWING …. „ 188

From a photogrt^ bp A, Downie, 8t, Andrews,

ANDREW KIRKALDY, AT FINISH OF SWING … „ 141

From aphotograph bp A. Downie^ St. Andrews,

MR. F. G. TAIT, AT TOP OF SWING ,,144

From aphotograph bp Herbert Bickerton.

MR. F. G. TAIT, AT FINISH OF SWING ,147

From aphotograph bp Herbert Biekerton.

MR. J. GRAHAl^ AT TOP OF DRIVE ,,149

From aphotograph bp Herbert Biekerton,

xiv GOLF AND GOLFEES

KB. J. GRAHAM, AT FINISH OF SWING …. to face p. 151
From a photograph dy Herbert Bidterton.

MB. J. L. LOW, PUTTING .,164

From aphotogm^h kp Herbert Bidterton,

MB. C. B. DICK, AT TOP OF SWING ,.167

From a photograph bf Herbert Bid:erton.

MB. 0. B. DICK, AT FINISH OF DBIVE n 169

From a photograph bf Herbert Bidterton.

MB. JOHN BALL, AT TOP OF SWING ,,162

From aphotogre^ b$ Herbert Bidterton.

MB. JOHN BALL, AT END OF SWING „ 164

From a photograph bp Herbert Bidterton.

MB. H. H. HILTON, AT TOP OF SWING 166

From a photograph bg Herbert Bidterton.

MB. H. H. HILTON, AT FINISH OF DBIVE …. ,,168

From a photograph bg Herbert Bidterton.

MB. CHABLES HUTCHINGS, AT TOP OF SWING „ 170

From a photograph bg Herbert Bidterton.

MB. CHABLES HUTCHINGS, AT FINISH OF SWING . . „ 178

From aphotogreg»h bg Herbert Bidterton.

MB. H. G. B. ELLIS, AT TOP OF SWING ,174

From a photograph bg Herbert Bidterton,

MB. H. G. B. ELLIS, AT FINISH OF DBIVE 176

From a j^ctogroph bg Herbert Bidterton.

MB. LESLIE BALFOUB-MELVILLE, AT TOP OF SWING . „ 180

From a photograph bg John Moffat, Edinburgh.

MB. LESLIE BALFOUB-MELVILLE, AT FINISH OF DBIVE „ 182

From a photograph bg John Mt^aty Edinburgh.

MB. B. T. BOOTHBY, AT FINISH OF SWING . „ 184

From a photograph bg Herbert Bidterton.

MB. FBANK FAIBLIE, AT FINISH OF LONG APPBOACH

STBOKE ,,188

From aphotograi^ bg Herbert Bidterton,

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xv

TOM MORBIS, AT TOP OF SWING to face p. 191

From apkoioffraph b$ Herbert SidterUm,

MR. HORACE HUTCHINBON, AT TOP OP DRIVE . . » IW

From a photograph bf Emberton^ Graeeehurdi Stroel.

MR. HORACE HUTCHINSON, AT FINISH OF DRIVE . . „ 196

From aphotograph bff Smberton, Oraoethwrck Street.

AUTHOR’S IDEAL OF THE SWING ,196

From a sOter figure modeled bg kimttl/,

LADIES’ AND AMATEUR CHAMPIONSHIP MEDALS . . „ 197

LADY MARGARET SCOTT, AT TOP OF SWING … ,,198

From aphotognf^ lent bn Edmund Sanburp^ Esq.

LADY MARGARET SCOTT, AT FINISH OP SWING ,,199

From aphotogrtq^ lent bf Edmund Banburp^ Esq.

LADY MARGARET SCOTT, AT TOP OP SWING,
OCCASIONAL, AND EXAGGERATED LENGTH … „ aOO

From aphotogragA lent b$ Edmund Banburp^ Esq,

THE LATE HUGH KTRKALDY ..200

From a drtuetng bp Ihamiu Hodge,

MISS AMY PASCOE, AT TOP OF SWING ,209

From aphUograph bp Qarland, Woking,

MISS AMY PASCOE, AT FINISH OF SWING …. „ SOS

From a photograph bp Oarland^ Woking,

MR. H. J. WHIGHAM, ADDRESSING FOR APPROACH. 1 ,,906

From a photograph bp Moffat, Kep West,

MR. H. J. WHIGHAM, ADDRESSING FOR APPROACH. 2 „ 208

From aj^otogrtqfh bp Moffat, Kep West.

MR. H. J. WHIGHAM APPROACHING, AT END OF
STROKE • • • . ,,210

From a photograph bp Moffat^ Kep West.

MR. J. A. TYNG, ADDRESSING FOR DRIVE …. ,,214

From a photograph lent bp Josiak ITeteman, Esq,^ New York,

MR. J. A. TYNG, AT TOP OF DRIVE …. „ 216

From a photograph lent bp Josiah Nemmcmy Esq,, New York,

xvi GOLF AND GOLFERS

MR. J. A. TYNG, AT FINISH OF DBIVB to face p. 8

From a phoiograph lent h$ JoHah Kewman, Ktq^ New York^

MB. R. A. HULL, AT TOP OF SWING n SSI

From a phoiograph b$ Herbert Bickertom.

MR. a A. HULL, AT FINISH OF DRIVE …. „ 398

From a photoffraph bp Herbert Biekerton,

SET OF HUGH PHILP CLUBS .• „ 288

From a photograph lent bjf J. E, Laidlaff, Est/,

SET OP OLD CLUBS ,,282

Frtrm a photograph bg Robert FerroM^ Apr,

ANCIENT AND MODERN … …. ,,299

From a photograph bg Robert Ferrai, Agr.

Errata

Page S7, line 6, for 1889 read 1898
„ 191, „ 8, „ end „ top
„ 206, ft>r J. IL Whigham read H. J. Whlgham
„ 814, /or Everard, Dr., read Everard, Mr. H. S. C.
„ 317, for Whigham, Mr. J. H., read Whigham, Mr. H. J.

GOLF AND GOLFERS

CHAPTEE I

HISTORICAL

I CANNOT find, after some diligent searching, that there is
much to be said of the history of Golf in addition to what
was said so well in the first edition of * Golf, a Boyal and
Ancient Game,’ by the late Mr. Eobert Clark. This fine work
was first published nearly a quarter of a century ago. He
himself — ^republishing his book, of which the first edition
had then been long exhausted — in 1893, shortly before his
lamented death, expresses regret that the interval of eighteen
years had given to his research no new matter throwing any
light on the great game’s early history. We do not know at
what remote date the game was first played in Scotland,
whether it was indigenous or introduced from over-sea, but
there is some strong evidence that a pastime from which the
name ‘ golf ‘ is derived was played at an early date in Holland,
and also evidence . that golf balls were made in Holland
and imported into Scotland in 1618. In the latter regard,
Mr. Clark quotes from a letter dated August 5, 1618, at
Salisbury, that whereas ‘no small quantitie of gold and
nlver is transported yierhe out of his Hienes’ kingdome of
Scotland for bying of golf ballis,* therefore * his Majesty con-
fers a monopoly of ball-manufacture on James Melvill, ” for
the spaice of twentie ane yeiris,” but lest the said James
Melvill should become an extortioner, it was provided that

2 GOLF AND GOLPEBS

the cost of each ball ” exceid not the pryce of four schillingis
money of this realm.” ‘ Further, a stamp was to be
placed on each golf ball thus made, to prove its native
manufacture. All without this mark were to be ‘ escheated.’
This plainly shows two facts — that golf was a very popular
game at that date (1618), otherwise the ‘ quantitie of gold
and silver ‘ would not have been aptly described as ‘ no
small ; ‘ and also, that Holland must at the same date have
been playing a game for which the balls were identical
with those used in Scotch golf — ‘ feather ‘ balls, almost cer-
tainly. Further, again by way of evidence, there is the
etymology of the name * golf,’ derived from German ‘ Kolbe ‘=
club, becoming * kolf ‘ in the Low Dutch, which in the Low
Dutch guttural pronunciation would be almost exactly ‘ golf.’
It is true that the Dutch game called ‘ Kolf ‘ has no resem-
blance whatever to our golf, being played in a bam and on
principles that connect it more nearly with croquet, though
not too nearly even with this, than with golf. Yet in certain
Dutch pictures we find illustrations of persons playing a game
with ball and club, and certainly not in a bam — on the ice by
preference, but sometimes also on the open sward — that looks
as if it had a kinship with golf. The principal difference is
that the players are aiming at a stick, or peg, rather than
* holing out ; ‘ but this may have been for lack of true putting
greens. The game that is illustrated on the Dutch tiles may
be taken from the indoor or the outdoor game equally, for
the majority of them do not show a background to inform
us on this point. There is a notable exception in the large
plate illustrations in the Badminton book on golf — a plate
lent for the purpose by Mr. Laidlaw Purves. Here the
game progresses on the ice. In either case, however, the
club — Kolbe, or Kolf — ^is used, and it seems allowable to con-
jecture that there may have been two forms, an indoor and
outdoor form of the game, both of which may have borne
the name Kolf, though differing by reason of the different
conditions xmder which they are played.

/
1

HISTORICAL 3

It does not seem that we can really arrive much nearer
than this at the root of the matter. Certain continental \

games that show some affinity with golf , such as the ‘ crosse ‘
played in Normandy, the * jen de mail,’ which seems more
peculiar to the South of France, and the ‘ chole ‘ of French
Flanders. For the rest, all seems to be mere conjecture, and
it is wiser to return to the safer ground of recorded fact.

The oldest mention recorded seems to bear date March
1457, when the Scotch Parliament ‘ decreeted and ordained
that wapinschawingis be halden by the Lordis and Baronis
spiritual and temporale, foure times in the yeir, and that
the Fute-ball and Golf be utterly cryit doune, and nocbt
usit ; and that the bowe merkis be maid at ilk paroche kirk
a pair of buttis, and schutting be usit ilk Sunday.’

This is the earliest mention found, but its manner is
significant as showing the great hold that the game must
even then have possessed on the popular favour if it was
necessary that it should be forbidden by Act of ParUament
in order that the king’s lieges might have leisure from it to
pursue the practice of archery as a defence against * our auld
enimies of England.’ The last quoted words appear in an
Act of May 1471, which had the same general tenor as the
one above quoted, including the clause that * Fute-ball and
Golfe be abusit in tyme cuming.’ Again, in May 1491 a
similar prohibition was fulminated against golf by the
Parliament. For all that, in the early days of the sixteenth
century, Mr. Clark notes that the king himself broke his
own behest, convicting him from the Accounts of the Lords
High Treasurers of Scotland, which contain sundry entries of
the king’s expenses for ‘ Golf Clubbis and Ballis.’

The final words of the Act first quoted — viz. * ilk Sunday ‘
— have a significance in view of the frequent indictments on
record about the end of the sixteenth century and beginning
of the seventeenth against persons who broke the Sabbath
by playing Gowff (such is now the orthography) on that day.

There were terrific struggles about the beginning of the

4 GOLF AND GOLFEBS

seventeenth century between the authorities and the Sabbath
breakers, the Town Council of Edinburgh, in 1692, making
proclamation against the doing of all sorts of dreadful
things on the Sabbath, such as ‘drynking in tavemis, or
otherwayes at Golf,’ &c. And in several separate sentences,
of date from 1604 to 1650, various persons were admonished,
fined, put in stocks, deposed from the office of deacon, &;c.,
for playing golf on the Sabbath, and especially * the tyme
of the sermonnes.’ One of these profane persons, curiously
enough, who was imprisoned for this o£Eence in 1608, was
named Bogie — ^Pat Bogie — no doubt an ancestor of the
Colonel of that name that vexes our peace so often in the
golf greens of to-day.

However, when James VI. came back from Scotland he
‘ rebuked the precise people and declared his pleasure to be
that after the end of divine service our good people be not
disturbed, letted, or discouraged from any lawfull recreation
— such as dauncing, either men or women, archerie for men,
leaping, vaulting, or any other such harmless recreation,
but prohibiting the said recreations to any that are not
present in the church at the service of God before their
going to the said recreations.’

Later, in 1633, Charles I., pious son of pious father, reite-
rates this injunction with the like qualification, commands
justices of assize ‘ to see that no man doe trouble or molest
any of our loyall and duetifuU people, in or for their lawfull
recreations, having first done their duetie towards God.’

On this whole subject, which has acquired a greater
interest now, owing to the prevalence of Sunday golfing in
England, and even in parts of Scotland, Mr. Clark has the
following note, which fairly sums up the whole position :
‘ The inference from all this is curious enough. In 1547 it
is expressly enacted by the Scottish ” Lordis and Baronis,
spirituale and temporale,” that ** schutHng be tcsit ilk Sun-
da/If,*’ In the century following, it is plain from the terms
of the edicts that the practice of Golf, though held sacrilegious

HISTORICAL 6

on Sunday in tyme of preaching — the iyme of sermonnes —
was at other times of the day at least tolerated. The
rigid Sabbatarianism of Scotland — ^now mnch modified, and
in conrse of being more so — ^is thus plainly of comparatively
modem growth. John Knox and the early Beformers knew
nothing of it.’

The modem fashion knows no such wise temperance —
either golfers golf all the Sabbath through — time of sermons
notwithstanding — or else do not golf at all on that day and
hold up their hands in pious horror at those that do.

It is difficult for a whole-souled golfer to reconcile the
addiction of the royal family of Stuart for golf with their
unsatisfactory character in some other particulars. Prince
Henry, eldest son of James VI., was a golfer. Mary Queen of
Scots was so devoted to it that she ‘ was seen playing golf
and pallmall in the fields beside Seton ‘ a few days only after
Damley’s murder — showing a very well-merited indifference
about his fate ; but ‘ the fields beside Seton ‘ does not read
like the description of a first-class links. Perhaps, after all,
it was only a form of penance. Charles I. is represented in
an historical picture receiving the news of the outbreak of
the Irish Bebellion in 1642 while engaged in a golf match
on the links of Leith — monstrous lack of discretion in the
messenger to interrupt the match with such tidings I and
monstrous sin of omission in the chronicler that he tells us
nothing of how the match stood at the time. Perhaps the
king was down, for he made it an excuse for breaking off
the game and driving straight to Holyrood. James II.,
as Duke of York, was a keen golfer, and in partnership with
one John Patersone, a shoemaker, defeated two English
noblemen in an important match, and as a token of gratitude
gave the shoemaker half the stakes, which must have been
considerable, for the man built himself therewith a house in
Canongate. Why does not the royal family of our day
play golf more earnestly ? We might have many houses in
the Canongate.

6 GOLF AND GOLFERS

It is recorded that a certain Bishop of Galloway, while
engaged in 1610 in a game of golf (‘ for he loved that all
his lyfe time verie much ‘), saw a vision, apparently quite
unconnected with the incidents of the game, that affected
him so much that he ‘went home trembling, tooke bed
instantlie, and died, not giving any token of repentance for
that wicked course [excess of golf playing, apparently] that
he had embraced.’

The great Montrose was an ardent golfer, at Leith,
St. Andrews, and at Montrose itself, where he played in a
match the day before his wedding, and again actually on the
very day of his marriage as soon as the ceremony was over —
a masterful man.

Mr. Clark, from whose work most of the above par-
ticulars are borrowed, has a very interesting anecdote of the
Rev. Dr. Alexander Carlyle, Minister of Inveresk, near
Musselburgh. He was a * mighty swiper.’ * In 1758,’ says
Mr. Clark, * while in London, he ‘ (the Eeverend Doctor)
‘ was invited to dine with Garrick at his house in Hampton,
along vsrith John Home, author of ” Douglas,” Dr. Robertson
the historian. Parson Black from Aberdeen, and others.
Garrick had told us,’ Mr. Clark goes on (now quoting
the words of Dr. Carlyle’s autobiography), ‘ to bring
golf clubs and balls, that we might play at the golf on
Molesley Hurst. We accordingly set out in good time, six of
us, in a landau. As we passed through Kensington, the
Coldstream regiment were changing guard, and, on seeing
our clubs, they gave us three cheers in honour of a diversion
pecuMar to ScotUmd ‘ (these words are italicised by the present
writer, as especially to be observed), * so much does the
remembrance of one’s native country dilate the heart when
one has been some time absent. The same sentiment made
us open our purses, and give our countrjrmen wherewithal to
drink the ” Land o’ Cakes.” (rarrick met us on the way, so
impatient he seemed to be for his company. Immediately
after we arrived, we crossed the river to the Golfing ground.

HI8T0BICAL 7

which was very good* (again a notable sentence). ‘None
of the company could play but Home and myself and
Parson Black. . . . After dinner, Garrick ordered the wine
to be carried to a temple in the garden. Having observed a
green mount opposite the archway, I said to our landlord
I would surprise him with a stroke at the golf, as I
should drive a golf ball into the Thames, once in three
strokes. I had measured the distance with my eye in
walking about the garden, and accordingly, at the second
stroke, made the ball alight in the mouth of the gateway
and roll gently down the green slope into the river. This
was so dexterous that he was quite surprised, and begged the
club of me by which such a feat had been performed.’

A suitable achievement, truly, ‘after dinner,’ and an
eloquent eulogium on the good doctor’s golfing skill and
temperate habit, even if his manner of telling it does not
impress us with any sense of his great modesty ; but the
main interest of the whole story — from the present, the
historical, point of view— is beyond doubt contained in those
two italicised passages, of which the one speaks of golf as a
diversion * peculiar to Scotland ‘ and the other describes the
golfing at Molesley Hurst as * very good.’ Now the Beverend
Doctor was famous as a ‘ mighty swiper ‘ — there is strong
testimony, from the good spirits in which he tells the
anecdote of his post-prandial tour deforce, that he had won
his match — ^but for all that it was a considerable concession
on the part of a Scotchman, used to the links of Musselburgh,
less careworn then than to-day, to afiSrm that this golfing
on Molesley Hurst was * very good.’ Such an admission is at
all events only consistent with the assumption that the
ground had been specially prepared, and was constantly used,
for golf. But how are we to reconcile this with the Doctor’s
previous statement that the game was ‘ peculiar to Scotland ‘ ?
Perhaps we are not to take the latter statement exactly by
the letter, and it certainly does look as if there was a golf course
established at Molesley Hurst in 1758. The unfortunate thing

8 GOLF AND GOLFERS

is that the establishment does not continue to exist, neither
are there, so far as some diligent searching has enabled ns to
discover, any extant records beyond these here contained of
its existence at any time. Still greater, however, is our
difficulty in reconciling this statement of the Reverend Doctor
with the establishment of the golf course at Blackheath, to
which tradition assigns 1608 as the date of its inception.

After all, it is but tradition, and we are here concerned
with history. The game of golf played at Molesley Hurst
in 1758 is the earUest match on record on English soil.
Blackheath records begin with the year 1766, at which date
we find that a silver club was given to the golf club at Black-
heath by a Mr. H. Foot. At this time, and for many years
later, the club played on the heath in summer only, and on
a course of five holes — that being the number then in use
on the Leith links, from which there is no reasonable doubt
that Blackheath golfers took their number. The silver club
aforesaid bears the record of its own antiquity engraved upon
itself, but the first written records of golf on Blackheath
bear date 1787, and are in the form of a list of the club’s
members entered in the cash book of the chocolate house at
Blackheath. It is ever to be regretted that the old minute
books, which would have formed an invaluable treasure house
of the history of English golf, were lost in a destructive fire.
A similar loss overtook cricket history in the destruction by
fire of old Lord’s pavilion. It seems as if the muse of
history had a grudge against intelligent research devoted to
records of physical pastimes. All the names in the list of
the cash book of the chocolate house are Scotch in sound,
and it is to be noticed that the spelling of golf at this period
has degenerated into ^ goff,’ golfers have become ‘ goffers,’ so
that it appears that the origin from Low Dutch ‘ kolf ‘ had
been forgotten temporarily. We are not told whether this
‘ chocolate house ‘ was another name for ‘ temperance hotel/
but in any case the club seems to have left it soon.

The next work that takes up the history of the club is

HISTOBICAL 9

the bet book, in which most of the bets recorded take the
form of gallons of claret. Claret was a great drink in Scot-
land in those days of her closer intercourse with France, and
doubtless these pious Scots brought loyal palates south with
them. But all this while they played only in summer, until
in 1789 a club was formed that was curiously named the
Knuckle Club, whose members used to meet ‘ to discuss a
dish of soup and knuckles, particularly beef ones.’ This was
the ostensible purpose of its existence, but incidentally its
members met to play golf on the heath during the winter
months. In 1825 the Knuckle Club — whose ceremonies seem
to have been of an interesting and childish nature, such as
holding a knuckle in the hand while making an after-dinner
speech, &c. — resolved itself into the Blackheath Winter Golf
Club, and so continued for a space of nineteen years ; at the
end of which time — namely, in 1844 — ^it dissolved its existence
by a kind of Buddhistic incorporation with the older, the
Summer Golf Club, the seasonal names ceased, and the
present club, playing all the year, was bom. By way of a
kind of incorporation fee, the winter club, on its dissolution,
gave its challenge medal to the older club.

This is a briefly checked-off account of the chief incidents
in the Blackheath Club’s history. Mr. W. E. Hughes has
compiled at length a history of the club that is a real
labour of love and an excellent literary achievement, occu-
pying a handsome volume, and those who want fuller details
should refer there ; and if the reputation of Blackheath for
the immense antiquity of its golf club have come out just a
little smirched — or if not that, at least without being able to
show any extract from the register in support as proof of
its year of birth — at all events the suspicion cast on it is a
purely negative one. The club has a tradition that it was
inaugurated in 1608. As a tradition we have no stone to
throw at the claim, and for tradition we can ask no proof
— only, when Blackheath begins to speak of her prodigious
age as a matter of historical fact, then she does justify

10 GOLF AND GOLFEBS

us in asking for a bit of proof, and so far we cannot find
that she has produced it.

But at BIsickheath, golf, whenever established, held its
own, and a little more than its own, growing in favour so
that the summer golf, from the first Saturday in April to the
first Saturday in November, ceased to be enough for it, and
it had to invent its Knuckle Club, and then its Winter Golf
Club to fill the gap. But in Scotland we do not find that
the game had been making any great progress in popular
favour. On the contrary, it had without doubt retrograded
from that status wherein we left it, in which it required Acts of
Parliament and no end of municipal denouncements to curb
the unseasonable zeal of the people who would play golf when
they should not. In 1844, the last date we have dwelt on
at all in considering English golfing history, there would
certainly have been needed no acts of legislature to moderate
Scotland’s general zeal for golf. Golf, in fact, had ceased to be
a popular game in Scotland. Why ? The reason is not far
to seek. In the old days we find all the enactments levelled
against the playing of golf on the Sabbath; but by this
time, and for a long while before, the Puritans had got such
a tight hold of the people and of the Sabbath that the bare
notion of playing the game on that day would have been a
scandal that social opinion could not have tolerated. If a
game is to be popular it has to be played on holidays.
Sunday was the principal holiday ; but the Puritans had
made the Sunday something that, if it was a holy day, was
certainly not a holiday, and the leisure for golf playing was
very much curtailed. So golf had fallen greatly from its
high estate in popular favour, and though prophecy is easy
enough when you may modify it with an * if,’ it is rather
interesting to speculate whether golf would not have died a
natural death but for the discovery of gutta-percha as a mate-
rial for golf balls, in place of the old balls of feather stuffed
into leather casings. Probably the date is not on record at
which the first gutta-percha ball was made — and found

HISTORICAL 11

wanting — (the histoiy of the manner in which the hall was
gradually improved mitil it superseded the feather ball alto-
gether is written in the chapter devoted to clubs and balls) ;
but by the middle of the present century the gutta had taken
the place of the feather universally. Of course there were some
who fought hard for the old mode, but the gutta-percha had
the immense merit of economy — in the degree of being about
four hundred per cent, cheaper to buy at the outset, and, more-
over, a better lasting ball when bought. This vast recom-
mendation, added to the fact that it was, let us say to avoid
controversy, an equally good ball for flight and putting, soon put
it at the head of the poll, and the feather ball nowhere — except
in museums for antiquities. Had the gutta-percha golf ball not
been invented, it is likely enough that golf itself would now
be in the catalogue of virtually extinct games, only locally
surviving, as stool-ball and knurr and spell.

But, as matter of history, the gutta-percha ball was
invented ; golf became cheap again, and with its cheapness it
became popular. And this essential condition of its popularity
arrived just at the time that a great wave of a rising athletic
spirit was coming over all Great Britain. At the beginning
of our Queen’s reign there were scarcely any sports or pas-
times that could be called popular. There was no popular
interest in any game. That keen interest in athleticism
which we see so strongly shown by the multitude of sporting
papers, the eagerness with which football records are scanned,
and the crowds that attend a cricket match, did not exist at
that time. But it arose about the middle of the century,
when the golf ball began to be made of gutta-percha, and
the two events, the mental and the material, coinciding gave
golf (which had, as the great ultimate ground of the
popularity it was soon to acquire, the merit of being an
extraordinarily interesting pastime) that impetus which has
resulted in the legion of golf players that are in the land
to-day. The time was ripe, the spirit of the age was ready,
the golf ball was cheap and prepared to suffer tops upon the

12 GOLF AND GOLFERS

head, when a fortnitous incident set the ball rolling — this
was the visit of a St. Andrews man to Northam village in
North Devon. He came as the guest of the late Reverend
I. H. Gosset, at that time Vicar of Northam. His
experienced eye at once saw the latent capabilities of the
Northam Burrows (now better known as the Westward Ho I
golf links) for golf. Mr. Gosset himself, with a keen love
of games and having sons of the right age for game playing
and game learning, set himself to work in union with some
of the resident gentry, and in 1864 the North Devon and
West of England Golf Club was formed. Later the ‘ West
of England ‘ part of the title was dropped, and when it was
taken under the august patronage of the Prince of Wales
the prefix of ‘ Royal ‘ was adopted. In its inception, however,
it was a very small affair, with no club-house, only a room
in a farmhouse where members might leave their coats, Ac.,
when they went out playing.

Eighteen holes were laid out on the pattern of St.
Andrews. Blackheath had before this increased her five
holes to seven, cutting her coat according to her cloth.
Eighteen seems now so inevitable a number for the holes of
a full-length course that one has come to regard it almost as
part of a law of nature that this should be their sum, but
even the St. Andrews eighteen were a fairly modem arrange-
ment. History tells us of a time when they were but six,
the players going out the present first six holes, then
playing the same number back, and so making a course of
twelve. The original course at Prestwick was of twelve
holes, and this seems to have been the standard number until
St. Andrews, in lengthening her course, found the nature of
the ground peculiarly adapted for nine holes out and the
same number home. And this nimiber, accidentally Ughted
on, has proved of just the right length to give a man pleasant
occupation between his breakfast and his luncheon, and again
between his luncheon and his tea-time, with sufficient and not
too severe fatigue. Convenience, therefore, and the august

HISTORICAL 13

example of St. Andrews have combined to stereotype
eighteen as the right nmnber of holes for a full-length course,
it is at this number that all aim, and this was the number
adopted at Westward Ho ! where the expanse of links was
practically unlimited.

With the establishment of the club at Westward Ho ! a
new era dawned for golf in England, and, it is scarcely too much
to say, for Scotland too. It has been said, in regard to quite
a different matter, that your own opinion grows immensely
in its value for yourself as soon as you have persuaded
another to share it with you ; and it may be that somewhat
on this principle, even though it was only our * auld enimie
of England ‘ that was persuaded to be of the opinion that the
Scottish national game was a good one, even this victory
that the charms of the game won, increased its value in
Scottish eyes. This may have been part of the cause, or may-
be it is only that gutta-percha and the spirit of athleticism
were flying in the air together ; in any case the fact is sure,
that about the time that England embraced golf with
enthusiasm, Scotland began to glow too with a warmer zeal
than she had ever shown since John Enox had driven golf
clean off the links on Sundays, so that Acts of Parliament for
its suppression were superseded by the stronger force of
popular opinion.

This golf at Westward Ho ! came as a kind of revelation
to all Englishmen that had the eyes to behold it. It is a
mistake to suppose that, apart from Blackheath and Molesley
Hurst, Westward Ho I was the first place south of the Tweed
to hear the golfer’s ‘ Fore ! ‘ and other less parliamentary
technical expressions. The Calcutta club is the oldest south
of the Tweed, a queer place for the Scotsmen to have pitched
on as an arena for their own game. Then Pau, in the Basses-
Pyr6n6es, claims next place, owing its golf to Scotsmen going
abroad in search of a less shrewdly nipping winter air than
that of the east Neuk of Fife. And in England itself there was
the old Manchester Golf Club, of older institution than the

14 GOLF AND GOLFEBS

North Devon. But all these were of the nature of inland
greens. That England, no less than Scotland, was begirt by a
kindly Providence with a chain of real sandy links — this was
a grand fact yet to be revealed, and the revelation began
with these links at Westward Ho !

But as yet the number of golfers that had eyes to behold
the revelation was very limited. There was the club at
Blackheath, and the few members of the Old Manchester
club: these embraced, perhaps, all the people resident in
England who took a living interest in golf. To other
Scotsmen golf may have been a sacred memory; it could
scarcely be a present interest. But what the few golfers
in England lacked of numbers they made up in enthusiasm.
As soon as Blackheath heard that there were seaside links
at Westward Ho ! its members flocked down there, and the
western club in its early days owed a heavy debt to Black-
heath’s support. The late Mr. George Glennie was the
finest golfer in those days in the Blackheath Club, and
not far from being the finest amateur player in the world.
The Westward Ho! people were much indebted to him,
both for precept and example. Tom Morris came down
from St. Andrews to lay out the Westward Ho! green.
Mr. Glennie’s association with St. Andrews was close
(subsequently he becalne Captain of the Boyal and Ancient
Club, and .the donor to the club of a medal which bears his
name), so Westward Ho! and the North Devon club were
peculiarly fortunate in drawing their golfing inspiration
direct from the pure fountain-head. It is perhaps due to
these circumstances that England has always, since coming
into her golfing heritage, turned her eyes so straight to
St. Andrews for her golfing teaching.

It has been said that to Scotsmen resident in England
at that time, unless they happened to be within access of
Blackheath in Manchester, golf remained more of a memory
than an interest ; but no sooner had the links of Westward
Ho ! contrived to make their merits known, largely by the

HISTORICAL 15

advertisement given them by the grateful golfers of Black-
heath, than the dim memory was at once revived into keen
interest, as old golfers realised the possibility of once again
taking up the weapons so long laid aside, and playing a
game of golf in the land of their exile. Curiously, it does
not appear to have occurred to Scotsmen that the coast of
England might possess potential golf links; but the acci-
dental visit of the St. * Andrews man to the late Vicar of
Northam suggested the course at Westward Ho ! — as the
watering-place that rose on the merits of the golf was
subsequently called — and it seems to have been the course
at Westward Ho ! that suggested to the many golfers and
Scotsmen resident in Liverpool that they too might as
well scan the shores of the Mersey’s estuary in case there
might there be ground that would lend itself to the golfer’s
purposes. No doubt the ground was there, and the Scots-
men were there, long before, but it needed the example of
Westward Ho ! as it appears, to bring them together.

In this manner grew the Boyal Liverpool Club at Hoy-
lake that is to-day so leading a body in Enghsh golf, and
golf was now — that is to say, about 1870 — well in the air.
The London Scottish Club was formed out of the fine
Scottish nucleus afforded by the volunteer corps of the same
title, and played, as it still plays, on Wimbledon Common.
Now, too, there is the Eoyal Wimbledon Club, but that is
another, and a newer, story.

Then for some years golf, as an affair of any general
interest in England, remained suspended — arrested. Scots-
men, and Englishmen who had been in Scotland, played at
golf, taking long journeys for the purpose — to Westward
Ho I to Bembridge in the Isle of Wight, for this was one
of the earlier greens, and their friends stayed at home and
laughed at them with cheap wit. Golf was described as
* an old man’s game,’ as ‘ Scotch croquet ; ‘ people thought
of golf either very httle or not at all. There were pro-
fessional players at each of the principal English greens —

16 GOLF AND GOLFERS

Johnnie Allan at Westward Ho ! Tom Dunn at Wimbledon,
and Jack Morris at Hoylake — and so restricted was the golf-
ing talent and the golfing area in England at that time
that though it used to be the custom, after the meetings of
the Broyal North Devon Club, to give prizes for professionals
on the last day of the week, the competitors for these
prizes always resolved themselves into these three, Allan,
Dunn, and Morris, and, so naming them, I fancy they are
named in the order in which they generally finished in the
prize plajdng. It is almost impossible for those who have
grovni up in the midst of golf-plajdng England, such as the
country is to-day, to realise what a strange and rare animal
a golfer foimd himself at that time. If you announced your-
self a golfer, people stared at you. What did it mean ? Oh,
yes! that Scotch game — Uke hockey, was it not, or like
polo? Did you play it on horseback? Travelling from
Westward Ho ! to Wimbledon and Hoylake, or vice versd,
with your golf clubs, you were eyed most curiously. In
general, people had never seen the weapons before, and
asked you, with an^ apology for their inquisitiveness, what
their use could be. Many a practical joke was played by
the waggishly minded golfer on their ignorance, and they
went home with wonderful tales to tell their wives and
children. Or, if people did know a little of the game, then
their regards were no longer curious, but pitiful, as who
would say, ‘ See the poor looney — is he not a sad sight ? ‘
It grew common to regard golf as a harmless form of
imbecility, holding towards it much the same attitude
that the general mind has towards a grown man with a
butterfly-net and a taste for entomology. Among golfers
themselves there was a phrase current at the time
which is significant and sounds curiously to-day; they
spoke a good deal about ‘ the freemasonry existing among
golfers,’ meaning thereby that if you happened to be
a devotee of this strange and new cult, and saw another
golfer awaiting his train at a station and advertising himself

HISTOEICAL 17

as a co-religionist by having some clubs with him, yon might,
and naturally would, at once approach him with the words :
* I see you are a golfer, sir,* and forthwith you would be as
blood brothers. Indeed it was quite rare to hear of a man
who was a golfer and whom you did not personally know.
Golfers were so few, and so constantly meeting, because links
were so few, that, speaking in a rough and ready way, each
knew all the rest. How very different it is to-day ! There is no
man with any self-respect at all who would dare to confess
himself nothing at all of a golfer. One might as well say
that one did not care for reading Shakespeare. And as for
going up to a stranger at a railway station on the strength of
his having golf clubs with him, one would have to accost
nearly every male in Liverpool Street station on a Bank
Holiday, and a good many female passengers too. It would
mean trouble — certainly it would mean a few rebufifs, for every
one of them in these days would not have so much opinion
of the ‘ freemasonry of golf ‘ as we used to hold in the bad
old days when golfers were so few. Another difference is
that in the old days when you wished to learn what a
stranger’s ‘ form ‘ at golf might be, you put the question in
the shape of : ‘ How do you play with So-and-so ? * naming
some golfer who was sure to be a common acquaintance.
Nowadays you ask briefly, * What is your handicap ? ‘ In
that golden age there were no handicaps, or the handicap, at
all events, had not reached its present pitch of importance.
The match was then the thing ; men thought less about the
competitions. It is not impossible that they enjoyed the
game rather more in consequence — but this is to raise a
question of taste, rather than of history.

In the early days of English golf there was a great deal
of intercourse between Westward Ho 1 and Hoylake. Both
clubs were greatly strengthened by membership of visitors
who played habitually at Wimbledon and Blackheath, but
perhaps it was rather the matches that were played between
Hoylake men and Westward Ho ! men that gave an extended

18 GOLF AND GOLFERS

interest to golf than any others. A deal, I think, was due
to Mr. John Donn and to Captain Molesworth. The former,
in partnership with Jack Morris, used to play the latter
with Johnny Allan as his partner, sometimes at Westward
Ho ! sometimes at Hoylake. Captain Molesworth was Yery
enterprising. When his sons grew up — of whom, un-
happily, only one, Mr. Arthur Molesworth, still survives —
he extended his field of operations, and a give-and-take
between English and Scottish golfers was established, to
which English golf owed much. Mr. Arthur Molesworth was
backed to play young Tom Morris, with allowance of a third,
at St. Andrews. Unfortunately snow spoiled the match, which
the brilliant young professional won easily. Later Captain
Molesworth and his three sons played Mr., now Sir William,
Houldsworth and three picked amateurs of Scotland. Scots-
men fell into the way of visiting the West Country green —
such men as the late Sir Eobert Hay, the late General Sir
Hope Grant, and many members of the Houldsworth family
regularly attended the meetings. The club at Bembridge, in
the Isle of Wight, became popular, owing much of its success
to the energy of the late Captain J. Eaton, B.N. Inland
greens were laid out, and clubs formed, at Crookham and at
Kingsdown. Meanwhile the Hoylake green was the nursery of
a very great amateur golfer, Mr. John Ball. For a long time,
though his success on his own green was very remarkable,
he could do nothing worthy of his local fame when he went
further afield. He had an interesting match with Douglas
Holland, then playing as an amateur, of which thirty-six
holes were played at the latter’s home green of Elie, and
thirty-six at Hoylake, where Mr. Ball was resident. Holland
won rather easily, Mr. Ball scarcely doing himself justice.
Two brothers of the late Johnny Allan, Matthew and Jamie,
came to work with him at Westward Ho ! and the latter
especially soon developed into a wonderfully good player.
He was backed to play matches on four greens with Bob
Kirk, then reputed the strongest player that St. Andrews

HISTOBIOAL 19

could produoe, and this long match, oyer St. Andrews, Prest-
wick, Hoylake, and Westward Ho ! the young English pro-
fessional (English by adoption, though Prestwick was his
native place) won very easily. But in a return match, over
the same four greens, with Jamie Anderson as Scotland’s
representative, the latter avenged the honour of the northern
country and won with tolerable ease.

All these matches have an historical interest, not so much
on their own account, as because they were the means of the
intercourse between Scottish and English golf, from which
the latter gathered so much advantage — ^learned much about
the game, and extended the interest in it to many who had
been indifferent or lukewarm before.

But in spite of all efforts the game was in no sense
popular in England, and it was even at the time that these
matches were being played that the man at the railway
station would look askance at one’s golf clubs or regard the
golfer with a pity that was nearer akin to scorn than love.
It was difficult for cricket-playing England to look with any-
thing but contempt on a game at which we struck a motion-
less ball, and at which, when that ball had been struck, one
walked after it, with deliberation. If there had been any
violent running required, the average Englishman would
have understood and respected the game much sooner.
Boyhood has been universally regarded as the game-playing
age, but golf is not a particularly good game for boys, for
the simple reason that runmng is the natural pace of boy-
hood, and that in golf there is no running. Also, it is rather
more expensive to the individual pocket than games where
expenses are defrayed by a subscription that is put down in
the bill. Therefore the youth of England was not educated
up to golf, and such golf as it played was in the nature of a
holiday task, if it so happened that the holiday home was
near one or other of the rare golf greens. But no doubt the
fact that Mr. B. A. H. Mitchell, the preceptor of cricket, and
a few other things, at Eton College, took to golf while it was

20 GOLF AND GOLFEBS

yet but little known in England, helped to make boys, who
were soon to be men, realise that there was such a game, and
that it possibly might be not altogether despicable if such a
grand cricketer condescended to play it. At the universities
a slight interest in the game sprang into being. In 1880
men were playing golf in the non-cricketing terms on Cowley
Marsh, at Oxford, and in the same year the first Inter-
University match was played at Wimbledon. To the
Beverend P. Henderson, of Wadham CoUege, golf at Oxford,
and indirectly English golf generally, is much indebted for
the interest he took in the club there. Subsequently the
club ground was shifted to Mr. Morrell’s park on Headington
Hill, and finally to its present quarters, which seem likely
to be permanent, at Hinksey. Cambridge golf was largely
the creation of Mr. W. T. Linskill, who was indefatigable in
his labours for it for many years. More fortunate than the
Oxford Club, it has always had its green undisturbed on
Coldham Conmion. Cambridge, too, has the further advan-
tage of being vnthin easy reach of some first-class golf links
on the east coast. In 1878 to 1882, however, when the
writer was at Oxford, very few men bothered their heads
about golf, and the general attitude of the university towards
the game may be shown by quoting an anecdote that has a
certain personal bearing, but is perhaps to be pardoned
because it illustrates the subject so well. ‘Did you know
So-and-so when he was at Oxford?’ a certain golfer, the
reformed cricketer class was asked in 1897. ‘ Oh yes I ‘ was the
answer, ‘ I was up there with him in 1880, and I remember
that he was even then said to be good at a game that nobody
had ever heard of.’ That shows what Oxford thought of golf
in 1880 — ^not a great deal, but it was about as much as the
rest of England thought of it. The ‘ boom ‘ in English golf
began not very much less than ten years later. In the
meantime it did not ‘ boom ; ‘ but it crept. Gradually the
number of golf links in England increased, gradually more
Englishmen took to playing golf, more and more they

HISTORICAL 21

iDYaded the high places of Scottish golf in their autimm
holiday; and meantime the tide was mounting up in
Scotland too. Very likely Scotland began to think a little
more of her national game, even than of old, as soon as she
saw it bringing a few English ‘ bawbees ‘ across the Border ;
it conld not have demonstrated its fascinations in a manner
more convincing than that. In other ways, too, it became
apparent to Scottish eyes that there was money in golf;
more money, since England began to take an interest in it.
It has already been noticed that Johnny Allan was at
Westward Ho ! Tom Dmm at Wimbledon, Jack Morris at
Hoylake. At every new green, as one by one they came
into being, there was a demand for a professional player who
conld teach the local people how the game should be played,
and could mend and make clubs for them withal. There set
in, then, a steady flow south of professional golfing talent to
Bembridge, later to Alnmouth, to Great Yarmouth^ to all the
golf greens of England as they were laid out. For as yet — and
it now seems difiScult to realise how short a while ago
that dark age was in which England knew little or nothing
beyond what she imported from Scotland of good golf — the
notion that the southern land could produce any capable
professional players and capable instructors was quite
undreamed of in her philosophy. The ‘boom,’ the big
‘ boom/ came with such alarming suddenness. In 1886 golf
was the eccentricity affected by a few; by 1890 it had
become a general fashion. The exact combination of causes
that produced the result would be hard to determine. Golf
is no better a game now than then. The opportunities for
appreciating its merits were not so numerous, but they
existed, yet still the general opinion of England held it in
scorn. It was the ‘ old man’s game ‘ — there was no running
in it : after aU, that is perhaps the prime reason that it did
not commend itself. Add to that the fact that it is probably
the dullest game in the world for a spectator who has no
personal knowledge of its excellencies, and perhaps we need

22 GOLF AND GOLFERS

not go farther back than that to explain the indifferent
attitude so long maintained towards it. Once, however, let
the spectator become in the feeblest degree a player, and the
fascination of the game nev^ leaves a properly constituted
man. One or two causes there were that helped to give the
‘ Ikoom ‘ its start, and among these, I think, we may reckon
the accident that Mr. Arthur Balfour was an enthusiastio
golfer. It may seem a singular thing that the example of a
single man should have had so great an effect, and had the
game been less good, had the time been less ripe, and had
Mr. Balfour’s place in the national eye been a less unique
one, probably it would have failed of that effect. But Mr.
Balfour had just become Irish Secretary at a moment when
the Irish question was the biggest problem of British
politics. He had taken the office when it had lately been
made vacant in a very tragic manner, and he filled it after a
fashion that won the warmest admiration of friend and foe
alike. And it was no doubt the singular coincidence of all
these circumstances that made his example so infectious. In
1890, when the first edition of the Badminton volume on
golf was published, the publishers were in some doubt
whether the game was of sufficient importance to justify its
being accorded a full volume to itself in that series. There
was even a talk of inporporating curling and skating with it.
But even while that question v^as being resolved the game
was growing in favour, so that it was decided that it should
be given the dignity of single-volume treatment, with the
result that not only was so much copy forthcoming that it
was hard to compress it all within the volume’s limits, but
the book itself proved, if the present writer may be pardoned
in saying so, a popular success, and its sixth editicm is now
in the hands of the public.

