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Title: The Golf Courses of the British Isles
Author: Darwin, Bernard
Language: English
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Transcriber's Note
This version of the text is unable to reproduce certain typographic
features. Italics are delimited with the '_' character as _italic_.
Bold font is delimited with the '=' character as =bold=. Words printed
using "small capitals" are shifted to all upper-case.
The illustrations were each presented with a full page caption, and
were separated from the text by blank pages. In this text, these
illustrations were moved to fall at paragraph breaks and appear as,
for example:
[Illustration: SUNNINGDALE
_The tenth hole_]
Please consult the transcriber's notes at the end of this text for any
additional issues.
THE GOLF COURSES OF THE
BRITISH ISLES
[Illustration: ST. ANDREWS
_Looking back from the twelfth green_]
THE GOLF COURSES
OF THE
BRITISH ISLES
BY
BERNARD DARWIN
ILLUSTRATED BY
HARRY ROUNTREE
LONDON
DUCKWORTH & CO.
3 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN
_All rights reserved_
_Published 1910_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. LONDON COURSES (1) 1
II. LONDON COURSES (2) 23
III. KENT AND SUSSEX 44
IV. THE WEST AND SOUTH-WEST 68
V. EAST ANGLIA 93
VI. THE COURSES OF CHESHIRE AND LANCASHIRE 111
VII. YORKSHIRE AND THE MIDLANDS 130
VIII. OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE 147
IX. A LONDON COURSE 158
X. ST. ANDREWS, FIFE, AND FORFARSHIRE 165
XI. THE COURSES OF THE EAST LOTHIAN AND EDINBURGH 181
XII. WEST OF SCOTLAND: PRESTWICK AND TROON 202
XIII. IRELAND 215
XIV. WALES 231
INDEX 250
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
ST. ANDREWS _Frontispiece._
SUNNINGDALE _To face p._ 4
WALTON HEATH " 12
WOKING " 18
MID-SURREY " 24
STOKE POGES " 28
CASSIOBURY PARK " 30
SANDY LODGE " 32
NORTHWOOD " 34
ROMFORD " 36
BLACKHEATH " 38
WIMBLEDON COMMON " 40
MITCHAM COMMON " 42
SANDWICH " 44
SANDWICH ("HADES") " 46
DEAL " 50
PRINCE'S " 54
LITTLESTONE " 56
RYE " 58
EASTBOURNE " 62
ASHDOWN FOREST " 64
WESTWARD HO! " 70
BUDE " 78
BURNHAM " 80
BROADSTONE " 84
BOURNEMOUTH " 88
BEMBRIDGE " 90
FELIXSTOWE " 94
CROMER " 98
SHERINGHAM " 100
BRANCASTER " 102
HUNSTANTON " 106
SKEGNESS " 108
HOYLAKE (1) " 112
HOYLAKE (2) " 116
FORMBY " 120
WALLASEY " 122
LYTHAM AND ST. ANNE'S " 124
TRAFFORD PARK " 126
GANTON " 130
FIXBY " 134
HOLLINWELL " 138
SANDWELL PARK " 142
HANDSWORTH " 144
FRILFORD HEATH " 148
WORLINGTON " 154
ST. ANDREWS " 166
CARNOUSTIE " 178
GULLANE " 182
MUIRFIELD " 184
NORTH BERWICK " 190
MUSSELBURGH " 196
BARNTON " 200
PRESTWICK " 204
TROON " 212
DOLLYMOUNT " 216
PORTMARNOCK (1) " 220
PORTMARNOCK (2) " 222
PORTRUSH " 224
NEWCASTLE " 228
ABERDOVEY " 232
HARLECH " 238
PORTHCAWL " 244
SOUTHERNDOWN " 246
CHAPTER I.
LONDON COURSES (1).
Some dozen or fifteen years ago the historian of the London golf
courses would have had a comparatively easy task. He would have said
that there were a few courses upon public commons, instancing, as he
still would to-day, Blackheath and Wimbledon. He might have dismissed
in a line or two a course that a few mad barristers were trying to
carve by main force out of a swamp thickly covered with gorse and
heather near Woking. All the other courses would have been lumped
together under some such description as that they consisted of fields
interspersed by trees and artificial ramparts, the latter mostly
built by Tom Dunn; that they were villainously muddy in winter, of an
impossible and adamantine hardness in summer, and just endurable in
spring and autumn; finally, that the muddiest and hardest and most
distinguished of them all was Tooting Bec.
All this is changed now, and the change is best exemplified by the
fact that although the club has removed to new quarters, poor Tooting
itself is now as Tadmor in the wilderness. I passed by the spot the
other day, and should never have recognized it had not an old member
pointed it out to me in a voice husky with emotion. The ground is now
covered with a tangle of red houses, which cannot be termed attractive,
and such glory as belonged to it has altogether departed. Peace to its
ashes! it could never, by the wildest stretch of imagination, have been
called anything but a bad course, and yet it held its head high in its
heyday. Prospective members by the score jostled each other eagerly on
the waiting list, and parliamentary golfers distinguished the course
above its fellows by cutting their divots from its soft and yielding
mud. I still recollect the thrill I experienced on first being taken
to play there; it was a distinct moment in my golfing life. It was
exceedingly muddy, but it was not so muddy as the course at Cambridge
on which I usually disported myself, and on the whole I thought it
worthy of its fame; people were not so difficult to please in the
matter of inland golf in those days.