Once the impetus was given, the game rushed into
favour ‘ by leaps and bounds ‘ — in a geometrical progression-*
it is impossible any longer to chronicle the several stepa.
If before it had seemed the part of a simple or an eccentrio

mSTOBIOAL SS

person to avow himself a golfer, it now became no less the
fashion to affect an intimate acquaintance with the game.
In a very short while it was the exception to find a person
who was not > a golfer, and any general ignorance of the princi*
pies and purpose of the game was unheard of. Golf * shop ‘ waa
rampant, is rampant still, and will remain rampant so long
as golf continues to hold anything like its present position in
popular favour ; and its popularity was the more assured as
soon as the ladies discoyered that they too might claim a
share in the good gift that Scotland had sent down to
Bngland. In that Badminton volume just referred to, there
is an excellent chapter on the game by Lord Wellwood,
which indicates very well the degraded position, golfic^
speaking, of women at the time of his writing. They are
given, he says, a little comer of the links — a sort of ‘ Jews’
g[uarter ‘ — in which to lay out their short holes, and enjoy
themselves after their own manner, without interfering with
ibe rational enjoyment of the men. This was the con*
dition of affairs at 8t. Andrews at the time of Lord Wellwood’s
writing, and the short holes — very up-and-downy, very trying
to tiie putter used to the level velvet of the greens of the
long links — remain as they were, but does woman remain as
she was at that date ? Certainly not. She now puts down
her name for ballot for order of starting to play over the
long links in company with the best of menkind, even in
tiiose congested months of August and September in which
woman of the old type would not have dared to show the
ham of her petticoat in the stream of players. Now she
drives off fearlessly under the gaze of the watching club*
house, and the short holes down by the bum are noticed by
her chiefly with contempt.

There is every reason at St. Andrews that ladies should
play on the long course — that specially designed for them is too
thort for the needs of the modem feminine golfer. But else*
where there are such excellent ladies’ links, suited to their mode-
lute length of driving, that they had better perhaps restrict

24 GOLF AND GOLFBBS

their energies to them than, too greatly daring, invade the
longer links of the men, where they cannot hope to carry the
bmikers. Modem ladies, however, are nothing if not ambi-
tions — ^that, indeed, is the great secret of their success. The
energy with which they have taken to the gamehas made a
change in the snmmer holidays for the golfer’s wife. Before
ladies played golf eagerly, there were no opponents of the game
more bitter. The ‘golf-widow’ was a subject for every
commiseration, and for the humorous pencil of Mr. Harry
Fumiss. But now, if she wear weeds at all, it is by her
own choice — a choice that few care to make. The better
part prefer a short skirt, a shirt and a sailor hat, and play
golf vnth an earnestness that even the husbands can scarcely
rival. The golfer of fifty or even fifteen years ago would
be horrified at the innovation. Ladies on the links at all,
even in the passive rdle of spectators, were a vexation to his
rather morbidly sensitive soul. Nor was he altogether wrong
in this point of view towards them, for in the last fifteen
years it is not only the golfing man, but also the golfing
woman that has changed. If there could be said to be
golfing ladies in the land at all fifteen years ago, they were
very few, and ‘ ladies on the links,’ in the mouth of the old
golfer, meant a bevy of delightful but rather talkative females,
who knew little about the game and cared less, who spoke
on the stroke and giggled in answer to any remonstrance. In
a word, they did not understand the game, or appreciate that
if it is to be played well enough to give any pleasure, it must
be played with attention and concentration. The modem
golfing lady understands all this perfectly. Very often she can
play the game as well as half the men she has the chance of
watching, and it has become hard for man to deny her equal
rights with him on the links when she can chsJlenge him
and defeat him at the game. This is no over-statement. Mr.
Harold Hilton is open champion at the moment of writing
this line ; his handicap at Hoylake is plus ten. Mr. Hilton,
as I judge, would give the best lady players about two-thirds

HI8T0BICAL 25

— certainly, I think, he could not give them a stroke a hole.
At Hoylake, therefore, we may take it that the hest lady
players would receive a handicap of something like six
strokes. And it is difficult to say to a person whose handicap
is six that he, or even she, is not fit company for you on the
links, for the answer may conceivably take the form of
argumentum ad hominem, e.g. ‘ Well, let’s have a match, and
see ; ‘ and if the argument goes against you, the case becomes
awkward. But however well woman might play golf, the
point of view of the old golfer would still remain fully justified
if she had not acquired a full knowledge and understanding of
the game, or if she persisted in approaching it in anyun-
seemly spirit of levity. But, far from this, she brings to
bear upon it an even more than masculine solemnity. Her
earnestness is grim and terrible ; there is no modem player
of the male sex who would fulfil more perfectly all the
requirements of the oldtime golfer. Woman, in fact, has
justified her claim to equality with man on the links, and
the sooner he can be brought to understand it the better for
the comfort of both sexes ; only, the shorter links are long
enough for most women, as they are, in fact, for many men,
and it is no kindness either to them or to other players to
let them loose on the longer links before their strength of
driving has outgrown the shorter.

With this new fenoinine factor of its popularity to help
it, the causes of the ‘ boom ‘ in golf need no further seeking.
The woman that had before fought against the golf resort
as the home of the summer holidays now welcomed its
suggestion most warmly, and of this Scotland soon felt the
influence. Not only those great golfing centres of St.
Andrews and North Berwick suffered under an annual
invasion of the Sassenach, but such less famous places as Elie,
Leven, Montrose, Nairn, even Dornoch, and so on, without
end, found their lodging-houses and hotels invaded by ‘ our
auld enimie of Eiigland,’ who had at least this merit, that
he brought his cheque-book with him. And naturally this

ae GOLF AND GOLFEES

invasion reacted on Scotland, after the Sassenachs had left,
in making golf seem a more important thing even than
before in native eyes, and inspiring the local youth to eager
emulation.

Concxurent causes helped to swell the rising tide. In
part it was cause, in part effect, of the golfing boom that in
1885 the Boyal Liverpool Club, at Hoylake, virtually insti*
tnted the amateur championship tournament, by a competition
open to all amateurs played over their green. In the quality
of the entry list, and in every respect except its formal
recognition, this was indeed to be regarded as the first
amateur championship meeting, and its winner was Mr. A.
F. Macfie. In the following year, a competition on ahnoet
identical lines, under the auspices of all the leading clubs in
the kingdom, was held at St. Andrews, and thus the annual
tournament for theamateur championship of golf had its being ;
and there is no doubt that its institution was a great factor, as
in part it was the result, of the flowing tide of the game’s
popularity. Heretofore there had been but one champion-
ship, that open to all the world. This, the open champicm-
ship, had been started as far back as the year 1860, under
the auspices of the three great Scottish clubs, the Boyal and
Ancient of St. Andrews, the Honourable Company of Edin-
burgh Golfers — who then had their playground on the links
of Musselburgh — and the Prestwick Club on the West Coast.
These three subscribed for a belt, which should be the
champion trophy of the game, and was offered for competition
on the understanding that it should become the property of
any who could win it thrice in succession. This great feat
was performed by the late ‘young Tonmiy’ Morris, who
won it for the third consecutive time in 1870. The following
year, for lack of a trophy, there was no competition, but the
next year again the same three clubs subscribed for the present
championship cup, which, warned by previous experience, they
offered under strictly challenge conditions, so that it remainB
in the winner’s keeping but forhisyearof championship, though

HISTORICAL 27

he win it never so often. This cup the brilliant and lamented
young player, Tommy Morris, won yet again, making his
fourth consecutive win — a feat that has never been equalled.
It can never be too greatly regretted, apart from all other
reasons of regret, that premature death cut him down in his
prime, because^-it would have been of the keenest interest to
see how his performance would have compared with that of
the younger school of players that has arisen since. That
he was fac^ priiiceps of his contemporaries seems to have
been placed beyond doubt by his unequalled series of victories
in competitions, though in many a private match he was
hardly pressed and sometimes defeated by the late Davie
Strath, the two constantly playing each other on the St.
Andrews green, of which both were natives. That the
subscribing clubs were wise in their generation in making
the new championship cup a strictly challenge trophy is
amply proved by three successive wins that have been put
on record since by Bob Fergusson and by the late Jamie
Anderson respectively.

For many years it seems never to have entered into the
calculations of golfing seers that this open championship of
the Scottish game should be won by any other than by a
Scottish professional. Few amateurs even presumed to take
part in it, and of these but a small percentage were English-
men. The number of the amateurs thus presuming, however,
showed a steady but gradual increase, until the event of the
championship meeting held at Prestwick in 1890 completely
changed the aspect of the afbir. At the close of that com-
petition the writer well remembers that Mr. Laidlaw Purves
came to him and said, with a due sense of the solemnity of
the occasion : ‘ This is a great day for golf.’ It was a great
day, an epoch-making day, in a double sense, for on that day
the open championship was won by Mr. John Ball junior,
an umateur and an Englishman.

The importance of this victory on the future of the game
was not inconsiderable, for it opened the eyes of the golfing

28 GOLF AND GOLFBBS

world to the possibility of an amateur and an Englishman
gaining the highest glory that can be) won at the game, and
the possibility had scarcely been entertained before. It at
once put the pretensions of amateur golf on a higher level
than they had yet reached, and made the recurrence of such
an event the more probable. The next date in the history
of the open championship that is marked by any considerable
significance is 1894, for in this year the championship was
won by J. H. Taylor, a young professional who had learned
his golf on the links of Westward Ho! In a sense his
victory was of more significance than that of Mr. Ball, for
the very reason that Taylor was an Englishman and at the
same time a professional. In our review of earlier years, we
have seen that it was the custom of the English clubs, as
one by one they came into being, to bring down from
Scotland a professional to teach them how the game should be
played, to look after their greens, and to do their club-making.
But with the victory of Taylor in the great event it was
made amply apparent that they need no longer be at the
pains to import their professional talent from the North.
Taylor was but one of an army of rising young players who
were perfecting themselves in the golfing schools of the
Bouth, and not only did his win serve to show the amateur
members of the clubs that there was golfing talent of the
highest order in the South, but also to prove to this army of
young English professionals and caddies that it was possible
for one out of their own ranks to take premier place of the
golfers of the year. It at once made the profession of golf
appear more important and worthy in Enghsh eyes. In the
following year this sign of the times was brought into
stronger evidence by a second successive victory on Taylor’s
part, won at the great centre of golf in Scotland and in the
world, on the classic links of St. Andrews.

A change had by this time taken place in the conditions
under which the championship was played. We have already
noted that Taylor’s first victory was gained at Sandwich,

HISTORICAL 29

whereas the original sequence of greens on which the
competition was held was St. Andrews, Prestwick, and
Musselburgh. But eyen before this there had been a relaxa-
tion of this rule of sequence. The Honourable Company of
Edinburgh GroUers had found the links of Musselburgh
growing too crowded for them, and had moved further down
the Forth to a new green at Muirfield. When the turn
came for the championship to be decided under their
honourable auspices, they decreed, by right of their original
participation in instituting it, that it should be played on
their new Muirfield green. There was natural opposition in
certain quarters to the change, but in the end the Honourable
Company had their way. Further, a change was made, by
agreement of the three clubs, by which the competition was
decided by the result of two days’ play, extending over four
rounds, instead of a single day’s play of two rounds as here-
tofore. And, finally, this competition at Muirfield was made
yet more worthy of note by the victory of Mr. H. H. Hilton,
following in the steps of his fellow clubman, Mr. Ball.
The sequence of greens on which this open championship is
played has since undergone a further re-arrangement, by
virtue of which Sandwich and Hoylake are included, and the
first competition of this nature held on the latter green was
noted for the second victory of Mr. Hilton, who has thus
won for himself the unique honour of being the only amateur
that has twice won the open championship of the game.

This inclusion of two English greens among those on
which the championship is played — and they are the esta-
blished battlefields of the amateur tournament, no less — are
a sign of the generous recognition on Scotland’s part of the
right of Englishmen to take their stand on equal terms with
her in matters pertaining to her national game. And while
this is creditable to Scotland’s breadth of view, it is surely no
less creditable to England that, in spite of all the success that
has attended her forces under golfing arms, she is ever willing
and anxious to look to St. Andrews as the source of golfing

30 GOLP AND GOLFERS

legislation and authority. After much diacuflsion a committee
has lately been appointed, consisting entirely of members of
the Boyal and Ancient Club, but representative, nevertheless,
of golfing opinion all the world over, that has the special
office of interpreting vexed questions of the rules and pro-
nouncing on them a verdict that has the power of law until
it is confirmed or negatived by the vote of a general meeting
of the Boyal and Ancient Club, and the authority of this
committee the general golfing opinion, both of England and
Scotland, seems disposed to recognise without demur and even
with gratitude.

But the rise into what may almost be regarded as premier
position among the English clubs of the St. George’s Club
at Sandwich is too large a feature in the golfing history of
our own times to be passed over without some special notice.
In the older days the Boyal North Devon Club and the
Boyal Liverpool were the leaders, the former owing much of
its success to the exertions of the Beverend I. H. Grosset,
Captain Molesworth, B.N., and, if the writer may be
pardoned the mention of a relative, Lieut.-Colonel Hutchin-
son, who was also one of the three founders of the club at
Pau. With the Boyal Liverpool Club the name of Mr.
Thomas Owen Potter, for so long its honorary secretary, is
perhaps most gratefully associated. At the first the West-
ward Hoi Club, by right of seniority, perhaps held first
place in common esteem, but later the Boyal Liverpool Club,
by virtue of its more central geographical position in Great
Britain, and also in part by the successful start it gave to
the amateur championship tournament, stepped into first
place, and was more generally considered as representative of
English golf. But very much more recently — so recently,
indeed, that it was not represented at all at the time of the
inauguration of the amateur championship — the young club,
by name the St. George’s, was formed to play golf over the
links of Sandwich. As to who precisely was the first to
lay golf club to the links of Sandwich there is some conflict

HISTOBICAL 31

of evidence. There is at Brancaster now a Mr. Luck, in
the coastguard service, who, being stationed at the coastguard
buildings near the ‘ Maiden ‘ tee at Sandwich, and having
learned something of golf in the North, went out, cut holes
in the turf, and, sinking gaUipots to preserve their shape,
made himself a golf course and played golf. This was many
years before the present club was formed, and Mr. Luck has
some claim to be the first golfer that ever drove a ball on
the Sandwich links. On the other hand, there is a legend
of a certain person, by profession a schoolmaster, who went
out from the other end, the Sandwich town side, of the
hnks and there drove about balls for his own edification ;
and it is probable that the date of this legendary playing was
earlier than that of Mr. Luck. But, however these things
may be, it is certain that neither of these pioneers had the
opportunity, though they might have had all the genius, to
give due importance, in the public eye, to their discoveries.
The opportunity of giving this fair gift of the Sandwich
links to the golfing world became the portion, much later, of
Mr. Laidlaw Purves, and, with him, of the late Mr. Henry
Lamb and the late Mr. W. B. Anderson. It was to this
trio (of whom only one, alas ! survives), perhaps more than
to any others, that Sandwich and the St. George’s Club owe
their fame and initial success, though it would be wrong to
pass without mention the special services of Mr. W. Buther-
ford, honorary secretary now, and for many years, of the club.
The great merits and possibilities of the newly discovered
green were quickly recognised, and though it was of course
several years before the ground worked down into the most
perfect golfing material, it soon justified the best hopes of
the club’s founders, and became one of the foremost and
most popular of English golf clubs. Besides its special
excellencies as a golf green, it had the merit of being within
easy access of London, a merit that it shared with no other
green of anjrthing at all approaching the same excellence.
And not only was it within easy access, but it had the further

32 GOLF AND G0LFEB8

advantage to commend it that its centre of management was
in London. It was in fact virtuaUy a London clnb. having
its green at the seaside. The peculiar merit of this is obvious.
Hitherto Londoners who wanted to play golf had to play it
on the inland greens in the neighbourhood of the Metropolis,
or else to go down to Bembridge, to Westward Ho I to
Hoylake — ^wherever you please — excellent links, all of them,
but all of them under a local management, so that the
visiting golfer — however old a member of the club he might
be, or however hearty the welcome that the local members
might accord him — ^inevitably felt himself nevertheless still
a visitor. At Sandwich he was at home. In London he
had been in the centre of the machinery that kept the club
going, and he knew just what he was going to find, and all
that had been going on — for the general meetings were held
in London — even before he went thither.

This, I think, we may take it, in addition to the sterling
qualities of its very fine green, was the reason that the
St. George’s Club so soon obtained a leading position among
English clubs, and was included, along with the Boyal
Liverpool Club, among those on whose greens the great
championships of the game were to be played. It was with
no disposition to underrate the claims of the Westward Ho !
green as a worthy arena of the championship that the
authorities did not include it also, but merely by reason of
its geographical remoteness from the golfing centres of
England and Scotland.

The history of the amateur championship is briefer and
marked by less notable incident than that of the open
championship. Virtually started by the Boyal Liverpool
Club in 1885, and formally recognised by delegates from all
the leading clubs in the following year, its conditions — as
determined by the delegates — have remained unchanged
until the present date, with the single exception that three
years ago it was decreed that the final heat should be played
off on the day following that on which the semi-final heats

HIBTOBIGAL 33

were played, and shonld consist of thirty-six holes, instead of
the eighteen that had sufficed in the previous tournaments.
The hero of the tournament thus far has without question
been Mr. John Ball, who has won it no less than four times.
In the year 1890 he was the holder of both open and amateur
championships. It is singularly noteworthy that Mr. Hilton,
twice winner of the open event, has never yet held the
championship of the amateurs.

The history of golf in Ireland has been but brief, but
Ireland has felt her full share, nevertheless, of the enthusiasm
with which golf has been received into the heart of the
greater island. The oldest established of the first-class Irish
clubs is the Boyal Portrush Club, though it appears that golf
in Ireland was first played on the Kinnegar, hard by Belfast.
To-day Ireland has many golf clubs and a capable army of
native players, though none of them has yet been of sufficient
prowess to win that Irish championship that is liberally thrown
open to all amateur golfers. Besides this, she has her own
native championship, restricted to those who are truly Irish
golfers, and the competition for this is keen and close, but has
brought into evidence no one player whose force is con-
spicuously greater than that of several others*

Of golf in Wales it is not necessary to make special
mention, except to observe that the sea coast of the Principality
is begirt with many fine links, all which have their enthusiastic
resident players.

Gk>lf has become a popular game also in the Isle of Man,
and there is scarcely any British possession or dependency
that is without its golf club or many golf clubs. We have
already noted the singular fact that the golf club of Calcutta is
the oldest established, Blackheath excepted, of any south of the
Tweed. To-day the name of golf clubs in India is legion.
A club of respectable age and of excellent links is that of
Jersey, and in Guernsey is a later laid-out course that vies with
it in excellence. Just across the Channel, at Dinard, is a fine
seaside course. Pau, though inland, gives good golf, and it

84 GOLF AND GOLFERS

has a keen rival in the younger clnb at Biarritz. In Australia,
at Hong Kong, at Cairo, in South Africa, in South America,
in every quarter of the globe where the Anglo-Saxon has set
his adventurous and impertinent foot, he has established the
national game of Scotland. But the most striking and
among the most modem of golfing phenomena has been
the enthusiasm with which the game has been received in
the United States. Some seven or eight years ago it was the
good fortune of the writer to be at Long Island in the States,
and there, on the property of the most hospitable Meadow-
brook Club, at Hempstead, he played a round of golf on an
impromptu links, and subsequently, the members having
kindly said that it seemed ‘ a very good game for Sunday,*
he sent a parcel of clubs ; but to the best of his belief they
were never used. The seed fell on stony ground. Possibly
the exhibition of the game given by the writer did not inspire
the spectators with any great opinion of it. At all events, it
was several years before the Americans bethought themselves
at all seriously of the game. But once they recognised its
merits they fell victims to its fascination with an abandon to
which the history of golf in this country furnishes no
parallel. Within the last few years links have been laid out
in all directions, clubs have been formed, club houses have
been built at great expense and on a scale that seems truly
continental as compared with the humble little insular houses
of this country, a demand has sprung up in America, not only
for British golfing materials, but also for British professionsJ
players to teach the game and to do club-making on the spot.
America has its championships, and though the native-bom
talent has never yet succeeded in vanquishing the skill of im-
ported players, there is evidence, in the hard fights that the
foreign talent has suffered to gain the victory, that before
long the athleticism and adaptability of the American will
assert itself at the expense of the best that can be brought
over from this side of the water.

The history of American golf has been so brief that it can

HISTOBICAL 85

scarcely be said to exist, and indeed its whole history is to be
smmned np in the single fact of the existence — of the birth —
of its golf and in the tremendous pace of its immediate growth.
Only a year or two back there was no golf in the States ;
now golf is such a fashion that it is said to be transforming
the conditions of American life in the East, in that, for
golfs sake, people are betaking themselves to life in the
country in preference to that life in cities that they used to
love better than any country delights. If golf has really
done this for them, created this salutary change of taste,
surely they have better reasons even than any given to us for
blessing the revelation that discovered it to them.

It is most imgallant to speak thus late in the chapter of the

ladies’ championship, but in point of historical fact the ladies’

championship came later than any other. We have already

seen with what enthusiasm ladies took to golf as soon as it

became apparent to them that they need not be restricted to

those putting greens, the * Jews’ quarters * of Lord Wellwood,

and the effect in swelling the flowing tide of the game’s

popularity that their newly won favour exercised. The new,

feminine, impetus came almost wholly from English greens.

The sentiment of Scottish golf was too conservative, the

tradition that it was a man’s game, and that woman had no

place on the links, was too ingrained in the mind of Scottish

man and woman to allow the former to encourage^’.or the

latter to entertain any hope that she might one day meet man

on something like terms of equality on his^ long links. But

in England golf was newer, its conditions had not reached

the crystallised stage, and in consequence woman was both

readier to dare and found less opposition to her daring. The

first ladies’ championship tournament, on lines similar to

those of the amateur championship of men, was held at

Lytham St. Anne’s, in 1893. In the following year it was

held at Littlestone, and the year after that at Portrush, in

Ireland. But the change of venue made not the slightest

difference in the result. On each occasion equally the

36 GOLF AND GOLFERS

winner was Lady Margaret Scott, a young lady who had
learned her excellent, strong, and finished game on the
private green of Stowell Park, in Gloucestershire. There is
not the slightest doubt — so little that one writes the phrase
of invidious comparison without a fear of hurting the feelings
even of those who were Lady Margaret Scott’s victims — that
this lady was considerably stronger all round than any
others who entered for the tournament. After her third
successive win Lady Margaret Scott has not taken any part
in these competitions.

There were very many, especially of the older school,
who were in the habit of saying that golf was not a graceful
game for ladies. This brave and general assertion was
emphatically contradicted by the style shown by several of
those that took part in the ladies’ championship. It was
realised then that golf could be played both gracefully and
ungracefully equally by women as by men, and also that
golf contained no conditions that made it essentially unsuited
for ladies’ playing. They were found able to play all the
strokes. Though their driving was not equal in degree with
that of men it was no less perfect in kind, and in the shorter
and more delicate strokes they were seen at no disadvantage.
It was even found to be possible for them to be silent on the
stroke. But as yet, it will be noticed, no Scottish green had
offered itself as the arena of this feminine championship, and
but few Scottish ladies had taken part in it. Scarcely could
it be said that it had received its due notice by any of the
greatest English clubs until, in 1896, it was decided at
Hoylake in favour of Miss Amy Pascoe. The following
year saw its first introduction into Scotland. GuUane was
now the arena of its decision, and there was a strong entry
of Scottish lady players. The Misses Orr had long been
known, exceptionally among their fellow country-women, for
fine play on the long links, and they justified most fully the
reputation they had gained. Miss Edith Orr, the second
sister, winning championship honours by defeating her elder

^ ^

fe^ ^

^ :^

^ ^

with it.

This is a stroke that Yardon plays marvellously well, and
likely enough he owes no little of his success to his mastery
of this stroke. The ball, struck very clean off the heavy
mashie, flies wonderfully far and straight, and keeps very
low. It is evident from the picture that Yardon has no
design here of cutting the ball or putting it at all high in the
air. His aim is evidently to play a strong half shot with lots
of power, the kind of power that will send the ball boring
into a solid headwind, if need be, and will not let it be blown
about at the mercy of the air. It is one of his best strokes,
and he uses it at all distances, often running up quite a short
shot, little more than a putt, with a flat-faced mashie.

It is one of the featiures of Yardon’s game, and a very
excellent one, that he always seems to adopt the simplest way
of doing everything. He will run up these approaches very
often under conditions in which a self-respecting amateur of
the second class would deem himself in honour bound to
pitch up with a lofting mashie, but Yardon’s ball would end
nearer the hole. In the picture before us he has his mashie \ a S
gripped very low down, so that the leather is not seen below /
the hand, and by the energy of the grip he would seem dis-
posed to put a deal of right-hand push, so much as his easy
style ever permits him to push, into the ball.

Yardon’s temperament as a golfer seems to have all the
qualities of his style, qualities that seem to have very few
defects attaching to them. The quietness and control of the
swing are reflected in the modest confidence of his manner. I
He is universally, we believe, liked as a man, universally, we
are sure, feared as a golfer, and he plays most of his golf on
the Ganton green, near Scarborough, where he is resident
professional to the club.

At the moment of writing he has recently won the
championship for the second time, and has the honour of

112 GOLF AND GOLPBBS

holding it nnchalleiiged until the spring of 1899. And the
winning of the championship of 1898-99 at Piestwick was
an achievement of nnnsual merit, for the average of play at
that championship, among the leaders, was better, in the
opinion of the best qualified judges, than ever before. More-
over, it was not until the final round that Vardon took the
lead. He had started, for him, not brilliantly, and Park led
him by three strokes on the first day’s play and by two
strokes at the end of the third round. But a very fine finish,
with 76 to Park’s 79, put him into premier place by a stroke,
and gave him his second championship. And the very next
day, on the Nicholas links at Prestwick, he was again the
winner of an open competition, with two splendid rounds of
75 each, showing, if there were any need of showing, the little
cost of nerve and muscle with which his easy style accom-
plishes such great results.

Lately it appears that Vardon has rather increased the
weight of his clubs, though still using them short ; but the
curve of the club shaft at the moment that he is exchanging
the upward for the downward movement shows the force
which, under all that appearance of ease, he is putting into
the stroke. EUs driving at the Prestwick championship
meeting is described as being wonderfully long as well as
wonderfully sxure.

Since that Prestwick meeting he has won a series of
competitions that has no parallel in golfing annals, and the
latest piece of good golfing news is that he has accepted
Park’s challenge (which we spoke of as still seeking on
acceptor when the sketch of Park’s golfing style went to
press), and that the great match will be played over North
Berwick and Ganton in the month of July.

Mb. ABNOLD BLTTH

Mr. Arnold Blyth is specially associated, as a golfer, with
the course of the St. Greorge’s Golf Club at Sandwich, a

A POETRAIT GALLEBY 118

conrse that is famous for its foimidable bunkers and the
loigth of the ‘ carries ‘ from the tee. And there is something
about Mr. Blyth’s style of play that seems peculiarly adapted
to a coarse of this nature, and to driving the ball fearlessly
over these big hazards. There is a great charm about the
fearless ease of this driving : it is a fine athletic performance.
Mr. Blyih has a more pov^erful physique than is given to the
average mortal, but for all that there is something in his
method that some of us who are less gifted might perhaps
imitate vnth advantage. The great merit of Mr. Bljrth’s
style that is most apparent to the spectator is the quickness
and freedom of his foot action — the turn up on the toes of the
left foot in the upv^ard swing, and on the toes of the right
foot at the finish. It gives the swing all the appearance of
being a long one, and probably it will surprise a good many
who are used to see him play to find that his cltib at the top
of the swmg does not go further round. It only seems to
go to the horizontal, and yet if any were to set himself to
mutate what he supposecf to be Mr. Blyth’s driving style,
before seeing this photograph, which reproduces it faithfully,
he would be almost sure to make the mistake of bringing
the club further roimd the head. And this illusive appear-
ance of length in the upward swing is almost certainly given
by the quickness of the foot movement.

It will be seen that there is very little turning of the body
on the hips as the club rises, and this gives a little appearance
of restraint, when the movement is caught and arrested by
photography, that the swing seen in action certainly does
not suggest. It looks a wonderfully graceful and easy per-
formance all through. But i if the picture suggests that all is
not supple movement — ^that there is a cramped hinge some-
where — in the upward half of the stroke, there is no question
whatever about the length and freedom of the finish and the
follow-on after the ball is struck. Here, in the second full-
page illustration, is a pose with which a sculptor could find
no fault. The characteristic straightening of the left knee

114 GOLF AND GOLEBBS

and the upright cairiage of the body, raising the figure to its
full height, have a peculiarly attractive effect, land it is im-
possible to conceive a more completely free movement of the
right foot and of the entire body and limbs than is shovm
here. The easy turn of the body on the hips is as noticeable
in this case as its absence was noticeable before. The body
has turned so completely as to face directly the line in which
the ball is flying — far over those great Sandwich bunkers.
A more perfect study of the finish of the stroke cannot be
found or imagined.

The practical result of all this is that Mr. Blyth drives a
ball that is long in its carry, and when its carry is fininKH
has still a deal of life in it for the run. It is a kind of ball
that combines length of carry with rather a low trajectory at
the finish, and in this it differs a little from the ball that
most long drivers achieve. There is a singular consistency
about the parabola of Mr. Bljrth’s drives. Whether dovm
wind or against the wind he varies the height of his driving
but little, and for this sufficient reason, that the normal
parabola of his drive is high enough for the ball to get most
of the advantage that a following wind can give it, and at the
same time it has the aforesaid tendency (to a low trajectory at
the finish) which prevents its soaring up in the teeth of the
wind and being blown whithersoever the wind is inclined to
take it. For this reason Mr. Blyth is especially formidable on
a windy day at Sandwich — and the windy days at Sandwich
are none too few. There are many golfers who have the
knack of keeping their ball low against the wind, and so
having it well imder control; but this skimming, wind-
cheating kind of ball, that pays so excellently on a flat course,
does not do at Sandwich, where there are almost always high
carries to be negotiated. It is then needful not only to be
able to control a very low ball, but to control a tolerably
high-flying one, which is a far harder matter. The ordinary
first-class golfer is just a little at a loss when he has to drive
a high ball in the wind’s eye, but it is a problem that does

A POBTBAIT GALLEBY 115

not seem to give Mr. Blyth the lea43t trouble in the world.
His normal shot suffices — it goes high enough, and yet not
too high — and when it comes to the ground it has all that
running power left in it that is essential for long driving
against the wind. Mr. Ball has often proved Imnself a
wonderfully fine player in a high wind, but he achieves his
results by something like tours de force — by keeping the ball
very low, or at just sufficient height to carry the obstacle
confronting him. But the style of driving that served him
80 excellently and was so fascinating to watch when he was
at the zenith of his game, was as unlike as can be the ball
that Mr. Blyth normally drives. Both had long carries, but
whereas Mr. Ball’s drives had a way of soaring up at the
finish, and dropping straight, vnth scarcely any run — a most
telling style of ball for landing on the putting green and
staying near the hole — Mr. Blyth’s ball wiH fall vnth that
rather flat trajectory that we have noticed, and run unusually
far. Both styles have their own merits, but Mr. Blyth’s
makes for longer driving, and it would be interesting, if we
might, to see how the result is arrived at.

Perhaps the best indication of the manner in which it is
achieved is to be seen in the half -page portrait of Mr. Blyth
addressing himself for the driving stroke. It may be noticed
that his hands are here peculiarly far in advance — far to his
left — ^with the result that the face of the club must be looking
rather downward on the ball. It is to be presumed that
when his club comes down on the ball, at the moment of
striking, the face of the club is at the same inclination as in
the address. The effect of this must be to put some little
overspin on the ball, or at least to counteract any excessive
measure of that underspin which Professor Tait has taught
us to be an essential of a long carry, but which must surely
tend, when exaggerated, to bring the ball rather straight
down to the groimd at the end of its carry, and so prevent it
from running far after landing. With most good players, at
the moment of address the shaft of the club seems to lead up

I 2

116 GOLF AND OOLFBBS

in something like a straight line from the ball to the player’s
eye. But in the case of Mr. Blyth a prolongation of
the club-shaft upwards would pass over, or even outside, the
point of the left shoulder. The inference seems ahnost
necessary that this peculiarity in his style of address, and the
consequent turning over of the club-face to lode slightly down-
ward on the ball, is the cause both of its low trajectory at the
and of the carry and of the useful run that it always has upon
it afterwards. His address gives us the impression of being
that of a man proposing to keep his ball low, in the wind’s
eye ; but it is, as a matter of fact, just Mr. Blyth’s normal
manner of addressing.

A graceftd and easy player with all his clubs, and very
rapid both in the stroke itself and the pace at which he starts
ofiF walking after the ball, Mr. Blyth gives one peculiarly the
idea of a man playing golf for pleasure. And it is an idea
that he succeeds in realising much better than most of us.
He is a Scotsman, yet he plays most of his golf in the
South ; but he has certainly never been bitten with that
furore for competitions which the Scotsman of the old school
is rather apt to consider the mark of the — ^English golfer.
If Mr. Blyth can avoid a competition by a railway journey
he will gladly do so, and it is chielBiy for this reason that his
name does not loom largely on the lists of championships
and the like. He plays golf for his amusement rather than
glory, and has only once or twice entered for the big amateur
tournament. But he manages to give his opponents a deal
of amusement when he does enter, as the present writer has
every reason to remember, Mr. Blyth having carried the
match with him, in a certain championship tournament at
Sandwich, to the twenty-second hole.

Beside the picture of Mr. Blyth addressing his ball, I am
putting — ^f or purpose of comparison and further illustration —
a picture of a golfer expressly addressing himself to drive
against the wind, wherein it is seen that in this special mode
of address the hands are to the player’s left of a plane drawn

A POBTSAIT GALLBBT 117

stiaight from the ball to the player’s eye. In the ordinary
address of this player, in a calm, hands, eye, and ball would
be, roughly speaking, in the same plane (vertically), whereas
Mr. Blyth’s hands are always, in his ordinary address, a little
to the left of this plane ; and it is for that reason, no doubt,
that he habitoally drives the kind of ball that we all try to
drive against the wind.

Mb. 8BI0 HAMBBO

Mr. Eric Hambro’s style and manner of playing golf
give a fine instance of the natural imitativeness without
which it is perhaps impossible to become a good golfer. He
has played a great deal with Mr. Arnold Blyth at Sandwich.
Playing so much at Sandwich, and being physically what he
is — six foot and a half high and fairly broad in proportion —
it was perhaps inevitable that Mr. Hambro should learn to
drive a very long ball. The big carries of Sandwich demanded
it, and his own power made it easy to him. But what was
not inevitable was that he should solve the problem of getting
over these big bunkers exactly in the manner that he did. A
deal of that manner has obviously been picked up by him —
very likely unconsciously— from Mr. Arnold Blyth. The
two drive very much the same kind of ball, low and yet with
a long carry, but Mr. Hambro’s does not get quite that nice
low trajectory at the finish which is so good a point in
Mr. Blyth’s driving. Very probably Mr. Hambro has rather a
longer carry on his drive ; but Mr. Blyth’s ball will more than
make this up in the run. There is a likeness in the swings
of the two men, but the most striking likeness in their golf
is more a likeness of manner, so to call it, than of style.
Mr. Blyth, we have said, always looks as if he were playing
the game for pleasure — ^with a poignant sense of deserving
kicking for saying so, we might even say that he seems to
play it blithesomely — ^he does not dwell over his stroke or

118 QOLF AND QOLFEBS

make a headachy study of it, he seems to enjoy it all. And
so too, ahnost in greater measure, Mr. Hambro. He looks as
if he were not taking the slightest care, or paying the
slightest attention to the stroke. He scarcely seems to be
looking at the ball, but he flogs at it with vehemence, and
away it goes, hit as truly as if he had looked at it for a week.
It is all very jolly golf to watch.

And then, as soon as either of these strong men and
long drivers has hit the ball, he strides away after it at the
rate that is commonly described as a thousand miles an hour,
and is sufficiently exhausting for the less long-legged over the
Saharas of Sandwich. No time is wasted when the stroke is
struck, and I believe that these two, Mr. Hambro and
Mr. Blyth, have been round the Sandwich course not only
in the shortest score, but also in the shortest tune, on
record.

The merit of the styles of both these players, as of meet
good players, is in their follow-on. Mr. Blyth gets his
follow-on chiefly by the quick turn on the feet. With
Mr. Hambro the follow-on is achieved rather by letting the
body come forward as the ball is struck. I am sorry that
I have not been able to get this moment of his swing
caught by photography. The moment shown is less
characteristic. At the instant of Mr. Hambro’s hitting
the ball his left hip is bent well out in the direction that
the ball is to go-— just in the attitude of a batsman hitting a
half -volley along the ground.

Beyond everything else Mr. Hambro’s is a free style — it
is a style that looks rather like a ‘ hit-or-miss ‘ style, as the
phrase is ; but that cannot be a fair description of a style in
which the hits are so very much more frequent than the
misses. It is a most attractive style to watch. When
Mr. Hambro is in his form there is no finer player in the
world, and this is sufficiently attested by what he has done,
holding the record at 78 for the lowest score for one round
ever returned in the St. George’s Vase competition. And

T Top or Cleek Shot.

A POBTBAIT GALLEBT 119

this is a competition in which all the best have, one time or
another, taken part. It is a beautiful sight, when he is
playing well, to see the ease and therewith the astonishing
accuracy with which he puts every ounce of his strength
into a drive or cleek shot. His work with the deek is
even more remarkable than with the driver, for these iron
clubs seem to demand from most of us a more careful study
than we care to give to the strokes with the wooden clubs —
I mean that it is more easy for most of us to hit freely with
wood than with iron. This difference does not seem to
occur to Mr. Hambro, nor greatly, for that matter, to Mr.
Blyth either ; but in this they are rather distinguished from
most golferSy even of the best class.

It is at the top of his swing for one of these tremendous
deek drives that the illustration shows Mr. Hambro. The
chief points that seem to strike one are the slight degree of
turn of the body on the hips in comparison with the freedom
of the knee and shoulder action; but it is rather by the
length of the follow-on, after the ball is hit, that the power
to send it so far is intimated, than by anything that is shown
in this part of the swing. The bending of the right knee,,
as shown here, it may be pointed out, permits the body to
be carried a little towards the player’s right, while the club
is coming up, without any movement of the head ; and this
admits of the body being carried forwards again, as the dtih
comes down, so as to ‘ get the weight of the body into the
stroke,’ as we say of a forward drive at cricket, which
Mr. Hambro’s stroke much resembles.

On the whole it is not a style, perhaps, that should be toa
closely imitated, apart from the consideration that it would
be impossible of the most distant imitation by any one wha
was not learning golf as a boy. A more studied manner is
the better pattern for our years of discretion — ^but it is &
jolly style to watch.

120 GOLF AND GOLFEBS

BEBNABD SAYEBS

This ‘running up’ stroke with the iron that I have
thought well to illustrate by photographs of Bernard Sayeis
taken in the act of executing it is one of the most useful that
a golfer can acquire. It is useful in special cases — as, for
instance, when there is some toughish groimd, but nothing
requiring a high loft, just in front of the ball. This, it is
true, may alternatively be overpassed by the higher and
more generally used lofting stroke. But a^ain there is a
««o when J anWSng sto>ke i. ^ m.HJi~M.,
and yet a long run up, as with the driving putter, is quite out of
the question ; and this is when rough ground lies immediately
before your ball (else you could use the putter), and just
before the green is a low bank with the hole so closely beyond
it that it is not possible to pitch over the bank and yet lie
near the hole. In this case the only feasible and trustworthy
mode of approach is this running up shot with the iron.
The low loft will take you safely over the rough ground
immediately before the ball, and the strong run on the ball
will take it over the bank rather as if it had been played off
the putter. To loft on the bank and ensure just the right
break to allow the ball to run the length of the hole is too
much to expect of golfing nature.

Of this useful stroke there is, I think, no better player
than Bernard Sayers, the subject of the illustration. Perhaps
it seems invidious to mention this stroke as the one of which
he has peculiar mastery, for he is master of all the strokes
that the golfer has any need to know ; but I have seen him
use it so often with great effect that it seemed specially
suitable to ask him to illustrate it, and we can scarcely go
amiss in studying his mode of playing it. The principal
point to notice about the stroke is that, though the distance
from the hole at which it is used is just that at which we
should ordinarily play what is technically called a wrist

Bbbnakd Savers, Addresscnq for a Running ai-proach Shot.

A POBTBAIT GALLEBY 121

stroke, in this running up shot with the iron the wrists are
not used — ^in the sense of being allowed to bend to make the
stroke — at all. They are held rigid, and the strength of
the stroke is given from the shoulder and by the turn of
the body from the hips. Comparing Sayers’s position in the
second illustration with the position of the first, this is seen
at once — the degree of bend in the arms is almost the same
in the one as in the other ; the wrist, if it has given at all, has
given rather in the way of allowing the knuckles of the right
hand to come higher during the course of the stroke than right
under, as they would naturally have come in course of play-
ing a lofting stroke of the same length with the iron ; the right
forefinger and thmnb have kept their grip rigidly through-
out the stroke, and so communicated the force originated by
letting the right shoulder come well down and forward, and
by the turn of the body on the hips, both which movements
are well shown by a comparison of the two illustrations.

I remember seeing Sayers play this stroke with great
effect in an important match when approaching the comer of
the Dyke hole, coming in» at St. Andrews, and to any one
acquainted with the green this hole, with its low bank before
the putting green, will give a very good example of the
circumstances under which the stroke is peculiarly useful.
There is no form of approaching that is not familiar to
Bayers. Trained on the North Berwick green — which used,
in the days of the short course, to put accurate approach at a
great premium — ^he could play the lofting approach stroke to
perfection, and make his ball lie as dead after its loft as any
man ; but he knew well enough that to pitch on the green of
the comer of the Dyke hole when the course was hard and lie
close to the hole, without over-running, was not within the
power of humanity. The occasion called for the special
BJxoke here illustrated, and the man showed himself equal to
the occasion by employing the stroke to such purpose that
the ball, pitching well short of the low bank, ran up over it
to the green and lay dead. It is a stroke that many another

122 GOLF AND GOLFERS

golfer can perhaps play equally well, though none I think
can play it better, and it is a stroke that no golfer can afford
to be without if he is to feel himself equal to every emer-
gency that can reasonably be expected to arise. It is not a
difficult stroke to acquire, presenting nothing like the difficulty
of the ordinary lofting approach stroke, for it requires no
cut to be put on the ball. The rigidity of the wrists is the
essential feature of the stroke, keeping the blade of the iron
in such a position that the ball flies off quickly and low, with
plenty of running power after it touches the ground. You
will often see a fine player use it when the simple running
up stroke with the putter, without any loft at all, would have
answered equally well, but as a matter of preference the
player has used the iron in the way described.

Sayers can hold his own with any man in the world
to-day, not by special virtue of his mastery of this, but of all
strokes. He is peculiarly accurate in all modes of approach,
and one of the very finest putters in the professional claas.
The caxe that he gives to every stroke is most praiseworthy,
and he calculates all chances with a thoroughness that some-
times becomes a little wearying to the opponent. If it be a
fault, however, it is assuredly on the right side, and this
excessive carefulness has gained him many a point that
another, with less deliberate methods, might have missed.
Though of short stature, Sayers is built on square and
athletic lines, and is an accomplished gymnast. Even now,
in his middle age, he is playing as fine a game as any man,
and drives a powerful baU, especially against the wind. He
is one of those who have lately taken to playing with shorter
clubs than he has used throughout his golfing life, and
appears to have gained certainty and lost nothing in length
of driving by the change. His brother-in-law, Davie Grant,
an excellent player and judge of the game, told the present
writer that he considered Sayers to have strengthened
his game considerably by his use of shorter clubs. At the
end of a long match Sayers, as he expressed it, had formerly

Bernard Savers, i

A PORTBAIT GALLBBT 123

seemed to be labouring with his long clubs ; now, on the
contrary, he seemed to be playing well within his powers,
without fatigue, right up to the end. There can be no doubt
that this was sound criticism.

Sayers and Davie Grant together, even before the former
had shortened his weapons, made a tremendously strong
combination in a foursome, and have won some notable
matches. Especially noteworthy was a match they played
against the two Kirkaldys — Andrew and the late poor Hugh.
They won this match easily enough, in spite of the great
name, so justly earned, of their opponents. Then Sayers
challenged Andrew to a home and home single, and gaining
a heavy advantage on his home green of North Berwick —
which, truth to say, in those days of the short course, gave
rather too heavy an advantage to intimate local knowledge —
won the long match by a narrow margin, though Andrew
played up most gallantly at St. Andrews against the heavy
odds, and actually had the match all square with a few holes
to go. But Sayers was nothing daunted, and, playing with
rare pluck, won as fine a match as could be seen by two up
and one to play. Of his successes in scoring competitions
there is no space to tell the tale. Championship honours have
never fallen to him, but he has made a good bid for them
more than once, and is always a foe to be feared at these
great gatherings. In other competitions, scarcely less impor-
tant than the championship in point of the quality of the
competitors, he has been first time and again ; but what is
especially to be seen is that if not first he is always high on
the list at the finish. He never seems to go clean off his
game, as happens to most others, even of the best, and
perhaps this steady excellence is to be ascribed in great
measure to the excessive care that he gives to every stroke he
plays. He is a great favourite with all who know him,
amateur or professional, and especially, it would seem, with
the newspaper reporters, who delight in chronicling * Ben’s ‘
achievements. They are well worthy of record, and he long

124 GOLF AND GOLFERS

held the record at North Berwick. He is a first-rate maker
of a club and a ball, and an excellent man of business ; alto-
gether a strong personality in the golfing world, and one of the
finest players of the running up approach, according to the
illustration, whose methods can be studied.

There is yet another stroke of which he seems to me to
have rather a special mastery, and this is a full swing shot,
played ¥7ith rather a slow swing, its special feature being
the flat trajectory of the club-head as it comes away from the
ball, and again as it comes down to it — a long slow sweep,
with arms kept very long extended as the club-head is
brought away from the ball, and extended again long before
it is brought back to the ball. As a rule, Sayers seems to use
the stroke when he does not want quite his longest shot, and
I hftTe seen him play it again and again with gieat effect
with a cleek or other long iron club, the ball starting low and
very slowly, as it seems, holding its way a good deal longer
than its initial velocity had led you to expect, and finishing
with a slight curve in from the right. He used to play this
shot beautifully, going to the hole over the comer of the
firwood on the old North Berwick course, before its extensioiL
Besides this, Sayers used to make good capital out of the low
trajectory of the arc that his club-head described coming
away from, and again coming down to, the ball, in driving
against the wind. Again, as in the cleek shot, the ball
started low and slowly, but it kept its way beyond belief,
and, not soaring at all, as he generally allowed the cleek shot
to do, but still coming in a little from the right, was far from
exhausted when it pitched and ran on gaily. He used to get
wonderfully long bails against the wind by this method.

I should much like to have got a photograph of him in
the execution of this stroke, but the emphatic and interesting
position would have been when the club was one-third of its
total arc away from the ball in the up stroke, and, again, two-
thirds of the way down. At neither of these points is there
a moment’s natural pause to give the photographer a chance,

AHCHie Simpson, t

A POETSAIT GALLERY 126

and a pause prolonged deliberately alwajrs gives a look of
onieality to any golfing portrait that strives to take
advantage of it.

ABCmE SIMPSON

Probably the first thing that any one will say on first sight
of these portraits of Archie Simpson is, ‘ Oh ! this does not
give any idea at all of his length, his freedom, of swing.’
That was my own first impression on regarding them. And
yet one has to recognise the fact that a photograph does not
tell lies — except in its own peculiar way of exaggerating that
which is near at the expense of that which is far — so that
the pictnies must be, virtually speaking, ‘ right.’ That is the
way that Simpson really does swing. That is the length,
or shortness, of his upward swing. That the fine follow-
through of his finish.

So that it really comes to this, that we must remodel our
impressions, not of the portrait but of the actual swing.
Simpson really does go no further back than this, and
therefore we must look for some other explanation of the
imipression of length that his whole swing gives us. There
is no reasonable manner of doubt that this explanation is to
be found in the style of his finish. If the back swing is a
little tied up, not quite as free as in some of those ideals that
we have had set before us, the down swing and its finish are
as free as we could have them. We could not have more
complete freedom.

There is this curious lack of proportion between the two
parts of the swing: the second part’ is out of proportion
longer than the first part. The ideal of the golfing swing
is, of course, that there should be no such disproportion, that
all should be in harmony. But if there is to be any dispro-
portion at all, it is certain that it is very much better it
should be on the side that Simpson’s style shows it — that the

126 GOLF AND GOLFERS

finish should be longer, freer, than the beginning — rather than
vice versd. Anything at all cramped in the upward motions
of the swing is undesirable ; anjiihing at all cramped in the
downward motions is sheerly fatal.

It seems very ridiculous to mention the word ‘cramped’
in any connection with Simpson’s swing. It has the look
of the very perfection of freedom. And yet the look of that
first portrait, only, does not express that. The second one
more or less explains it; but it is to Simpson’s living style
that we must look for a perfect explanation.

No man enjoys hitting the ball more than he does; no
man gives us the idea of playing golf with a greater notion
of getting pleasure out of the game ; and there is no doubt
that he enjoys hitting the ball hard better than he enjoys any
other part of the game. But it would be a great mistake —
Simpson has over and over again by his performance proved
its mistake — ^to suppose that he cannot moderate his delight
in hard hitting sufficiently to be sure as well as far, and
to lay his iron shots near and his putts dead, as well as
send his drives two hundred, and odd, yards. But I think
if we consider this matter of his pleasure in the hard hitting,
his sheer delight in hitting the ball and seeing it go, we may
detect something of that keenness in the manner even of his
upward swing.

He has not gone very farup-^the dub is not even horizontal
behind his head. He has not gone very far round — his left
heel is not lifted much from the ground, his body has turned
but little at the hips, his left shoulder has not come very far
round. All this means, I take it, that whether he has taken
the club slowly or swiftly away from the baU, he has come
quickly to the top of his swing — more quickly than one
who was more free and flexible in all these motions that
we have named. ‘ If he has come to the top quickly,
that means to say that he has come quickly to the
point at which he may begin to go down again. He
may quickly satisfy his desire to be hitting the ball. This,

A POBTBAIT GALLERY 127

I think, is in part the explanation of the comparative
shortness and compactness of Simpson’s up swing, and again
it is in part the explanation why that swing in action gives
ns the impression of being so free, whereas the photograph,
which cannot tell lies, tells us that the least important half
of the swing is, in its motions, not very free. But if not free
in its motions it is very free in its pace. Simpson, in his
eager desire to be down on the ball again, is very quick in
getting to the top of the swing, and this speed in getting to
the top gives the impression of freedom, and is achieved, on
his methods, without violation of first principles. He has
gone but a little way back ; therefore, he has accomplished
that journey quicker than one who makes the journey longer,
and he is so compact in all the movements of that short
backward swing that he has little re-adjustment to do before
he is ready to give the ball that welt in which he dehghts.

There are many interesting points, less distinctive, to

notice in his style. He is a very long driver, and the ball,

in common v^ith the practice of most of our longest —

Holland, Toogood, in a measure Braid, and I may mention a

less known one, Bowe, of Ashdown Forest — is placed nearer

the left than the right foot, with the right foot drawn back.

The right elbow is noticeably low, the grip is well in palm of

both hands — ^the grip of a man who intends no half measures.

The second illustration, of the finish of the stroke, shows all

notion of crampedness, even of photographic cramp, entirely

vanished, thrown to the winds after the ball. There is no

hurry to get back out of this position on to the ball — all had

to be given up to that delightful business of hitting the ball

— ^the body has turned perfectly freely on the hips now, the

right shoulder has come right down, and under, the right heel

right up off the ground, and even the straightening of the

right knee has helped in sending the body following on after

the ball.

Simpson’s delight in hitting the ball seems to be an
infectious kind of pleasure. It gives the spectator keen

138 GOLF AND GOLFERS

delight to watch it. And scarcely less delightful than his
manner with his drives are his fall iron shots — ^there is no
half swing, as some of the modems nse, about them — ^they are
really hard full smacks, that seem to make the very ball
laugh as it goes away.

Axchie Simpson comes from a nursery of long driyers.
It is a wonderful example of the power of emulation — ^the
list of long drivers that have been reared on that fine litde
green of Leven, on the north shore of the Firth of Forth.
There is nothing particular in the character of the links to in-
dicate that it would grow a crop of Jehus. It is not a v^
long green — ^not so long as many others that do not produce
such long driving children. Yet there the fact is ; it has
grown Bolland, and Braid, his cousin, there was the late
Jack Simpson, poor fellow, who died soon after winning the
championship at Prestwick, on which occasion BoUand was
second to him, there are the two Kinnells, and there is
Ajchie Simpson. All these are long, some of them aie
immense, drivers. Of Jack Simpson Mr. Everard used to
say that with the exception of Mr. Edward Blackwell he had
the finest driving style of any man he had ever seen — and
Mr. Everard is a very good judge. It was in this school that
Archie Simpson learned his golf, and since there is no
peculiarity in the links to account for the length of driving
that men learned there, the only way to account for it is on
the theory of emulation. Probably it was BoUand, Holland
with his enormous power, that began to drive farther than
other people, and once he set the fashion the others had to be
in it, or to be left behind. The consequence was that the
whole lot of them grew to drive immense distances, and to
startle the rest of the golfing world when they began to show
themselves off elsewhere.

Simpson’s first engagement, I fancy, was at Bembridge,
where he surely must have overshot a great many of the
holes. Then he was at Carnoustie for a while, and for
several years now has been at Balgownie, near Aberdeen,

A POBTRAIT GALLBBY 129

where he lately engaged in the big foursome in which his
partner was Sayers, against Andrew Eirkaldy and Herd.
He has not done a very great deal in the way of exhibition
matches, and it is only on that account that his name is not
larger in the public eye than it is. He has all the power.
But it is part of his exceedingly pleasant and modest
character that he should refrain from offering himself over-
much as a public spectacle, while at the same time it is a
part of his sturdy self-respect that he should always give a
good account of himself when the public does see him.

W. FEBNIE

It is not such a bad record, as golfing records go, to be an
ex-champion and to have played a game of the very first
class for a considerable number of years. Willie Eemie
has done all this, and he has done a good deal more — he has
made a methodical study of the methods of the driving swing,
and can not only play golf, but also is able to teach it.
A few years ago he was down in the south on tour — a
lecturing tour — and the subject matter of his lecture was
the manner of playing the royal and ancient game of golf.
Maybe he had some maxims to inculcate that were new;
at all events there was a novelty about his way of presenting
them. He had a certain pungent humour that made them
go down, and when precept failed to find expression, he
helped the lecture out by that better brother of precept,
example. He showed, club in hand, how the thing should
be done. He showed also, club in hand, how the thing
should not be done, not sparing the feelings of an individual^
if so be he might hold him up as the * horrid warning ‘ to
the rest of the class. And all this was done with a pleasant
humour that carried it off without giving offence to its
victim. Many, very many, of his scholars came away from
bis lectures better golfers than they had gone in, and those

180 GOLP AND GOLPEB8

whose golf was not materially helped were at least interested
and amused.

The principal maxims of his teaching were divided into
several headings — ^the stance, the grip, the arm action, the
turning of the body ; and Femie made his pupils follow him
in all their movements, just as a drill-sergeant moves hk
recruits. ‘ Elbows down ‘ was a great maxim, designed to
help the pupil in keeping the club-head in the right position
throughout the swing. Femie, by careful observation and
by study of his own swing, both when he was ‘on’ and
when he was ‘off’ (so that he might learn the secrets equally
of success and of failure), had come to the conclusion that
letting the club-face wander from the right angle was a
conmion cause of bad play, and I do not know that this has
been particularly noticed by any other teacher ; and certainly
all that Femie has to say on the subject is worthy of every
attention. He has given the swing such careful study, and
has observed so exactly the many aberrations of many
amateurs, that he is able to fix on the weak point at a glance.
Of my own experience I can attest this.

Among his pupils Femie made a great point of getting
the body swing correct and free, recognising, as others have
done before him, though perhaps none quite so fully, that it
is the body turn, giving the ‘ foUow-on,’ that puts power into
the stroke, rather than any efforts of the arm muscles. The
excellent follow-on we may probably say to be the feature of
Femie’s own game, and if it required justification none
better could be found for it. About the first of the illustra-
tions of Femie in the act of striking there is nothing really
very remarkable, though every action appears of the best
and most correct kind. His is not a very long swing ; not
the swing of a lithe lissom figure, but rather of one com-
pacted of strength. The club is just at the horizontal behind
the back. Yet even so it is further round than in the case
of Vardon, whose figure, curiously enough, is just of that
lissom kind that one would expect to see lending itself to

A PORTBAIT GALLBBY 181

length of swing. But Vardon has made very much his own
the secret that true timing and true accuracy are of more
Yalne than application of great force.

Femie’s upward swing, we may say then, shows an
orthodox perfection ; the left shoulder has come nicely down
and round. Even such a little glimpse of the grip of the
right hand as the picture shows us is enough to make it
clear that the club has moved freely in the right hand and
is resting on the web between the forefinger and the thumb ;
the body has turned freely at the hips, and if there is a point
that is more noticeable than another it is the freedom shown
in that bend of the left knee-joint, allowing the swing to be
made without any stiff strained point. Femie’s is essentially
a powerful as well as an easy swing. We know no other
that combines the two qualities more perfectly. Vardon’s is
the acme of ease, Mr. Blackwell’s of power, but neither of
these seems to show quite the same perfect mean of the two
qualities as Femie’s shows. Necessarily, with such free
action of the knee, the left heel has come well up off the
ground, but the right knee is not quite straightenedi with
the result that though the weight is thrown on to the right
leg, the body has scarcely moved towards the right from its
position when the ball was being addressed.

But when we come to look at the second illustration,
showing the finish of the swing, here I think we do see a
point that is noticeable. In Willie Park’s book on golf he
refers to a peculiarity in the swing of his father, a very
famous golfer — none more so — of the olden time, that some-
times, after hitting the ball, he would follow on so far as even
to move a pace or two after it in the direction of its flight.
In the finish of Femie’s stroke we see a suggestion of the
very same action not quite so fully carried out. With
the body thrown forward and the bend of the left knee, he
almost seems to be on the point of walking or running a
pace or two after the baU. And this noteworthy effect is
produced by tbe excellent n^ianner in which Femie finishes

K 2

132 OOLF AND GOLFEBS

out his stroke, and the great * follow-on/ of which he proTes
the value by his practice, as he has insisted on it in his
theory. We should notice too, I think, the way in which
the arms haye come forward, and are well away in front of
the head, even after the club has come right back over the
left shoulder. This is yet further evidence of the value that
he has put on the ‘ foUow-on.’ The turn of the body is again
very complete — the player is facing directly in the line of
the ball’s flight — the right shoulder has been allowed to
come very far round and forward, and the whole effect has
been helped by letting the right foot come right away off the
ground, with right knee still a little bent, by way of further
aid to this very free * follow.’

It is impossible not to be constantly drawing comparisons
between Femie’s swing and that of Vardon, both of which
illustrate so very well the value of the free movement of the
legs and lower part of the body. Vardon’s appears to me
the acme of grace, Femie’s to combine, with scarcely less
grace, a greater appearance of power. It is a more compact,
more forceful movement.

I do not know any man who is capable of playing a
strong game day after day with scarcely a semblance of
mistake better than Femie when at his best. It seems a
hard thing to say of a player who has had such a great
measure of success both in big matches and in competitions
that he has failed to do himself fall justice in these big events ;
and yet I do believe it to be true. I believe that a certain
nervousness, inseparable from certain temperaments, hss
stood in the way of more frequent successes. In private
matches he has proved himself so very accurate and so very
strong, the accuracy and the power apparently costing him
no effort ; and this power of going on day after day playing
splendid golf is no doubt to be ascribed, amongst other
causes, to the accurate ease of his style. Whatever his golfing
lectures may be worth, and they have proved themselves of
value, there can be no question but that his game famishes

A POBTBAIT GALLEBY 188

UB with one of the very best object-lessons in golf that we
can possibly want. This knee-action of his and the fine free
torn of the body may be difficult indeed for a player to acquire
after he has come to years of discretion and stiff muscles ;
but they supply him at least with a useful ideal, and, as we
are told in ‘ Peveril of the Peak/ it is more important that
our ideals should be high than that we should attain to
them. Femie’s execution is a high ideal indeed to aim at,
and yet he seems to make such an easy game of golf that we
might be tempted to think that we all could achieve it.

The same fine free, easy, and yet compact and forceful
swing characterises his use of every club. In general he is
a fine putter, but he has times — ^as who has not ? — when
this essential faculty seems to fail him.

The links of Troon, where he now resides, owes a great
deal to his skilful care of its green. The fine club house
comes in as a background to these illustrations of Femie’s
methods. Prestwick, the neighbour links of Troon, is
almost equally familiar to him, but there is scarcely a green
of note on which he has not made his prowess felt, and he
carried his successful lecturing tour into the heart of English
metropolitan golf, and had many pupils among the members
of the club at Wimbledon.

A. HERD

The characteristic that strikes one first and most forcibly
in watching Herd play is something that is perhaps best
suggested by calling it the ‘ compactness ‘ of his style. It is
not only that he always seems to be playing well * within
himself,’ not exerting his muscles to the utmost of their
power, but also that the whole movement of the swing seems
very perfectly under control, and the entire stroke to be
aocompUshed within a small compass. He does not seem to
reach his arms out very far as the club goes back, nor again

184 GOLF AND GOLFEBS

to throw them out very freely from him after the ball is hit.
And this is, in some points, no high praise ; for it does not
seem to imply the much more than merely respectable length
of drive that Herd attains. Yet, if we watch the line of
travel of the club-head carefully, we shall see that though
the stroke is not very long, and the arc not very flat during
any great section, still that it is a flat arc just at the impor-
tant moment — ^that is to say, the moment at which the club
is passing the ball. This is the important point. What the
club is doing at other moments of the swing is not of much
value except as a means of making the flat direction of taivel
at the moment the ball is struck easier to compass. Yet if
this can be managed satisfactorily, as Herd undoubtedly
manages it, we have no right to quarrel with what the club
is doing when it is far away from the ball, and anything
that Herd may possibly be thought to lose by his methods
in one way is certainly, in his case, more than compensated
by the virtue of what we have called his ^ compactness.’

It is to this compactness of his style that we probably
ought to look for an explanation of his wonderful steadiness.
Herd’s latest big performance was in the foursome match in
which he and Ejrkaldy defeated Simpson and Sayers, who
had challenged any pair. The winners had a certain advan-
tage in this big encounter, for whereas Simpson and Sayeis
could not select, as the green of their choice, one that was
familiar to both (and did, in fact, choose Aberdeen, where
Sayers was a comparative stranger), the other pair, making
choice of St. Andrews, met their opponents on a home green
which gave them every confidence. At no stage of the
match, however, did Herd and Kirkaldy show that they
required any other advantage than that which their skill and
power gave them. They were three up even on the Aber-
deen course, and at St. Andrews finished off the long match
by twelve up and eleven to play. But though Herd has thus
done well in recent match play, it was in score play in 1896
that he seemed so steadily brilliant as to be almost invincible.

A. HfiRO, AT TOI” O

A POBTRAIT GALLEEY 185

Again and again he won competitionB against fields that made
the contests virtually, thongh not nominally, championship
battles. In the actual championship itself Herd led for
three rounds, and had not a saving shower of rain come on,
which put him a little out of his confidence on the keen
putting greens, while it gave Taylor a chance of regaining
the confidence he had lost, he would in all probability have
won the championship too. As it was, his share both in
prize-money and in glory in this northern campaign was
certainly that of the Uon, though the big championship bone
did not go his way.

It is quite to the point to name these successes — not for
the purpose of retelling a familiar tale, but in order to remind
any one who reads this that there is some reason to speak of
Herd as a player of remarkable and quite unusual steadiness.
At the time that he was playing so grandly, and that Taylor
was also at the top of his fame and game, the two used to
have many a contest, and though Taylor would seem to be
the stronger built man. Herd, I fancy, in spite of his swing
rather close in to his body, would commonly out-drive the other.
Herd, again, was the better putter. It is hard to find a man
to beat Herd on the green, and he crouches down, so as to
get on good familiar terms with the ball, in a manner that
seems to say that he means business. So if Herd had the better
of Taylor in his driving and his putting, it only remained for
Taylor to put things even again by his skill in approaching,
and this he did time aiter time, with that wonderful and
unrivalled accuracy with his mashie.

It is always interesting to ask fine golfers their opinion as
to how the game should be played ; their practice is often so
different from their theory. Though we should perhaps
choose Herd among the very first as a type of controlled
power in his swing, he has no notion that he gives any such
impression to the onlooker, for he tells one who asks him that
he hits as hard as he can. But we are bound to believe our
eyes, and must accept this cum grano saHs, if with politeness ;

136 QOLF AND GOLFEBS

it is certain that Herd believes it to be a true account of his
methods. Still we retain our own conviction that he might hit
harder if he would, though, no doubt, with loss of accuracy.

It is quite apparent, however, although his swing is rather
close round his body, so that we do not see that flinging away
of the arms after the ball that we admire in the style of some
of our drivers, that he does, in point of fact, get a good
‘follow-on’ nevertheless. If it were not so, his ball could
not possibly go the length it does ; and we see the manner
in which he arrives at this ‘foUow-on ‘ in the lastof the three
illustrations of his driving swing. His body is turned very
far and freely, and he has straightened himself up on his
right leg, which has the knee straight now for the first time
throughout the swing. Herd’s is rather a crouching address
to his ball ; his knees are bent all the while, rather after the
manner of Andrew Eirkaldy, though when the real business
of the swing is begun Herd is a good deal longer. It is this
mode of address — close up to the ball, and bending rather
over it — ^that helps to give his style its appearance of com-
pactness and his scores their resulting steadiness. It is
harder to see whence he gets his brilliancy and length, but
a hint of that secret is revealed to us by the straightened-out
right knee after the stroke.

There are, perhaps, few players of whom it is harder to
say what is the strong point of their game. Braid’s length of
drive, Taylor’s approach shots, and so on, are worthy of special
remark ; but of Herd it is not to be said that any one part
of his game is conspicuously better than another. He is a
fine driver, both in respect of length and straightness, a fine
approacher, and a fine putter^ but one cannot say that he is
specially good in any one of these. The truth is rather that
he is equally good in all, and that this all-round excellence is
the secret — ^not nearly so diflSctdt to perceive as to imitate —
of his constant success.

There is no finer putter than Herd, and if one were
obliged to pick out one department in which his game is

A POETBAIT GALLEEY 187

stronger than any other, it is probably the putting and the
short game generally that we should choose. To his putting,
as to most of the other business of the game, he crouches
closely down, so as to be near his work, and on good terms
with the ground and the ball. Mr. Hilton is a firm believer
in the man who addresses himself in this way to his putting,
and indeed is a firm believer in Herd as a golfer all round.
But especially has Mr. Hilton a word of praise for this dose
and attentive settling down to the putt, declaring that he
does not fear on the putting green the man who stands up
and puts off his right leg, but him that bends over his work,
as if he meant to come to close quarters with it. Herd very
fully justifies this opinion, but there is an opinion that we
have heard expressed by Herd that his own play does not
fully bear out, and that we must take some little exception
to. ‘ In putting,’ he says, ‘ the ball should be struck with
a smart tap.’ Now, in the opinion of most of our golfing
counsellorB, ‘ tap ‘ is the last word that would express the
smooth stroke that it seems good to give the ball. However,
there the case stands. Herd says you shotdd tap your putts.
He is himself a very good putter, yet he is good in virtue of
his practice rather than his theory, for we cannot see that
he does practically tap his putts in any marked degree.
There is another player who holds the same theory, but does
not make nearly such good putting practice, and that is
Taylor. Taylor, for the immense strength of his all round
game, is a poor putter. The chief merit of his game is that
he leaves himself so near the hole off his maediie that he
seldom has much putting to do. But in this httle putting
he believes the tap to be the magical kind of stroke; his
magic, however, is not always very effective.

But, however we may criticise his theory, there is no
mistake about Herd’s practice in this business of the short
game. He is very deadly, and deadly, we believe, rather in
virtue of that good and close settling down to the ball before
striking than of any special tapping in the stroke itself. All

138 GOLF AND GOLFEBS

round he is a very grand golfer, and if his chief triumphs have
been won in scoring play, he is equally jgood in match play, and
this without any special help from unusual physical strength
and length of driving. His fine skill and his fine courage —
cheery under the most untoward circumstances —have made
him the golfer that he is.

In the last championship, 1898-9, he scarcely did himself
justice. Yet on the following day, in a thirty-six hole com-
petition on the St. Nicholas course at Prestwick, he played
very finely indeed, with a grand first round of seventy-four ;
and was only beaten by a single stroke and a single man —
the invincible Vardon.

ANDREW EIBKALDY

Andrew Earkaldy’s swing, in action, gives the impression
of being such a very quick and short one that many of us,
I think, will be surprised to see how far round his head the
club actually does come, both before the stroke and after.
As exhibited in the photograph — which is, of course, from
life — the club is seen at just a little more than the horizontal
behind the head. The truth probably is that £irkaldy’8
square-built figure makes the swing appear shorter and
quicker than it really is, and that the same swing, reproduced
by a player of slenderer physique, would appear a deal longer.
In any case here is Andrew Kirkaldy’s swing as it actually is
done, and he is good enough player to make it worth a little
attention.

It is to be said, in the first place, that he has the advan-
tage of great physical strength, and a big advantage it is,
however much we may talk of the secret of long driving
being in accurate, rather than forceful hitting. This is a trae
saying; but nevertheless there are many men that hit
accurately, and of the many equally accurate ones he that
combines with his accuracy the greatest strength will drive
the longest ball. And again there is a deal of fanciful talk

X
N

A PORTRAIT GALLERY 189

about the yalne, or valaelesBnesB, of length of driying. We
all say that a little additional length of driving makes no
difference, but we aU have a suspicion, nevertheless, that we
do not quite believe what we say. It is like the common
saw of the philosopher, that riches do not make for happiness.
We subscribe to the theoty, but our practice perpetually
contradicts it; and so, in spite of what we say about the
little utility of length of driving, we make it our constant
study to lengthen owe own drives. The truth is that length
of driving is a double-edged sword ; it constantly makes the
second stroke easier because shorter, and occasionally saves a
stroke by virtue of reaching a hole or carrying a hazard that
a shorter shot would have failed to carry or to reach ; and
again (this is its second edge), it infallibly exercises a
certain terrifying effect on an opponent, and this may
perhaps be put down, on the average, at the value of about
two strokes to our credit during the round. So let us not
put too much faith in our own wise sajrings about length of
driving.

Andrew Eirkaldy is a Ipng driver, he is even a very long
driver, though there are a few that are longer. Still, no one
will take much advantage of him in this department of the
game. He is as long as any man needs to be, and he accom-
plishes this length of drive with a club that is moderately long
in the shaft, but, for a man of his strength, exceedingly hght in
the head. In his powerful hands it must feel Uttle more
than a toy. He chooses this hghtness of club dehberately,
believing that he thereby gets a longer ball, and indeed it
is said to be one of his maxims that ‘ the lighter the club
the longer the ball.’ This theory is founded no doubt on
the unquestionable truth that length of driving depends
principally on the speed with which the club-head is travel-
ling (always supposing its line of travel to be in the right
direction) at the moment it meets the ball. But the right
direction of travel is an essential, and some folks find it easier
to get this important point right — in the simpler golfing

140 GOLF AND GOLFERS

tongue, they can play steadier — with a heavy- than with a
light-headed clnb ; and, moreover, it is open to argument
whether a certain measure of weight in the head is not an aid,
rather than an impediment, to its swift movement. In any
case the light head is capable* of being made to move swiftly
enough and to impart quick enough movement to the ball
in the hands of Andrew £irkaldy.

Eirkaldy’s grip of his club is a firm and masterful one,
characteristic, as it would seem, of his whole golfing method.
There is about his play a deal of forearm push, of muscular
power applied to the ball. His stroke gives one the impres-
sion less of a swing than of a very forceful push. It would
be wrong to describe the stroke as a hit, for the woid
inevitably suggests a jerky movement, and there is no such
fault to be seen in Kirkaldy’s sound style. But it is essentially
the style of a strong man, of a man who relies on his weight
and muscle for the force he applies, rather than on the long
swing by which others aim at Uke results. This is perhaps
more plainly seen in his half shots, his long iron approaches,
even than in the full drive. I have been again and again
surprised when watching him play to the short hole at
St. Andrews, to see the very little way that his club came
back from the ball in the upward swing. It seemed impos-
sible that with so short a svnng sufficient force could be
given to the stroke. Yet the loud ring of the ball on the
club and the pace at which it started from the face showed
evidently enough the power that the player was able to put
in in so little space, even without the evidence of the ball’s
sustained flight through the air, till it landed somewhere in
the neighbourhood of the hole — ^rarely short — for Eirkaldy,
if he is anything, is a bold player, and has the courage of
his convictions.

His courage and his power of pulling an apparently
desperate match out of the fire are familiar to all who have
followed the recent course of first-class golf. Quite lately,
when he and Herd were practising for the big foursome in

A POBTRAIT GALLEBY 141

which they defeated Archie Simpson and Sayers so hand-
somely, the former two played a single exhibition match of
thirty-six holes. At the end of the first round Kirkaldy was
six holes down, bat so grandly did he play in the last romid
that he actually won the match, although Herd’s play was
not greatly amiss. And this is only a single instance out of
many that might be cited in evidence of his tremendous
power and courage as a match player. As a score player,
considering this power and courage, he has done compara-
tively ill. It is often said, with a note of exclamation after
the remark : ‘ Andrew Kirkaldy has never won the champion-
ship ! ‘ And this note of exclamation is the highest testimony
to the respect, which is universal, for his play. He has tied
for the championship with Willie Femie, but that was many
years ago, and he was beaten in playing the tie off. But he
plays every bit as well to-day as ever he did. He is even
more feared in match play than ever, and yet no one now
ever expects him to be champion. In spite of all his courage,
he seems to lack that long-suffering cheerfulness and patience
that can alone give a man the heart to last through a long
scoring competition without desperate disgust at all ‘the
slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’ that are certain,
sooner or later, to assail him. That, we take it, is the secret
of his ill success; it is a question of temperament rather
than of eye or muscle.

We have said of Andrew Kirkaldy that his stroke is to
be described rather as a forceful push than as a swing, and
yet in the second illustration, in which he is seen at the end
of the swing (for so we must, of course, for convenience call
it), we can infer from the position of the club something of
the arc that the club-head described after the ball was hit.
It will be seen that the club is very low down on the
shoulder — the hands gripping the club must clearly be close
down to the shoulder, almost perhaps below the shotdder.
In most of our illustrations of the finish of the swing the
hands have finished a good deal higher than this. It is

142 GOLF AND GOLFERS

naturally to be inferred that the hands were pushed away
rather low after the ball in the follow-on ; and this we
believe to be actually the case, and also the explanation of
the long low ball that Eirkaldy generally drives. It is a
most useful shot against the wind, and it is against a wind
and across a wind that Kirkaldy’s power is best seen. He
seems to have the ball under very good control. For the
rest he is good throughout the piece ; good through the green
(no man has finer power of forcing a ball away out of a bad
lie), exceptionally good at his long half-shot approaches, sound
at his shorter approaches, and a good holer-out. In putting
he is one of the comparatively few that sometimes use the
old wooden putter ; but he is by no means wedded to its use,
and seems to have a belief, which many of the best opinions
share with him, in changing his putting club.

The bravery that Kirkaldy has shown as a match player
he has shown in his profession as a soldier, and he is said to
have been one of the first, if not actually the first* into the
‘zariba’ at Tel-el-Kebir. This is perhaps not strictly a
golfing matter, but it is germane to the matter as showing
the character of the man, and also as showing that he might
be thought to compete at some disadvantage with oiha
golfers, for the greater number of the golfing profession have
had no other profession than golf ; they have learned the game
as boys, they have gone on practising and improving them-
selves in it, and the club has never grown cold and unfamiliar
to their hand. But this has not be^i Kirkaldy’s case. There
were years of his life in which he probably never saw a golf
club ; in which, at all events, the rifle was very much more
familiar to his grip, so that he might fairly have been expected
to lose something of what he had learned. But if he ever
did lose anything the loss is in no way apparent, and he stiU
has quite enough left to satisfy most of the people that play
against him.

A FOBTBAIT QALLEBT US

Mb. F. G. TAIT

The great feature, as it has always seemed to me, of
Mr. Tait’s style is the impression that it gives us of keeping
a reserve of power beyond what is put into the stroke. One
seems to notice this, not only with his driving, but also in his
approach strokes — ^he appears to swing the club quietly down
on the ball, without any huiry or forcing.

I have written that this has ‘ always ‘ seemed to me the
feature of his game. I ought to take that adverb back, for
there was a time when Mr. Tait was just emerging from
boyhood, at which his great ambition seemed to be to drive
all the holes at St. Andrews in one. He used to drive a very
long way in those days — further, probably, than he drives
now — but he was not nearly so good a player. And in those
days one certainly could not have said that power held in
leserve was distinctive of his game. Every inch of power
that he had, and he had a great deal, was put into the stroke.
He has more power, no doubt, now, but he uses it a deal
more economically. Possibly it is in great measure because
he has so much power that he is able to use only a portion
of it and yet get a longer ball than most, and it may be
that only by using all the power that he possesses can an
average man put himself on terms with Mr. Tait’s driving.
And if this is true, it may further be that it would not do for
the average man to imitate this characteristic feature of Mr.
Tait’s style. At the same time, it is so certain that to hit
the ball truly is infinitely more important than to hit it hard
that probably even much weaker brethren would do well to
imitate the ‘ control ‘ of Mr. Tait*s swing.

This consideration, however, at once raises a further
question; and in the same connection it is interesting to
notice a remark made by Mr. Tait (I have it by report, not
from himself) that in his opinion a longer and a heavier club
than that which is the latest fashion is the better weapon,

Ui GOLF AND GOLFBBS

because with the heavier club you can get the same length
of ball with less hard hitting. Let us take that as a truth,
so far as it goes — ^namely, that long and heavy clubs will
drive further than light ones — though even this is disputed.
Andrew Kirkaldy is reported to have pronounced the dictum
that ‘the lighter the club the longer the stroke.* But,
accepting Mr. Tait’s contrary view, it still raises a further
point, which he has tacitly assumed — ^namely, that it is easier
to hit truly when hitting gently than when hitting hard.
Mr. Tait’s whole performance in the golfing swing is evidence
to his own belief in this theory, and it is also convincing
testimony of its truth so far as he is personally concerned.
He plays with much greater accuracy in these days of his
relatively gentle hitting than in the hard-hitting days of his
early youth. But every good golfer is not of his opinion.
Some hold the theory that you should hit as hard as yon
can, and that it is more difficult to hit truly when you hit
with some force consciously held in reserve. Of course even
these people would tell you that the theory of the famous
* Don’t press ‘ is good — especially good for the learners — ^but
their rendering and interpretation of the theory differs from
that of others. Every one is agreed that you must not hit
with wild force, that you must control the stroke so as to
keep your aim accurate ; only, some will say that up to a
certain point it is easier to control the aim when you hit
hard. The question is not one that admits a dogmatic
answer. One method may be the better for one man, and
another may suit another man better ; but it is worth while
noticing Mr. Tait’s view of it and the manner in which his
style gives practical expression of that view.