Tooting is no more, but there are many courses like it still to
be found, most of them in a flourishing condition, near London.
Meanwhile, however, a new star, the star of sand and heather, has
arisen out of the darkness, and a whole generation of new courses,
which really are golf and not a good or even bad imitation of it,
have sprung into being. Here are some of them, and they make an
imposing list--Sunningdale, Walton Heath, Woking, Worplesdon, Byfleet,
Bleakdown, Westhill, Bramshot and Combe Wood. The idea of hacking and
digging and building a course out of land on which two blades of grass
do not originally grow together is a comparatively modern one. The
elder 'architects' took a piece of country that was more or less ready
to their hand, rolled it and mowed it, cut some trenches and built
some ramparts, and there was the course. They did not as a rule think
of taking a primaeval pine forest or a waste of heather and forcibly
turning it into a course; if they had thought of it, moreover, they
would not have had the money to carry it out. Now the glorious golfing
properties of this country of sand and heather and fir-trees have been
discovered; its owners too have discovered that they possessed all
unknowingly a gold mine from which can be extracted so many hundreds of
pounds an acre, and the work of building courses out of the heather and
building houses all round it goes gaily on.
These heathery courses are, for the most part, very good, and so
indeed they ought to be. They have, in the first place, the priceless
gift of youth. Those who have laid them out have been able to study
both the merits and the faults of the older courses, and then, with
the advantage of all this accumulated mass of knowledge, have set
themselves to the work of creation. This science, for so it may now
be fairly called, of the laying out of courses on carefully discussed
and thought-out principles, is itself comparatively modern; the very
expression 'a good length hole,' which is now upon all golfers' lips,
is of no great antiquity. Those who laid out the older links did not,
one may hazard the opinion, think a vast deal about the good or bad
length of their hole. They saw a plateau which nature had clearly
intended for a green, and another plateau at some distance off which
had the appearance of a tee, and there was the hole ready made for
them; whether the distance from one plateau to another could be
compassed in a drive and a pitch, or in two drives, or perhaps even two
drives and a pitch, did not, I fancy, greatly interest them. In some
places nature, being in a particularly kindly mood, had disposed the
plateaus at ideal distances, so that a St. Andrews sprang into being;
but people as a rule took the holes as they found them, and were not
for ever searching for the perfect "test of golf."
Gradually, however, the more thoughtful of golfers evolved definite
theories as to what were the particular qualities that constituted
a good or bad hole, and longed for an opportunity of putting their
theories into practice. One such great opportunity came when it was
discovered that heather would, if only enough money was spent on it,
make admirable golfing country, and the architects have made the
fullest use of it, lavishing upon the heather treasures of thought,
care and ingenuity which the non-golfer might say were worthy of a
better cause. Nothing can ever quite make up for the short, crisp turf,
the big sandhills and the smell of the sea; seaside golf must always
come first, and inland second, but the best inland golf can no longer
be reproached with being a bad second.
[Illustration: SUNNINGDALE
_The tenth hole_]
Of all these comparatively young courses, the two best known are
probably Sunningdale and Walton Heath. Sunningdale was designed
by Willy Park, who is an architect of very pronounced characteristics,
though Sunningdale is not perhaps quite so clearly to be recognized
as his handiwork as are some of his other courses, such as Huntercombe
or Burhill. It was laid out in what proved to be the last days of the
gutty ball, though there was then no whisper of the revolution that was
coming to us across the Atlantic. It was a long course--really a
fearfully long course for an ordinary mortal. The two-shot holes were
doubtless two-shot holes--for Braid, but they had a way of expanding
themselves into two drives and a reasonable iron shot for less gifted
players. I cannot help thinking that the coming of the "Haskell" was
a blessing for the course, and that it may be said of Sunningdale, as
it can be said for perhaps no other course in Christendom, that it was
improved by the rubber-cored ball.
The holes are still quite long enough, and if we accomplish any
considerable number of them in four strokes apiece we shall be
justified in a modified amount of swagger, but we need no longer risk
an internal injury in trying to reach the green with our second shot.
Of all the inland courses Sunningdale is perhaps the richest in really
fine two-shot holes, where a brassey or cleek shot lashed right home on
to the green sends a glow of satisfaction through the golfer's frame.
Almost as surely as the two-shot holes constitute its strength, the
short holes are the weakness of the course. Really good and interesting
short holes add a crowning glory to a golf course, and that, I think,
Sunningdale lacks. It resembles in that respect another fine course,
Deal, where the longer holes are admirable and the short holes are
almost totally wanting in distinction. The short holes at Sunningdale
are, however, much better than they used to be, for there was a time
when they might have been rather scathingly dismissed as consisting of
two practically blind shots on to artificial table lands, and a third
entirely blind shot on to a bad sloping green; but this third reproach
at least has now been entirely wiped away.