It will be seen that Mr. Tait’s swing is not remarkably
long. The club does not go very far back, nor is the turning
of the body very much emphasised. But, on the other
hand, his foot action is remarkably free, quick, and good.
In the Badminton book on golf, the praise that Mr.
Lyttelton in his chapter on * batting,’ in the cricket volume,

Mh. F. G. Tait, at Top of Swing.

A PORTRAIT GALLERY 146

giyes to a quick-footed batsman was noticed, and it was
expressly said that such a phrase would be anything but
praise of a driver at golf. What was there meant was that
the trick of some golfers, generally not of the most efficient
class, of moving their feet — shifting their foothold — at the
moment of striking the ball was not to be commended* In
another sense, however, quick and correct foot action is good
in a golfer, and fine instances of it are shown in the styles
both of Mr. Tait and of Mr. Arnold Blyth. In the latter
it has perhaps its more perfect expression, but Mr. Tait’s style
shows it finely too.

We have said that the chief feature of Mr. Tait’s swing
18 the impression of controlled power that it gives ; but the
characteristic— -accidental, and not part of the swing proper,
of course — ^that the casual observer will first notice in his
play is that he tries over, before addressing himself to the
ball, almost every single stroke that he plays in the course of
a long day’s golf. Very likely it is a help ; certainly, Mr.
Tait must conceive that it is so.

For a player who first came into notice rather as a long
driver than anything else, he is remarkably good with all
his clubs. We cannot say that he is noticeably better in his
driving, his approaching, or his putting. He is good in them
all, and there is no weak spot in his game. His &ae
performances are too many to chronicle. Perhaps he has
shown his best form in matches against professionals, to
whom he must be a real terror. The best actual win that
he has put on record was his victory in the amateur champion-
ship of 1897, at Sandwich, when he beat Mr. Hilton in the
final by a large balance of holes. Just previously he had
won the St. George’s Challenge Yase against a very strong
field. But no less praiseworthy, though less conspicuous,
have been his scores in three consecutive open champion-
ships. At Muirfield, when Harry Vardon won, after a tie
with Taylor, Mr. Tait entered the last round with a good
chance of victory ; and at Hoylake, in the following year,

146 GOLF AND OOLFEBS

when Mr. Hilton gained the championship, he played the
most steadily good golf of any, and was third, after Mr.
Hilton and Braid. At Prestwick, in 1898, when again Harry
Yardon was the victor, Mr. Tait was still a force to be
reckoned with when only one round remained for play ; but
a lamentable disaster in the famous, or infamous, bunker
called the ‘ Cardinal’s Nob ‘ cost him eight strokes for that
hole and practically put him out of the running. Mr. Tait is
amateur champion at the moment of writing, in 1898 ; but I
do not rate that — ^neither, I think, will he — on the same level as
his win of the same honour two years before, nor as his very
fine,though in no case quite victorious, work in the last three
open championships. Mr. Tait won, but he was distinctly
lucky to get through his semi-final tie with Mr. Low and
the previous tie with Mr. Graham. In neither of these
matches did he play in his own true form, nor in the form
that he showed in the championship tournament of 1896.
But there is a point about Mr. Tait’s luck that is worth some
consideration — ^his luck seems constantly attending him,
which almost seems to be the same as saying that really it is
not rightly called luck at all. And yet we have far to go to find
another name for it. Thrice, to my knowledge, has Mr. Tait
holed long putts, putts so long as to be really lucky, at the
last hole in big competitions-— once to win the St. Andrews
medal, once to tie with Mr. Edward Blackwell in a tourna-
ment which Mr. Tait ultimately won, and once to beat Mr.
Mure Fergusson for the St. George’s Vase at Sandwich.
All these were putts of fifteen yards or so, and these are just
a little too long not to be just a little lucky. Moreover, Mr.
Tait has a terrible habit, after making a bad stroke, of laying
the next close up alongside the hole and holing out. From
sixty yards or so he holes out in two perhaps more often
than not, playing the ball up, not with a deal of cut, as
Taylor plays it, but half running and half lofted, so that it
flies low and runs up.

Now all this is in the nature of luck — it is lucky — but there

Mr. F. G, Tait. a-

A PORTRAIT GALLERY 147

axe some sterling qnalities behind it all to make the luck
possible. But for the qualitieB Mr. Tait would not have
the luck. And the qualities are chiefly mental and moral.
These lucky putts, and so on, mean that Mr. Tait, after
making a bad stroke, or when to all appearances the case is
desperate, does not permit himself to despair. He works his
hardest still, does not give up, or play carelessly. He tries
his best, and now and again the good effort has its
unexpectedly good result.

Mr. Taif 8 k a quiet swing in driying. a swing apparently
under very good control ; but for all that it has all the look
of a long swing. Any one setting to work to imitate it with-
out special study would be almost certain to bring the club
quite as far round as the horizontal, and probably would let it
go even further back, behind the head. A glance at the first of
the accompanying pictures, showing Mr. Tait at the top of
the driving swing, will prove at once the mistake that such an
imitator would make, and at the same time prove how very
short in the upward swing Mr. Tait’s driving stroke actually
is. His club is at no more than an angle of forty-five
degrees, probably the shortest back swing of all those that
we shall have occasion to study. And yet the swing looks
long. Somewhere in this there is a mystery, and the key to
the mystery is no doubt to be found in the second illustration,
showing Mr. Tait at the finish of his drive. It is a very fine,
almost an ideal, finish. The club has not come very far back
over the shoulder again — ^not down over the back, after the
manner of the finish of Mr. Boothby’s drive — ^but its position
shows clearly how very well the arms have followed out after
the ball after it was struck, and all this following on has been
helped by the leaning forward of the body, with the weight
all thrown on the left leg, the right foot being well away,
up and off the ground, to make all this movement possible.
Add to this that Mr. Tait has let his right shoulder come
very far round, and none of the qualities of a fine finish are
wanting. Especially to be noted is the comparative straight-

148 GOLF AND GOLFBBS

ness of Mr. Tait’s arms — ^the very slight crook of the elbow
as compared with the position of the arms in most of these
photographs of the finish of the swing.

Finally, Mr. Tait’s ‘control’ is shown again by the
patience with which his hands wait for the dub-h^id to
come down right to the ball before they go out after it. It
is difficult to put into words this good quality of Mr. Tait’s
driving style, in virtue of which he is able to wait for
the club to come to the ball, so that he gets behind the
ball, as it were, and puts the driving power well in after
it. We have seen that it is the manner of most fine
players to have eye, hands, and ball pretty much in the
same line when they address themselves to the fall
driving stroke. In the address of some — as, for instance, of
Mr. Arnold Blyth — ^we see the hands advanced in front of the
line passing from ball to eye, much in the manner of address
affected by most when they are preparing to drive a low ball
in the wind’s teeth. But whatever the manner of the address
in this particular, it is almost certain that the club, ball, and
eye ought to be in the same positions, relatively to each other,
at the moment that the club hits the ball as they were at
the moment of the address. It is only this assumption that
makes all our trouble in addressing the ball worth its while.
If we may not make this assumption we take away all sense
and purpose from the address. Few of us, unfortunately,
are able to act up to the assumption with any consistency.
Most of us are apt to hurry the stroke, to get av^ay our
hands in front of the club-head, so that, having addressed
the ball in orthodox fashion, we yet constantly hit it vnth
hands advanced as in the manner of Mr. Arnold Blyth’s
address.

This discrepancy between the stroke and the style of
address is probably very much more common than we
suppose, and probably an unsuspected source of many inaccu-
races. But it is a discrepancy scarcely to be seen in Mr.
Tait’s play. We know no golfer who, consciously or un-

,T Top of Dbive.

A POBTBAIT GALLBEY 149

consciously, seems more studiously to avoid the mistake and
all its fatal consequences, and probably by a fuller appreciation
of its evils, and a note of Mr. Tait’s * control,’ we too may
help ourselves to conquer the tendency, and may learn some-
thing of his patience.

Mb. J. OBAHAM

Again and again, in looking over this gallery of golfing
portraits, I have been struck by the utterly wrong notion
that I formed in my own mind with regard to the style of
swing of various golfers whom I had seen play and whom I
had played with many times and for many years. It was
rather an interesting discovery, though rather a humiliating
one, but there is the satisfaction of thinking that if it is possible
for oneself to be so mistaJten, it is not very much less possible
that others may be equally mistaken, and that so they may
find an equal interest in those mistakes. The meaning of all
which is, in the first place, that I have discovered Mr.
Graham’s swing to be a very, very great deal shorter in the
upv^ard stroke than I had imagined it to be. The photo-
graph does not lie. These photographs, I may be allowed to
mention, are taken at the rate of a 200th part of a second,
and it is not easy to deceive so quick an eye as this. Of
course the facial likenesses are not as striking as if the people
had stood for five minutes, with their necks in the stocks,
gazing into the camera ; but in that case the movements of
the swing would show more constraint. I only wish these
golfers had been cricketers as to their costume. Given a man
dressed all over in white, the problem of photography is re-
duced to elemental simplicity. In the meantime, however,
we must take what we can get, and the results — as the writeo:
may freely say, seeing that he is not the photographer — are
‘ no that bad.’

Mr. Graham’s swing, then, it is very apparent, is a very
short one, as far, at least, as the upward half of it goes*

150 GOLF AND GOLPEBS

There is only one other of the personages of this pictue
gallery who is content with so short an ap-lif t of the club.
That other is a very notable player, Mr. F. G. Tait, and he,
like Mr. Graham, is a long driver. It is said at Hoylake that
Mr. Graham is the longest driver on the course, and the
Hoylake people ought to know. The writer, for his part,
can but say that, following in the wake of a four-ball match
played just before the amateur championship meeting of
1898, in which the players were Mr. Tait and Mr. Graham
on the one side against Mr. Hilton and Mr. Ball on the
other, the driving of Mr. Tait, Mr. Ball, and Mr. Graham
was so singularly level that time after time a tablecloth
would almost have covered all the three balls after the tee
shot, while Mr. Hilton, then open champion, was just a little
behind. But one ought to watch players day after day and
week after week before giving a dogmatic verdict on their
relative driving. It is a point in which men differ from day
to day, the same man sometimes driving twenty yards further
throughout the one day than he did the day before, though
to all appearance hitting the ball no better and no worse. So
it is wiser to accept the secondhand opinion of those who
have seen more, and to acquiesce in their view that
Mr. Graham is the longest driver at Hoylake, where the
standard of driving is not set particularly low.

And yet, if he is the longest driver, he is probably the
shortest swinger of all the fbrst-class ones, on the up-stroke at
all events. An angle of forty-five degrees seems the limit
that his club reaches behind the head ; it seems as if it weie
necessary for us to revise the canons of the long-driving art,
since we see the things that are done by Mr. Tait and
Mr. Graham and the way in which they do them. It is to
be noted, too, as a remarkable point about Mr. Graham’s
style, that he has the ball unusually far back, just abont
opposite the right foot. In other respects his attitude is
extremely like that of Mr. Tait (q.v.), but in this particular
it is widely different. The ball, when Mr. Tait is proposing

A POBTBAIT GALLERY 161

to strike it, is nearly opposite the left foot. Also there is
this comparatiYe merit in Mr. Tait’s style, that his arms are
stradghter than Mr. Graham’s, the hands further away from
the body. He has also a freer movement of the left knee and
foot. On the whole we are bomid to admit a certain sugges-
tion of constraint about Mr. Graham’s attitude at the top of
the swing ; the best thing that we can say for it is that it
gives the notion of a very well-knit, concentrated action. We
can conceive that it would bring down the club very much
according to the desire of the striker, so far as the accuracy
of the club is concerned. What we should scarcely have fore-
seen is that it should put such power into the stroke.

The second illustration — ^that which shows the stroke at
the finish — gives us something of the explanation of this
power, but does not fully explain it. We see here that
Mr. Graham, taking into consideration the rather constrained
position that we caught him in at the top of the swing, has
swung out with a deal more freedom than that position could
have led us to expect. His arms have come round and back
again over his shoulder, they are less finely stretched out
than Mr. Tait’s at the finish, but the body has come well
forward for the follow-on ; the weight is thrown strongly on
the left leg, the right heel is raised and turned to help the
action. All this is good, but it does not fully explain the
secret of Mr. Graham’s power. That we may be able to find
explained in an account that he himself gives of his methods
rather than in anything that even the swiftest photographic
snap-shot can show us. He affirms that he tightens the
grip of the right hand as the club-head gets to the ball, and
puts in most of the force by that means.

It is impossible not to believe that this is a correct
account. It is true that there is no matter on this earth
about which men are more apt to deceive themselves than
this matter of the methods by which they achieve the ever-to-
be-desired end of hitting the golf -ball. Human methods with
the golf club seem even more elusive from the search of

162 GOLF AND QOLFERB

intarospection than human motives, so that by holding up the
glass to golfing nature, as we are doing by the exhibition of
this portrait gallery, we are really laying ourselves within
perilous hazard of libel action. Still, if the photographer caa
act as the god, to make folks see themselves as others aes
them, we are surely entitled to take full advantage of his
power, and put the dots upon the doubtful ‘ i’s.’

Mr. Graham, we believe, however, does not deceive him-
self one bit in thinking that he takes a good grip with his
right hand, and therewith hits the ball a good forceful blow as
the club-face comes to it. We do not see how else he is to do
it with his peculiar stand, and the ball so far back opposite the
right foot. If a man, with the ball so far back as this, is to
get properly behind it with his club, so as to hit it a strong
straightforward blow, it seems inevitable that he must do
most of the hitting with the right hand, with his weight
resting on the right leg at the moment of striking, and vidth
the hands far back at that moment, nearly opposite the right
thigh. This, according to our observation, is the method of
Mr. Graham’s driving, and this is also his method according
to the inference we should naturally draw from his position
at the top of the swing.

It is chiefly in private matches, so far, that Mr. Graham
has proved his worth as a golfer. In big competitions he
has not had any great luck — ^he is not yet old enough to have
taken part in many of them — ^and it needs a bit of luck to
win a big competition. But both Mr. Ball and Mr. Hilton
know him weU on the links of Hoylake, and neither claims
to be able to give him a single stroke. In the four-ball
match spoken of above Mr. Tait and Mr. Graham gave
Mr. Ball and Mr. Hilton a seriously heavy beating, both the
victors playing remarkably fine golf. But two days later
Mr. Graham, in the antepenultimate round of the amateur
championship, let himself be beaten, quite imnecessarily, by
Mr. F. G. Tait, neither playing up to the mark, and
Mr. Graham in particular missing some very short putts.

A POETBAIT QALLBEY 153

Two years before, at Sandwich, he worked his way into the
semi-final round of the same tournament; then he met
Mr. Hilton, and was beaten. So Mr. Graham has done well,
but his power gives him the right to expect to do better.
And no doubt he will do better. He is an especially fine
driver, hitting a nice low ball, but he is good all through,
with aU his clubs, and has an even temper and sound nerve
that ought to help him to make the most of his good gifts of
eye and muscle.

Mb. j. l. low

In the mind of a good many of us who have watched the
course of first-class golf during the last few years, the name
of Mr. Liow is associated with some very hard treatment.
Luck is supposed to come all even in the long run ; but in
that case there must be a very good time coming for Mr.
Low, to make up to him for past ill-usage. It is especially
in the amateur championship tournaments that he has been
so badly treated. Two years in succession have seen him
in the semi-final tie, and each of these years he has been
beaten, after a halved match, in spite of plajring distinctly
the better and steadier golf in the extra holes. In 1897, the
semi-finalist that put him out was Mr. Bobb — himself after-
wards beaten by the late Dr. Allan — and in 1898 Mr. Low
was defeated by the amateur champion of that year, Mr.
F. Gr. Tait. In each case the round of eighteen holes had
been halved. In Mr. Tait’s case it was only a prodigious
recovery at the sixteenth hole at Hoylake that enabled him
to get a half of the match ; and in both cases Mr. Low had
hard lines not to win on the extra holes. At the twentieth
hole he ‘ had Freddie a regular sitter,’ as the situation was
commonly expressed by the spectators, for Mr. Tait had to
hole a nasty six yard putt to tie ; and at the next hole Mr.
Tsdt drove out of bounds, and again it looked any odds on
Mr. Low, But again the former recovered brilliantly, and

154 GOLF AND GOLPEBS

Mr. Low, plajring the hole faultlessly, only halved it. At the
next hole Mr. Tait won. Against Mr. Bobh, in the final hole
of their match, Mr. Low drove a straight shot, Mr. Bobb
hit the wall — ^it was at Mnirfield. Bounding off the wall
the latter had a good lie whence he could reach the green,
while Mr. Low, in the middle of the course, lay in an iion-
skelp, and had to take his iron, with the result of loss of hole
and loss of championship.

Of course this matter of Mr. Low’s bad luck has an
historical and personal interest, but no more ; the interest in
finding out how he arriyed at so honourable a position as
semi-finalist two years in succession is more general. It is
a position that he gained by the combination of a variety of
good golfing gifts ; not the least useful being a light-hearted
and brave temperament, that is ignorant of * funk ‘ or nerves.
On the muscular side there is straightness and fair length of
driving and some accurate approach play to Mr. Liow’s
credit, but the factor that is biggest in making the sum of
Mr. Low’s success is undoubtedly his putting. He is so
good a putter that we cannot, for the moment, name a better,
and it is a point especially to be noted that he putts with a
wooden putter. This is a weapon that was universal for
the short game twenty years ago. One hardly ever sees the
club to-day ; we all putt with irons. Perhaps we putt better,
perhaps not. It seems easier to see the correct line off the
face of the iron putter ; the iron blade seems to give the
more definite base line on which to erect our imaginary
perpendicular than the wooden putter. But, for all that, it
is a significant fact that some of the very best putters are
those who stick to the old wooden weapons. About the value
of the wooden putter for running a long putt up to the hole
there can be no doubt ; we can all do that part of the
business better with wood than with iron. But it is the short
putts that bother most of us when we take the wood to them.
They do not bother Mr. Low, however, nor several of those
very excellent putters that .putt with the wood ; and if Mr.

A PORTEAIT GALLEBY 165

liow continues putting, and putting so well, with his wooden
patter, it is more than likely that he will produce a reaction,
and that we shall see the wooden putter winning its way
into favour again. In the meantime there are also very
maxty men — the amateur champion, Mr. F. G. Tait, notably —
who are uncommonly good with the iron putter ; so perhaps
there is more in the method than in the instrument.

And in the method as exhibited by Mr. Low there is some-
thing Yery noteworthy, and the more noteworthy because it is
exhibited by other fine putters with the wooden instrument also,
and this is that they all seem to draw the club very far back
away from the ball before striking, and to strike the ball a very
free blow. Another very good putter indeed, though he is not
a first-class player, who has this peculiarity is Mr. Linskill,
who did so very much to help the Cambridge University
Golf Club in the days of its infancy. A third was Jamie
Allan, who in his best day was as fine a player with all his
clubs as ever played golf. All these seemed to use the
wrists a great deal in the stroke with the wooden putter. In
Mr. Low’s putts, the ball seems to be hit so hard and freely
that it must inevitably go far beyond the hole, but though he
is as bold a putter as he is accurate, and always gives the ball
a chance, he seldom runs it out of holing ; indeed, no man
is better at that important detail of the game — flaying the
long putt dead.

There is a very good point about Mr. Low’s putting — ^that
he does not dwell very long on his aim. In every putt it
seems as if there was one psychological moment at which
we might be able to hole it — ^a moment in which we seem to
see the right line, and to have every confidence in our ability
to hole the putt. That is the condition of affairs when we
are putting well ; when hand and eye are working in happy
harmony. In other cases the psychological moment never
comes. We wait for it in vain. But perhaps to most of us
it comes sooner, rather than later, if it is to come at all, so
that waiting on is not likely to do much good. Generally it

156 GOLF AND GOLPBES

is the first sight of the line that is the useful one ; and if we
settle down too long over our putts, dreaming over them,
and, as it were, getting ‘broody’ over them, like a hen
inclined to sit, we are apt to overstay that psychological
moment, and never to chance on it again. Then we putt
feebly, without decision or purpose, and the end is despair.
Mr. Low never gives himself a chance of this. He does not
get ‘ broody ‘ over his putts. He studies the putt well from
behind the ball, and when he has satisfied himself of the
proper line from ball to hole he goes up to his putt, takes a
final glance at the hole, lays the putter to the ball and putts
quickly — ^and with deadly effect. Perhaps this quickness is
part of the secret of his success, but I expect that his good
nerve and good eye have more to do with it. At the same
time, if a man be inclined to be nervous, there is no doubt
that a continued dwelling over the putt gives time and
opportunity for all the demons of doubt and irresolution to
assail his soul — a review of the dreadful consequences of the
prospective miss looms large between his eye and the ball,
and obscures the clear view that the one should take of the
other ; and the shorter the time that can be given for these
nightmares to take shape the better. Therefore we believe
that there is wisdom in Mr. Low’s method, a wisdom that is
fully justified of all the progeny of well-played putts that
she produces. It is not while we are studjring the line from
ball to hole, or again from hole to ball — as Park so wishes
us to do — ^that these ghosts throng in upon us to frighten us.
All that is good business. We are wishing all the time to
find out the lie of the ground and the line of the putt — there
is then no spece in our fully occupied minds for the ghosts
to slip in. But it is after we have begun to address our-
selves to the ball and are standing over it that we begiu to
think of all manner of things in heaven and earth.

Why we sometimes delay so long before striking we
should often be puzzled to say. It is not that we are recon-
sidering the line, or the strength, or are occupied in any useful

*. C. E. Dick, at Top o

A POETRAIT QALLBBY 157

calculation. Bather it seems to be that we have fallen into
the habit of thinking that a decent interval must elapse
between our address to the ball and our striking of it — that
it is, as it were, disrespectful to the putt to play it without
standing in the attitude of address for the canonical length
of time. We cannot say why we delay so long; but
the effect, no doubt, is to make us miss many an easy putt.
The only consolation is in the reflection that it has probably
caused our opponents, in their natural exasperation at our
delays, to miss quite as many; but Mr. Low’s speedier
methods are the better ones, both for oneself and partner.

Mb. 0. E. DICK

As a general rule, in his remarks on the subjects of this
golfing picture gallery, the showman has found himself
obliged to confess surprise at finding the swings of some of
his golfers shorter than they had appeared to be. Andrew
Kirkaldy, however, is a notable instance of a player whose
club is shown to go back further than most of us would
have expected to see it go, and another striking instance
of a similar delusion is before us in this portrait of Mr. Dick
The writer, at all events, had always been under the impres-
sion that Mr. Dick had quite a short swing ; and yet — regard
it — ^longer by nearly a right angle than the swing of Mr.
Tait or Mr. Graham — that is to say, so far as the first half,
the upward stroke, of it is concerned !

Mr. Dick’s power as a golfer is perhaps best known on
the links of Hoylake, where he has played very consistently
for many years ; but later he has been playing a good deal at
Troon, and has there proved himself a worthy opponent even
for Willie Femie. He has been extraordinarily unfortunate
in competitions at Hoylake, being beaten for first place four
times in succession, as I beheve, by Mr. Hilton, and on each
occasion by a single stroke. It looks as if there was some-

158 GOLF AND GOLFERS

thing wrong in ibis — as if the scales of justice had become
jnst a little unhinged at the joint. Still Mr. Dick has done
quite well enough, both in these competitions and in private
matches, to leave the golfing world in no manner of doubt
about his power.

It is seen at once that Mr. Dick’s style is an unusual one.
In the upward stroke, with the club at the top of the swing —
where it appears, much to the writer’s surprise, to come down
below the horizontal line — Mr. Dick bends the right knee a
deal more than most of our first-class golfers, and perhaps just
a little more than any other of them. At the same time the
left knee also is allowed to come unusually far down, and the
left heel is very far up away from the ground. Withal, the
body has turned freely on the hips and the left shoulder has
come far down and round. None, in fact, of what we may
call the ‘ encouragements ‘ to a long swing are lacking in this
instance, and the conclusion of the matter is therefore that
we are rather at a loss to conceive how Mr. Dick’s swing can
ever have impressed us with the notion that it was a short
one. The explanation is again perhaps to be sought in
the second illustration, that shows us Mr. Dick’s attitude at the
finish of the stroke. It is an attitude that is easy, even to
nonchalance. The body has turned just slightly at the hips,
the right heel is well away from the ground, but the right
knee is bent —not straightened up to push the body forward
for the f oUow-on, as in many other cases — the right shoulder
has come round but a very httle, the arms are greatly bent.

In previous studies, as of Mr. Tait and Mr. Graham, we
were surprised by the shortness of the upward swing. Either
of these players we should have said to possess a long swing,
yet we find them both very much shorter on the up stroke
than Mr. Dick. It seems that in every case we have found
out the explanation of our mistakes by looking at the illus-
trations which showed these players at the end of their
respective strokes, and this consideration suggests a further
conclusion of a general nature, that we are almost com-

A POETEAIT GALLBEY 159

pelled to adopt — namely, that we derive our notions with

regard to the length of a golfer’s swing very much more

from what he does after he has stmck the ball than before he

has struck it, from the finish rather than the beginning of the

swing, from the follow-on rather than the up stroke. This is

the conclusion at which I am forced to arrive with regard

to my own judgment of different golfers’ swings ; and it has

come as a surprise to me. I think it not impossible that it

will come as a surprise to other golfers also. Hitherto I

had always supposed, when I said that such and such a

golfer’s swing was long, that I meant to say that he brought

the club a long way round his head and down behind his

back on the up stroke ; and that, I believe, is the sense in

which most golfers use the word * long ‘ of a swing. But by

the medium of these two hundred times quicker tha^

instantaneous photographs, it is revealed to me that the

impression of length is given very much more by the finish

th&m by the up stroke of the swing ; and altogether this golfing

swing has revealed itself as very much more a matter of the

finish than I had supposed that it would prove. It is a useful

conclusion to have reached, and the practical inference that

we should draw from it is that the more we shorten the first r

part, the up-stroke, of our swing perhaps the better, but the /

more we shorten the finish, the worse.

Ancl yet even thus far it does not do to be dogmatic. The
instance before us — the portrait of Mr. Dick — seems to show
a shortish finish.’ It does not’ give us .the impression of a
stroke carried out very far after the ball ; and yet it would
not be easy to name a steadier driver than Mr. Dick, or one
that gets a longer ball without much apparent effort. In the
quiet easy attitude of Mr. Dick’s finish there is indeed a
suggestion of that ease which is so admirable in his stroke^
but it is evident that we must not fall into the extreme error
of judging every swing by its finish only, or we should never
find in Mr. Dick’s style a suggestion of that power of long
driving that he possesses. He has a special f Skiulty of getting

160 GOLF AND GOLFERS

away a long low ball that rons far after the pitch — a style of
ball, it may be said, that is especially useful on the long flats
of Hoylake — and with his length he combines more than the
average of straightness.

Altogether, therefore, it is just a little difficult to find out
why Mr. Dick has not done more than he has done in big
competitions. He is capable of much. But the initial success
always seems to require a little luck to assist in its achieve-
ment; after the initial success the confidence thereby won
quickly leads to further success, and perhaps this little luck,
the initial success, has still to come to Mr. Dick. But he
has plenty of time before him and plenty of golfing ability.

Mb. JOHN BALL

The name of Mr. John Ball ought to be an inspiring one
to write about. Just at the moment of writing it appears that
he is not, for the time being, on his best game, but he has no
need to do more than he has done to fill perhaps the biggest
place in the golfing eye — even Mr. Hilton, twice open
champion, not excepted. Mr. Ball has been amateur
champion four times, and no other man has been amateur
champion more than twice. He has also won the open
championship, and though he has won it once only, while
Mr. Hilton has won it twice, he was the first of the amateun
to win it; the first to break the spell of professional in-
vincibility; the first to raise amateur golf to higher pre-
tensions.

For a great many years of his golfing career Mr. John
Ball was a disappointment — both to his friends and to him-
self. He played extraordinarily well at Hoylake, went
round in wonderful scores, beat any one that dared to play
liim ; but when he went away from this, his native heath, he
always failed to do himself anything like justice; so that
after a while it began to be said of him that he could not

A PORTRAIT GALLERY 161

play anywhere but at Hoylake, and a good many of the
Scotsncien were inclined to doubt whether he really were any-
thing like the player he was reputed to be. PoBsibly it was
Mr. Ball’s modesty that prevented him from doing better
abroad. It was a long while before he seemed to have a
belief and a confidence in himself. But when he came into
possession of his confidence he was a terrible player.

His first big match abroad, so far as I can remember, was
with Douglas Holland. It was a home and home ajffair — at
Elie and Hoylake. BoUand played as an amateur in those
days, and we in England had an idea that * Johnnie/ if he
played his game, could beat any amateur. Only we had
some small doubt of his playing his game. In the event he
got badly beaten. Perhaps he did not quite play up to the
mark, and certainly at Hoylake he was below his own best
mark. But then we did not know, in those days, what
BoUand was. Another thing that we did not know then was
what amateurs could do ; it was Mr. Ball that first taught us
that an amateur could win the open championship, and
when all that there was to tell us was that Mr. Ball had
been beaten in a home and home match by a comparatively
unknown Scottish amateur, we did not quite know what had
become of our golfing standards, or what to think of Mr. Ball
or what of BoUand. But aU that has been put more than
straight again since. Mr. BaU has much more than vindicated
aU the merit that we were prepared to ascribe to him, and
BoUand, though he never won the championship, was for a
long while regarded as the most formidable player on the face
of the earth. He has also acquired the fame of an enormous
driver.

Now in course of that match of which we have just
spoken, it is remarkable that there was nothing between the
two men in driving. ‘Both men drove like clockwork,’ is
the phrase that a Scotsman, an exceUent judge, used in
^ting to me about the match at Elie (or was it Leven ? — ^it
reaUy does not matter). The point that is interesting is that

162 GOLF AND GOLFBBS

in those days Mr. Ball was driving as far as BoUand.
Perhaps BoUand grew a little longer, later; but certainly
Mr. Ball has grown shorter. He is not an ont-of-the-way
long driver now, by any means. But he used to be ; he used
to have an enormous carry. It is true that his ordinary ball
never had on it much run. A low ball at the start, rising a
little at the iOnish, and falling dead, was the ball that was
characteristic of him — ^a beautiful ball to see driven up,
hole-high, to a green. Against the wind he could hit a long
low ball, with a bit of pull at the finish, that was wonderfully
paying ; but the other was his normal style of ball. Also be
would drive an enormous ball with a cleek, a club that I
believe he never uses now.

It is the present writer’s opinion that Mr. Ball’s driving
was the prettiest sight that golf had to give a man. I have
never seen a player whose hitting was such a pleasure to
watch, such a beautiful exhibition of grace and power,
showing such ability to concentrate in a moment, and on a
spot, all the muscular power that a human frame was master
of. It was a beautiful sight.

Every critic does not agree in this eulogy. There are
those who are so offended by Mr. Ball’s grip of his right
hand, reaching right away under the club-handle, that they
will allow no beauty at all in his style. It is a matter of
taste. Possibly Mr. Ball’s driving, as a thing of artistic
beauty, might be worthy of even higher praise if he did not
reach down, in his own manner, with his right hand. But,
taking it as it is, with all possible drawbacks, it commends
itself to most golfers, as to the writer, as the most perfect
exhibition of the drive ever seen.

A deal of this grace and power is suggested in the portraits
that excuse this notice. In the first illustration, showing
Mr. Ball at the top of his swing, it is impossible to find any
point at which there is the slightest appearance of constraint,
or the slightest evidence of effort more than is necessary ; nor
are there ‘ compensations ‘ in the swing, as we have seen in

I. John Bali, at Top of SwrNG.

–\

A POBTBAIT GALLEBT 163

the case of others, where one joint, by an extra effort, is
making up for a little idleness or lack of exertion on the part
of another. All, according to the writer’s judgment, is very
perfect — all, that is, except perhaps that we might like to
see the club less firmly gripped home in that right fist ; but
this, where the rest is so excellent, it is surely hypercritical to
notice. The swing of the club is neither too long nor too
short — ^nothing is exaggerated, nothing is defective. Almost
equally above criticism is the second illustration, of the finish
of the swing, showing the follow-on, with free movement of
the right foot and knee, good turn of the body at the hips,
and arms well stretched away from the body. One of the
most charming features of Mr. Ball’s style, when he was at
his best, was the perfect freedom with which he let his right
shoulder come away under and round ; and this was specially
to be seen when he was flogging the ball away, with cleek or
brassy, out of a cuppy lie. No player that the writer has seen
ever gave quite the same impression of having his ball under
control in the air as Mr. Ball gave. He was the master of
so many strokes, so many tours deforce. He could do things
that other people could not do. He could cut a ball up out
of a bad cuppy lie ; we could all do that, all of us that are
golfers at all, but we should play a downward, straight-
forward, cut or jerk stroke at it. Mr. Ball was not content
with that. He would cut the ball out, and away it would go
making for the right of the hole ; but then it would suddenly
catch sight of the putting green, or Mr. Ball would begin to
work on it after his manner, as if he had it like a Brennan
torpedo at the end of a wire ; it would begin to turn inwards,
towards the hole, announcing the astonishing fact that,
though he had cut it out of a hole, Mr. Ball had still been
able to put pull on it. How he did it goodness only knows
(for I do not believe for a moment that he knew), but it is
stark fact, and he was the only man that I ever saw that
could combine the pull with the jerk in this way, I believe
that his right shoulder, working so very well and freely

M 2

164 GOLF AND GOLFERS

under, gave him more power than most of us ; and then that
much-reviled grip of his, with the right hand away underneath,
may have had something to say to it, for this must be a
stroke that is engineered principally with the right hand.

Mr. Ball’s longest drive was got by means of this pull
at the finish. These pulled balls always have a deal of ran
. them, and it seemed to be in this way that Mr. Call
counteracted that tendency, characteristic of his normal
style, towards driving the low balls with a soaring finish,
that were so pretty to watch, so very useful for playing
boldly up to a green beyond a hazard, but which had the
disadvantage where sheer length was required of falling
very nearly dead.

We speak in the past tense of Mr. Ball’s achievements,
not at all because he is not capable of great things now,
but because the time of his greatest feats was some few
years back. 1890 was the year of his zenith, as regards
achieved success, for in that year he won the open champion-
ship, being the first of amateurs to do so, and in the same
year won the amateur championship also, a position of
double championship that no one else has held before or
since. But even so the writer would venture a doubt
whether the finest exhibition of golf was not given by
Mr. Ball a few years before this. He might not have
mastered the consistent steadiness that gave him the
campaigns of 1890, but he could do very brilliant — often
did possibly more brilliant — things. But the wonder is
rather, not that he should play less brilliantly than of old,
but that he should have played so brilliantly for so long.
And he has played brilliantly all this while in face of a con-
stant besetting weakness — a ‘tendency to miss short putts — a
tendency that he shared, singularly enough, with his first
great foe, Douglas BoUand. Nervousness on the putting
green has always been wasting away Mr. Ball’s extra-
ordinary powers in the longer game. If he could get Park
or Mr. Hilton or any one of the really good putters to do

Mr. John Ball, i

A POETBAIT GALLBEY 165

the work on the green for him, he would be without doubt
the finest player in the world, instead of only one among the
finest. His approaches he has always played well and
prettily, and at times has had a run of laying them so very
near the hole that he left himself not much putting to do.
Indeed, Mr. Laidlay, after a series of matches, somewhere
about 1890, with Mr. Ball, said that he had learnt never to
mind when ‘ Johnnie ‘ only put his approaches ‘ dead,’ he
was so thankful when they did not go ‘ in ‘ I A little
exaggerated, no doubt, but a significant exaggeration.

However, it is not his approaching, but his long game,
that is the real secret of Mr. Ball’s success. His finish of
the stroke seems to me to show much the same qualities that
we admired at the top of the swing — all is easy and sufficient
— ^nothing is exaggerated or strained. Heel of right foot is
well raised up, right knee slightly bent, body has come well
round at the hips, but still the slight backward turn of the
head seems to show that the eye has only just been raised
from the ground and from the spot that the ball occupied.
^And then there is the characteristic and extremely free
working of the shoulders, vdth the backbone as their pivot ;
and the hands are well thrown away from the body, arguing
a good follow-on.

At Hoylake one sees many pseudo-Johnnie Balls —
pious imitators who have done their best to form their style
on this magnificent model. Yet, singularly enough, none
of them seem to have come to great achievement. The
great golfers of a younger generation that Hoylake has
reared — Mr. Hilton, Mr. Graham, and the rest — do not seem
to have owed much to imitation of him. Their styles are all
individual, self-made. Perhaps it has to be that way with
genius — that it must grow on its own lines ; but for mere
humble talent, if any will be modest enough to claim for
himself no more than that, it cannot be amiss to do a little
study and imitation of these great originals.

166 GOLF AND GOLPBRS

Mb. HILTOM

The point in Mr. Hilton’s style that seems most worthy of
attention and imitation is the careful way in which he setUes
himself down to address the ball, so that in every stroke, feet,
hands, ball, and all shall be in the exactly correct positioii
relatively to each other and relatively to the line in which
he intends to send the ball. This at least appears to me to
be a distinguishing feature of his style, and one to which he
probably owes not a little of his wonderful success. Few
players, as it seems to me, pay an equal attention to this
important matter of getting the feet in exactly the right
position — ^right, that is to say, for them — when they wish to
dtive in a particular direction. You commonly see a player,
even one of the best, address himself to the ball with more or
less care, but v^th rather a casual glance towards the hole
before his stand is taken. After that is taken, you see him
sometimes bring his hands a little more forward or a little
more back in order to adjust the face of the club square to
the direction in which he wishes to send the ball. Yon will
seldom see Mr. Hilton do this. If he wishes to change tiie
direction of his aim — iOnding, after taking his stance, that it is
not quite what he wishes it to be — ^he at once changes that
stance. He does not change the position of his hands. The
consequence is that the stroke is repeated, time after time,
with unvarying accuracy by Mr. Hilton, with accuracy
I perhaps more unvarying than any one else has ever attained.

1 For this is the characteristic of his game — its perfect

i accuracy. It is not that he drives unusually far, or that be
‘ ‘ approaches and putts miraculously well, but that he is so
unvaryingly good at driving, approaching, and putting alike.
This it is that wins him his championships, and it is hard
not to think that this wonderful steadiness owes a great deal
to that most valuable habit that he has formed of adjusting
the direction of his stroke almost entirely by change of stance.

A POBTBATP GALLBBY 167

and scarcely at all by the more slipshod way that we so
easily fall into of altering the angle of the club’s face by
shifting onr hands forward or back. It may be that Mr. Hilton
18 not conscious of this characteristic of his game ; it may be
even that he would disclaim it — he will himself, in his own
chapter, be the best exponent of his own methods — but
certainly it is the characteristic that strikes an observer, and
I have purposely written this before seeing his chapter, so
that we may have the two points of view, that of the observer
and that of the player. It is certain that all of us have
methods and habits that we are not aware of, methods and
habits that perhaps contradict the very maxims by which we
believe our game to be guided ; and even to note these very
contradictions is sometimes useful and interesting.

Mr. Hilton’s address to the ball, with right foot rather
forward, and a relatively short swing back, does not give
promise of the very great power that he actually puts into
the stroke. The quiet way in which he draws back his club
from the ball is one of his greatest merits as an exponent of
golfing style. All the power is put in at the critical, the
useful, time — at the very moment when the club is coming
into contact with the ball ; and his finish, as shown in the
illustration, is very fine. He follows on after the ball
splendidly. Mr. Hilton’s driving is not unusually long, but
it is fully long enough, and only the ‘ slashers ‘ outdrive him
at all considerably. On the other hand, he has the advantage
of any of them, and of almost all the world, in consistent
straightness. And again, though his tee shot is not an
unusually long one, his second shot is, so far as I have been
able to reckon, as long as his tee shot — always, of course,
provided that the lie is a tolerable one — and this is as much as
to say of his second shot that it is unusually long. And this
tmusual length, again, is capable of explanation; it is an
effect of very accurate striking, and this not merely in the
sense that the club-head is going in the right direction when
it meets the ball, and that the ball is neither heeled nor toed,.

168

GOLF AND GOLFERS

but also that the ball is consistently hit at the right height
on the club’s face. This is a point that is very often neglected.
It does not have such an importance in the tee shot as in the
second shot, because when the ball is on a tee the tee of
itself lifts it to the right height on the face of a club. But so
many of us hit our second shots fairly, to all appearance, and
yet they do not go as far as they ought to go, and we are
rather at a loss to account for it. Observation of Mr. Hilton’s
game gives a good object-lesson that may teach us soniething
of the reason. His club-head always seems to get very well
down to the ball, so that the ball is struck fairly in the centre
of the face. There is no striking of the ball with the horn of
the club. That is really the common reason that second
shots, apparently well struck, do not fly as they should fly ;
they are hit on the horn. They rise in the air, perhaps, in
consequence of an underspin given to them by the downward
direction of the hit, but they have not the carrying power
that they would have had if the horn had nipped in below the
ball, and the ball been fairly struck by the good driving wood
or leather of the club’s face. Mr. Hilton seems to realise
very fully the value of this getting well down to the ball, and
also to be able to put it into practice with undeviating
certainty. Thanks to this faculty he is never at a loss wh^
a good carrying shot is wanted — ^he has no difficulty about
getting the ball well into the air.

But, after all, the most telling part of his game is his
approach play. He has a faculty of playing the ball straight
up to the hole, with cut on it, without any of that curve from
the right that is the common device of most of us when we
put on cut. Taylor has this faculty, too, and has described
very effectively his own methods in the chapter he has
written for this book. I am in hopes that Mr. Hilton will
let us into some of his secrets too, but that is not to say that
we can all hope to assimilate them. When he startled us all
by winning his first open championship at Muirfield, he was
said to have holed not one, but several, mashie shots. This

Mr. CHABLES HUTCHINOS

Mr. Charles Hutchings is a wonderful instance of the
success that it is possible for a man to achieve at golf though
he has not taken up the game until his school days are fairly

A POBTKAIT GALLERY 169

was marvellous work, and he has holed a great many since.
Se lias a stroke that is peculiarly his own, a low approach,
with slight puU on it, that is particularly useful against a
wind. And again he has a fine long approach stroke with /
his brassy. This is a most useful shot at certain distances,
but it is apt to be a snare to those who have not mastered it
perfectly, because of its hability to slice the ball and send it
boomerang-wise to the right. This is to be obviated by
especial care that the arms be sent well out after the ball, by
following through as straight as if the shot were a full one.

And when Mr. Hilton reaches the green his almost
mechanical accuracy is perhaps still more strongly in evidence
in his putting. Fewer strokes are thrown away by him on
the putting green, probably, than by any other living player.
He virtually never fails to lay the long putt dead, or hole the
short one, and for the holing of the short putt he believes j
himself to have discovered a secret which he generously gives p
the world — you must keep the body absolutely still. This is
his theory, it is also his practice, and as practised by him it
crowns the theory with perpetual success. Possibly it may
be of something like equal use to many others, but of putting
we are inclined to think that no better account has been
given than that which calls it an inspiration.

Seeing that Mr. Hilton himself is contributing what is
perhaps the most important chapter in this book, it does not
seem that it would make for edification to say more here
about his style, illustrated as it is by the accompanying
reproductions from photographs. He should be the ablest
exponent of his own most able methods.

170 GOLF AND GOLFERS

passed. Until Mr. Hntchings was thirty years of age we
believe we may say that virtually he never saw a golf dub.
Beginning thus late, but practising with great assiduity, he
has worked his way into the first class of playerB, and has
done several notable things in his golfimg career. Nothing
perhaps that he has ever done was more notable than the
manner in which he tackled Mr. F. G. Tait in the amateur
championship tournament of 1898. Both men played well,
and Mr. Hutchings’s putting was extraordinarily good. At the
end of the round the two were all even, and it was not till
the twentieth hole had been played that Mr. Hutchings
succumbed. This is wonderful going for a man who never
touched a golf club till he was over thirty years old. It can
nearly be matched. Mr. S. H. Fry, though he has played
not a quarter as long as Mr. Hutchings, began golf, not
indeed when he was over thirty, but when he was well over
twenty, and is a scarcely less formidable player. And these
two have this further in common, that is interesting to notice
— ^both are very good billiard players. Considering how little
attention Mr. Hutchings pays to billiards, he plays wonder-
fully, a hundred break being not at all beyond his powers ;
and Mr. Fry, playing the game more seriously, has brought
it to a much higher degree of perfection, and has held the
amateur billiard championship. These instances are far
from exhaustive of the connection that seems to hold between
good billiard playing and good golf playing. Mr. J. B.
Hutchison, Mr. W. H. Fowler — ^who used to be such a hard
hitter in the Somersetshire County Cricket team — and
many others are instances in point. It is not very difficult
to see features that golf has in common with billiards and
with a few other games. Billiards is one of the comparatively
few games at which the player strikes a ball at rest, though
there is this general and remarkable point of difference, that
whereas most players look at the object ball in billiards, it is
a primary maxim of golf that the player should keep his eye
fast on the ball he is striking. Yet even to the rule of

A POBTBAIT GALLEBY 171

keeping the eye on the object billiard ball there is a notable
exception in the person of Joseph Bennett, the player who
advertises himself, jnstly enough we believe, as the only living
man who has ever beaten Roberts for the championship.
Bennett inculcates, both by practice and precept, the method
of keeping the eye on the ball that the cue is to strike. Never-
theless, the object ball is probably the one at which ninety-
nine out of every hundred billiard players look when they
make the stroke.

And, over and above the great point that the ball in both
games is at rest when it is struck, there is this further
resemblance, that both games require great nicety of strength
and direction, and that the eye is trained in both to indicate
to the hand the strength with which the ball should be hit.
There are also subtler problems, connected with the influence
of spin on the travel of the ball, that are in some measure
common to the two games.

Of course all this is not to be taken as implying that
because Mr. Hutchings was a good billiard player when he
took up golf it was inevitable that he should become a good
golfer. It was very far from inevitable, and there are many
other factors that have gone to the making of his remarkable
success. That he should prove a good putter was perhaps
more than likely, but his singular success in the long game is
very largely to be attributed to the style that he has adopted,
and especially, perhaps, to the ease and quietness of that
style. It is possible enough, and it is not uncommon, to see
players who have learned golf as boys play first-class golf in
a style that is better to be described by some such epithet as
* slashing ‘ than by * easy ‘ or ‘ quiet ; ‘ but for a man to
achieve any success by such methods after his muscles have
set and he has passed his thirtieth year we can hardly think
to be conceivable. Many woo golf in this bold manner,
and many fail. It is the more patient, and the more con-
trolled, that succeed. There is a quiet manner, without any
deficiency of force, about Mr. Hutchings’s driving style that

172 GOIiF AND GOLFERS

is worthy of much attention, and probably of some imitation
by those who are taking up the game comparatively late in
life. Unfortunately, the second of our illustrations, showing
the player at the finish of his stroke, scarcdy does his style
justice. Something, very surely, has distracted his attention
just at the moment that his club was meeting the ball, and
he has glanced up an instant before he should. This is not
Mr. Hutchings’s way. If it was he would not be a fixst-dass
golfer. But, allowing this unwarrantable departure from the
paths of rectitude, the rest of the methods of his swing are
well shown.

There are one or two points about it that seem to imply
that it is not the style of a man whose golf was learned in
boyhood. At the top of the swing the left knee has been
bent forward a little, to allow the body to turn a little, just a
little ; but there is no turning whatever on the left toe — ^
turning which would have permitted so much freer a turn of
1 the body, and which we scarcely ever fail to notice in the
swings of those whose golf was learned in childhood.
Given this, that there has been no turning on the left toe, it
follows as an anatomical necessity that there is scarcely any
turn on the hips. The swing of the upper part of the body
— of the shoulders and the aims — is very much more orthodox,
and indeed the left shoulder has come round with remarkable
freedom considering the tied points lower down. Naturally
the club has not gone far round behind the head —
scarcely further than to an angle of forty-five degrees — but
we have already seen from many instances that a long back
swing is not a necessary condition of long driving.

Mr. Hutchings is a long driver. There are longer, but
among first-class players he well holds his own. And he
drives a low ball with plenty of travel on it when it reaches
the ground. The manner in which he gets this long ball is
shown for us better in the second illustration — that of the
finish of his swing — than in the first, although this second
is marred, in an unimportant detail, by the distraction of

Mn. Charles Hutchincs, ‘

A POBTEAIT GALLBBT 178

attention that has evidently occurred. But the picture shows
us faithfully enough the important and best features of Mr.
Hutchings’s finish, and especially that straightening of the
whole body on the left leg which is the most striking thing
about it. In the upward swing Mr. Hutchings had not let the
club’s swing be helped by any turn on the left toe ; but in the
downward swing — at the finish and follow-on — he has let the
movement be helped by a very free turn on the right foot,
the heel is right away up oiBf the ground, and the whole
action of the leg and foot has helped to carry the body
forward on to the left leg. And by this time we ought to have
come to the understanding that it is the second part of the
swing — ^the downward stroke, and the finish, after the ball is
struck — that is far the more important. The upward seems
to matter little, in comparison ; and therefore we can see in
the freedom of this finish the reason of Mr. Hutchings’s fine
driving, in spite of the constraint of some of the hinges in the
mechanism of the upward swing. It gives a fine character
to his stroke — ^this straightening of himself up, as he does, at
the end, on the left leg.

For the rest, in the way the club has come round,
and so on, there is not much to remark specially ; but what
is worthy of remark is that all the movements indicated in
these pictures are made so smoothly and so quietly ; without
any hurrymg, or jerk, or pressing. In carrying the stroke
forward Mr. Hutchings lets his body, and even his head,
come forward with it in a manner that is not altogether
orthodox, but which no doubt helps to give the stroke power,
and to get that long low ball that is characteristic of his
driving ; and now and again, when Mr. Hutchings is not at
his best, this carry-on of his body is apt to be a little too
quickly, almost jerkily, done. But it is not fair to criticise a
man by anything but his best work, and Mr. Hutchings’s
best work is second-best to that of no golfer in the world ;
and it is marvellous that he should have won the position he
has after so late a start in the race. Especially, perhaps, by

174 GOLF AND GOLEBBS

the learner of mature years should that upward swing of
Mr. Hutchings’s be studied, although it is the less perfect ; for
it shows very strikingly how much freedom is sacrificed by
not turning on the left toe. Mr. Hutchings fairly compen-
sates for this lack of freedom in the action of the lower
joints by the lissom turn of his shoulders; but all cannot
conunand these compensations, and the orthodox style is more
worthy of imitation.

BfB. H. G. B. ELLIS

The style of Mr. H. 6. B. Ellis is one that ought to be
worthy of some special study, for there is a special feature of
very great value in his execution — he is without exception
the straightest driver that the writer ever saw, and in the
opinion of most of those that know his game he is deemed
the straightest in the world. It is not very easy to discover
the secret of the straightness. Probably it came rather as a
divine gift than as the result of any deliberate study. We
aU try hard to drive straight — equally hard, it may be — ^but
we do not all meet with equal success. The really straight
driver is bom, not made.

Mr. Ellis’s swing is a very peculiar one ; it has more
peculiarities than appear in this picture of him at the top of
the swing; and yet sufficient are even here to be seen.
Notable among them is the direction in which the club*head
points — not downward, according to the practice and special
precept of Willie Femie, but outward, straight end-on to tiie
camera. This is very unusual, we might almost have said
very wrong ; but there is some other peculiarity about Mr.
Ellis’s swing which makes it all come quite right. No nian
brings his club through straighter, or sends the ball away
quite as straight. A good point to notice in this picture is
^e height that the player’s hands are raised above the head.
A strict horizontal seems to be the position that the club-
shaft takes behind the head.

Me. H. C. B. Ellis, at Top of Swinc.

A PORTBAIT GALLBKY 175

But there is a veiy remarkable feature about Mr. Ellis’s

upward swing that does not appear in this picture. It would

need positive genius, aided by a little luck, to reproduce it

properly by photography. There appears to be a joint in the

swing. It is not all done in a piece. It appears as if it were

done in two motions. This appearance is given by the curious

^way in which Mr. Ellis brings his club away from the ball

at first by the straightening of the arms only. He does not

gradually bend the left knee, rise on the left toe, turn on the

hip, as the club comes away. He waits, to begin these

movements, until his arms are at the furthest stretch. Then,

as the arms begin to turn up round the head, and as the left

shoulder comes round, then, and not till then, he helps or

follows the upward swing with these movements of foot,

knee, and hips. It has a most curious effect, but perhaps it

is all an aid to the wonderful straightness attained by Mr. Ellis

in his driving.

This straightness must mean only one thing — that his
club-head is moving very truly in the ball’s proposed line of
flight at the moment of impact. Straightness of driving,
we must surely think, depends very much more on this than
on the hitting of the ball in the centre of the club-face, for
we have to assume, in the case of first-class players playing
their game, that a very large majority of the balls are hit in
the centre of the face. And yet it is not too much to say
that a very large majority of these balls, so hit, diverge a
little one side or other of the actually correct line — a consider-
ably larger percentage show this slight divergence in the case
of most players than in the case of Mr. Ellis. The reason of
his superior straightness, it appears then, must be looked for
in the absolutely correct line of travel of his club-head at the
moment that it meets the ball.

It seems very possible that this wonderful correctness may
be helped by his habit of taking the club away from the ball
by the simple straightening of the arms before any of the
other joints and muscles of the body begin to take any active

176 GOLF AND GOLFERS

part in the upward swing. It has always been a maxim
that as the club ascends so is it likely to descend. It
is the old story : ‘ Ye’re takin’ the club up ower straight,’
says the professional adviser, meaning thereby that yon are
bringing it down too straight, and so implying that the my
to correct this too straight descent is to mend the too great
straightness of the ascent. And as a matter of fact a similar
series of movements, in reverse order, do actually show them-
selves in Mr. Ellis’s downward swing, and it is hard to think
that he does not owe much of his very correct driving to the
peculiarity of his upward swing which is reproduced in
the downward. To keep the arms at full stretch as long as
possible in the upward swing is a maxim that has been
emphasised by many golfing instructors. By none is it more
fully obeyed than by Mr. Ellis, and by none is the maxim of
the pedagogues more fully justified.

But such as are the peculiarities and the excellences of
Mr. Ellis’s upward swing, even they are less apparent than
the singular finish which the accompanying picture of him
at the end of the stroke illustrates so well. It is a finish that
is unlike any other that we seem to be familiar with. Of all
those that are shown in this picture gallery, perhaps the
finishes of Mr. Balfour-Melville and of Mr. Mure Fergusson
most nearly resemble it. But even these latter fine players
do not carry out the bringing of the arms away quite to the
same extent as Mr. Ellis. The club in this picture has not
come up round his he€Ml at all, but absolutely over his head,
so much so that we cannot say that at the finish it is more
towards the left side of the hecwi than towards the right. It
is absolutely straight above it. With such a finish as this it
is inevitable that Mr. Ellis must have thrown his arms veiy
far out after the ball. His body has turned so completely
round on the hips, aided by the movements of the right knee
and foot, that it is directly facing the line in which the ball
has flown, and the club, pointing directly backwards from
that line, has the end of the shaft directly indicating to the

A POBTBAIT GALLBBT 177

ball, as one might fancifully think, the line that it ought
to take.

And is it not possible that in this remarkable finish we
see the logical sequence of that very straight and correct line
of travel that the club-head took in leaving the ball, and
again followed, in the reverse direction, when it came down
to the ball ? Does it not seem that the arms went on, and
straightened themselves out again, after the ball was struck,
in the same manner and to the same remarkable extent that
they were straightened before ? It seems to me that we can
infer these excellent merits from the picture of the finish of
his stroke, and that we can observe them in actual practice
as we watch him drive.

I have dwelt at some length on the peculiarities of Mr.
EUis’s style, partly because it is so peculiar and interesting as
a curiosity, and partly because the peculiarities seem such
good ones to affect and, in due measure, to imitate. It can-
not be said too often that when one suggests imitation the
meaning is not that a man should discard the style that
serves him passably weU, and strive to construct a new system
for himself on the lines adopted by this or that excellent
player, but merely that he may do well to bear their excel-
lences in his mind, and to try to graft on his own style such a
measure of them as it can bear without strain. If he tries to
do more than this, the efiEect must be disastrous ; but if he
can be content with this, it seems strange if it may not be
beneficial.

Mr. Ellis is a young golfer who has not yet made the
mark that he ought to make, and that he will make, in big
competitions ; but by those who know his play no excuse
will be required for this mention of it. I believe that he has
equalled the records of the Sandwich and the Woking courses,
both records that have stood some severe tests. He is one of
the very best of the young school of university golfers. His
^ving is long, as well as wonderfully straight ; but it is not
on his driving only that he depends. He is good all through

178 GOLF AND GOLFERS

the piece, through the green, in the approach play, and on
the patting green. But the straightness of his driving is, and
probably will alwajrs be, his greatest merit and the chief
instroment of the successes that ought to lie before Imn.

Mb. LESLIE BALFOUB-lfELYILLB

Had ‘ the man in the street ‘ been asked, twenty years ago,
who was the finest amateur player in Scotland, there is very
Uttle doubt that he would have answered without hesitaticm
(alwajrs supposing that he had ever ‘ heard tell ‘ of the game
at all), Mr. Leslie Balfour. Since then Mr. Balfour has
taken the name of Melville in addition, but if he is no longa: the
man who would be named as the most capable representative
of amateur Scotch golf, he is certainly among the first half-
dozen. More than that, it is the opinion of all the best
judges that he is playing as well now as ever he did, uid he
has played with a very remarkable consistency all through
that long space of twenty years. With that he has all the
while been handicapped by a weak point in his game, which
is as much as to say that in certain parts of the game he is
extraordinarily good. It is quite certain that he has idv^ys
been an indifferent putter, and we believe that Mr. Balfour-
Melville would pardon us this criticism and would acquiesce
in it. It follows that either his long gcune or his approach
play must be just a little better than the ordinary first-class
standard. We cannot find any especial merit in his
approaching, though in this part of the game he is well up
to the first-class mark. It remains only to infer that his
remarkable excellence is in the driving — in the long game-
in his play from the tee and through the green.

Those who have played much with Mx. Balfour-Melville,
or have seen much of his game, cannot fail to find this
conclusion confirmed by their experience. The vsrriter has
played with many fine drivers, with the drivers of terrific

A PORTBAIT GALLBBY 179

length (they are apt to be a little wild), with the drivers of
exceptional straightness (they are often a little short), but
there is no opponent against whom he seems so often and
so continually to be playing the odd, after the tee shot, as
with Mr. Balfoor-Melville, for he is both long and straight.
“When he is driving weU, and he does not often fail to be
driving weU, there is an unusual power in his stroke, an
unusual length of sustained flight in the ball that, starting
as a rule rather low, continues its flight beyond expectation
and falls with such a trajectory as gives it a great length of
ran after touching the ground.

It is, perhaps, well to emphasise this, because the length
of Mr. Balfour-Melville’s driving — ^its constant length — ^is
not quite fully appreciated. And yet, in discussion of the
relative merits of golfers, criticism on his putting is common
enough ; but what is not common is to find the critics
realising the feature of his game, by which it is so powerful
in spite of the confessed defects of its short game. Mr.
Balfour-Melville is a magnificent driver, and the writer does
not know where to look for a better combination of the
far and the sure with all the long clubs. Neither does he
know a model which a beginner might more worthily
study.

Mr. Balfour-Melville’s is eminently a painstaking style.
It is a style that seems to be the result of hard work. We
seem to see him, as he addresses himself to the ball, settling
himself down as if with the conscious purpose of getting into
the position in which the club wiU come well through, and
the stroke be played with force and precision. All good
golfers, no doubt, go through this process, but with none of
them does it seem to be so consciously and deliberately done.
With others it seems more like an act of intuition, the
processes are not to be seen so plainly, and for this very
reason the style of Mr. Balfour-Melville seems specially to
lend itself to study.

Add to that that the style is in itself so good. The club

X 2

180 GOLF AND GOLFEBS

comes throngb so well and tnily. It follows on so straight
and far after the ball. It is so smooth and even thronghoui

Mr. BaUour-Melville’s is essentially the style of a strong
man, of a man possessing compact moscnlar strraigth. AD
the orthodox elements are to be seen in his upward swing.
The weight is thrown completely on the right 1^, the torn
of the body on the hips is sufficiently free, and aided by the
bend of the left knee and lift of the left heel. The left
shoulder has come well round. And besides all these, there
is rather a special merit, a merit which not a great many share,
that the hands are brought well away from the shoulder,
high above it at the top of the swing. This is a point of
excellence, because if the hands are in this position at the top
of the swing, it almost of necessity follows that they have
been kept well out from the body all the time, or, in other
words, that the upward swing has been long — describing a
wide circle. The club, it will be seen, has come just a little
below the horizontal line behind the head.

And if this feature — ^the keeping of the arms well out
from the body, so as to make the swing big, in the best sense —
is well shown in the illustration of Mr. Balfour-Melville at
the top of his swing, it is even yet more strongly in evidence
in the second illustration, of the finish of the swing. There
are, I think, only two other finishes in our picture gallery that
show the club finishing above the head, as in this case — ^those
of Mr. Mure Fergusson and of Mr. EUis, the latter of whom
perhaps carries this finish out to its fullest extreme. None,
however, show the club quite so high above the head, or the
hands quite so far away from the body. The inference is
that Mr. Balfour-Melville’s arms have been very greatly
extended throughout the whole swing, and I think tiiat in
this we may see part at least of the secret of his exceptionally
fine driving. All the rest of the action of the follow-on is
complete and perfect, if less striking. The body is facing the
direction of the ball’s flight, the right shoulder working under,
the body turning on the hips, the right knee and foot aiding

Mr. Leslie Balfour-

A POBTBAIT GALLEBT 181

the action, and perhaps a further rather exceptional aid to
a long follow-on is the slight bend of the left knee. It
is a very perfect style, and well worthy of some pious imi-
tation.

To give anjrthing like even the most meagre sketch of
“Mjc. Balfonr-MelYille’s trimnphant career as a golfer would
be quite impossible in the brief space of these notices. He
lias won medals of the Boyal and Ancient Club, of the
Prestwick Club, and of the honourable Company of Edinburgh
Grolf ers, innumerable ; and he has gone on adding to his list
of successes year after year with remarkable steadiness, not
“with any exceptional briUiancy at any one period, but with
xmyarying consistency. At St. Andrews, in 1896, he crowned
all his previous victories by winning the amateur champion-
sliip after three of the most severe matches that have ever
been witnessed, each of them finishing at the nineteenth hole,
and his opponent in the final heat being the redoubtable
Mr. John Ball.

Mr. Balf our-MelviUe may claim to be regarded as a link
between the older and the younger schools of golf. He played
golf as the equal, and later as more than the equal, of the
finest exponents of what has been called the * grand manner ‘
in golf — that manner which modem lack of manners has
suffered to decay. EUs opponents, in his younger years, for
the St. Andrews medals must have been such men as Sir
Bobert Hay, Gteorge Glennie, Admiral Maitland Dougall,
Colonel Boothby, Mr. Thomas Hodge, the chief illustrator of
the Badminton book on golf and equally excellent with golf
club and with pencil. In these ranks Mr. Balf our-Melville
appeared as a young but tremendously formidable recruit.
Then came the boom of southern golf — Mr. Arthur Moles-
worth, Mr. John Ball, and others presuming to contest Scottish
amateur pre-eminence in Scotland’s national game. For a
while Mr. Balfour-MelviUe appeared as Scotland’s chief
champion. And even now, though there are one or two that
might perhaps be chosen for this perilous post of honour

182 GOLF AND GOLFBBS

before him, he can still meet the very best of them on levd
terms and fully hold his own.

It is a remarkable fact that in the opinion of those who
have known Mr. Balfonr-Melville’s game longest and most
intimately, he became a stronger player, a better golfer — rose,
in fact, to the occasion — as soon as he fonnd himself in con-
tact with a new school of golfers, playing on different, and
sometimes on self-taught, methods. It is the part of genius to
rise to the occasion in this manner ; and yet the genius that
we see exhibited in Mr. Balf our-Melville’s game is essentially
in conformity with that definition of genius which styles it
‘ an infinite capacity for taking pains.’ Mr. Balfour-Melville’s
painstaking is infinite ; and the faculty never deserts him, no
matter what may be the condition of the match. He is
never too many holes up, or too many down, to be concen-
trated, with all his powers, on the particular stroke before
him. This, which is perhaps a mental habit rather than
anything else, is certainly worth study and imitation so far as
it is given to one to be able to imitate it. Few have his faculty
of concentration. It is a faculty that makes Mr. Balfour-
Melville very hard to beat. He is a nervous player, as it
would appear — it is scarcely possible to account in any other
way for the occasional marked weakness of his short play-
but he is a very determined player. Without great determi-
nation it could scarcely have been possible for him to win
his championship, as he did, gaining each of his last tiuee
matches at the nineteenth hole.

But the point that is specially to be noted is not ibe
exceptional brilliancy at any one time or in any one match
of his game, but rather the consistency with which he has
gone on playing very fine golf for so many years. And this
steady excellence of execution it is impossible to help
assigning to one principal reason — ^namely, the undeviating
excellence of his style. It seems to be the fact that, just as
ill-made horses can go well for a while, so can golfers with
singular and unorthodox styles play well for a while. But the

). Leslie Balfour-Melvill

A POBTBAIT OALLEBY 188

ill-made hoises do not wear well, they go amiss and break
down ; and the like calamities are apt to overtake the golfer
who plays in a style of aberrant genius. For a while all is
well with him, but he is liable to cruel lapses from his best
game, and his seasons of recovery are but brief. But the
golf^ Hhskt has made a really sound style his own is far
less liable to these disastrous lapses, and we may see, I
think, a striking instance of this general proposition in the
particular case of Mr. Balfour-Melville. . So lately as the
autumn of 1897, he finished first, and Mr. Mure Fergusson
second, for the Boyal and Ancient Club’s medal, scoring
a triumph for the veterans and for a really orthodox style
of golf.

Mb. R. T. BOOTHBT

This picture of Mr. B. T. Boothby at the end of his drive
is interesting, not only because it shows a characteristic feature
of the swing of so fine a driver and so good an all-round
player, but also because it is a grand illustration of what
we may call the ‘ magnificent ‘ style of finish. It is a finish
in which all the fine qualities are carried to the uttermost
extreme. It is impossible to conceive a finish in which the
club is brought further round, over the shoulder, or the body
allowed to follow on more freely, with the help of every joint
and muscle of the frame. And I have put it next to the
illustrations of Mr. Leslie Balfour-Melville, because it shows
how great a difference there can be in the styles of two
players both of the first class and both graduates in the
same school, though it is to be said, indeed, that Mr. Balfour-
Melville had taken his degree before Mr. Boothby was
anything but a freshman. But St. Andrews was the Alma
Mater of both, and it is not a little siagular that the results
of what was practically the same education should be so
different. In Mr. Balfour-Melville’s finish there is very
much more evidence of control. He might have swung

184 GOLF AND GOLFEBS

farther round, probably might have hit harder, had he so
wished. But there is none of this pmdent parsimony about
the swing of Mr. Boothby. We cannot doubt that he has
put every ounce of his by no means inconsiderable power
into the stroke, and the result is that he is a remarkably
fine driver — a driver of the magnificent school. It is also
to be said that this magnificent style of driving is scarcely
the style that it is wisest for the learner to adopt a^ his
model. It requires genius — that genius that is the outcome
of very early initiation into the ways of golf — ^to swing cor-
rectly with this perfect freedom. The ‘ control ‘ of Mr. Tait’s
and Mr. Balf our>Melville’s method is more to be commended
to the notice of a pupil ; and yet, if a man feel that his
swing is poor, tied up, and shortened, so that he is not getting
sufficient freedom in his follow-on, we cannot conceive a
better medicine for his cure than some attention paid to the
magnificent foUow-on of Mr. Boothby. As a model for
imitation it is to be eschewed, but as a suggestion for inspira-
tion it is to be welcomed and studied. The extreme bend
of the left knee, allowing the body to go on after the ball,
the almost exaggerated stretching of the right leg, and the
tremendous swing of the arms that has caused the club to be
carried so far round behind the head, are all corrective sugges-
tions to anything short or poor in the way of a finish.

Mr. Boothby is on both sides come from a family of
distinguished golfers, his father, the late Colonel Boothby,
having been a frequent winner of the Boyal and Ancient
Club’s medals before Mr. Balfour-Melville, Mr. Mure
Fergusson, Mr. Alexander Stuart, and others whom we may
look upon as the youngest pupils of the older school of golf,
came into the field to win them from the older men. On
the maternal side, his grandfather was the celebrated Mr.
George Condie, of Perth, of whom it was said that the reason
he won so very large a proportion of the matches he engaged
in was that he was always past the hole. An elder brother
of Mr. R. T. Boothby’s, the late Mr. Fitz Boothby, who died

A POBTBAIT 6ALLEBT 185

in the very prime of his youth, was a magnificent golfer too,
and in the characteristic features of his play not unlike his
younger brother.

It is noticeable in Mr. Boothby’s finish that he gets his
hands well away from his body, rather after the good example
of Mr. Balfour-Melville, but more round the head, and not
so much above it. It is impossible to doubt as one looks at
this finish that the ball has been hit a cruelly severe blow,
and it does not require a long experience of Mr. Boothby’s
power as an opponent in a match to confirm this inference.
In score play and in big competitions he has perhaps been
less successful than his power should warrant, but he has
plenty of time before him, in which there is little doubt that
he will justify his magnificent methods.

Mb. F. FAIELIB

Mr. Frank Fairlie is one of the very few among the
inventors of very many golfing inventions who have devised
a really new style of club that has absolute merits, and that
has achieved success simply by their virtue. I mean that
several very notable players have invented some slight and
inconsiderable departure from the accepted mode in golf
clubs, and have patented this, and sold it in some numbers ;
but this has been generally a sticcis d’estime, a success
depending on the fame of the pateiitee, rather than on the
merit of the thing patented. Mr. Frank Fairlie is a very
famous golfer ; but he is not famous enough for his name
to carry the weight of an invention that had not distinct
merits of its own. He has not won the open championship,
nor the amateur, though he is strong enough player to make
a good bid for the latter at any time, and has won com-
petitions of scarcely less importance. He had a great win,
for instance, at Sandwich, for the St. George’s Vase, when
all that was best in golfing England and Scotland was

186 GOLF AND GOLFERS

gathered together there, on the first occasion that the
amateur championship was played on that southern green.
His second round in that contest beat all previous competition
records for the course. In the same year he won many
another notable golfing triumph, and though he has perhaps
played equally well in other years, he has never achieved
quite the same share of success.

Therefore, not being a champion, or amateur champion,
or even an ex- of either of these, it had to be a good inv^Ltion
that could make his clubs famous. And it is good. The
blade — the face— of the iron clubs is set on in advance of the
* hose,’ as it is called (that is to say, the iron neck or socket
into which the wooden shaft fits). One great advantage of
this is obvious, obvious above all to the man that has a trick
of hitting his baUs with the pipe — ^the hose or neck— of the
club. It is impossible, with Mr. Fairlie’s clubs, to hit the
ball on the hose, because the hose is away back behind the
face, and only by hitting left-handed-wise could the ball be
struck with that part. So this is one fatal error — ^besetting
sin, indeed — of some golfers that Mr. Fairlie’s club has done
away. And then it has another advantage : that when the
ball is lying in a cup, the blade of a Fairlie iron or mashie
is the first thing, in the downward stroke, to cleave into that
cup, and so get in beneath the ball. But with the ordinary
mashie or iron, that little angle where the blade joins the
hose has to go down into the cup to the depth of an inch or
so, before the blade can come into contact with the ball at
all. Slight as this difference is, the loss is all to the discredit
of the ordinary club, as compared with Mr. Fairlie’s. And
a great point about Mr. Fairlie’s clubs as a patent invention
is that he plays with them himself. Singularly enough, it is
not always thus with patentees.

And his play with them is their best advertisement. The
writer has played with a good many golfers, of tolerable
calibre, and has suffered many severe beatings ; but he never
remembers to have been so out of heart with himself, so

A POBTRAIT GALLERY 187

demoralised by an opponent, and so altogether inclined to
say, once and for ever, of golf that it was ‘ a rotten game,’
as in course of certain matches that he played with Mr. Frank
Fairlie on the links of Nairn. Mr. Fairlie was in fine form
with all his clubs, but with his iron clubs — with these
quaint iron clubs that have the face right away in front of
the shaft — there was no holding him, he was irresistible, it
had ceased to be golf at all. From all distances — 150 yards
down to 15 — Mr. Fairlie was laying the ball, not only near
the hole, but stone dead. Li the language of Euclid, ‘ it was
absurd.’

There can be no doubt that these clubs of Mr. Fairlie’s,
apart from their merits for dealing with a cupped ball, make
the approaching work easier. Speaking of approaching
mashies generally, without any reference to Mr. Fairlie’s
clubs, Sayers once observed to the present writer that a big-
faced mashie was easier to play with than a small-faced,
because you did not need to be * so careful ‘ with it. What
he meant was that with a good big-faced thing you did not
require to take the same pains to guard against hitting on
the hose as with the small-faced, so that you had all the
more pains to spare for the line and the strength. Of course,
with a club of the build patented by Mr. Fairlie, where there
is virtually no hose at all for the ball to be struck with,
there is still more surplus of pains to be devoted to strength
and direction.

But this is not to be understood as giving the whole
accoxint of Mr. Fairlie’s wonderful approaching. Mercifully,
he is not always so deadly. Yet he is always a fine player
with all his clubs — fine driver, fine approacher, fine putter.
He has not been as assiduous as some in taking part in every
great competition that is going, but his average of success is
high; and quite lately, in the spring of 1898, he played
two matches with Taylor at Wimbledon, where Taylor is
at home, and halved both of them. This is great work.
Li partnership with his brother, Mr. W. E. Fairlie, the two

188 GOLF AND OOLFEBS

have won foniBomes against very strong conbinations, and
for a long while were able to say that they had never been
beaten. As a band of brothers, indeed, the Fairiies wonld
be bad to beat. There are Mr. Ogilvy Fairlie, late captain of
the Boyal and Ancient Club, Captain Henry Fairiie, who
plays chiefly in Jersey, and Mr. Reginald Fairlie — all fine
golfers. Their father— Colonel J. O. Fairlie of Coodham, hard
by Prestwick — was a noted golfer in the palmy days of ‘ Old
Tom ‘ Morris and of Allan Bobertson, so that the brothers
breathed in the love of golf in childhood.

In the illnstration that excuses this notice Mr. Frank Fairlie
is seen at the finish of a style of approach stroke which he has
made peculiarly his own. Most of us play onr approaches
with a slight carve in the air from the left to the right,
following tiie maxim of the late Mr. Greorge Glennie, * Alwajm
pitch your iron shots to the left of the hole.’ But Mr. Frank
Fairlie seems rather by preference to play his approaches
with a slight pull, maldng them come in at the fiiufih from
right to left. If this is not his normal manner of approach,
it can at least be safely said that he has the stroke always
at command when he wants it. It wonld be interesting, if
we could discover it, to see how this stroke is played, but its
methods are rather elusive, and Mr. Fairlie does not seem
very well able to explain them. He will show you the shot
in action over and over again, as often as you please, but
when you come to speak of the ‘ how,’ the way in which it
is done, that is another pair of shoes altogether.

But from the accompanying picture we get at all events
some little idea of it. You may look at this picture, and you
may compare it with the portrait of Mr. Pease that follows,
and which shows that player also at the end of a half iron
shot. There is a deal of difference between the two. But,
leaving other points of difference for the moment, you may
notice very particularly one thing, that Mr. Fairlie’s club is
pointing away out from his body, and much lower down
than Mr. Pease’s club ; and again, it is evident how this has

Mr. Frakk Fairiie, at Fjnish o

A PORTRAIT GALLERY 189

come to pass, for Mr. Fairlie’s arms are much lower down
and his hands much closer in to the hody than Mr. Pease’s.
Bnt, finally and most important, there is a great diflference in
the way the clnh is gripped. Mr. Fairlie’s right hand over
his left, pointing the cluh away to the left of him, seems to
be pointing out to the ball, as it were, the curve from right
to left that it is meant to take, and that it craelly often does
take, according to my own experience of the matter at Nairn.
Ciomparing the positions of the heads of the two clubs, too,
Mr. FairUe’s and Mr. Pease’s, after due allowance made for
the eccentric shape of Mr. Fairlie’s, it will be seen that the
Fairlie club is more turned over, its face more towards the
ground, than that of the other, although the latter has gone
so much further up. The stroke, the curve from right to
left at the finish, is accomplished, so far as I can make out
(though I have no idea how to put the stroke into practice),
by turning the wrists so that the knuckles of the right hand
come uppermost just at the moment that the ball is being
struck, and by bringing the club round the body rather than
up over the shoulder at the finish. And if this may sound
a very queer account of it, it wiU have to stand, for it is the
best that my ignorance is able to suggest. But there is a
chance of some more adequate explanation of it, for it is
a stroke that Mr. Hilton has in his bag, so perhaps in his
chapter he will let it out of the bag. It is a stroke, as it
seems to me, that is peculiarly useful for approaching against
the wind. It keeps the ball low as a rule, and yet does not
let it run far after pitching. When the wind is blowing from
the player’s left to right, across the line of approach, it is
especially useful, for if you then play with the ordinary curve
from the left it is very hard to know what will happen to
your ball, because, so, it will virtually be pitching and running
down wind. But if you can put on the curve from right to
left you will then be pitching the ball virtually against the
wind, and it does not need any very accomplished wizard to
tell you what a much easier problem that presents to you. So

190 GOLF AND GOLFERS

far as I have seen, only Mr. Fairlie and Mr. Hilton ate
perfect masters of this most asefnl mode of approach, the
former playing it with his patent weapons and the latter with
his ordinary mashie or irons. The latter past master can
also get the same effect on an approach stroke played with
his brassy.

The world would have heard a good deal more of Mr.
Frank Fairlie as a golfer if he had not happened to pass
several of the best years of his golfing life in Ceylon, where
he kept his game up, indeed, but could of course take no part
in competitions at home.

After saying so much in favour of the Fairlie iron clubs,
it might be expected that I shoxdd certainly use them and
recommend every one to do the same ; but I do neither. With
so many points in their favour it would be strange indeed if
they did not appear the best kind of iron club to put into a
beginner’s hands, and for him to continue using throughout
his golfing life. From his point of view they must be the
best clubs possible. But we are not all beginners, though all
of us now and then play as if we were, and for those who have
grown used to a certain kind of iron club — ^the ordinary kind —
it would be doubtful policy to change it for a strange species
of weapon. For all that, many a good golfer, besides
Mr. Fairlie himself, has made the change and seems the
better for it ; and more than one — J. Bowe, the professional
to the Ashdown Forest Club, is a striking instance — carries a
Fairlie driving mashie for forcing the ball out of a bad cup,
and yet plays the rest of the iron game with clubs of the
common kind. Whence it is evident enough that the use of
the one sort does not necessarily put out the hand and eye for
the successful use of the other.

THOMAS MOBBIS

It is time to close this portrait gallery with the likeness
of one of the most remarkable men — best of men and best of

T Top OF Swing.

A POBTBAIT GALLERY 191

golfers — that ever missed a short putt, Mr. Thomas Morris,
known to all the golfing world, and to many who are no
golfers, as ‘ Old Tom.’ He has heen written of as often as a
Prime Minister, he has been photographed as often as a
professional beauty, and yet he remains, through all the
advertisement, exactly the same, simple and kindly.

We may look at this picture of him that shows him at
the end of his swing, and may learn from it something of
the secret of that golfing skill that put him four times at the
head of the list in the play for the open championship —
namely, in 1861, 1862, 1864, and 1867 ; but what no study
of that or any other moment of the swing can show us is the
virtue by which he has become that which he is — ‘ Old Tom,’
to all the golfing world, of fame to equal Prime Ministers and
professional beauties. The virtue which has given him this
position — ^which he has certainly never sought, and does not
seem greatly to value — is, of course, moral and mental, not
muscular. It is not to say that if he had not had the physi-
cal gifts to make him four times champion, and had he not
perpetuated his golfing fame by the unique successes of
‘Young Tommy,’ his son, these gifts of temperament would
have been equally conspicuous. They might have remained
unobserved by the world, known only to those few who were
about him. But his successes in playing the game brought
him into a position where they were invaluable and where
they were truly valued.