Let us now begin at the first tee and duly admire the view over a vast
expanse of wild, undulating, heathery country, with more houses on
it now than anyone except the ground-landlord would like to see, and
clumps of fir-trees here and there, one especially on a little knoll,
which makes a pleasant landmark in the distance. The next thing to do
is to hit the ball, which should be a comparatively easy task, for
there is plenty of room at this first hole, as there always should
be, and nothing but an egregious top or a wholly unprovoked slice is
likely to harm us. It is really, from the point of view of the greatest
happiness of the greatest number, a wholly admirable first hole, since
not only is there no great opportunity for disaster, but the hole is
a long hole and so enables the couples to be despatched quickly and
without undue irritation from the tee. It is just a steady, easy-going
five hole--two drives and a pitch--a mere prelude to the beginning of
serious business at the second.
This second is a really good hole. The tee-shot has to be played at an
unpleasantly difficult angle, and if we slice it we may find ourselves
in some innocent householder's front garden, while in endeavouring to
avoid such a trespass, we shall most probably pull it into a region
of ruts and heather. If we avoid both forms of errors, we have still
the second shot to play, long and straight and of an aspect most
formidable, for the avenue of rough down which we drive narrows as it
approaches the green, and there is an indefinable temptation to slice.
Altogether a fine hole, and on the easiest of days we may be thoroughly
pleased with a four, a figure we ought to repeat at the third. This
third is of no vast length, but is an excellent example of those holes
whereat there is much virtue in the placing of the tee-shot. There is
a bunker that "pokes and nuzzles with its nose" into the left-hand or
top edge of the green, and he who pulls his drive ever so slightly will
have a most difficult pitch to play over this bunker on to a somewhat
slippery and sloping green that runs away from him. On the other hand,
the man who has had the courage to skirt the rough on the right-hand
side of the course--very bad rough it is, too--will be rewarded by a
fairly simple run up shot, and moreover, the slope of the green makes a
cushion against which he may play his shot boldly.
The fourth is a short hole on a plateau green some way above the
player. The plateau is reasonably small and well guarded, and the shot
in a cross wind is sufficiently difficult, but the bottom of the pin is
out of the player's sight, and he needs much local knowledge to be sure
whether he is ten yards short or stone dead; a better hole than it
was, maybe, but not quite worthy of Sunningdale yet.
The fifth and sixth are beautiful holes, and the tee-shot to the fifth
sends the blood coursing more briskly through the veins. There is an
exhilaration in driving from a height and rushing thence down a steep
place on to the course which cannot be gainsaid. The more scientific
may point out that there is no justification for such emotion and that
we have far less on which to plume ourselves than if we had struck our
tee-shot from the flat. The fact remains that hitting off a high place,
if it be not done too often and we are not too scant of breath, is
wholly delightful; the difficulty is that we are so intoxicated with
the situation that we hit much too hard and the ball totters feebly
down the hill-side, suffering from a severe wound in the scalp.
The drive from this particular high place having been safely
accomplished, there is an accurate second shot, which varies greatly
in length according to the wind, to be played between a pond on the
right and a bunker on the left. Some will pitch it and pitch into the
pond; others will run it and run into the bunker, and Mr. Colt will
play a peculiar low, scuffling shot straight on the pin and win it from
us in a four, which will very nearly be a three. Another wonderfully
good two-shot hole is the sixth, where the green lies in the angle of
a wood, and we must hold our second shot well up to the left so that
the ball shall trickle slowly down the sloping green towards the hole;
that is supposing we have hit a straight tee-shot, a thing by no means
certain, for there is a horribly attractive clump of fir-trees to the
left which catches many and which once proved particularly fatal to
Jack White in a big match against Tom Vardon.
The seventh is a bone of contention, some averring that it is a fine
'sporting' hole, while others have no names too bad for it; when not
alluded to with profanity it is generally known as the 'Switch-back'
hole. Those who like a blind tee-shot and a blind second will admire
it, and those who don't wont, and there is the whole matter in a very
small compass. The eighth is quite a good short hole now (it used to be
bad and blind and stupid); and the ninth we may skip, although there
is a fine straight tee-shot needed, and then from the tenth tee we
drive down another steep place into the lower country. Those who make
a loud outcry when they drive "a perfect tee-shot, sir, straight on
the pin," and find it in a bunker, may here have cause for annoyance.