From a * character sketch ‘ of * Old Tom’s ‘ life, supposed
to be from his own mouth, but really the work of that clever
writer and good golfer the late Mr. Patrick Alexander, and
by him given to Mr. Arthur Balfour for use in the Badminton
book on golf, I gather that ‘ Old Tom ‘ was bom at St.
Andrews on June 16, 1821. He was made apprentice to
Allan Bobertson as a ball-maker, at the age of eighteen, and
worked in his shop for eleven years. The mention of the
great name of this worthy, Allan Bobertson, at once suggests
some reflections and comparisons. It was an article of faith

192 GOLF AND GOLFEES

with many old golfers that Allan Bobertson was the best
player that had ever handled club, and equally, I think,
they would have deemed it impious to doubt that he was
better than any that ever would handle club in the future.
No less than this was their faith in him. Now Allan
Bobertson died in 1859. On that doleful day a contemporaiy
wrote : ‘ They may toll the bells and shut up the shops at
St. Andrews, for their greatest is gone.’ If ‘ Old Tom ‘ came
to Allan when he was eighteen and was with him eleven
years — that is to say, from 1839 to 1850 — ^it is an amazing
thing that the two should never have had a match together.
Yet such seems to have been the case. And ‘Old Tom,’
most modest of men, has more than hinted to the writer that
any reluctance to put their comparative merits to the test
was not on his side. It was not that great matches wore not
the * mode ‘ — ^they were eminently the * mode ‘ in those days
that preceded the institution of the championship. Thus, in
1843 C being then twenty-eight years old,’ as Mr. Everard
says, a chronology that does not agree with that of Mr.
Alexander, given above, but is perhaps more trustworthy),
Tom was playing a twenty-round match and winning it
handsomely against Willie Dunn. And six years later Tom
and Allan played a match on three greens — St. Andrews,
Musselburgh, and North Berwick — against the brothers Dunn,
and won the match after being four down and eight to play,
at which point, we are told, odds of twenty to one on the
Dunns were freely offered. The St. Andrews pair thus won
the stakes, 400Z., on the match, as well as the long odds.
These facts are worth noticing, if for nothing else, by way
of showing that ‘ Old Tom ‘ was one of the foremost figures
in the golfing world, and constantly playing matches, in the
time of Allan Bobertson’s prime, so that there was no
chronological difficulty about their meeting in single contest.
After all, if Allan was loth to put the matter to the issue, we
cannot blame him much — should rather applaud him, seeing
that he was a professional and not an amateur golfer. For

A POETRAIT GALLERY 193

it is evident that he had nothing to gain if he beat Tom.
As it was, the papers said ‘ their greatest was gone ‘ at his
death, and they conld not have said more in any case;
whereas, had he been beaten by Tom, they might have said
a deal less. So at that let us leave it ; but the fact remains
that if Allan was their greatest, it was a greatness that he
had never proved at Tom’s expense.

‘ I left Allan,’ says Tom in Mr. Alexander’s version of
his autobiography, ‘ to keep the green at Prestwick, and was
there fourteen years.* Then, three years after Allan’s death —
which would make it 1862 — he came to St. Andrews, and has
been there ever since. During the last years of his time at
Prestwick the Open Championship belt was given by the
Prestwick Club, and to Prestwick all the best professionals of
the day used to go yearly to play for it. Prestwick from
1860 to 1872 was the single green on which the champion-
ship was played. In the first year of its institution — that is
to say, in 1860 — Willie Park won, beating Tom by a single
stroke ; but Tom was the winner of both the next two years.
Then, in 1863, Park won again, and in 1864 again Tom.
Li 1865 the winner is a new man, Andrew Strath of St.
Andrews. In 1866 Park won his third and last victory, and
the following year, for the fourth time, Tom won. After
this for five years (in one of which there was no competition)
* Old Tom’s ‘ son, ‘ Young Tommy,’ entered on his wonderful
career of victory ; and by the time of his sad and premature
death * Old Tom ‘ was truly an old man. Much trouble had
been his portion, and new names begin to appear on the
championship roll.

And in the meantime, as we have seen, Tom had moved
to St. Andrews. His talents had marked him out for the
post left vacant by the death of Allan Bobertson ; and it
is in this post that his wonderful qualities have made them-
selves knovm and have endeared him to all that have been
associated with him. His unfailing courtesy, kindliness, tact,
and perfect temper have kept aU the various interests, that

194 GOLF AND G0LEEK8

are a little apt to run counter to each other at St. Andrews,
jogging along without friction. Town clubs, stadente’ dubs,
and Boyal and Ancient, all have done, like good boys, whftt
‘ Old Tom ‘ has told them to do all these years — ^has told them
with such a way of telling that they had not the least idea
they were being ordered about — ^Tom also not precisely under-
standing what sort of a tyrant he was; and so they have
all gone along together in friendly wise, as if shamed into
mutual friendliness by the perfect gentleness of the old man,
their common mentor.

Tom can play a good game still. Until siz or seven yesra
ago he could be relied on to play a first-class game ; and it is
only some three years ago that he ceased to take part in the
championship play. As for ‘ the way it was done,’ that may
be more or less seen from the portrait. Old maoi though he
is, his swing has not altered much within the writer’s remem-
brance. It is just as it used to be. He too, like one or two
others of the most perfect and most successful golfers that
we have referred to, has been guilty all his life of the amiable
weakness of missing short putts. In this connection there is
a good old story to be told ; but it is so old that, good as it is,
I shall forbear to retell it.

‘ A sound player throughout ‘ is the criticism that one would
be inclined to apply regarding Tom’s game, as I have known
it, in his later years — always with the exception of bis xmfor-
tunate weakness in the short putt. There is a great deal of
body swing about his driving stroke. It is rather a slow
swing, the kind of swing that permits a man to use rather a
supple club. Tom’s dubs are supple and flat in the lie, and
his swing is a flat one, rather of the ‘ auld wife cuttin’ hay ‘
style, according to Bob Martin’s description of his own fine
driving mcmner — generally sending the ball away with a fine
flat trajectory that gives it a good run. It is a style of drive
that I should have imagined more suited to the long flats of
St. Andrews than to the mountainous Prestwick, for Prest-
wick was always mountainous, even before the days of its

A POBTBAIT GALLBBY 196

extendon. Nevertheless it was at Prestwick that ‘ Old Tom ‘
learned a vast deal of his golf, and at Prestwick that he
earned his ^greatest golfing laurels. The fine body swing and
the fine timiag of the moment for letting that swing have its
fall effect, are the best qualities, as it seems to me, of his
style. He has a fine, half-ronning, half-lofted, approach
stroke with his iron which is very useful, perhaps especially
useful for approaching the St. Andrews putting greens,
which so oftcoi have a low bank before them. But yet, when
all is said, I believe that we must look for the secret of his
many and great successes less in any muscular adjustments
and methods than in that unruffled serenity of temper that
has made him both the man and the golfer that he is.

His figure has a special interest in this picture gallery.
Old Tom is perhaps the most remote point to which we can
cany back our genealogical inquiries into ‘ the golfing style,
so that we may virtually accept him as the common golfing
ancestor, who has stamped the features of his style most
distinctly on his descendants. ‘Young Tommy’ was his
son. It would be singular indeed if so gifted a son had not
taken some of his methods from so gifted a father, and on
the style of ‘ Young Tommy ‘ that of the younger generation
of St. Andrews players has been more or less consciously
modelled. Thence players have gone out, inspiration has
gone out, to all the golfing world in these days of the modem
* boom ‘ in golf, and the ultimate source of the inspiration, so
far as we can trace it, is revealed to us in the person of
‘ Old Tom.’

Mb. HORACE HTJTOHINSON

Yielding to the extremely injudicious advice of my pub-
lishers, I am giving two illustrations of the swing of Mr.
Horace Hutchinson. Two points seem worthy of some
little attention ; in the first place, the bend of the right
knee at the top of the swing. This is quite worth any

o 2

196 GOLF AND GOLFEBS

beginner’s study. It always seems to me that such bending
of the right knee must give an instability and inaccuracy to
the whole swing. Certainly, almost, it is a weak point
Compare the swing executed with this yielding knee with
the swing of those who have this knee-joint straightly
braced when the club is at its height.

The second feature in this swing that seems to me to
merit, though less pointedly, much reprobation is the inade-
quate turn of the body in course of the follow-on after the
ball has been struck. The actual follow-on, with arms Bad
body, is fairly well executed, but the turn of the body is
checked, and freedom lost, by the fact that, though the heel
of the right foot has come away from the ground, there has
been no turning on the toe of that foot.

It is perhaps as useful in a portrait gallery to have
illustrations of what is to be avoided as of what is worthy of
imitation ; and by way of some partial excuse for the swing
that these two pictures show us it may be pleaded that it
was acquired before people had begun to write these in-
valuable books which now teach us all to swing so gracefuUy
and with such accurate results.

In addition to the foregoing portraits, I have ventured to
give a reproduction from a photograph of a silver figure,
modelled by myself, of a golfer at the top of the swing. It
is not any exalted opinion of this figure as an artistic pro-
duction that induces me to give it this publicity, but merely
a wish to show what seems to me the ideal of the golfing
swing. If I were making this model at the present time (it
was made some four years ago), the only alteration I should
make in it would be to lift the right elbow rather higher.
At the time that I made it, it so happened that I was getting
rather badly ‘ heckled ‘ for the advice given in the Badminton
book to keep this elbow high, and I yielded to that clamour
so far as to depress the elbow in my ideal golfer. But now,
since the study of the swings that I have made in course of
collecting this gallery, I find the elevated position of the

A PORTRAIT QALLEBY 197

elbow supported by so many of the brightest examples— as,
far instance, by Mr. Edward Blackwell (the incarnated ideal
of Mr. Everard) — that I find myself returning to something
like my old opinion about it, and that opinion on the golfing
swing in general is given, for the little that it may be worth,
in the accompanying portrait of the silver man.

Beside this I would put the picture of an old medal,
shovnng what an artificer of an older day — of the days when
men played golf in bushy whiskers — ^thought about the
golfing swing. The elbow is elevated here to a torture, but
I have a suspicion that the worker merely cojpied his design
from an old handbook of golf. At all events the picture of
the medal, which is from a die many decades old, gives a
notion of the ideal swing according to older judgments. The
comparison is interesting, and may possibly be useful.

The other medal, of which a picture is also given, is a
much more modem affair, being one of those given to the
two defeated semi-finalists in the amateur championship
tournament. In this it is seen that the right elbow is so far
depressed that, though its exact position is not easy to make
out, it could be safely said that the artificer did not deem the
elbow above the height of the hand to be the ideal at which
he should aim.

LADT MABGABET SCOTT

I think we may regard Lady Margaret Scott (I propose to
speak of the lady under the title by which she won her
remarkable series of victories — she is now Lady Margaret
Hamilton Bussell) as the greatest champion in golf that we
have ever had in Great Britain. In Great Britain, one should
say advisedly, for in America another lady has been equally
pre-eminent, winning the ‘Women’s Championship’ (as,
with a pleasant homeliness and simphcity , they style it) of the
United States each year of its institution. Lady Margaret
Scott began to compete for our ladies’ championship in the

Lady Maraaret Scott, i

A POETRAIT GALLERY 199

when the Misses Orr came on the field of the championship.
The writer had the pleasure of playing with the Misses Orr at
the time that Lady Margaret Scott was champion, and at that
time it was his opinion that, had they met, Lady Margaret
Scott would have had the better of the battle, thongh by a
very small margin. But it is generally understood that the
Misses Orr (one speaks of them in the plural because, though
one was first and the other second in the championship
meeting at Gullane, yet these positions might as likely as not
be reversed at their next meeting) have improved their game
more than a little in the last two or three years, and would
at least have been able to give Lady Margaret Scott a very
hard fight for first honours. Unfortunately, such a meeting
is not at all likely to take place, for the latter lady appears to
have left the championship list, entirely and for ever, with a
record absolutely undefeated.

It is a wonderful position, and these illustrations give
some remote idea of the manner in which it was achieved.
It is on illustrations No. I. and 11. that the studious atten-
tion should be bestowed. The third is introduced only as an
example of the eccentricities in which genius now ani again
indulges itself, and also to put it in comparison with the
style of the late young Hugh Eirkaldy, of whom Lady
Margaret Scott was in some measure a pupil. There is this
of similarity, that while young Hugh’s is about the longest
svnng behind the back that we ever saw achieved by any
male golfer, this eccentric example of Lady Margaret Scott’s
style is an illustration of the greater suppleness of the
feminine figure, the club coming round without extraordinary
effort further than a man would be able to get it without risk
of dislocating something. Not the least notable point of the
performance is that the lady, as we see, has easily accom-
plished this terrific length of back swing almost entirely by
the turn of the body and shoulders, the left foot has hardly
come away from the ground at all ; whereas, in young Hugh
Kirkaldy’s swing — ^though he was remarkably supple, and

aOO GOLF AND GOLFEBS

the swing is remarkably long — ^he has only been able to
achieve his comparatively far less long swing by bringing
the left heel right away off the ground and letting the left
knee ‘ knuckle in ‘ very far. It is wonderful, too, how
the lady, without an effort, is keeping her eye fixedly oa tbe
ball.

This tour de forcSy however, is an object for our wonder
and admiration — scarcely, even for the youngest and moBt
supple of us, should it be an object of our imitation. Such
an object, worthy of all study. Lady Margaret’s style per-
fectly affords in the illustrations numbered I. and 11.
No. I. is singularly like the style of young Hugh, I
think, and it is not easy to pay it a higher meed of praise.
For all that was dashing, fearless, and fascinating, I know
no style to beat, scarcely one to equal, that of poor young
Hugh. If it erred at all, indeed, it was on the side of being
too dashing, too fearless. And yet, no one could put the long
shots close up beside the hole more accurately than he — ^this
was a part of his fearlessness. And just the same dashing
qualities we may trace iu these illustrations of the thrice
champion lady. The left foot, as noticed before, is not taken
so far from the ground as is Hugh Kirkaldy’s ; but this was
not needful, for the club has come as far round and down as
his — ^fully far enough. The grip of the hand, you may see,
is strong and determined — there is no faint-hearted work of
light-fingering the club here. It seems to be gripped well
home in the palm of both hands, after the manner of one
who has no fears of not being able to bring the stroke well
through, and get the f oUow-on, if the club be thus held. It is
something like the full-fisted grip of Mr. John Ball himself.
And certainly, when we look at the picture of the finish of
the stroke, it appears that there was not the slightest reason
for any lack of confidence about the follow-on. The stroke
has been well enough carried through ; it is not possible to
doubt that. The club has gone right back again over the
shoulder, so that we should say that the club-h^id had come

:- 1

A POBTBAIT GALLEBY 201

▼ery nearly to the exact point it had reached at the highest
of the swing, haying described, as nearly as might be. a com-
plete circle. The same supple swing, that could bring the
club down behind the back so far and with so little effort
before the stroke, has been of fully equal value in carrying
the stroke well through after the ball was struck.

And though the ball has been struck away, there is a
great point to be noticed — the lady is still looking at the
place where it lately was. In spite of the thoroughness of
the f oUow-on, allowing the club-head to describe its completed
circle, this length of follow has not been allowed to carry off
the eyes from their steadfast gaze at the ball, and at the spot
it lately occupied. There is no prospecting of a dubious
event; the event is made a certainty, and the study of its
results has to follow.

For my own part I can scarcely see a point to criticise in
Lady Margaret Scott’s style. It appears to me as good as
one could ideally make it. But for all that, it is not quite
the style that one would recommend a tiro to imitate, unless
that tiro happened to be of quite childish years, in which case
it would probably do its imitating unconsciously. For those
of riper years the style, though fascinating, is like that of the
late young Hugh Eirkaldy, on which we might almost fancy
it modelled, too dashing, too unrestrained, for safe imitation.
We want something a little slower (for, for us, that wiU
mean surer) in our examples. But certainly this is a picture
that it will do us good to study now and again — at those
times when we feel ourselves too fast bound up in rules and
traditional rheumatism. If we want an encouragement to
let ourselves go, and have a good free swing at the ball, /or
pleasure, let us have a glance at this style of Lady Margaret
Scott or young Hugh Kirkaldy, and it will be impossible to
play the next stroke in a cramped style. Whether we shall
hit the baU is another — ^perhaps a minor — matter.

The great pull that Lady Margaret seemed to have over
almost all her competitors in the ladies’ championships lay

202 GOLF AND GOLFEBS

in her power of getting the ball well away with the second
shot. She could pick the ball off an indifferent, nnsym-
pathetic lie with a brassy certainly better than any other lady
I have ever had the luck to see. Others might drive from the
tee equally well ; it was in the play through the green that she
beat them. Her iron play was good, but not remarkably bo,
and if her game had a weak point it was in the putting. But
then, as ‘ Old Tom ‘ remarked in this very connection, not
without a sly twinkle of personal significance in his eye,
• every really good golfer putts badly.’

To this maxim I would add a rider, namely, that it is
quite possible to putt badly without being a good golfer.

MIB8 AMY PA8G0E

The best possible pen portrait of Miss Amy Pascoeasagolfer
is that which is unconsciously supplied by the lady herself in
the chapter on ladies’ golf that she has been kind enough to
write for this book. It shows several things about ladies’
golf ; firstly, the earnest — ^very earnest, so earnest as now and
again to raise a smile — spirit in which they have learned to
approach the game. They treat it with all that respectful
deference that is the ideal attitude of the golfer of the old
school, now nearly defunct, and yet that school would have
raised eyes of holy horror at the very notion of ladies playing
on the long links at aU. That they should be permitted only
to score was a great concession to make to persons of such
levity of manner and volubility of tongue. Such was the
conception of the old-world golfer, and it seems a curious irony
of fate that those who are now upholding his traditions are
the very ones towards whom his point of view was so intolerant.
A second point that cannot fail to strike us in the paper con-
tributed by Miss Pascoe is the great value that ladies put on the
matches played in teams ; and the third point is the subordi-
nation of all the chief events in the ladies’ golfing year to the

1 Top of Swing.

A POBTRAIT GALLERY 203

central anthority of the Ladies’ Grolfing Union. I think that
we of the inferior sex may take a good deal of suggestion from
these three points. It is possible, of coarse, to overdo the
earnestness and * solemnity/ as the old Scotsman phrased it,
of the game ; but it is even more possible and certainly more
frequent to err on the other extreme of treating it with too

great levity, as if it were a game of bnt perhaps it is

better not to specify. And certainly it is a good feature of
the ladies’ attitude towards the game that they put such store
on the team matches. This is a healthier tendency than
the undue value that we are so prone to give to competitions,
and the team match has this advantage over disconnected
singles and foursomes, that it alleviates the individualism that
is apt to make golf a very selfish game, the only argument
against its superlative excellence that carries with it any
weight. Finally, the manner in which the central authority
of the Ladies’ Golfing Union regulates aU the principal
matters that are of general interest to golf -playing ladies is
worthy not only of our admiration but our envy. Long have
we, hampered by long-grown custom, sighed for some such
authority, and eventually have but evoked some unsubstantial
phantom of it.

There once was a time when even persons of more
modem ideas than the old-world golfer used to hold just his
views on the matter of golfing ladies. That, the general view
of male golfers, has become entirely changed, yet without in-
consistency, for the change has been in the lady golfer herself.
Formerly she was endowed with most of the qualities that
the old-world golfer found to condemn in her — voluble at the
wrong moment, with no intelligent appreciation of the game,
or, if appreciative at aU, of its putting strokes merely. Now
she has changed aU that, as we have seen. Li her apprecia-
tion of the qualities necessary for good golf and her power
of concentration on the game she is equal to the best
golfer among men ; the length of her drives, the fashion of
her approach, and the finesse of her putting have put her

9M GOLF AND 60LFEBS

into sach a position as to enable her to say to many a male
golfer who respects his own game most highly : * Do you
tell me ladies onght not to play on the long links ? I will
challenge you to a match/ And she is capable of enforcing
her arguments most drastically by beating him. Thereafter
there can surely be nothing more to say by way of criticism.
She has established her full right to play on the long links on
equal terms with men.

The wonder is that she does not insist on this right more
often ; and it is really the highest evidence of the modesty
with which she bears the consciousness of the position she
has won for herself that she does not strive to thrust herself
into competitions hitherto restricted to men, or take part in
their matches unless at a special invitation. We have never
yet seen a lady entering her name for the amateur or the
open championship, though we know of no rule by which
she is excluded, and though we do know ladies who would
have a better chance of gaining either championship than
some of those male golfers that have entered for them.

After so much, by way of preface, in r^ard to lady
golfers as a class, let us consider for a moment Miss
Pascoe’s special merits as its representative. Her victory in
the championship was won over the long course at Hoylake,
though it is only just to say that the tees had been brought
forward so as to make the holes a good deal shorter than the
lengths at which they stand for the masculine championships
and for the medal meetings of the Boyal Liverpool Grolf Club.
Until the year of Miss Pascoe’s victory the ladies’ champion-
ship had seemed to rest under a spell, Lady Margaret Scott
had been three times victorious — champion in each of three
years of the institution of the tournament. But this year
Lady Margaret Scott had retired from the contest, satisfied
with her laurels, and has never since taken a part in it. It
is not too much to say that the immense prestige which this
lady had thus gained, in addition to her splendid golfing
power, made it very difiGicult for any other lady to attempt

A* PORTRAIT GALLERY 206

competition with her. Her previous victories had accumu-
lated a force of moral effect, and she had all the skill by
which they had been won to maintain it. With her retire-
ment the field seemed again open. There was no one player
on whom the others need look with any emotions of awe.
The competitors now met on equal terms. At Hoylake
inmiense galleries, composed of the people of Liverpool and
all the surrounding populous country, came to watch the
play, and it seemed as if the rather unusual spectacle of a
ladies’ tournament proved specially attractive to them.
Ladies, as a rule, have not the same opportunities that the
best male players find of hardening their nerves, by custom,
to the natural effect of being the cynosure of so many critical
eyes. Miss Pascoe’s championship, therefore, was won no
less by dogged resolution and firm nerve than by actual skill
in golf. Not that this latter was lacking to her, but that
where several were nearly on a par in this quality, the balance
was in all probability turned by those qualities that we may
perhaps caU mental and moral.

But in any case Miss Pascoe’s execution, as is seen plainly
enough in the illustrations, requires no great additional
advantages to bring her golf into the highest class. The
style is almost above criticism, remarkably orthodox. She
has nothing like the length of swing of Lady Margaret
Scott (to speak of that lady still by the maiden name under
which she won her championships) ; but we have discussed
that swing elsewhere, and have scarcely been able to find any
advantage gained by that extreme length. Miss Pascoe’s is
long enough, fully, according to our standards, and compares
not ill with that style of Mr. Edward Blackwell which
Mr. Everard pronounced the * ideal of orthodoxy.* We see
the same characteristic high lift of the right elbow at the top
of the swing, a feature so typical of the older-fashioned
golfer. The body has turned easily on the hips, the left heel
coming well away from the ground, the grip of the hands
according to all the maxims of the teachers.

906 GOLF AND OOLFBBS

CHAPTER VI

OOIiF IN THB UNITED STATES
By J. H. Whigham

The main difference between golf in America and golf in
England is that one is artificial and the other is natniaL
The climate and soil of the United States are snch that they
do not admit of the perfect natoral conrses which abound
aronnd the coast of England and Scotland. In a few places
like Long Island and the coast of New Jersey there is some-
thing approaching to the sandy belt which has been left by
the receding seas on the shores of Great Britain, but even
there the long summer droughts leave the grass thin and
wiry, so that the rolling turf of St. Andrews is practically
unknown. This great and essential obstacle has not, how-
ever, prevented the growth of the game in America. The
national characteristics of energy and enterprise have, after a
few years, solved the difficulty in no unsatis&bctory manner.
It is nearly ten years since the game was first thought of and
played on this side of the Atlantic. But the real development
of golf belongs to the last half-decade, and looking at it from
that point of view the growth of the sport in America and
the extraordinary ingenuity by which nearly every short-
coming has been conquered are most remarkable. The
consequence is that a sort of golf has been developed here
which is practically unknown either in England or Scotland.
In the older countries the player has to choose between
a journey to the seaside and a very indifferent field for his
favourite pursuit. With all the good will in the world, it is

GOLF IN THE UNITED STATES 907

impoflsible to assert that there is any inland course, either
in England or Scotland, which in any way approaches the
links of Sandwich or St. Andrews.

In America, on the other hand, courses have been built
up in the last few years which, although inferior in a few
respects to the genuine seaside courses, do afford not only an
enjoyable game, but a real test of golfing ability.

This consummation has not been reached without a vast
expense of money and a great deal of mental and physical
labour. It was a long time before the real idea of the game
could be instilled into the minds of those who had the charge of
the various courses in the east of America. In nearly every
case the holes were exactly the wrong distance apart, the
hazards were badly placed, the putting greens were either
extremely bad or far too small, and anything from a stone
quarry to a pigeon trap was considered a legitimate feature
of a good course.

It is not so long ago that a writer, of no mean ability as
a penman, described in glowing terms the sporting qualities
of links in which ploughed fields, railway tracks, and wooden
pavilions added new elements of interest to the old Scotch
game.

It is indeed extraordinary that with the large percentage
of Scottish business men throughout America there should
not have been a wider-spread knowledge of the true require-
ments of a national pastime. It remained, however, for one
or two men like Mr. C. B. Macdonald, of the Chicago Golf
Club, and Mr. John Beed, of the St. Andrews Club at
Yonkers, to appeal again and again to the intelligence of
American devotees in favour of courses laid out with some
knowledge of what golf links ought to be. The efforts of a
few men like these — combined with the growing impetus which
has been given to the game by its universal popularity, both
among older men and among college undergraduates — have
at last succeeded in producing what is essentially a good
American golf links. Even to-day there are very few such

SB GOLF AXD GOLFERS

czoisesof dwnornuddgfateenlMJeB. But there aie oertaiiily
o£je cr two in the east, and two in the neighbooriiood of
Chica€^3, which, as &r as length, ^Qctmg qnalitieB, and good
orcii^DQ go. wc>Gld compaxe Toy bkyoaaiAj with some of
the best of the seaside comaes of Gieat Britain.

One misses^ no doobt, the keen salt air of St. Andrews
or Frestwick, the sea hrecges, and the beantifal seascapes of
the Firth and Gyde ; bat, ozone and natoral beaaty apart,
ther allow ample scope for good and enjoyable gcXL

Bnt here comes in the qfnestJcn of expense. It is not too
mach to say that before a good eighteen hole coarse has been
seemed, pat into fiist-rate condition, and ornamented with a
suitable chib-hoase, a som approaching a hmidied thousand
dollars most first hare been spent It nrast be remembered
that tor a golf dab to be saoceasfal in a commercial coontiy
like America it most be situated within easy reach of a big
city. In other words, the two hundred acres required for
the purpose will cost a good round sum in purehase-money.

If posiUe, and admitting always that the purchasing
committee knows what it is about, the land thus procured
^-^”^^ ^ a piece of open pasture land with good turf and no
Unfortunately that is not always the case ; whether it
is because open pasture land is not easily available, or because
would-be golfers have a lingering love for forest scenery.
There is one case at least — ^that of Morristown in New York,
vhich is now a championship course — ^where many acres of
woodland had to be ruthlessly rooted up, ploughed and sown,
before the necessary eighteen holes could be laid out. And
in the earlier days of golf in America such cases were not rare.
The crame was taken up tentatively, with a slight feeling of
suspicion, so that men investing in property for the purpose
had alwavs an eye to its real estate value, which might at a
future date be realisable by cutting the land up into building
lots should the popularity of golf be on the wane. For
building lots in desirable suburbs trees were of course essen-
tial, and that is one of the reasons why so many courses all

GOLF IN THE UNITED STATES 209

over the country were studded with picturesque trees and
gioupB of wood which added greatly to the beauty of the
landscape, but were certainly of no real advantage to the
developinent of the game.

Now, however, that golf has come to stay, as we say in
America, these objectionable features have been in great
part removed at the expense of many misgivings and much
sorrow. Patches of primaeval forest have given way to
smooth turf and an open course.

The cost of purchase is only the beginning of the many
expenses which must be incurred before a golf club is upon
a firm basis. First and foremost, a large well-appointed
club-house must be fitted out with all the modem con-
veniences of a first-class hotel. This is necessary for two
reasons. In the first place it entices men of money who
care little about games and a great deal about their personal
comfort, but whose purses are a very solid consideration in
dealing with so expensive a pastime. In a few months they
will probably be far keener about their customary 18-holes
than the quality of their dinner, but in the meantime they
must be propitiated and brought into the fold.

In the second place, golf without the help of the fairer sex
never will be successful in America. Women make up a very
large portion of the golfing community, and not only must their
needs be amply cared for, but their presence must in every
way be sought for and encouraged. Herein the contrast
between a Scotch and an American golf club is too obvious
to require further emphasis. Moreover, in nine cases out of
ten your club is not confined to the pursuit of golf alone,
but is a ‘ Country Club ‘ for the purpose of furthering the
advancement of all out-of-door games, and it is not at all
uncommon for golf, tennis, polo, and many lesser games to
be played side by side on the grounds of the various ‘ Coimtry
Clubs ‘ of America.

Then come the laying out of your ground, the providing
of a complete water system, the building of bunkers, and

210 GOLF AND GOLFBBS

provision for the np-keep of your course — ^whichy owing to
the climatic conditions, is a very large item in the yeady
expense. On inland courses there is no such thing hardly as
a ‘ natural hazard/ with the exception of a brook or pond of
water. Hedges, trees, marshes, stone quarries, and other
obstacles which do duty upon the inland courses of Great
Britain, and used to answ^ the same purpose in this country,
are gradually being eliminated, because it is generaUy agreed
that these are not proper features of a real golf links. And
since they are not proper features, and, as is generally the
case, money is no object, they are removed, in favour of the
regulation sand bunker. Even long grass on the course is
usually tabooed on the best links, because, although it may
be a useful and legitimate hazard, the thick growth which
comes in sununer upon a good soil is so certain to lead to
innvAmerable lost balls that other means of pimishment have
to be resorted to.

The great difficulty in making bunkers on inland courses
lies in the enormous cost of making them large enough and
keeping them filled with sand. There are also minor
objections in the shape of their inartistic appearance and
their capacity for holding water. The two latter objections
are not so hard to overcome. By a little care in construction
a bunker can be made, if not a thing of beauty, at least an
inoffensive hole in the ground. The water difficulty can
only be removed by a thorough system of drainage, and that
has been generally resorted to by this time.

As for the size, it is of course mainly a matter of expense,
and if you can once persuade the executive conunittee of your
club that a small bunker is of little or no use whatever the
money can generally be procured. The fact remains that
there is hardly a course in the country ‘as yet whose artificial
bunkers are large enough to do away with a constant
element of luck. Green committees seem to find it very
difficult to harden their hearts and use the spade. Experience
proves that a bunker which is intended to stop a hard-hit

GOLF IN THE UNITED STATES 211

ball must be at least forty feet wide and two feet deep.
Then it should have a raised face on the farther side. When
it is considered that some thirty or forty of such bunkers
stretching across the course in various shapes and directions
have to be constructed on every inland links which lays
claim to first-class honours, it will be seen that the permanent
improvements which have to be embarked upon, even after
your land is bought, are of no small importance. You will
be fortunate, too, if you have not to lay and turf the majority
of your putting greens. The natural sod of the rich pasture
land, either on the New Jersey uplands or Western prairies,
does well enough for brassy play through the green, but is
far too coarse to admit of accurate putting. Indeed, it is
only after many years of hard labour that you can make long
grass approximate the fine velvety quality of the seaside
article. Still, with good care and constant seeding, good
putting greens are not difficult of attainment ; but water is
most of all necessary.

West of the Alleghanys, and in most cases on the eastern
slopes, the rain in summer is so scarce that an elaborate
system of water pipes must put every putting green beyond
the reach of drought. The Chicago Gk)lf Club, for instance,
has a system by which a hundred thousand gallons can be
put upon the course every day — that is to say, half an inch
per diem on each putting green. And now that water
systems for golf courses have been, after many experiments,
brought to a state of perfection, there is no reason why the
whole course, with the exception of the bunkers, should not
be watered at least twice a week in summer. In some cases
where there is a clay soil and the sun is apt to make the
ground hard until it cracks, such a scheme will have to
be cairied out. This water system for putting greens has, 7
believe, been applied with the best results to the once threadbare
turf of St. Andrews, and if it is beneficial on Scotch courses,
where even in sunmier rain is usually plentiful, much more
is it essential to courses in this country.

313 GOLF AND GOLFEBS

With plenty of water and good drainage it is not diffictdt,
provided yonr soil is of a reasonable quality » to get perfect
lies thronghout the green in a short space of time ; but
to guard against the rigours of the winter and spring,
when the severe frost of the Northern States breaks up the
ground and spoils the best turf, it is often necessary, or at
least beneficial, to protect your whole course, as far as possible,
with a thick covering of straw. And here the advantage of
the combined country club sj^tem comes in, for where th^re
is a polo stable it is not difficult to get all the straw that is
required at the end of the season.

In the early spring the grass, especially in its younger
years, must be rolled over its entire length with a heavy
horse or steam roller. Steam rollers have been used with
good results, as this system obviates damage done to the turf
and wet ground by the horses’ hoofs.

As the smnmer advances, the growth of the grass will
every season get beyond the control of any number of sheep.
And indeed sheep have been generally discarded as being
more nuisance than they are worth on American courses.
This means that the whole ground must be cut on an average
twice a week by means of close-cropping mowing machines,
a task which in itself means a good deal of labour for hatBe
and man. Altogether, you will be fortunate if, after all your
permanent improvements have been made, you can keep your
course in proper condition for less than five or six hundred
dollars a month.

It would not be necessary to go into all these details of
ways and means if the expenses of the game did not con-
stitute a determining factor in the history of golf in Ammca.
Lr* ving ihSiAe^ the consideration that the ready way in which
moirtJT-.is sp “^^n A hands by men starting clubs in the
vicinity of our bij^-c ^ € proves the zeal and enthusiasm with
which the rise of golf in America has been attained, there
has been up to the present time this rather unfc^rtunate
result. In order to play golf it has been necessary to join a

GOLF IN THE UNITED STATES 213

club, and golf clubs are very expensive amusements. For that
reason golf hitherto, so far from being, as it is in England and
Scotland, ‘the poor man’s game,’ has actually become the
privilege of the well-to-do. The natural consequence has
been that for several years it was always regarded as
more of a society fad than a real form of athletics. In
this respect America has not been altogether unlike England
It was not so long ago that the pastime of Northern
Britain was dismissed contemptuously by the Southerner with
such epithets as ‘ Scotch croquet/ ‘ the old man’s game,’
and so on, but the case against golf was even stronger in this
democratic country, where anything belonging exclusively
to the richer classes is regarded with mistrust. In the last
year or two, however, the aspect of things has changed
considerably. The game has got into the colleges, and is
now at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton regarded as a legitimate
branch of athletics. In fact, it bids fair to rival the older
sports in popularity. If that becomes the case the future of
any game is assured. Next to a schoolboy, the college under-
graduate is the most conservative being in the world. It is
only ten years ago that the few Oxford men who struggled
painfully around the swamps of Cowley Marsh in dead of
winter were looked upon with the utmost contempt by
cricketers, football players, and rowing men. Since then the
prejudice has been overcome, but the universities were the
last places in England to be affected by the golfing boom.

So it has been in Am.erica. The older men, possibly on
account of their years and their inability to play baseball and
football, took kindly to the milder pursuit, and it has only
been more recently that Harvard and Yale undergraduates
have come to the front in the tournaments of the year, ‘^he
change was first marked at the amater ;hpr- ‘onship r^eet-
ing held at Chicago in 1897, when Mr ossiter Betts, a Yale
undergraduate, worked his way into the finals, defeating an
ex-champion in the person of Mr. C. B. Macdonald. That
was the beginning of the gigantic development which has

214 GOLF AND GOLFEBS

been brought about in college golf. And now that college
are taming out year by year a whole host of golfing men into
the country, it is perfectly safe to assert that the game which
only a short time ago was hardly alluded to in the press
except for the sake of sarcastic comment will in a short
time become one of the most important of national pastimes.

Already golf has reyolutionised the whole life of business
men in America, and the term ‘ business men ‘ includes nine-
tenths of adult males capable of playing any game at all. It
must be remembered that in America when a man leaves
college he is almost cut off from any kind of athletic
exercise. If for a few years he keeps up his football or
baseball, it is done with much difficulty and some danger to
life and limb. It is almost impossible in the midst of the
great rush for the spoil to find time in which to keep up train-
ing for the severer forms of athletics. In any case a football
career ought not to extend very much beyond the age of
twenty-five. As for baseball, even though it were possible
for a man who spends his eight hours a day in his down-
town office, the fact that it has got so much now-a-days into
the hands of professionals has robbed it of most of its
interest for amateurs after they leave college. Lawn tennis
has never been very popular in America, and for some
reason or other does not seem to fill the whole requirements
as the sole form of exercise. Hunting is rare, and shooting
in many cases entails a long trip. Polo has its devotees,
but for obvious reasons it can never be a game for the many.
It requires too many conditions. It is not unnatural,
therefore, that when golf, after a year or two of desperate
struggles, was forced upon the notice of the American
public, it was very soon hailed with delight by all those who
craved some rational form of exercise and had hitherto been
unable to find it.

Barring the fact that the ground it should be played
upon was difficult to acquire, it seemed to fill the blank in
the ordinary life of the American citizen. It can be played

GOLF IN THE UNITED STATES 215

by men of all ages ; it can be enjoyed by good players and
bad alike ; above all, it can be brought within easy reach
of the down-town office, bnt not so close that it does not
give the tired business man a chance to get into the country,
breathe an ampler air, and forget, in the vagaries of his first
endeavours, the worries which form a constant element of
business life in this country. At first the difficulties of
securing a good course were hardly recognised, and therefore
little fdt. The first enthusiast who introduced the game
into the West laid out a course with a Badminton book in
one hand and clubs of extraordinary pattern in the other,,
over the tree-studded lawns which top the blufis of Lake
Michigan. Other beginnings were just as insignificant. It
was a curious game for sane men to indulge in, but it
gradually led to better things, and soon, with the help of
Scotchmen, some notions of the real sport were inculcated in
the minds of the enthusiastic, and although a year or two
ago the condition of golf courses in this country seemed
almost hopeless, it must be admitted in looking back over the
three years’ experience that the development has been
extraordinarily rapid.

At this point it might be well to say just a word in
tribute to the endeavours of one or two men who are
responsible for this speedy growth.

Gtolf was really crystallised in America in the early months
of the year 1895. A National Golf Association was formed
under the presidency of the late Mr. Theodore Havermeyer^
whose memory is kept green in the minds of every golfer
and every sportsman in America. He had as Yice-Presidenti^
Mr. Lawrence Curtis and Mr. G. B. Macdonald. It is to the
latter that the greatest credit must be given in accounting
for the way in which the game has improved within the last
few years. Not only is Mr. Macdonald a fine player — he
learned his game as a boy on the links of St. Andrews — but
he has always been imbued with a keen sense of the best
points of the game and the most sportsmanlike methods of

216 GOLF AND GOLFBBS

playing it, and for some time he was really the only man in
America who was capable of laying out a comae as it ought
to be made. As late as 1897, when the championship meet-
ing went to Chicago, the construction of the Wheaton
course, for which Mr. Macdonald is responsible, was a
revelation to many of the players who had journeyed from
the east to take part in the competition. The result has
been most beneficial upon the golf courses all over the
country, and it is quite certain we shall never again have
a national tournament held over a course which is not, at
least, a fair test of golf.

The other members of that small comnciittee w^e
Mr. Parish, treasurer, Mr. H. 0. Tallmadge, secretary.

It is not necessary here to go into the arguments for
and against a ruling body to control a national game. Theie
can be no doubt, at any rate, such a ruling body is in keep-
ing with American institutions, even though at times its
actions may be autocratic. By some happy chance the
choice of the executive committee, which lay with the repre-
sentatives of all the golf clubs in the Association, feU upon
men who had an extraordinary aptitude for the task bef(»re
them. It would have been very natural for American
golfers, with their inventive faculties and youthful expe-
rience, to branch away from the older traditions of the
ganie as played in Scotland. It is due to the rulings of
the executive committee, and especially to the influence of the
late Mr. Theodore Havermeyer, that such a falling away
was prevented, and the result is that the rules under which
the game is played are at the present moment, in spite of all
objections to the code, precisely the same as those that
govern players on the links of St. Andrews. But in the
proper development of the game the American Association
has not been backward. In interpreting the somewhat
obscure St. Andrews code, the work of Mr. Lawrence
Curtis and Mr. Macdonald has met with universal approval,
both in America and in Great Britain. In this way great

GOLF IN THE UNITED STATES 217

service has been done to all golfers by clearing away a
number of ambiguous points which were constantly leading
to aJl sorts of disputes.

A word also might be said in reference to the conditions
under which the contest for the amateur championship of
the United States is held. These conditions, which have
been gradually evolved, seem to provide a better test than
any means yet employed anywhere else. The weeding-out
process, by which players have to compete for the right of
qualification, while it gets the field down to the reasonable
limit of thirty-two, gives, however, a chance to every golfer
who has a claim to recognition. After that each round of
match play consists of thirty-six holes, which eliminates, as
far as possible, the element of luck which is apt to creep in
when only eighteen holes are played. Moreover, the system
requires a certain exceUence, not only in match playing but
also in score playing, which, after all, is a proper department
of the game.