There is no bunker on the straight line, but there are bunkers to right
and left and a somewhat narrow space between, and a shot that is very,
very nearly well hit sometimes finds a resting-place in one or other
of them. It is a poor thing, however, to demand perfect immunity for
any respectable drive, and the shot that is placed where it ought to
be gives the chance for a really fine second shot between more bunkers
on to a green of fascinating but fiendish undulations. At the back of
the green is a hut, where live ginger-beer and apples and other things,
and he who has done the hole in four fully deserves them. This tenth
hole will be celebrated in golfing history for a truly tremendous
second shot played by Braid out of the left-hand bunker in the final
round of the _News of the World_ tournament, his opponent being Edward
Ray. Braid calls it in his book the most remarkable bunker shot that
he ever played, and that is praise indeed. Poor Ray! He had a perfect
tee-shot and a perfect second, laid his third stone dead, and yet lost
the hole, for Braid, having driven into the left-hand bunker from the
tee, gallantly took his iron for his second, reached the green with a
terrific shot, and completed the roll of his infamies by holing his
putt for a three.
Provided we do not top our tee-shot into a formidable sandy bluff, the
eleventh should be done in four, with a chance of a three; and the
twelfth should be another four, if only we can be straight enough from
the tee. This is a hole to be approached warily and in instalments, and
the prudent man generally takes a cleek or a spoon from the tee, and
even then breathes a fervent thanksgiving if his ball lies clear, since
the fairway narrows down to a horribly small point.
The thirteenth, as I said, was once one of the very worst holes in
the world, and is now a thoroughly attractive one; the player must
produce some stroke whereby the ball shall sit resolutely down on a
slanting green surrounded by bunkers, and stay there. The fourteenth is
a two-shot hole for Mr. Angus Hambro, and rather more for most other
people, save under favourable conditions. Then comes another short
hole--I should have said there were four and not three--but this is
a long short hole; a wooden club shot is often needed, and when that
wooden club shot has to be held up into a stiff right-hand wind, the
difficulties of the situation are not easily to be overrated.
Then we face homewards with three good long holes, all of which may be
done in fours, though most people would thankfully strike a bargain
with Providence for two fours and a five. The most difficult of the
three, as is only right and fitting, is a seventeenth hole, and here
Mr. Colt has worked a great transformation and turned a hole that once
possessed no merits whatever into a thoroughly good one, with a most
difficult second shot--one of those shots which produce an instinctive
and fatal tendency to slice. After that two good, straight, steady
shots should get us safely on to the home green, and we have finished
at last; if we have done a score which is perceptibly lower than 80, we
have done well. If we have not been too frequently 'up to our necks'
in untrodden heather--nay, even if we have--we ought to have enjoyed
ourselves immensely.
From Sunningdale we go to =Walton Heath=--a thing far easier to
accomplish in the imagination than by a cross-country journey, and
there we have another fine, long slashing course laid out in the grand
manner, especially to suit the rubber-cored ball.
The course is the work of Mr. Herbert Fowler, who is perhaps the
most daring and original of all golfing architects, and gifted with
an almost inspired eye for the possibilities of a golfing country.
He is essentially ferocious in his methods, and there is no one else
who is quite so merciless in the punishing of shots that are quite
respectable, that are in fact so nearly good that the striker of
them, in the irritation of the moment, calls them perfect. This fell
design he will accomplish either by trapping the long shot that is
almost straight but not straight enough or by planting his green amid
a perfect network of bunkers. The result is that there will always
be found some to call down maledictions upon his head, and in truth
some of his devices are almost fiendish, but they are nearly always
interesting.
The trend of modern golfing architecture is all against the
old-fashioned cross-bunkers, which used as a matter of course to be
dug at regular intervals across the fairway, but, curiously enough,
the cross-bunker plays a not unimportant part at Walton. Two holes in
particular come to mind, the long seventh and eighth, where bunkers
have to be crossed and cannot be circumvented, while the crossing of
them in the proper number of strokes is a very essential matter, since
the necessity of playing short often involves the loss of a whole
stroke.
Wild and bleak and merciless the course looks--a vast tract of
wind-swept heather. In truth it is a very long one, and the casual
visitor often brings against it a charge of monotonous length, but when
he has played there more often he will probably discover that each
of these long holes has a very distinct character, and that each is
interesting in a way of its own. Some courses impress themselves very
quickly on the memory so that each hole stands out quite distinctly,
while others leave only a vague and blurred recollection, nor is it
merely a question of the holes being absolutely good or bad. When a
man has once played the first six holes at Sandwich he is likely
to remember them all the days of his life, even if he has avoided
the Sahara and the Maiden; whereas he may retain only the haziest
recollection of St. Andrews after two or three days' play. So it is
with the long holes at Walton Heath; they have in reality plenty of
character, but it is hard at first to distinguish one from another.
[Illustration: WALTON HEATH
_The second shot at the seventeenth hole_]
The short holes, on the other hand, make a vivid and lasting
impression, and, as I think at least, give to the course its chief
distinction. There are four of them, and all four are good. Of these
four the sixth is by common consent the best and most difficult; so
difficult as sometimes to be paid the high compliment of being called
'impossible.' When the professionals were playing at Walton in the
_News of the World_ tournament, and playing with their wonderful and
monotonous accuracy--shot after shot clean, long, and straight as an
arrow through the wind--it was pleasant to find that there existed in
the world quite a short hole which could show them to be vulnerable.
I stood on the first day watching a succession of couples play this
sixth hole, and though there was usually one ball safely on the green,
there were never two; it was really a most cheering and satisfactory
spectacle.
Even on the stillest of still days the shot is one which can scarce be
approached without a tremor. The distance can be compassed with a firm
pitch with an iron club of moderate loft, and the green is undeniably
of adequate size, but it is ringed round, save immediately in front,
with a series of bunkers very deep and horrible, and, to increase
our terror, the ground 'draws' unmistakably towards them. Often as we
stand on the tee in a frenzied attitude, trying to steer the ball to
safety with vain gesticulations of the club, we see it light upon the
turf, and breathe a sigh of relief. Alas, we were too hasty! The ball
trembles and totters for a moment or two, in a state of indecision, and
then, as if magnetically drawn towards Scylla on one side or Charybdis
on the other, slowly disappears from our sight. Once in the bunker
there is nothing to do but employ the 'common thud' of Sir Walter
Simpson, and we ought with ordinary fortune to get out in one, but the
ball must be made to drop wonderfully dead and lifeless, scattering
showers of sand as it goes, or else it will run quite gently and
deliberately across the green into the bunker on the other side. It is
one of those holes at which, were the fates amenable to a compromise,
many a stout-hearted player would write down four on his card and
proceed to the next tee with the ball in his pocket.
Another hole of similar character, but a degree or two less formidable
and by just so much the less fascinating, is the twelfth. Perhaps it
would be just as terrible were it not that the prevailing wind is here
behind the player, whereas at the sixth it seems to blow persistently
across. With the wind behind the hole is brought within the compass of
an ordinary, straightforward, inartistic thump with a mashie, and that
shot, which is the _bête noire_ of all but the truly great, the push
with the iron, is not brought into requisition.
The other two short holes, the fifth and the tenth, are never very
short, and, when the wind blows strong in our faces, too long for us to
entertain any great hopes of reaching the green. In any case, unless
the ground be abnormally hard and fast, we had better behave with due
humility and take a wooden club. At the fifth our chief care must be to
hold the ball well up to the right, a task usually made more difficult
by a strong pulling wind. There are many chronic and many occasional
slicers in the world, but there are few who can deliberately hit the
ball to the right and make it hold on its way when they want to:
wonderfully few who can do so without a disastrous loss of distance.
It is the chief beauty of the hole that it calls imperatively for this
most difficult of shots, since the slope of the green is from right to
left and a series of graduated horrors await the pulled ball: a mere
bunker for the moderate sinner, a tract of wet ruts and hoof-marks
for the rather more criminal, and a waste of heather for the utterly
depraved. Nor is it sufficient merely to hit the ball somewhere out to
the right. Good intentions by themselves are not enough, and there is a
bunker lurking on the right-hand edge of the green; if we go so far to
the right that this bunker lies between us and the hole, we shall have
to employ all the arts of a Taylor if we are to be within reasonable
putting range next time.
Now we must leave the tenth, though an excellent hole, especially as
played by Braid with a vast, low skimming cleek shot, and look at some
of the longer holes. Of these there are three which fix themselves
in the memory, the second, seventeenth and eighteenth. A hole more
satisfactory to do in four than the second it would be hard to
imagine, since both the drive and the second must be long and straight
and the second must almost inevitably be played from a hanging lie.
We may, if we like, approach it in cowardly instalments and play our
tee-shot deliberately short of the sloping ground; if we do, we may
possibly escape a six, but by no means shall we get a four. It is the
hole for a man brave and skilful who can use his wooden club when the
ground is not flat, neither is the ball teed.
It is the duty of every golf course to have a good seventeenth hole,
and the seventeenth at Walton certainly need not fear comparison
even with the Alps and the Station-master's Garden. We must begin by
hitting a long, straight drive between bunkers on the right and some
particularly retentive heather on the left, but that is, comparatively
speaking, an easy matter. The second shot is the thing--a full shot
right home on to a flat green that crowns the top of a sloping bank.
To the right the face of the hill is excavated in a deep and terrible
bunker, and a ball ever so slightly sliced will run into that bunker
as sure as fate. To the left there is heather extending almost to the
edge of the green, and, in avoiding the right-hand bunker, we may very
likely die an even more painful death in the heather.
After this glorious hole the eighteenth seems simple enough. Two lusty,
straightforward drives, with a big bunker to carry for the second;
it is a hole that presents few terrors to the professional, since he
always hits his wooden club shots, yet even for him there are some
bunkers at the edge of the green which are not to be despised. For
humbler people everything connected with the hole is very far from
despicable.
Besides the greens, which are big and true and fraught with undulations
difficult to gauge, there is one feature which calls for special
mention, and that is the deepness of the bunkers. It is part of Mr.
Fowler's ferocity that he does not intend us to run through his
bunkers, if he can by any means prevent it, while, when we are in them,
he does not mean us to do more than get out with a niblick. Braid can
sometimes hit prodigious distances out of them, but then he has been
round the course in a score under 70--a thing that no respectable man
should do.