Up to the present time the championship honours of the
year have always fallen to players who have learnt their
game in Scotland, and this applies both to the open and to
the amateur events ; but the reign of the Scotch player is
likely to be of very short duration now that the game has
become popular in the colleges of the country.

Every year the contest becomes more open, and although
we have as yet few players who can compete on even terms
with the best professionals in the country, the time is not far
distant when some of the younger exponents may rival the
performances of Mr. Hilton and Mr. John Ball in England
by carrying off the open championship.

For a certain time it seemed as if a new style in golf was
likely to be developed in America by men belonging to the
baseball contingent who learnt the game later in life ; but
they answered very nearly to the converted cricketers of
England. They play for the most part with a short, some-
times only a half, swing, and depend for success upon getting

218 GOLF AND GOLPEBS

the entire weight of the body into the stroke at the right
moment. Among such players the best are, perhaps, Mr. J. A.
Tyng, Mr. A. H. Fenn, Mr. Herbert Harriman, and Mr. H.
Toler. It will be seen, however, that these players do not
really represent a new class, but one which is likely to grow
up in any country where men of athletic ability take to the
game after their muscles are set. There is very little difTe-
lence, for instance, between the style of Mr. Harriman and
that of Mr. E. Buckland. This style, however, is not at all
likely to supersede the more orthodox methods of the St.
Andrews professionals, who, after all, dominate the field in
this country. It is from the Scotch professionals that college
boys learn their game, and in all outward appearance thej
could not be distinguished by their style from players on the
links of St. Andrews. So that as far as the playing of the
game itself is concerned, there does not seem to be as yet any
definite divergence from the development as it goes on across
the water.

Lastly, in considering the ethical side of golf in America
there is this to be said, that in a country where the professional
element is apt to creep into amateur athletics and spoil them
for all future use, golf has been up to now, and presumably
always will be, free from such a taint. Not that there is any
intention to cast a slur upon professional athletics. Amateur
and professional athletics should go on side by side in perfect
amity ; but when the line of demarcation is blurred, and semi-
professionalism creeps into sport, results are apt to be dis-
astrous. At first there seemed to be a want of understanding
of the true spirit of the game in this country, leading to a
club rivalry which ought never to exist at all ; for wherever
you get club rivalry an element of semi-professionalism is
apt to enter sooner or later.

The executive committee of the United States Grolf Asso-
ciation has done excellently well in refusing to deal officially
in any way with team matches between rival clubs, and as
long as such team matches are not officially recognised and

GOLF IN THE UNITED STATES 219

cannot give rise to leagues or challenge cups or other elements
which lead to malice and hatred, they may be enjoyed as an
excellent form of social amusement, although they have very
little to do with the real game of golf.

The team match question thus being put aside, there is
no reason why golf should not flourish into the far future as
the cleanest of amateur sports in this country. The tourna-
ment craze and the love of pot-hunting is a necessary
nuisance, and it must be confessed a rather enjoyable one,
which is essential to the game in its early stages. But these
early stages are already passed, and golf is already recognised
as one of the best forms of athletics for men of all ages in
the United States. It is no longer a fad ; it has become an
institution.

We are able to illustrate this interesting chapter of
Mr. Whigham’s on the rise of American golf by three photo-
graphs of himself taken in the act of playing one of those
skilful short approach strokes by which chiefly he considers
that he has attained his success. It is scarcely necessary to
remind golfers that in 1897-8 — ^that is to say, at the date of
his writing the chapter which sets before us so clearly the
differences between American golf and golf in Great Britain,
the difficulties with which golf in the States had to contend,
and the imperial manner in which that democratic people
conquered their difficulties — ^at that date Mr. Whigham held
the amateur championship of the States. In that same year
broke out the war in Cuba, and thither Mr. Whigham went
as special correspondent. He passed through some notable
adventures ; it was even rumoured at one time that he had
been taken prisoner by the Spaniards, aad some discussion
forthwith arose as to the ransom that should be paid for an
amateur champion golfer. It was proposed that he should
be valued and exchanged at the rate of a general officer. In
any case he returned in safety, and the photographs, which
we are able to reproduce, were taken of him at Key West ;

230 GOLF AND GOLFBBS

but though sound of limb he had contracted malarial fever,
which we believe was telling on him not a little at the time
of the last amateur championship in America, which was won
by Mr. Findlay Douglas. We may say this without a shadow
of reflection on the golfing merits of the present amateur
champion, who, we believe, won entirely on his merits.

Mr. Whigham’s chapter notices the very natural foot that
the championship of the States has never yet been won by a
native American, though he prophesies that the youth of
America will soon assert itself when it has passed another
year or two of apprenticeship at the old Scotch game. In
the meantime, America has produced some sterling good
native golfers, and probably none better than Mr. James
Tyng, to whom Mr. Whigham refers, and whose style we
are able to reproduce through the courtesy of the editor of
the United States magazine named ‘Golf,’ which devotes
itself exclusively to the game. Mr. Tyng, as Mr. Whigham
says, is a golfer who picked up the game after his muscles
were set or had been exercised in other athletic games, and
his style has all the characteristics of a manner so acquired.
In the illustration that shows Mr. Tyng at the moment of his
address to the ball, the muscles of the forearm stand out
with a prominence that shows the power that even a very
short swing executed by such machinery cannot &il to have
at command. And tlukt Mr. Tyng’s normal up-swing is, in
fact, short, the second illustration fully shows. There is
scarcely any turning of the body at the hips, scarcely any
lift from the feet ; all is done by the turn of the shoulders
and the action of the arms. But in the third illustration,
that shows the finish of the stroke, there is a deal more free-
dom, and our studies of our British golfing picture gaUery
convince us that the finish of the stroke — the follow-
through — is really of more practical importance than the
movements of the frame before the ball is hit. In the finish
it is evident that Mr. Tyng has brought his body well forward
on the left leg, the body has turned freely on the hips, the

iT Top of Swing.

GOLF IN THE UNITED STATES 221

right heel has come well away off the ground, to allow of
freedom in all these movements, and the result is a really
fine finish to the stroke.

Mr. Whigham suggests a comparison between those
American players who have been brought up in their child-
hood on baseball, and so on, and have then taken to golf
after the muscles have become set, with British players who
have learned cricket as boys and taken to golf as an after-
thought. He suggests a comparison especially with Mr. E.
Buckland, but I prefer rather to give as a comparative study
Mr. B. A. HuU — not in the least because he is the more
typical of the ‘converted cricketer,’ but because it so
happened that he came kindly to the camera which had not
the opportunity of a snap-shot at Mr. Buckland. Mr. Hull,
though he did not begin golf as a boy, has played the game
for many a year now, and with such good share of success
that he has won the second medal of the Boyal and Ancient
Club. The first medal has never fallen to his lot. There
are points of likeness between his swing and that of Mr.
Tyng, and there are notable points of difference. Mr. Hull,
though his swing gives the effect to a spectator of being a
short one, yet brings his club very nearly to the horizontal
behind the head, which is further, as may be seen, than
Mr. Tait or Mr. Graham, whose swings have all the appear-
ance of being a good deal longer. But Mr. Hull, with turn
of the hips and lift of the left heel, has helps to getting his
club up which Mr. Tyng does not permit himself. After the
stroke, Mr. Hull’s follow-on is perhaps less free and complete
than Mr. Tyng’s — his arms not so fully thrown out — but
he allows his body to come on after the ball by throwing
the weight forward with a bent left knee ; and he, too, has the
useful turn of the hips again, and the right heel well up and
away from the grotmd. It is always to be said, however,
that the strong department of Mr. Hull’s game is his short
play and putting, rather than long driving from the tee or
through the green.

222 GOLF AND GOLFEBS

With these few remarks in conclnsioii, we may sUaw
Mr. Whigham’s convincing picture of golf in the States to
speak, as it speaks so eloquently, for itself. Mr. Whigham is
of a notable golfing family, his father a fine player and one
of the best partners in a foursome in the world, and he has
two brothers at home who are able to give an excellent accoont
of themselves even in such company as the amateur champion-
ship brings together. And they are young players still, with
the best of their golf before them. On the ladies’ side of the
family, too, the golfing faculty has not foiled. Brought up
on the fine links of Pre8t¥nck, they necessarily learned to
play every club in their set and imbibed the best golfing
traditions. The United States have certainlv been fortunate
in the instructors that they have found to put them in the
right royal way, and have proved themselves right royal
pupils.

223

CHAPTEE VII

liADIES
Bt Aht Bbnnbt Pasgob

The lady golfer is a distinct genus, belonging to the order
of AmazoneB, or athletic women. Interesting and instnictive
are the characteristics of the species, pity space prohibits a
detailed account of its acquired and inherited habits ; they
are, however, very obvious to the ertiditi in girls’ games and
sports. Lady golfers are found at every age, in all parts of
the world. With curls down their backs, in abbreviated
skirts, we meet them flying over the Shinnecock Hills, U.S.A.,
or silverhaired, bespectacled, bonneted, they waggle on the
Wimbledon Common 1 Amid the desert near Bagdad they
hole-out, win championships in New Zealand, and tea at the
neat chalet pavilion on the top of the Mustapha slopes,
Algiers. Their chief habitat is the United Kingdom ; here
they possess over one hundred and twenty clubs, of which
nearly all have been instituted since the eighties. The evolu-
tion of the lady player may be studied by those who have no
acquaintance with fossils or comparative anatomy. We trace
her descent through Mary Queen of Scots, to the fishwives
of Musselburgh. On the principle that a Norman ancestor is
more usually quoted than a Victorian greengrocer grand-
manoana, the fact of Mary having played in the fields round
Seton is better known than the instance of the fish ladies’
competition in 1810 for a new Barcelona handkerchief, a
new creel, and shawl. Although we cannot determine the
exact sequence of women drivers and putters who preceded
Queen Mary into the remotest hazards of history, we have

224 GOLF AND GOLFBBS

those records of their near relative— the male player — which
gaide us in the right direction ; for it would not be possible
that Scotch father, brother, and husband should play the
game during many hundred years without their women folk
joining in foursomes, or engaging among themselves in terrible
single combat. Indeed, it may be proved that the discovery
of golf was due to a woman. The pre-historic shepherd who
hit a pebble with his crook into a neighbouring rabbit-hole,
and thus accidentally originated the game, did so in a fit of
ill-humour that his shepherdess was late for the rendezvous !

The reason of woman’s tardy introduction on Southron
greens \& that her presence there was somewhat severely
interdicted in the Badminton book : firstly, lest men should
find it hard to decide between flirting and playing the game ;
secondly, because of the volubility of female tongue and skirt ;
and thirdly, that should she volunteer to score there could
be no manner of doubt in whose favour she would do so !
However, as women grew more independent in their habits,
and cultivated a love of fresh air and sport, lady golfers
became naturalised in England, and notwithstanding a length
of prize list and a shortness of course, factors not favourable
to the production of first-class play, attention to style, keen-
ness, and practice have developed within the last five years
a game which elicits high praise in all parts where their
championship has been held. Critical, able judges pronounce
the drive of our best players to be both long and straight, their
approach a matter of surprise, their putting more cool and
accurate than men’s.

Lady golfers may be classed under three heads, and
treated of individually, viz. : the Golfer, scratch or handicap,
the Pot-Hunter, the Player. Tlie Golfer is often one of the
younger and latest members of the club. A good match and
a good score are her pleasures. She takes a genuine interest
in links and clubs. From her the secretary hears no com-
plaints of the difficulties on the course or the unfairness of
her luck. She is a favourite with the handicap committee,

LADIES 225

because a reduction of h^r odds is followed by no outcry ;
it dares curtail her allowance on any improvement of form
shown, not waiting for a win ; her ambition being a cham-
pionship, not a button-hook ! The Pot-Hunter. — These pro-
fessional prize-catchers are fortunately not common, but
most of us have had the opportunity of studying their habits.
Their only enjoyment is in winning. They are no sports-
wonaien. If they lose, we know that we shall all hear about
their bad luck. The way that bad luck * goes ‘ for them is
extraordinary. According to them, lies are infinitely worse
in the particular spot where their ball rests than anywhere
else on the links, even in the bunkers ! The hazards seem
to get up and follow them round the course ! They have
never been properly handicapped, yet most of them have
played a long time and belong to many clubs. The fashion
of undervaluing one’s own powers, especially when accom-
panied by an over-appreciation of those of others, is so
unusual in life that when i*r J^find it on the links we may
confidently assert that such modesty is incompatible with
morality. Pot-Himters never seem to have any game of
their own to think about, but they make up for this by taking
a five-hundred horse-power interest in other people’s. The
Player. — ^Happy, light-hearted, irresponsible players! All
serious golfers love you. Sparkling, gaseous, bright, an
efiervescence of youth and amusement. We recognise you
by your fluttering pretty dress, merry laughter, irrelevant
movements. You hurry out to the tee, and rush back again
for balls ! You putt and talk with the flag in the hole ; and
add up the score on the green while two cracks wait to play
their approach. Such incidents as stjmtiies, honours, penalty
strokes, you take no note of. When after a round, where we
have seen you and your caddies walking off instead of on
the course, with a handsome allowance of twenty-four you
win an enamelled brooch, we are pleased and congratulate
you. We do not even expostulate when, on the point of
striking off the tee, we are suddenly startled and miss the

226 GOLF AND GOLFEES

globe by hearing eftger voices discuss Mrs. B.’s last danoe
from an adjacent green. No! we glance at the bright
young faces so unconscious of the enormity of that ofTence
which has cost us our record round, and — ^forgive. Healing
influence of youth and good spirits I desert not our links for
the lawn-tennis courts and hockey-fields. To preserre you we
will cede the golfers’ unwritten rule of silence. Talk on, thece-
fore, unrebuked. For you are always talking as fast as yoo
can. Casual observers might think you had nothing to do
with the game, and had merely come out for two hours’ hard
conversational exercise I Nevertheless we like you. Yoa
are not always in trouble, neither do you worry about other
people’s handicaps.

The history of the evolution of ladies’ links has yet to be
written ; it is too deep and exhaustive a subject for me to
touch. An attempt to describe how ladies’ courses paesed
from an indefinite incoherent homogeneity of lies and hazard
to a definite coherent heterogeneity requires the ability d
an historian and philosopher versed in all the intrkacies of
the Gaelic tongue ; for surely it is in the ancient literataie
of Scotland, among her musty metrical romances, that we
must look for the first allusion to the eadiest forms of the
green on which ‘ the braw Scotch lassie holed cot her ba’ ‘ I
While it is true that vague hints and nebulous references to
some remote ancestor of the woman’s course might possibly
be found in the works of a forgotten chronicler, it was cer-
tainly not until the nineteenth century that their length and
nature were seriously considered, or that opinions as to the
advisability of extending them into something beyond putting-
greens began to be mooted. I am afraid Mr. Horace Hut-
chinson is responsible for much of the structural weakness
and deficiencies of the ladies’ courses. That high authority
deliberately questions our right to play on long links I and
advocates the gift of a few holes, admitting of a drive or two
of seventy or eighty yards ; from which nubgnificent piece of
generosity he eliminates everything likely to call forth a

LADIES 227

game. However, Mr. Horace Hatchinson, whatever his
prmted theories are, has always in practice proved himself
the friend of the lady golfer, and he has, moreover, recanted
his heresy in a later edition of his work ; still, we must
attribute to his classical remarks that sad adherence to a type
of links we would fain see become extinct. The memorable
epoch of 1893, when the Women’s Championship was insti-
tuted, altered the conception of ladies’ driving and approaching
current among the hitherto sceptical male, and did much
to improve the courses. Carries were lengthened, greens
guarded, and such a stroke as an approach putt entered the
possibilities of women’s golf.

Our physical and mental capacity to use a driver and
lofter being no longer an hypothesis, but an historical fact,
a gradual progress in the laying out of links was perceptible
everywhere. It became no longer possible to break a record
using a putter only, or to carry off the monthly medal with
a game resembling croquet. The championship and the
liadiee’ Gk>lf Union raised the standard of play, and the
courses tried hard to adapt themselves to the higher golf. If
the green accoxmts of the older clubs are consulted, and the
expenditure on new tees, on lengthening, and on alterations
read, we perceive the struggle for existence made by them ;
and certainly nine holes of reasonable length are better than
eighteen where your drive strikes the flag or your second is
a wrist shot. The only Union clubs which have an eighteen-
hole green of their own are the Boyal Portrush and the West
Lancashire. There are clubs which play over men’s courses,
using separate and short tees. These I would term transition
links, for the nine-hole course as a tjrpe is doomed ; if it
survives at all, it will be where the extra holes are impossible.
The good players among us want eighteen holes, and the only
arguments I have heard against having them are (1) that
nine are enough for ordinary golfing womanhood, (2) that
the dubs cannot afford the up-keep of longer links. I would
suggest that ladies will play two rounds of eighteen with

228 GOLF AND GOLFERS

the same ease as they play four rounds of nine, their xiBiial
allowance, and that to obtain more funds the annual sub-
scription could be doubled. The majority of golfers belong
to two clubs, and the longer and better course would have
the preference.

The chief faults of our present short links are :

1. The short carries.

2. The absence of second shots, or play with brassy and
cleek through the green.

3. The rudimentary nature of the hazards.

4. Lisufficiency of space for a well-hit stroke.

5. The smallness of the putting greens.

Give a girl something to carry, and she will quickly learn
to swipe. Our long drivers have learnt their golf on men’s
links. The second shot marks the virtuoso. It is the test of
judgment and of the knowledge of distances; yet in this
most necessary part of the game many of us fail, our short
links affording no practice for brassy and cleek. There is
nothing to be said against the Littlestone sand bunker, and
the beds of rushes at Westward Ho! are excellent. But
what of made bxmkers that any ball with the faintest idea of
steeplechasing jumps gaily, and hazards that it may (always
does, in my own experience) run into, but which yet may
not be played from ? If the hole is planned for a wooden
club from the tee, then it is a great pity that scratch players
with a wind behind them are frequently obliged to use an
iron or chance a burial in the bunker placed to punish a
weak second shot. There is no reward for good strokes on
short links. A grandly hit ball runs into obtruding badly
situated hazards. We want more space everywhere. It is
the same near the hole. No one who has played elsewhere
ever dreams of pitching a ball on a typical ladies’ green ; it
would never stay there. Some untutored persevering home
members try it year after year, and it is sad to think of so
much wasted effort ! If Fate and a club match bring you to
such a one, never attempt an3rthing of a lofting nature : the

LADIES 229

element of luck attending its approach is far more terrifying
than any hazard which surrounds it. Aim to pitch the ball
near the edge of the green, and if you are Fortune’s favourite
it may run up and stay there ; if not, we know the alterna-
tive. The term * green ‘ should cover at least twenty yards
of grass, and a flag encircled with a growth of weed, or
premature hay, is not calculated to improve the putting or
the temper !

The very best links owned by women is that of West
Liancashire. It is pre-eminent for length, and has none of
the faults catalogued above. It is easily accessible, being
only two minutes’ walk from Hall Boad, one of the stations
on the Lancashire and Yorkshire line from Liverpool to
Southport. Situated near the sea, there are large natural
sand bunkers, in every size and form. Many of the holes are
about five hundred yards, with capital carries, and room for
the ball to run after it alights. The course is of unusual
interest for a ladies’ green, and has been well laid out.
Strength and skill are rewarded, not penalised ; the players
do not cross and recross each other’s path ; the round allows
of variety, and does not contain a dull hole, many being of
an exceptionally sporting nature : the grasses are natural
and the air bracing. Great improvements have been made
recently ; there is now a handsome club-house, with every
convenience for the large number of members. From the
establishment of this northern golfing centre in 1891 up to
the present moment of writing it owes much to the energy
and influence of Mrs. Alsop, and it is almost safe to assume
that if there had been no Mrs. Alsop at BlundeU Sands,
West Lancashire would not be the club it is now. The
amount of time and love she has spent on it is only known
to herself. Such unselfish devotion and untiring interest in
all which concerns her sport deserves a very wide recognition
among us, and it is impossible to mention any one whose
name I respect in this connection as highly as hers. Could
she have played regularly for her club, she would have proved

230 GOLF AND GOLFERS

herself the backbone of the team ; as it is, she is its chief
supporter in other ways. Invariably bright and conrteoii8»
she has always an encouraging word for the younger promis-
ing player.

Within a three and a half mile radius of liondon aie
some of the most energetic southern clubs, the meritB oi
whose members compensate for the malignancies of their
course. Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays you can play
on Wimbledon Common with Miss Lena Thomson, a
silver medallist and the pleasantest of partners, or if desirous
of defeat — ^which, after aU, is the best practice — challenge
Miss Issette Pearson, who, having practically planned the
links and played round them three dajrs a week since 1890,
knows, not each blade of grass — ^that, perhaps, would not
require any effort of memory — but every stone, rut, and piece
of rubble. They are a curious nine holes ; the varying and
changing hazards make it difficult to keep both a good score
and a good conscience. This club, under the name ot
the London Scottish Ladies*, was founded in 1872 and re-
constructed, under the name of Wimbledon Ladies’, eighteen
years later. In its early babyhood Mr. Franklin Adams
kindly took care of it ; afterwards his brother, Mr. Arthur
Adams, and Mr. William Laidlaw Purves nursed it until it
was able to walk alcme. It is not particularly blessed in its
surroundings, though healthily perched on the hill : the
restrictions of conunon conservators preventing any enlarge-
ment and prominent improvement. The selection uod
management of the club’s different committees are entirely
in the treasurer’s and secretary’s hands. Wimbledon plays
one of the strongest teams in England, though the driving of
the ordinary member is often painfully cramped, owing to
the tricky and circumscribed nature of the course.

Then there is Princes’ — with a station at its gates — a
new very pleasurable golfing ground ; for eighteen holes and
an abundance of turf are great advantages. There is space
at Princes’, extensive views, open air, and an odour of the

LADIES 231

country. Given another year or two, it may be the best of
onr inland links. The tnrf is good, there are enough natural
hazards, without open unplayable ditches as ‘extras/ A
little clearing, draining, and remodelling is all that is needed.
The club house and management could not be bettered.
Princes’ is not localised. It has started the first Inter-
Coxmty Competition by offering a challenge cup to be played
for annually at Mitcham by representatives of all counties in
Great Britain and Ireland, one year’s residential qualification
being indiBpensable. Any number of players may be entered
for each county, and the cup is held for one year by the
county returning the best four medal rounds for thirty-six holes.
If we leave town and move along the coast — south, east,
and west — ^there are on all sides possessions of sand and bent,
vnth golfers of quality to welcome us. Westward Ho 1 offers.
fine grass, beds of rushes, and a bum. How far removed
from noise and red brick are the days spent on its velvety
greenness! Days which seem longer here than an]rwhere
else, so unhurried. are life and time in that tranquil spot.
Should the custom of competition still cling to us, then
Littlestone, Eastbourne, and a hundred more present medals
and silver spoils. The game has its two sides. The stir and
excitement of emulation, with the talk and hght chatter of
the club-room, the friendly lunch and sociable gossipy tea»
There is Banelagh, bright in club colours and scarlet coats,
crowded by competitors, when prizes are awarded for a care-
fully compiled score. Then there is the game played on the
few solitudes left in England — away, miles far, from screaming
railway engines, the clatter of cab, the world of fashion — on
some point of the coast where we and our caddies are the
only visible sentient things. The wind whispers round us,
the warmth of the air hes on our cheeks ; at all sides the
width of view is silent, the incessant call of the sea stilled,
for the tide is out. It lies a blue coruscating patch under a
larger, bluer patch of the heaven. Amid such surroundings
we get a rare sense of freedom and life, the world is at peace

232 GOLF AND GOLFERS

here ; the happiness of bird and insect in the sunlight and
wonderful nature is ours also. Be our drive ever so long
here, it brings us to no prize ; hole we out ever so skilfnlly,
there is no applause, but the pleasure lies in the doing and
the beauty of tiie green.

Women play very many inter-club matches, and the
captains belonging to the respective teams are kept per-
petually busy with arrangements for attack or defence.
These meetings can be very pleasant ; they give good games,
and improve the play of the club — nerve and judgment being
largely matters of habit. They also somewhat mitigate
that individualism in the game which is the chief drawback
to golf as a sport. It is considered an honour to be one
of the regular team, and most women think nothing of a
journey or bad weather when an important club match is in
prospect. If, however, the members are new to the game,
and their club is of recent growth, the position of captain
is no sinecure. The usual plan is to play the teams accord-
ing to their respective club handicap; but all girls have
not had a previous training in games, such as cricket and
hockey, which makes them responsive to orders, conversant
with the spirit of sport, and comprehensive of esprit de carps.
In such a case a captain will want tact and even temper to
keep her players in their places. A declines to play B, because
that proposed opponent has a trick of saying ‘ like as you lie ‘
when on the green, notwithstanding the discrepancy of stroke
through it. C is too nervous to pair with D, the long driver.
E and F cut each other socially, and won’t speak even to
say ‘ one o£f two.’ G refuses to take on H, as the latter
brings a relation to caddy. S*s wire arrives to announce she
was at a dance last night and now in bed. K wont play
after G and L have suddenly become engaged ! As for the
foursomes which are usually started after lunch, no general-
ship will avail here. The best plan is to let the team choose
their own partners ; they would never do it, of course, but
that it is impossible to play a foursome without one.

LADIES 233

Inter-club matches might be made the most enjoyable side
to the game, only second in interest to the championship
itself. But before this comes to pass there must be a great
change in the way in which they are played at present.
Most of the good golfers belong to several clubs, often situated
within the same or adjacent counties ; the captains, anxious
to put a strong team in the field, naturally make every early
effort to secure their scratch members, and often women play
for and against the same club in one season — an anomaly in
sport I This custom weakens the individual and general
local interest, and prevents any match being a test of the
club’s strength and status. I would suggest that members
select one of their greens, and represent it, and it only. The
objection current is that players by thus confining themselves
to one have so much less golf. But once put these matches
on a different basis, and they might be arranged on the lines
of public-school and university cricket, and regular annual
fixtures instituted. Thes encounters would be closely con-
tested, and afford the greatest incentive to ‘play up,’ and
facility for meeting first-class and new opponents. They
would produce an improvement in skill, and form a specially
interesting series of contests. Success in golf depends on
the pleasure and interest taken in the game, and I believe
there is some danger of destroying this enjoyment through
the multiplication of slack friendly matches and prize com-
petitions. It is not the quantity of play which injures the
player, but its quality. Look at the amount of * coaching ‘
and practice matches the schools get in their sports. Instead
of producing ‘staleness,’ these exercises improve form and
the general conduct of the game. The system of doing the
best for their * side ‘ or ‘ house ‘ induces those habits of care-
fulness and keenness which are the foundations of excellency.
Where the efforts of all unite coincidentally to achieve
victory, an individual slackness is quickly marked and con-
demned. Golf must always lack the sympathetic co-opera-
tion with other players which is the charm of nearly all

234 GOLF AND GOLFERS

field sports. From tee to hole, it is each for herself, and the
bunker take the hindermost. Yet if inter-club and county
matches were properly organised, the individualism of this
pastime would be lessened. The desire to * pull it off ‘ for
our club or corps, which honours us in its selection, is a more
sporting spirit than the somewhat professional compiling of
strokes to win for ourselves a biscuit-tin !

When one woman says of another that she would make
a good captain, it is a high compliment, for captains are borny
not made, and the qualities which fit for that post are the
most valuable in other lines of life. Different clubs have
different ways of electing their officials, but the position of
captain is ever an honourable one, and should never be given
to any who would fail to represent the club in a sporting and
womanlike way. As she is the representative head of all
the members, they as a body are often judged by her conduct,
and certainly a captain should and can give the tone to the
club. There are qualities indispensable to good captaincy —
viz. tact, a thorough knowledge of the game, and an even
temper. If, in addition to this, the captain is cheery, bright,
enthusiastic, so much the better ; but she must understand
the rules and etiquette of her sport, and possess the useful
and winning gift of good humour. Apathetic, excitable,
greedy captains are bad. For the apathetic have no control
nor influence, the excitable lose the confidence of all, and the
greedy disgust the sporting contingent. A captain’s work
varies according to the work of the secretary and other
officers, but her most important duty lies in the arrange-
ment of the matches. It is for her to welcome the visiting
team, bid them farewell, and see that everything is done for
their comfort while they are on her green. To do this in a
quiet and satisfactory manner, she should be at the club
some time before the arrival of the visitors ; thus she can
personally assure herself that a sufficient number of good
caddies are in attendance, refreshments prepared, the dressing-
rooms in order, and yet have leisure to attend to any other

LADIES 235

Bomall fortuitous matter. Friendly hospitality is delightful,
and makes for good will and enjoyment on both sides. There
is every reason, I think, for the home captain to tell her
guests of special local rules and peculiarities of the course.
Her object and wish is for her team to win, but a victory
won by the superior knowledge of the ground is not good
golf, though it is often mistaken for it. Personally, I have
no satisfaction in winning a hole from an opponent who, not
having played the round before, takes a wrong club and
lands in an unseen hazard. Blind bunkers and blind holes
should be pointed out, and their distance if possible indicated.
You want to win by a better stroke than your rival, not
through her bad play or ill-luck. To forgo an unfair
advantage has ever been the stamp of a sportsman. To-day,
when all classes are on the green, it is for those who feel that
the unwritten law of honour is more binding than the most
stringent rule to speak out and give the lead. If the captain
shows this spirit, the members will learn to play a generous
and sporting game. It does not follow that because the
captain is thus solicitous for the strangers, the home team
suffer. They are her peculiar care, and it is a good plan for
her to start last, so that she may see all safely off the tee.
She will not forget a word of encouragement to her nervous
player, nor a warning to the careless — ^that the wind is due
east, or the greens extra keen. Trifles such as these
may make a difference of a hole, and one hole wins the
match! An unselfish capable captain can in a couple
of seasons turn a strong team out of comparatively raw
material. As inter-club matches acquire the importance
they deserve, the recognition that good captaincy is of
important interest to a club will be more widely felt. A
captain must have confidence in herself ; though she may
listen to volunteered advice, she must not act on it without
due consideration. There is only one captain in a club, and
the sooner members understand this the better. Let her
stick to her arrangements. If these have been carefully

236 GOLF AND GOLFERS

made, they are most probably better than the accidental
advice offered her. When with a team on strange greens,
she should be particular that her members pay attention to
the laws and etiquette of golf. That rules make a game is
sometimes forgotten by women. It often happens that at
open meetings a captain is called on for a short speech ;
this is not difficult to achieve, and it is a common custom to
return thanks for entertainment received. On her own links
she should always be on the look out to discover yoxmg
promising players, her eyes and ears open to all that goes
on around her. When such a captain is found, the best
thing is — ^keep her !

With women the secretaryship is generally honorary, and
though it entails an expenditure of much time and trouble,
there is always foimd some one to run through the corre-
spondence, balance accounts, and post forthcoming events.
I am not sure, however, that, provided funds permit, a paid
secretary is not better. The work is often heavy, and club
management must have incessant attention to be perfect.
Members feel a delicacy in complaining of bad management
and retarded notice to a lady who kindly devotes so much of
her spare time for their benefit. But however simple and
small a club is, its business and comfort should be irreproach-
able. Members have a right to aU the conveniences their
subscription can cover. Officers are there to carry out their
wishes and regulations. The amateur secretary often resents
complaint as personally reflecting on her management ; the
professional is paid to please, does so or goes ! All officers and
committees, if they accept the responsibilities of office, have
no excuse for shortness of time or temper; their raison
d’itre is to discover defects and invent improvements ; but
a usual thing is to go on in a slovenly satisfaction with the
existing state of affairs. The monopoly of all committee
work by the older, and often worse, golfers is a frequent
reason of this. Older women are jealous, especially of
authority. Girls are over-eager, particularly if enthusiasts.

LADIES 237

but it is foolish to alienate the younger good golfer.
Fresh blood is always a capital thing ; the promising new
member should be given some rdle, made to feel she is an
integral part of her clnb. On the cricket field, at boys’
schools, these are they who are ‘ spotted ‘ and trained to
bring glory home. On the short links they are ‘sat on’
until * squashed ‘ or they achieve success. Clubs will welcome
a player with a reputation, but few will help her make one.

It would not be out of place to recommend to committees
the apostolic precept, * Be courteous,’ but it would probably
be useless.

The best captain and officer I ever knew was Miss A.
Tyrwhitt-Drake, a good all-round player and a thorough
sportswoman. Ill-health now unfortunately prevents her
presence on the links of the many clubs to which she still
belongs. She could get a team together where every one
else would fail, and although she was never anything but
kindness and gentleness to all — I have never seen her ruffled
under any circumstances — I do not fancy there is one who
would have cared to dispute her command. During one
season she was captain at three different clubs — a unique
position 1 How she managed her multitudinous duties it is
hard to imagine; that they were done, and done well, is
certain, for she never disappointed any one. Her jokes and
stories kept every one cheerful round the luncheon or tea table,
and when she gave a prize, which she had a bad trick of
doing, all were supremely anxious to win it. She was specially
good to the younger members. Her quick eye and sound
knowledge of golf made her a capital judge of a player.

The Ladies’ Golf Union originated from a wish expressed
by some members of the Wimbledon Ladies’ Golf Club.
Mr. Laidlaw Purves, that fairy god-parent of the game in
the south, took up the subject warmly, and by his help its first
meeting was held on April 19, 1893. The Union has been
of use by combining the associated clubs in a greater con-
formity of rule, and by introducing more consistency in the

338 GOLF AND GOLFERS

handicap system. It started with eleven clubs, and now
numbers twenty-seven. The championship is played under
its auspices, and as the members of Union clubs, when ihey
compete for that honour, pay only an entrance fee of five
shillings, and others one guinea, this is an inducement for
clubs with a strong playing membership to associate with the
Union. Each enrolled club the membership of which does
not reach 100 is entitled to be represented on the council by
one delegate. Those counting between 100 and 200 players
have two representatives, and others over 200 three, but no
club can have more than this number on the council, except
at the annual meeting, as provided in Bule 6. The officers
of the Union are : the President, Vice-Presidents, Honorary
Secretary, and Honorary Treasurer; and the principal by-
laws are : ‘ 1. In inter-club matches the minimum number of
each team shall be eight for clubs of over fifty members, and
six for clubs of fifty and und^; 2. In inter-club matches
each match won shall count two, in addition to the number
of holes up.’ The society publishes a small annual, con-
taining its rules, a synopsis of the principal women’s golfing
events during the past season, and a list of the names and
addresses of its members. In 1897 the Union decided to
give a silver medal to each associated club, to be won by the
player returning the lowest aggregate of four scores, under
the Union handicap, in the medal round competition of the
year. It also presents a handsome gold medal to be played
for over a neutral course by the winners of the silver medals
in each year. Any member of a Union club who desires to
have a handicap for this competition must have sent in two
medal scores, neither of which shall exceed the par of Hie
green, as fixed by the Union, by more than twenty-five
strokes. A member having a handicap in one dub shall
receive the same handicap at all the clubs to which she may
belong, such handicap to be the lowest she shall receive. At
any one club the par of the green is fixed by the handicap
sub-committee, and the handicaps are calculated by doubling

LADIES 239

the best gross score returned, adding the next best, and,
having found the average of the three, subtracting the par of
the green from it, and taking the remainder as the handicap.

At present, that a player can be scratch at one club, owe
three at another, and receive four at a third, is a mysterious
absurdity. Such inconsistency shouts for reform. If this
scheme eventually leads to a conformity in the handicap
system, it will have accomplished much. Miss Issette
Pearson, the Union’s indefatigable secretary and its moving
spirit in legislative measures, is confident that it will.
Already it can be a help to those whose sad lot in life it is to
dole out strokes to the hungry competitors of large open
meetings. The Banelagh competitions often number 100
entries. On these green meadows you may drive fearfully,
your class being minus three, or dig happily in bunkers with
a handicap of twenty and odd, for your sins I It is all a
miatter of your club handicap. The injustices of life are
nothing compared with those on the links ; yet, strangely
enough, Hyde Park has no golf socialist, demanding an
equality of strokes.

It seems hopeless to attempt a list of the annual competi-
tions open to a lady golfer. An editor, interested in physical
aberrations, once asked me to compile a catalogue of such
competitions. I began and worked hard every morning, only
stopping for luncheon ; but as he required the MS. within
the year, and I found it would be my life-work, it has never
been published. I will mention one or two of the events.
Club matches, inter-club matches, private matches. Mixed
foursomes, ladies’ foursomes, married versus single foursomes,
private foursomes, club foursomes. American tournaments,
monthly medal rounds, medal rounds under handicap, medal
rounds for the best scratch score, annual monthly medal
winner’s competition, questions and answers on l^e rules
competition, driving, approaching, and putting competitions,
consolation competitions, open competitions, bogey competi-
tions, the championship ! Why are there, then, no prizes for

240 GOLF AND GOLFERS

players who have never yet competed — a maiden plat-e ? Is
it because the existent lady golfer would find difficulty in
qualifying ? It is a fact that a lady has been known to enter
for a large open meeting who had only played twice previously.
But the demoralising egotism of the game is proverbial ! A
club may crowd its tees, block the greens, strew the bunkers
with balls, and call this comedy of golf a medal day — c*est son
affaire I but to popularise open meetings, where handicaps
of twenty-eight are given and more grumbled for, is to put a
premium on bad play, and becomes the concern of all those
who have the true interest of the sport at heart. Where
prizes and strokes are many there will the golfers be gathered
together . There are few men’s clubs whose members
receive an allowance of over eighteen. Ladies get twenty-
four, thirty, forty. To what depths of debilitated driving and
abyss of foozles can prize winning descend when we find
recipients of these numbers ! Golf under such circumstances
is an ingenious game, not a sport. ‘ How can any one give
any one else thirty, with the par of the green at sixty-eight ? ”
enquires Alice in Wonderland. * Handicaps d^fy the arbitrary
rules of scientific formulss,’ pants the committee. ‘ And dis-
regard the petty limits of common sense,’ responds Alice
with a fine scorn. Then she goes away and writes a golfer’s
catechism — that is to say, an instruction to be learned of
every player before she be elected by her club.

To win a championship requires a judgment so keen and
cool, a game so good and steady, and withal so happily
circumstanced, that unless a player is facile princeps the
golfer of the year it is impossible to spot the winner, or even
name those who are sure of a place. The Ladies’ Golf
Union gives a gold medal to the champion, a silver to the
runner-up, and bronze ones to semi-finalists. The challenge
cup, value 5i!. 5s., is held by the club from which the winner
entered ; she herself receiving a small replica. Up to the
present time of writing, the event has been held four times
in England, once in Scotland, and once in Lreland. It is

LADIES 241

played on a shortened coarse of some long links. The Union
is limited in its choice of a suitable locale, as of comrse it
cannot invite itself, but must wait for invitation. The great-
est kindness and consideration is always shown by the men’s
club to whom the green belongs. These gentlemen invariably
give up the use of their club house for the week, and act
themselves as referees and committee men. Their courtesy
ajid patience are apparently inexhaustible. The week before
the place is generally in a state of intense golf excitement.
‘ Best player I can’t be beat,’ whisper the backers, and the
prophets prophesy foolish things. All along the links are
scattered ladies — ^practising ; they thus acquire a knowledge
of the course which would put to shame the local professional.
They have counted the rabbit holes, and know the green
where the worm loves to feed I With ominous contraction
of their lips they circle the driver round their club hat-band
and carry the unresisting hazard; the next moment their
glistening steel rolls the ball on the green, then with a con-
temptuous shove of the putter, they leave it dead I Yet,
alas 1 they lack one thing : that gift is the unrevealed power of
winning against an opponent who stands four up and two to
go ! When this discovery is made, we shall all want a new
game. As the heats progress, and the wind rises, the
player’s temperature rises too ; representatives of the press
appear on the scene, the trophy is presented amid a crescendo
of praise, and the four medallists return from the monotony
of success to the stirring incidents of home life.

The primary idea of a championship is to discover the
best players, and thus a fair field and no favour are indis-
pensable. The luck of the draw and the luck of the green,
both of which are accepted by sportswomen as inevitable,
should not be further increased by the presence of ladies
who enter for the ‘ fun of the thing ‘ — ^which means that if
they meet an unknown player they start, if a ‘ crack ‘ they
scratch. They would not survive their first round were it
not for the weaknesses of others as unsporting as themselves.

342 GOLF AND G0LPEB8

I shoold fancy there are not more than two dozen gdfecB
who have a reasonable prospect of carrying off the cnp — j^
we have a hundred entries. Every game here shoold be as dose
as the luck of the game and daily difference of form will
allow. What we see is neck-to-neck finishes^ and other
matches with one player nowhere ! The Ladies’ Champion-
ship is always played in May, and we heartily wish that we
had at conmiand space wherein to give an account of all
those who have distinguished themselves in that contest, but
it is only possible to mention the three who have been cap-
winners.

Lady Margaret Hamilton Bossell was, I need hardly
say, the best player of her day. She won the first three
championships held at Lytham St. Anne’s, Littlestone, and
Portrosh, the first two with a consmnmate ease which
marked her as standing in a class of her own. Her style
was perfect and marvellously graceful. She had a particu-
larly long, beautiful swing. Deadly straight shots and a
valuable courage were her ‘ points.’