Before quitting the heathery courses, we must take a glance at
=Woking=, which is the oldest and still one of the best of them.
Indeed, although my judgment may not be strictly an impartial one,
I think it is still the pleasantest of all upon which to play, and
the golf is undeniably interesting. It does lack something, however,
of the bigness of Sunningdale or Walton Heath, which have been laid
out on an altogether grander scale. The two-shot holes at Woking do
not always require quite two shots. When the ground is at all hard a
poorish drive does not do a great deal of harm, and a long one means a
comfortable second shot with an iron club. Still, continuous brassey
play is not everything: it is apt to grow monotonous, and whatever
charge can be made against Woking, I imagine that no just critic would
call it dull. The keenest golfer among my acquaintances said to me the
other day that, whatever anybody might say, Sandwich and Woking were
the two pleasantest places for a game of golf, and though there is no
resemblance between the two courses, I think his verdict was a sound
one.
Woking has certain, almost unique, distinctions--or disgraces,
according to one's point of view--among golf clubs. It has but one
medal day a year, and it possesses no Bogey. Any innocent stranger
visiting Woking and enquiring the bogey score for any particular
hole will be greeted with a glare of such withering contempt as
seriously to impair his day's pleasure. Another curious, and I think
a blessed, circumstance about Woking is that the bunkers, which are
many and cunningly disposed, are the work of one benevolent autocrat.
Unconscious of their doom, the members disperse for their summer
holidays and when they return they find that the most revolutionary
things have been done. Upon greens that were formerly flat and easy
have sprouted plateaus and domes and hollows. Hillocks have risen as
if by magic in the middle of the fairway; 'floral' hazards bloom at
the side, and bunkers have been dug at that precise spot where members
have for years complacently watched their ball come to rest at the
end of their finest shots. Even now as I write I believe there is a
gigantic project in view at a certain hole, which I would rather die
than reveal. All these things happen at the instigation of a very small
secret Junta, and after a little grumbling, such as is only right and
proper, the members settle down and admit that the alterations are
exceedingly ingenious and the course more entertaining than ever. It
appears to me to be the ideal way in which to conduct a golf club,
but it is an ideal that can very seldom be attained.
[Illustration: WOKING
_Looking back to the sixteenth green_]
Over one of the revolutionary things done at Woking controversy still
rages, or rather it no longer continuously rages, but spirts every now
and again into flame. This is the famous bunker at the fourth hole, of
which the traveller may get a fine view as he is being whirled towards
Southampton by the South-Western Railway. This hole was originally
a very ordinary 'drive and a pitch' hole. You drove straight down a
fairly broad strip of turf between heather on the left and the railway
line on the right. Then you jumped over a rampart on to a nice big
green and there you were. The soul of Mr. Stuart Paton, however, soared
far above so lamentably unimaginative a hole, and he set to work upon
it. First he removed large portions of the cross-rampart, so that it
became possible to play a running instead of a pitching shot from
certain positions, and then in the very centre of the fairway, at just
the range of a good drive from the tee, he dug a small but formidable
bunker. In shape it bore a resemblance to the Principal's Nose, while
in position it was rather like that of the bunker which lies in the
middle of the course going to the ninth hole also at St. Andrews. By
means of this bunker a clear-cut and distinct problem has to be faced
on the tee. We must decide whether to drive safely away to the left,
and so have a pitch to play, which is sometimes rather difficult, or
whether to take a risk and lay down the ball between the bunker and
the railway line. The danger of pushing the ball out a little too
much, and so going out of bounds, is considerable, but the reward is
considerable also, for an easy running up shot should give us a putt
for three.
The number of discussions which I have heard as to this one little
bunker would fill a large but not an interesting volume. The form of
the discussion is nearly always the same, and is something like this:
A. "You can't persuade me that it is right to have a bunker bang
on the line to the hole, exactly where a good drive should be."
B. "If there is a bunker there, then that cannot be the line to
the hole. Your drive was not a very good one, but a very bad one."
A. "It was not a bad one. It was a perfect shot--hit in the very
middle of the club."
B. "You should use your own head as well as the club head."
After this the conversation becomes unfit for publication.
There are also some bunkers situated actually in the putting greens
which used to cause annoyance. There is one at the sixth and two at
the seventeenth, one of which is affectionately called "Johnny Low,"
after that sternest of bunker-makers, who invented it. To these,
however, everybody has long been reconciled, and both holes afford good
instances of how much can be done in the way of making a player place
his tee-shot, by digging a comparatively small bunker in the green.
Another clever and interesting piece of golfing architecture is to be
found at the seventh hole. The hole can be reached from the tee with a
moderate iron shot, and in former days, so long as one did not slice or
pull very egregiously, one could recover from a most indifferent shot
by laying a long putt dead on a flat easy green. Now, however, a most
ingenious range of mountains has been introduced, which has had the
effect of dividing the green into two compartments. If a shot be at all
crooked a three is still well within the bounds of possibility, but the
approach putt, instead of being easy, has to be made over a series of
most perplexing curves. The straight player's ball, on the other hand,
is lying close to the hole, for the hills, which are the enemies of the
crooked, are as a rule the allies of the accurate, and have rewarded
his virtuous ball with a kick from their friendly slopes. A somewhat
similar architectural feat has been tried at the other short hole--the
sixteenth, where we have to pitch over a pond--but there, for some
reason, it hardly seems to have been so successful.