The champion of 1896 was Miss A. B. Pascoe, who is not
a bad golfer, though on account of her usual unsteadiness she
is considered weaker than she is. Very good off the tee, and
when once on the green, the poorness of her iron play places
her ball in a bunker and her game within easy range of the
arrows of criticism.

Miss E. C. Orr, having been brought up among gdit
surroundings, is an ideal typical player. Winner at Gullane
1897, in a field of 102 competitors, England and Scotland’s
best, we must regard her victory as one of the highest class.
Her game has no weak point, but is critic-proof. It was
Lady Margaret Hamilton Bussell’s swing, unequalled for
beauty, which gave us a model of style, and it is the#higfa
standard of Miss Orr’s play which will raise our own. England
has gained by her victory, for the Scotch-bred game of the
last lady champion is sans peur et sans reproche.

Ireland has a champion and Union of her own; the latter

LADIES 248

enrols almost adl the clubs in Ulster. Golf is spreading
rapidly southward in the Emerald Isle, but is taken ‘ aisy ‘
there. Little Wales contemplates a fixture for women this
year. Holland and New Zealand have their annual event.
America makes her women qualify by score play, the winning
eight passing into the match rounds on the following days.
Ladies, as a rule, are proficient in the use of the wooden
clubs. The ordinary carry of a scratch player is about
130 yards, and the very long drivers exceed this by several
yards. The fashion of a woman’s life gives her a clearer
eye cbud a greater delicacy of touch than a man possesses,
therefore her putts are as straight and deadly as his, though
less scientific. Good iron play among us is not so usual.
Here it is that many of us fail. Our half-shots cbud short
approaches lack loft, cut, and power. As a rule our set of
clubs is too heavy — ^having been a great sinner in this
respect myself, I would caution others.

Golfers should know something of the history and litera-
ture of their sport, of which each year sees a constant increase.
As regards books which treat exclusively of the game on
short links, we have none. Mrs. Mackem has written in the
‘Badminton Magazine’ and ‘ Encyclopsedia of Sport,’ and
there are articles in the ‘Golfer’s Guide Series,’ and a
chapter in the ‘ Isthmian Golf Book ‘ by Miss A. B. Pascoe.
Beports of ladies’ open meetings leave much to the imagina-
tion, the writer being usually some hours’ railway journey
from the scene of competition. Newspaper interviews and
sketches of lady players are even more emotional and less
moral. Travelling on the Inner Circle we catch sight of a
poster with the heading ‘Potent Putters, Golf Giants (it
should be ‘giantesses’). Drastic Drivers.’ We hail Smith and
invest in a sixpenny. The lady of this week, whose repro-
duced photograph we sincerely hope is a libel on her character,
is unknown to us and fame. No matter, the modest violet
is no less celebrated because she hides from publicity, cbnd
likewise this bashful flower of the links may have a sweet

B 2

244 GOLF AND GOLFERS

swing. We open and read— but of her bicycle ! her favourite
jam ! and bootmaker ! The element of golf is eliminated
altogether. A sickening horror seizes ns. Once more we
scfibn the journal. Too terrible I We have been caught oat
by a poster, and wasted sixpence. That potent putter,
golf gianteBS. or drastic driver is an imaginative creation of
an interview. Where is our sixpence ? Far better it had
been spent on a ‘ remade.’ I have also ever been pleased
to discover that the cruelest critics of my own game have
been those to whom I would have no hesitation in offering
three strokes a hole on my home links.

THEOBT AND PRACTICE

If peradventure, golfer, it hath been thy lot to waste the
long warm summer of thy youth on the green links, to have
thine ears early attuned to the ring of the iron and the whirl
of the ball on its rise through the air, when it starts like
some white bird from the ground, soaring upwards over
dread hazards of sand, water, and furze ; if in the age of
innocence and porridge thou didst absorb unconsciously the
forty rules of match play, plus the fourteen for medal, and
on the principle of transmitted impulses thou possessest a
strong inherited tendency to a full swing, then pause not to
read these poor few words. Ye blessed ones ! who have
never lived without a club in your hands, I wave you to pass,
and leave me to address the motley multitude who block our
nine-hole courses with weird muscularised motions practised
by them amid circumstances of intense solemnity, under the
name of ‘ my swing,’ but which are conmionly anathematised
by other players freezing on the tee as * Mrs. A.’s favourite
foozle ! ‘

These ghastly unspeakable contortions, reacting on the
visual organs of a watchful handicap committee, give rise to
such sensations of pity that handsome donations of twenty-
four and thirty-six strokes are offered, emd, I regret to think,

LADIES 246

accepted. Shadl I lift up the veil of compassion still farther^
and disclose to you that at a club in the South of England
one member is in possession of a ninety-nine handicap? An
inexhaustible credit draft, you cry in astonishment. Alas !
ten minutes after these xmf ortunates leave the tee the account
is overdrawn. A bad lie, whin, or bunker is their inmiediate
bankruptcy, and the record of their liabilities floats sadly
down the wind. Lady golfers, these things need not be.
Certainly the first-class player is bom, not made, like the
musician and poet, not mcbnufactured with theories and
practice, but all with health, time, and perseverance may
attain unto second place; and any one can learn to golf
sufficiently well for it to be a pleasure to herself and no
nuisance to others. * I don’t play well, I never make any
improvement. I shall never be any better.’ These buzzes
of despair continually suffuse our club rooms. Time alters
the colour of our members’ hair, the fashion of their clothes,
but unfortunately appears powerless to affect the paralysing
monotony of their score, which on medal day rises to three
figures. My friend, the reason for your failure is this : you
possess the TpmimnTn power of execution and an absence of
all theoretical knowledge. Hence, no stroke comes off, unless
it is allied to the genus ‘ Fluke.’ You depend entirely on
your misdirected muscular force. With years you learn to
arrive on the green, it is true, and have generated a theory
of your own on the process of reaching it which will effec-
tually prevent your ever attaining the paradise of scratch
golfers. The majority of you have never had a lesson. Self-
taught, you have probably not discovered that there are
certain positions for body and club in which it is easiest to hit
the ball. The athletic woman, being only a modem inven-
tion, has rarely an inherited instinct for games of ball, and
her skill must be acquired by patient observation and practice.
‘ But I do practise,’ cries Miss 36 Handicap. Pardon me,
you do not. You can hardly dignify with that word a
perpetual perpetration of the same mistakes. If you really

246 GOLF AND GOLFEBS

practise, you must improve. \Vliat you have to do is :
first, realise how a certain stroke must be played ; secondlyy
find out your fault ; thirdly, overcome it. I am convinced
that adult beginners and fossilised foozlers think too little
of theory and its bearing on their practice. Theory cannot
be hid. Once understand from object-lessons, or diagrams^
the position that limbs and clubs should assxmie for certain
shots, endeavouring to put theory into practice, and in time
your shot will characterise itself as the result of that theory.
Never mind, so long as the theory be a soimd one, if its
practice be less beautiful. Golfing on this system you are
bound to improve. Never imitate blindly. The adopted
style of another is only half your own. Besides, there are
certain indispensable principles that you must understand in
order to counteract successfully certain natural bad habits.
Theoretical principles teach position, free swing, and proper
grip — in a word, correct style. Force and firmness follow
from practice.

To those who would start afresh, I say : Go to a good
professional, one who is accustomed to coach ladies. His
trained eye will immediately detect violent or subtle aber-
rations in swing or stance. Und^stand from him where
you go wrong, then practise; but do not content yourself
with verbal precepts. Bead Hutehinson, Everard, and
other golf guides. Be prepared for some degree of obscurity
in your manuals. Fog them out for yourself. Do not take
them to your professional instructor. The coach, secure in
the certainty of a long-life practice, mocks joyously at
theories. He has swung his club since caddyhood, and
plays greatly by an intuitive process. Natural golfing genius
defies the arbitrary rules of golf formula. ‘ You’ve a club
and a ball, why don’t you drive?’ I once heard a much-
tried young professional ask his pupil. Truly a Socratio
poser this. The chief difference between professional and
amateur teachers is that the former coach more as spectators
of our manifold wrong-doings. The latter, having practical

LADIES 347

esqperience of gross frailties, teach from an inwardness of
knowledge that conveys comprehension and comfort. The pro*
f essional is replete with traditional, and to you vague, phrases :
‘ Blow back,’ ‘Follow through,* * Keep your eye on the ball.’
‘ I always keep my eye on the ball,’ interrupts Miss Foozler.
Indeed, Mademoiselle, but I believe only until the club comea
within an inch of it. Then presto I off goes the eye, but the
ball generally waits — ^in a bunker ! A study of theory will
suggest that you should keep looking at the spot where the
ball was, after it has left — ^not moving off position.

I am certain that all long handicap players could reduce
their allowances on ladies’ links to eighteen, a legitimate
number. A strict adherence to principles adopted by all
good golfers would revolutionise their game. A prevalent
error among ladies is that strength is a sine qud non.
Physical fitness is a great advantage in all sports, but in ball
games the essentials for success are : that the ball be hit at the
right time, and in the right way. None therefore are debarred
from studying the philosophy of a drive — the mystery of a
successful approach, the palpitating piquancy of a puttt
Allow the opponents and partners you meet to trace some
coimection between your theory and your game. And when
your handicap comes down, and the principles and practice of
golf are yours, do not forget that will is the measure of many
a long drive and the secret of all success.

[Since Miss Pasooe was kind enough to write the above able chapter
the Ladies’ Championship for 1898-9 has been played on the Great Yar^
mofQih links, and won by Miss Lena Thomson. — H.G A]

248 GOLF AND GOLFBBS

CHAPTER Vm

METHODS OF PLAY
Bt H. G. Hutchdiboh

The game of golf is played, according to the phrasing of
the role, by two or more sides, each playing its own ball.
That is well enough, as far as it goes, but it is not a very
illnminating account ; it would not teach a stranger to the
game the exact manner of its execution. The mostconmion
way of playing is, of course, in a single match or in a
foursome match, one playing against one, or two playing
alternate strokes, against two others, likewise playing
alternate strokes. But, besides these methods, there are the
well-known three-ball games, in which each may play
against each, or the best player may play his own ball
against the * best ball,’ as it is ungranmiatically called, of the
other two— that is to say, the two who are in alliance count
the score that is the lower, at each hole, against the score of
the single player. If A and B are playing their ‘ best ball ‘
against C, and A does the first hole in four, whereas B takes
five, A and B are entitled to count the lower figure — ^the
four — against C’s score ; and so on at each successive hole.
In these days of congested greens there is a deal of feeling
against these three-ball matches — quite needlessly. The
rule amply provides against their creating extra congestion
by particularly stating that they may be passed at any time,
and it is to be specially recognised that the party playing
behind a three-ball match that is really blocking the green
is very remiss about its duty if it do not insist on its right ot

METHODS OP PLAY 249

passing. Otherwise this party gives the parties behind agsdn
no chance of passing the three-ball match, and the whole
green is delayed. But as a matter of fact it is quite the
exception to find golfers thoughtless enough to start on a
three-ball game on a crowded green, unless they are justified
in doing so by knowing that they are fairly quick players.
Now and again, even in the very medal week at St. Andrews,
a three-ball match or two will go forth ; but the players are
generally something like first class, and a three-ball match of
that calibre moves a deal quicker than the normal rate of
progress on the green at that season. They are in no one’s
way. No one would arrive home a minute sooner if one of
the three dropped out, and generally the party behind is wise
enough not to exercise the law according to its letter, but to
allow the unoffending match to go its way unharassed. It
is only if the three-ball match is obviously delaying the
course of after events that it becomes a positive duty to insist
on the privileges given to a two-ball match under the rules.

This apology for three-ball matches is inspired by the
fact that their status is often a little misunderstood, and the
participators regarded rather in the light of criminals, how-
ever little actual mischief and delay they cause. And to the
taste of many golfers they are particularly agreeable, for they
give a chance for the playing of two or more matches in the
single round, and so add proportionately to the interest. It
is curious how often very good scores have been made in
ihree-ball matches, how often they have furnished the occasion
for the making and breaking of record scores, probably for
the very reason that they give an added incentive to constant
effort, for if one player have fared greatly better, at a certain
hole, than one of the others, it is likely enough that the
third is still giving him something to play against. Also, by
the rule, there are no stimies in these three-ball games, so
that every opportunity is given for a good score.

The stimy question in match play still remains a vexed
one in the general golfing mind, and on some greens it is

250 GOLF AND GOLFERS

rather the exception than the role for stimies to be played.
By mutual consent they are often abolished, and none of the
inconveniences — such as disputes as to the exact position of
the removed ball — ^which the lovers of the stimy ui^ as
likely to arise, and as a motive for its retention, seem to
occur ; but there is a particular mode of doing away with the
stimy, first suggested by Captain Bum, as I believe, which
seems preferable to any other, and this is to give the player
whose stroke is intercepted the right to say to the opponent,
‘ I give you that in. Take the ball away.’ That is to say,
that if the intercepting ball is so close to the hole that
the opponent thinks there is no reasonable chance of the putt
being missed, he will ‘give it in’ as if the ball had been
actually played and holed. If, on the other hand, he thinks
there is a reasonable doubt of the ball being holed, he will
naturally prefer to try to loft or circumvent the stimying
ball, and so the delicate and difficult stroke will be retained.
The suggested plan has these peculiar excellencies : first, that
it does away with all possibility of dispute about the replace-
ment of the ball, since it is not to be replaced, and secondly
that it retains just those stimies which give a good lofter
a reasonable chance of holing his ball over the intercepting
one. For it is just those balls that lie on the lip of the hole,
and which would naturaUy be given as in by an opponent,
that give the bad, because the practically impossible, stimy.
When the ball is a little further from the hole there is a reason*
able chance of pitching over it and running on into the hole ;
but the pitching right into the hole, which is practically what
the stimy on the very lip of the hole demands, is such a
tour deforce that its execution is almost a fluke, and outside
the sphere of practical golfing politics. Of course the
ordinary rule of lifting when the balls lie within six inches of
each other would be retained, even with this suggested mode
of dealing with the stimy.

The principle of ‘ best ball ‘ is capable of indefinite ex-
tension, according to the relative capacities of the players.

METHODS OF PLAY 251

Mr. Tait not so very long ago was playing matches with his
single ball against the best ball of Tom Morris, Mr. Everard,
fibnd Captain Bum — a very formidable alliance. Indeed five-
ball matches, and even more, have been seen on the St.
Andrews green and elsewhere, but the three-ball match
includes as many players as can often take part in a match
with comfort, and without occasioning too much delay by
the necessity for the opponents waiting while one is playing.

Mr. Tait and Mr. Edward Blackwell lately played, and won,
a singular match against Andrew Eirkaldy and Willie Auch-
terlonie, in which the ‘ best ball ‘ of one side scored against
the ‘ best ball ‘ of the other ; and this, though something of
a golfing eccentricity, seems likely to come into a good deal
of favour. Mr. Tait is specially partial to it. He and Mr.
Graham, playing in this kind of partnership, have had match
and match about with Mr. Ball and Mr. Hilton, and he and
Mr. Mure Fergusson have twice defeated Mr. Arnold Blyth
and Mr. Eric Hambro.

Score play has been aptly described as a means by which
the play of many is brought into comparison in the course of
a single round. It is never quite as satisfactory as match
play by holes, partly because in playing for a score the golfer
has the consciousness always impending on him that a
single bad stroke may be the occasion of ruin to his score,
whereas in match play its worst result could be only the
loss of a single hole, and partly because it does away with
the ‘ personal element ‘ — with that hand-to-hand fight with
a flesh and blood opponent that is the very essence of the
game by holes. With a view of doing away with the first-
named drawback, the device of playing against a ‘ bogey ‘ score
has been invented— a score previously drawn up, with figures
given for each hole, against which figures the players contend,
and he that comes in most holes up or least holes down to
the bogey score is accredited the winner. It is a very
excellent device, by general consent assumed to be of English
origin, and though of this reputed southern origin, and

252 GOLF AND GOLFEBS

baptised with a name that sounds to the earnest Scottish
player rather in the nature of light trifling with his solemn
game, has found its way nevertheless into the centres of
Scottish golf and been given a trial even on the St Andrews
green. But its southern origin is not wholly undisputed, tor
it is asserted, and strongly maintained, by some, that many
years before its invention in the south, and its baptism by
its doubtful name, the golfers of Elie had a way of playing
against what they called the ‘ ground score ‘ which was
virtually identical with the * bogey score ‘ of to-day. There is
no doubt in any case that the southern ‘bogey’ was an
absolutely original invention, even if it be true that there is
no new thing under the sun, and that the Elie folk had
played against ‘ bogey ‘ under another name years before ;
for Mr. Botherham, the deviser of the plan, as we believe, at
Coventry, had certainly never heard of this Elie ‘ground
score.’ To him, therefore, as having brought the device
into favour, belongs all the honour due to an original
discoverer. ‘Bogey’ competitions are now so common in
England that there are nearly as many held under these
conditions as on the older scoring method.

It has never, however, come into use at any of the greater
competitions. The open championship is decided by score —
by the score of seventy-two holes. The Amateur Cup is com-
peted for by tournament, the entries being supplemented by
blanks until the total is raised to a power of two, and a
blank being drawn against the name of each competitor as
it comes out until the blanks are exhausted ; so that all the
byes come in the first round, and the tournament works out
smoothly to the finish. Of course this assumes that there
shall be no ties, and the means by which ties are avoided is
not altogether satisfactory. After toiling through the heat
of a whole round of eighteen holes it seems rather inadequate
to settle a result which so long a struggle has left doubtful
by the issue of a single other hole, played after the round
has been halved. But there is no other very obvious way in

METHODS OF PLAY 253

which the tournament could be made to work itself out to a
smooth finish, for if halved matches had to be replayed, and
decided by yet another full round, there is no saying when
the business would come to an end. The only question that
remains is whether the game is worth the candle, whether
the end achieved is sufficiently important to justify the not
quite satisfactory means, whether, in fact, it would not be
almost better to allow halves to count as wins, allow both
parties, where two finished equal, to go on into the next round,
as is done in handicap tournaments, and to let the byes come
where they please. The objection to this plan is not so
important as it was when the device of bringing all the byes
into the first| round was first adopted, for at that time the final
heat was decided by a single round, and it was thought very
unfair that in the case of three being left in on the last day,
one player should have a complete rest in the morning while
the other two were engaged in what might be a very hard
tussle. Obviously the man who had looked on in the
morning would have some not quite fair advantage in the
afternoon when he came to meet the other, whose nerves
and muscles had been at a hard stretch all the morning
through. But now that it is ruled that the decision of the
final heat shall be a two-round business, and shall be reached
on another day than that on which the semi-final is decided,
this objection scarcely holds, and it is well worth recon-
sidering whether the unsatisfactory settlement of halved
matches under the present system is not a bigger bother
than the occurrence of byes all through the tournament
could ever be. This, however, is a matter for the conside-
ration of the higher authorities. One thing at least is very
certain, that the decision of halved matches in handicap tour-
naments by the result of a single extra hole is obviously most
unfair — so unfair that one would deem it scarcely worthy of
comment, if it were not that one sometimes sees it practised.
Supposing two to have halved whose golfing relations to
each other are such that one gives the other a half — under the

254 GOLF AND OOLFBBS

system we aie noticing th^ go out to decide their difieienoeB
by playing on until one cnr otiier gains a hole. Should the
mode of the green be for a half to be taken at the first hcde,
the giver of odds is at a grievous disadvantage, for though
he can give only a half, he has to start giving a stroke on
the first hole. On the contrary supposition (of nine strokes
isken at the even holes), the unfairness is equally striking —
the man who is a half worse than the opponent has to n^eet
that opponent on equal terms. Possibly it may be urged in
rop^Jf why not let the men play two holes? This sug*
gestion in their particular case might be fair enough ; but
supposing one to be handicapped to give the other one stroke
in the roimd, it is obvious that these odds could not equitably
be brought in without playing a whole round. Again, there
is a device of giving a half at a single hole, the understanding
being that if the giver of odds wins the hole the hole scores
to him, but that if the hole be halved it scores to the receiver
of the half. This, however, is only an ingenious eccentricity
of handicapping ; it is not a recognised golfing mode. And
it, again, is subject to the same objection as the proposal to
play two holes for decision ; for though it works fairly
equitably where the difference between players is rated at
a half, it is scarcely applicable to any further fractional
difiFerences.

There is one drawback inherent in the method of play by
tournament which no taking thought can modify — ^the mis-
fortune that the best players are as likely as not to be drawn
together, and to knock each other out in the early rounds,
while a comparative duffer may find his way, by easy
matches, into the final heats. This is a trouble that nothing
can evade. The ‘ American tournament,* as it is called — ^in
which each player plays all the rest and the winner of the
tournament is he who wins the greatest number of matches —
is, no doubt, the fairest of all, and does obviate the objection,
inevitable under our plan, that the good men may have to do
* Kilkenny cat work * on each other. But, on the other hand,

METHODS OF PLAY 356

the American plan is not well suited for a game like golf, in
which a match of eighteen holes occupies half a day. It
would make a tournament with such an entry list as our
amateur championship immensely and impossibly long.

Our biggest competitions give examples of both the
methods by which we bring a number of players into com-
petition within reasonable limits of time, the open champion-
ship being a scoring business and the amateur a match
tournament affair. There is a good deal of difference of
opinion as to which method is the better and the fairer. The
objections to the tournament plan we have considered, but it
has the merit of bringing men together in that hand-to-hand
struggle which is of the essence of the match at golf. The
Americans for their amateur championship have adopted a
method which is a combination of the methods of both our
championships — ^a method for which there is a deal to be
said. They have a competitive examination to start with, in
the shape of a preliminary scoring competition, and the
thirty-two lowest scorers then proceed to the final test by
knock-out tournament. It is a method not pecxdiar to America,
but has been tried in this country. Certainly it seems to have
merits to commend it, and it may be that it is destined to make
advances in golfing favour. The Americans have a clever way,
too, of limiting the number of entries for one of their cham-
pionships. Under the rule of a central golfing association they
are able to organise their events better than we can do with our
unrestricted right of local option. The association has required
each club to send in a return of the length of each hole of its
green, and of a ‘ scratch ‘ score based thereon ; the principle
being to add two strokes to the number in which a hole can
be comfortably reached by a good player, and to count the
total as the ‘ scratch ‘ or ‘ bogey ‘ score for that hole. The
total of the eighteen holes so reckoned gives the scratch score
of the green. And until a player shall be able to show a
score, duly witnessed by an opponent, that comes within six
strokes of the scratch score at one or other of the greens

856 GOLF AND QOLFEBS

under the jimsdiction of the association, such player is not
an admissible competitor for the championship. No doubt
there is about this reckoning by sheer distance, irrespective
of the nature of the ground thus measured — whether it be
dear of hasard, like the Elysian Fields, or bristling with
terrors tike the neighbourhood of ‘ Hell ‘ bunker — ^a roughness
and a readiness that remind one rather of the famous bed of
Procrustes ; but at the same time there is a deal to be said
in hkYOQJt of the plan, and it would be a blessing if our own
circumstances permitted us to apply some remedy of the kind
to the evils of our own amateur championship, and some
other, competitions. At present we are entitled to say to
no man, however inefficient and however we may desire to
tell him ao : * You are not good enough for this competition,
you must go somewhere else ; ‘ though it is true that the
authorities in charge of the open championship have done
something to strengthen their hands in its direction by pro-
viding that if a player be too hopelessly behind the leader on
the first day’s score for this open competition he shall not
proceed to ‘cumber the ground’ on the second day also.
The main danger, however, which threatens the game at the
present moment is not that of being allowed to go too free,
but of being held vnth too tight a hand and overlaid with
legislation. Especially would it be well that we should make
a stand against the tyranny of the handicap committee being
imported into match play. In matters under their own
control the handicap committee should be tyrannical indeed,
and there is no VTorse sign of a handicap than to find people
who are satisfied vnth it — ^though any satisfaction that he
may feel, the pradent and Machiavellian golfer will con-
ceal with much subtlety. The handicap committee should be
tyrannical in the sense of doing what they believe to be their
duty, and meting out what they conceive to be justice,
irrespective of the groans that they vmng from their victims
— for if they listen to such groans the advantage in the
handicap will be given to him who groans the loudest, and

METHODS OF PLAY 267

injustice will be done, for it is generally he who groans the
loudest that deserves the hardest treatment. But it is when
this tyranny is imported into the business of the match that
we may begin, with every right, to resent it, for it is a tyranny
that has no business there. It is not the committee that
strive to impress their will upon the match players, but it is
those who foolishly bring the methods of handicapping by
score to apply to the playing of matches also that rouse
resentment. Now and again, for purposes of ‘ bogey ‘ play,
or competition by tournament, we have to accept, with
merely arithmetical adjustment, the rulings of the committee
that have arranged the handicaps for the scoring competitions,
and to adapt that arrangement to the match by holes. Thus,
by a rough and ready reckoning, four strokes given as
handicap for a scoring round is equivalent to three in a match
by holes. This is conventionally accepted as a way of
bringing a number of players into a competition on some-
thing like equal terms, but the handicap was originally made
with a view to a scoring competition; some men play
relatively better for score and others for holes ; it needs some-
thing more than mere arithmetic to arrange the relation
aright ; and therefore much injustice is often done by insisting
for purposes of private matches that players shall take three-
fourths of the odds allowed them by the handicap committee.
The old plan, before handicaps held so large a place in the
golfing eye, was to arrange the match by a mutual friendly
VTrangle. The wrangle over the odds, to start with, was often
not the least amusing p8brt of the match. Now there is often
none of this ; the player who deems the handicap list to work
in his favour invokes it as if it were an oracle, and the other
has perforce to consent, because it looks at first glance as if
nothing could be fairer than submitting the arrangement of
the match to this impartial tribunal. But in point of fact it
is unfair, because the original purpose of the handicap was
to make things equal in scoring competitions and not in
matches, and further because that original aim has been

GOLF AND 60LFEBS

dhvted byzedndicHi for wins and a Tuiefey of ciicomstanceB.
To qpo^ an eztxeme mstancift — ^tfaere is a certain constant
-pL^jer on a certain gieen whose handicap is eighteen. He
was grren eighteen when he joined the cluh ten yeais ago.
It was a tur handicap for him then, becaoae he was then
cclj a be^nnner. Now his fair handicap would be» pezfaape,
five. Bat he has never been in for a competition, and it is a
maxim with the handicap committee of that clnb not to reduce
a player’s handicap until he has won something. The result
is that* except with those that know him well, this gentleman
never makes a match that is in the least fair. He invdcBS
the ocade — * My handicap/ he says, ‘ is eighteen.’ On that
bass ibe match is played, and it is only perhaps once a year
that this si^ioit gendeman is known to lose one. His is an
exceptional and a flagitious case, but it is an instance in
pcint« illustrating the dangers that we live under by reason
cf the trranny ol the official handicap. In the old days when
w n::et a stnngi» the first question by way of preliminary to
masch m^hhya was: ‘How do yon play with So-and-so?’
nACTTTT-jr some mntoally known opponent, and according to the
answer the match was arranged. It was a pleasant and
frienily way of settling mattoB, preferable and more jnst in
its result than the present. We shall only arrive at that
peasant state of things again when we have relegated the
official handicap to a pn^ieriy humble place, or to Ae region
cf that bunker, east of the EUysian Fields, in the long^hoia
mmm^ home at St. Andrews.

259

CHAPTEB IX

PBAOTIOAIi 0LX7B-1CAXING
Bt J. H. Tatlob

The popularity gained by golf within the last few years
has made the demand for goU clubs and balls so great that
hundreds of men are now continually engaged in their
manufacture. The art of golf club and ball making has
long since come to be considered a trade of suf&cient im-
portance to guarantee the apprenticing of lads to those
already adepts in the business, so that the industry may be
learned by them the more perfectly with a view to its
becoming their means of livelihood. Machinery also has been
invented to aid in the production of clubs, but though a great
deal of the hard work has been saved in this manner, the
finishing has yet to be done by skilled workmen, nor is it
likely that it will ever be otherwise. In the manufacture
of shafts even, although they are sometimes turned by
machinery, yet in order to make anything like a satisfactory
job each one has to be finished after the head has been fixed
on. The great difficulty which golf club makers have always
experienced has been the obtaining of good wood suitable
for the purpose of head-making. Beech, which is more used
than any other wood, grows in great abundance both in
England and Scotland, but, notwithstanding the amount
obtainable, it is exceedingly difficult to get it really good.
A great deal depends on the manner in which the tree
has been grown ; if in some sheltered spot where plenty of
nourishment has been afforded, it will generally be very soft,
but if in some exposed quarter, where the growth has been

8 2

260 GOLF AND GOLFBBS

slow and difficult from the force of preyailiiig winds and
the lack of soil, it will then be hard and durable. Under the
latter circumstances no wood can be more suitable for
making into golf club heads, for while it is hard enough to
wear well, there is not that stony hardness about it which
is sometimes found in holly, hornbeam, rockwood, &c. To
inferior players this is a matter of no importance; but to
others, if a yard or so can be added to the length of the
drive by the extra spring in the wood, it is certainly worth
thinking about. Apple is also often used, but being a more
brittle wood than beech it is not easy to foretell what will
happen to it. If it stands for the first few rounds it will pro-
bably last for years, but with rough usage it is very liable to
break in the neck. This is not so plentiful a wood as beech,
as the trees do not grow very large. The hardness of apple-
wood does not depend so much on where it has been grown
as is the case with beech ; it is nearly always hard, but the
sour apple trees are the hardest. There is a great deal of
waste with this wood in cutting it up, as the trees are
so small. It is also very treacherous to work, as there are
often little flaws in it which cannot be seen at first, one of
which may, however, appear in the neck of the club just when
it is nearly finished, and of course labour in that case has
been spent in vain. Thorn, which is also sometimes used,
is very like apple in all respects. Hornbeam also, although
it may turn out very well, being of a brittle nature often
breaks very quickly in the neck. Nothing will so certainly
break a club as hitting the ball on its neck. When a club
has been broken, it is quite customary for the player to say :
‘ I did not strike the ground, hence it ought not to have
broken,’ whereas had he struck the ground a hundred times,
instead of hitting the ball with the neck of his club two or
three times, it probably would have remained whole. The
neck is the weakest part of a club, and when it strikes the
ball, there being nothing to resist the forward twist of
the head, an unwonted strain is put upon the neck which is

PEAOTICAL CLUB-MAKING 261

almoBt sure to end in a smash. Because of the frequency
with which clubs are broken in this manner bent woods have
recently been introduced in which the grain runs straight up
the neck of the club, which is thereby wonderfully strength-
ened. Hickory and beech are mostly used in this way.
Although clubs made from this kind of wood are rather more
expensive than the ordinary ones, yet they are by far the more
economical in the end, as they last much longer. Shafts
are mostly made of hickory, and for general purposes it is by
far the best wood. It is also the cheapest. Greenheart
makes very good shafts, especially for wooden clubs. Being
stiff, it can be reduced until it is very fine, and it has a nice
steely spring. It is not very good for rough work, as it is
rather brittle and will break much more easily than hickory.
It does not, however, become so easily bent as hickory, but
has greater power of resistance. If pressed out of the straight,
it will readily regain its former position as soon as the
pressure is removed. Lancewood and lemon- wood, which are
very much alike, also make very good shafts. They are neither
quite so stiff nor so brittle as greenheart, but they possess
much of its power for keeping straight. Of texa wood I can
say but little, for, notwithstanding the great things claimed
for it, I have not been able to discover wherein lies the
advantage which it is supposed to possess over other woods.
There are many woods which are occasionally used both for
heads and shafts, besides those to which I have ref erred> but
I have not mentioned them, as I thought it best to confine
myself to those only which are most generally in use. All
wood must be thoroughly seasoned before it is used. If heads
were made of wood that was not seasoned, they would be
more than likely to come rapidly to pieces if immediately
played with, or would shrink very badly out of shape if kept,
while shafts that were not seasoned would soon become as
crooked as ram’s horns. As shafts are mostly made from
foreign wood, the best way is to obtain them already seasoned
from timber merchants, but as a beech or apple tree may be

262 GOLF AND GOLFBBS

cast in any one’s way I will explain briefly the treatment it
should receive preparatory to being made into golf club heads.
U the tree has to be felled, late in the autmnn or mid-
winter is the best time, as then the sap is not circulating.
After it has been felled it should be sawn into plank
2| inches thick, care being taken to split the heart if
possible, as a plank ¥dth the heart in the centre is next to
useless. The next thing is to obtain from some club maker
a block which has already been cut out for a head, and, taking
this as a pattern, to draw on each plank the number of blocks
it is calculated to produce. The simplest way is to cat the
plank first into pieces the length of the block, which should
be about eleven inches. In marking it off, the part of the
block which is to form the neck of the club must have the
grain running pretty straight up, and not across it. It was
customary, a short time since, to cut blocks from the plank

with the same amount of wood on each side
of the angle, thus, so that either aide might
be used for the head or neck, as it was beat
suited for the purpose. The blocks were
then sawn from the plank in this manner.
This method was very useful, in so far as it
always gave one or two chances of getting
the grain right in the head, but the strength thus obtained
in the neck was not sufficient to bear the strain put upon it,
so another plan had to be adopted. Blocks are now usually
sawn from the plank with one side of the angle already
allotted for the neck and the other side for the head. The

part which is to form the neck is therefore
J^^^^^ longer than that which is to form the head,
^^ thus. Instead, therefore, of cutting blocks from

the plank in the manner shown above, they
should be cut out thus. In this way the
grain runs much straighter up the neck,
which is consequently much stronger. The
grain, however, must not be kept quite straight up the neck,

PEACTICAL CLUB-MAKING 263

as that would unduly weaken the head. The objection
to cutting out blocks in this manner is that if the grain
of the head is not right it cannot be altered, but the
objection is small compared with its advantages. What I
mean is this, the grain of the head should run in one of three
ways, either straight across from the face to the lead, long-
ways from the toe to the heel, or curve from the face back
towards the heel. With either of these three ways there is
not much wrong, but if the grain runs from the face with an
inclination towards the toe, the face will generally break up
very soon after it is played with. The grain will usually be
right if the block is sawn out so that the face of the club
shall be formed of that part of the plank which was nearest
the heart of the tree. This is also best for durability, as
heart-wood, or duramen, is always the strongest. After the
blocks are sawn out, they should be stacked in a well ven-
tilated room to season. Plenty of space must be left between
each block for the air to get through, but the sun must be
kept from them or it will bake them to pieces. If the room
is made hot by means of a fire they will also crack. The
time they take to season depends on the degree of moisture
in the wood when it was sawn up, but at the end of six
months, if the room is well ventilated, they should be in
pretty good working order. Of course blocks will season
very much quicker than planks, and they are not so likely to
split in drying as planks are. Wood is often seasoned
artificially in a very short time, but it is not so good as when
seasoned in the ordinary way. Before the blocks can be con-
verted into golf club heads, a place must be found wherein
to erect a bench, which must be strongly built, and should
not be more than thirty-three inches high. Also the following
implements must be obtained :

One vice, 3^-inch jaw

One 14-inch bow saw

One 12-inch tenon saw

One 14-inoh half-rotmd wood rasp

One 14-inch half-round cabinet

rasp
One 14-inch half-round cabinet

file

364 GOLF AND GOLFERS

One f-inoh gonge

One l-inch chisel

One medium hammer

One brace

One lead ladle

One V’8′^Since writing the above we learn that Vardon, who now seems to be playing
better than ever, has increased the weight of his clubs a good deal, i^le still
keeping to the short shafts.

CLUBS AND BALLS 287

professionals seem to be using short and rather stiff clubs,
rather light in the heckd. Certainly the lightening and
shortening, according to the modem fancy, does not seem to
have made any general reduction, but rather the contrary, in
the length of driving. Andrew Eirkaldy is credited with the
dictum that the lighter the club the longer the driving, and
we must all recognise that the essential requisite for long
driving, always provided that the ball be properly struck, is
that the club-head shall be moving at great speed at the
moment that it meets the ball. And it is easier to get this
great speed of movement into a hght club-head than a heavy
one. It is possible to exaggerate the extremes on either side
until the club becomes either too light or too heavy to drive
the ball at all, and a close match might be played by one
man with a crowbar against another with a walking-stick ;
but the driving on neither side would be very long. So
probably the virtue hes somewhere in the mean — not an
absolute mean, but a mean relative to the muscular power of
the man that is to use the club. A certain amount of play
and spring in the shaft is good, but it must not be too much ;
a certain hardness of head is good, or it will too soon be
battered to pieces, but it must not be too hard or it will not
drive. Jn this case — indeed, in either of these cases — a
leather face is the remedy, and a very good remedy too, for
the leather will drive just as’ well as wood.

It is to be remembered that the apparent weight of a club
depends a great deal on the length of shaft. A heavy head
will not feel as heavy in the hand at the end of a short shaft
as a head an ounce lighter at the end of a shaft several inches
longer. J. Rowe, of the Ashdown Forest Club, told the
writer that he was greatly puzzled by the length of ball that
a certain gentleman drove with a club that was obviously
very short, and apparently very light. It happened, however,
that he had to take off the head of one of these clubs, and for
curiosity put it in the balance, when he found to his astonish-
ment that the head he had supposed so light weighed in

988 GOLF AND OOLFEBS

reality neariy eight onncee. It was the shartness of the shaft
that had made Uie head appear so light, and without doabt,
in spite of the theory as to length of driving varying directly
witii the lightness of the clnb-head, this weight, so concealed,
must have had somettiing to say to the length of its master^s
driving. Possibly the truth is tiiat at the end of a short
shaft we can give relatively quicker movement to a heavy
head, but at the end of a long shaft quicker to a light one.
And, speaking in moderation, it seems as if we ought to be
able to strike Hie ball with a short-shafted club with greater
certainty.

The set of clubs with which tiie modem golfer deems
himself fairly and sufficiently equipped consists of driver,
brassy, cleek or driving mashy (generally the latter, as being
better fitted for finding its way into small holes), driving iron,
mashy, putter, and (on a green of sandy bunkers) niblick.
With these he should be armed at aU points. The driving-
iron will serve for a running approach, the mashy for the
lofted ones, which are more frequently usefuL The putter,
by modem usage, is of iron ; but some carry a wooden putter
besides, for running up long putts. Moreover, it is useful to
have an alternative putter in your set, for often, if you are
completely ‘off’ with the putting weapon that you ordinarily
use, a change will have wonderfully good results. Of the
* ba%,’ or short approaching spoon, we have spoken as of a
discarded weapon ; but a few use it still, and for those who
find the successful and scientific use of the iron insuperably
difficult we would strongly reconunend a trial of this
little club.

Of the many kinds of patent clubs we do not find it
useful to press the claims of any but one, and that one is the
Fairlie mashy. The feature of these clubs, inv^ited by that
very excellent golfer Mr. Frank Fairlie, is that the Uade is
set on in advance of the shaft. One effect of this is that it
is impossible with them to faU into that most desperate
state of affliction which expresses itself by striking the ball

CLUBS AND BALLS 289

with the * hose * — that is, with the iron part of the shaft (if
this Hibemicism may be used). This perhaps is a point that
does not affect the scratch player ; he practically never falls
into this affliction, and for such a one it might be a dangerous
experiment to make such a radical change in his weapons
after arriving at full years of golfing maturity; but if we
had a young family to bring up to golf we should certainly
equip them all with these clubs of Mr. Fairlie’s — who is him-
self a past master in their use — believing that it may save
them much subsequent suffering. But there is a special
point about the Fairlie mashy that makes it a useful club in
the hands of the very best. Let us suppose a ball in a bad
cuppy lie ; the ordinary mashy that we should use for this sad
occasion has the blade set on, say, half an inch behind the
hose. The end of this hose, then, forming the extreme heel
of the club, has to go down half an inch into this cup before
the blade can reach the ball at all. With the Fairlie mashy,
having its blade in advance of the hose, the extreme heel of
the club is formed by the rear portion of the blade itself.
This blade, therefore, will have a whole half -inch advantage
of the other — it will reach the ball half an inch sooner — and
no part of the club-head will have to find its way into this
difficult little cup before the blade comes fairly home upon
the ball. It is a point that is not very easily to be explained
in written words, but a glance at the two clubs, side by side,
will serve better than pages of description to show the advan-
tage here claimed for the Fairlie club.

A good club— that is to say, a club that suits you — deserves
good treatment, like a good servant. It is ruination to wooden
clubs to use them on a grassy course after rain, and a * scratch
pack,’ kept to save the better sort, will be useful in the
circumstances. On the other hand, if a club be put away in
cotton wool, as something ultra-precious and only to be used
on great occasions, it is often found to disappoint expectation
sadly when the great occasion comes. If you are plajring
well with a club, continue to play with it, except in heavy

290 GOLF AND GOLFEBS

wet, in hard frost, or in any of the circumstances that are fatal
to a cl

Golf Seminar: The Book of Golf And Golfers- Horace G. Hutchinson

The Book of Golf And Golfers- Intro

Text

PREFACE

CONTENTS