I am afraid I may have given the idea that Woking has been laid out
in a spirit of impish mischief, but such an impression would be an
entirely wrong one. There are plenty of opportunities for fine,
straightforward hitting, although wild, erratic slogging will nearly
always be punished. There are some really beautiful two-shot holes,
which are at their best when there is not too much run in the ground.
The fifth, for instance, where there is a wonderfully pretty green
lying in a semi-circle of trees, and the eighth, a really gorgeous hole
when there is any wind against one. Twelve and thirteen again, though
not quite so long, are both beautiful holes, and the fourteenth, which
brings the golfer right up to the club-house and tempts him to lunch
before his time, requires two of the very longest and straightest of
hits.
Taking them day in and day out I think the greens at Woking are the
best that I know to be found inland--Mid-Surrey excepted. They are
often very nearly perfect, and are practically always good. They are
not as a rule alarmingly fast, nor so slow as to convert putting into
mere hard physical exercise, but of a nice, easy, comfortable pace,
that reflects enormous credit on Martin, who is one of the best of
green-keepers. I can only end as I began by asserting that there is no
more delightful course whereon to play golf.
CHAPTER II.
LONDON COURSES (2).
Now leaving the heather, we must turn to some of the other substances
upon which Londoners play their weekly golf. On the course of the
Mid-Surrey Golf Club in the Old Deer Park at Richmond there are
probably more rounds of golf played throughout the whole year than
on any other golf course in the three kingdoms. You may go down to
Richmond on any day of the year, on which it is not snowing, and be
sure of finding a good many people who have managed to get a day
off and are spending it in playing golf. The business of the world
presumably goes on in spite of their absence, and indeed the week-day
crowd on a golf course points the moral that we are none of us
indispensable.
The =Mid-Surrey= course is in a park, and must therefore be classed
among the park courses, but it is hardly typical of its kind. The trees
stand for the most part as occasional and isolated sentinels guarding
the edges of the rough. We do not drive down whole avenues of them,
nor, as on some courses, do they play the part of gigantic goal-posts
through which we must direct the ball. The country is more open and
more sparsely timbered than the typical park, but, if the big trees
only interfere with us now and then, there are several peculiarly
odious little spinneys which are almost certain to thrust themselves
upon our notice.
The Old Deer Park is a pretty spot, but the course does not at first
sight look attractive; its disadvantages may be summed up in two
adjectives--'flat' and 'artificial,' nor do the course's enemies forget
to make the fullest use of them. Flat it is--as flat as a pancake, as
may be seen at a glance, and the bunkers, which are now innumerable as
the sands of the sea, have been raised one and all by the hand of man.
So much is certain, and on such a course there is a limit to our powers
of enjoying ourselves; we cannot hope for the exhilaration that is born
of sea and sandhills and, in a minor degree, of fir-trees and heath.
On the other hand, of the joy that comes from a well-struck brassey
shot--a joy that has been sadly diminished on most courses by the
rubber-cored ball--we can taste in abundance. The last nine holes in
the Old Deer Park repay really long straight play with the wooden clubs
almost as well as any nine holes that can be mentioned, wherefore the
Mid-Surrey course, if it be not quite 'the real thing' itself, provides
at least an admirable training ground.
[Illustration: MID-SURREY
_The tenth hole_]
There is but one thing lacking for the player's perfect education in
brassey shots, and that is an occasional bad lie or bad stance; he
will constantly be taking his wooden club through the green, but the
ball will always be sitting up on a perfect lie and obviously
requesting to be hit, while his stance will be of the smoothest and
flattest. When he leaves this smooth and shaven Paradise and fights the
sea breezes amid hummocks and hollows, he will find that considerably
more is asked of him, and may possibly re-echo the dictum of the
celebrated Scottish professional, that it is necessary to be a goat in
order to stand to his ball, and a goat, moreover, qualified with no
uncertain epithet.
In this matter of perfect lies and stances Mid-Surrey is apt to pamper
and over-indulge its devotees; and the same may be said of the greens,
for they are as near perfection as anything short of a billiard-table
could possibly be. Much care and money and a transcendent genius among
green-keepers, Peter Lees, have combined to make them a miracle of
trueness and smoothness. Some greens that are extraordinarily good,
true and easy, yet afford no particular pleasure, since they are too
slow and soft; a perfectly true Turkey carpet might lead to the holing
of many putts and yet the player would soon long for some barer,
harder, more untrue substance. The necessity of hitting our putts very
hard covers many little deficiencies in our execution, but it is poor
fun compared with the art of stroking the ball up to the hole.
The Mid-Surrey greens are open to none of these reproaches, since they
combine perfect trueness with plenty of pace, and we must strike the
ball a delicate, subtle blow; the methods of the bludgeon are equally
unsuitable and disastrous. There are plenty of little ripples and
ridges and hollows in the greens, though few bold slopes, and there is
therefore scope for considerable nicety of putting; above all, there is
the cheering knowledge that a putt has but to make a good start in life
to ensure its turning neither to the right nor to the left and ending a
blameless career at the bottom of the hole.
Thus we have perfect lies, stances, and greens, and it is clear that
we shall have none but the most futile excuses for our errors. If we
hit the ball we ought to do a good score, and, especially on the way
out, nothing but our own folly should prevent a long and gratifying
sequence of fours; that is to say, we ought to do six fours, two threes
at the short holes, and a five, which we may fairly allow ourselves
at the second. This green can be reached in two shots; Robson did
reach it in two in the _News of the World_ tournament, but to have
seen him do it was enough to prevent our own vaulting ambition from
o'erleaping itself once and for all. They were indeed two stupendous
shots, and if we carry the big cross-bunker safely in two and then
play a nice straight run-up on to the green, we shall have done all
that can be reasonably expected of us. Of the other holes on the way
out the third is perhaps the most engaging, since we must employ our
heads as well as our clubs. There is a spinney--a detestably, almost
mesmerically attractive spinney--to the left, and if we pull our drive
we shall be confronted with a shot wherein the ball must rise abruptly
to a considerable height and at the same time traverse a considerable
distance. If, however, we have pushed the tee-shot well out to the
right, we shall have our reward in a simple approach shot, a steady
four and a consciousness of virtue.
As far as the turn, then, we may progress in an average of fours, but
we shall be lucky if we do not considerably exceed it on the way home;
we shall need a series of lusty second shots and even so shall be
none the worse for a wind behind us at all the holes, which is alas!
impossible. There is no one hole that stands out particularly from its
fellows, but the one we are likely to remember best is the twelfth, not
so much for its intrinsic merits, which are considerable, as for a fine
cedar tree, which fills us with joy till it has entirely and hopelessly
stymied us from the hole.
The bunkers are many and cunningly devised, and there is also rough
grass, but the lies in the rough are not very bad, and if we are going
to make a mistake we shall be well advised to do it thoroughly; thereby
we shall be so crooked as to avoid the bunkers, while brute force and
a driving iron may extricate us from the rough with but little loss.
This, of course, is not as it should be, but the difficulty is an
insuperable one on many inland courses.
Not far off are two nice courses, Sudbrook Park and Ashford Manor, but
from Mid-Surrey we will voyage to another park course, the newest of
its kind, at =Stoke Poges=. Stoke Park is a beautiful spot, and there
is very good golf to be played there; the club is an interesting one,
moreover, as being one of the first and the most ambitious attempts in
England at what is called in America a 'Country Club.' There are plenty
of things to do at Stoke besides playing golf. We may get very hot at
lawn tennis or keep comparatively cool at bowls or croquet, or, coolest
of all, we may sit on the terrace or in the garden and give ourselves
wholly and solely to loafing. The club-house is a gorgeous palace, a
dazzling vision of white stone, of steps and terraces and cupolas, with
a lake in front and imposing trees in every direction, while over it
all broods the great Chief-Justice Coke, looking down benignantly from
the top of his pillar and gracefully concealing his astonishment at the
changes in the park.
Never was there a better instance of the art of forcibly turning a
forest into a golf-course than is to be found at Stoke Poges. The
beautiful old park turf was always there, cropped from time immemorial
by generations of deer, who little knew what service they were doing to
the green-keeper, but in every direction there stretched thick belts of
woodland, and yet a golf course was going to be made and opened in less
than no time. I saw the place in its pristine state, and the holes,
as they were pointed out to me, with an eye of but imperfect faith.
Thousands of trees, as it seemed, bore the fatal mark that signified
their doom, and yet the thing appeared almost impossible. One hole was
particularly impressive. All that was then to be seen was a pretty
little brook running innocently between its banks, which were thickly
covered with trees, while on one side the ground sloped gently upwards
to a path through the woods. It was a spot to conjure up visions of
dryads or fairies, "Green jacket, red cap and white owl's feather"; of
anything in the world except a narrow, catchy, slanting green and
a half-iron shot. Yet an inspired architect had fixed on it as the site
of one of his short holes; the trees were to be cut down, the sloping
bank was to be turfed and the brook promoted to the fuller dignity of a
burn. I went my way full of admiration--and of doubt.
[Illustration: STOKE POGES
_The sixteenth hole_]
A few months after I returned to find that the romantic little wood
had vanished, and there was a short hole in its place--a hole that
any course might be proud to own, and a putting green that the deer
might have grazed for centuries. I never saw a more daring bit
of architecture, except perhaps at Stonham, the new course near
Southampton, where Willy Park has actually built a putting green over
a stream. Apart from this one hole, belts of wood had disappeared in
all directions as if by magic, and had been replaced by turf; yet
there were so many trees left that no one could reasonably complain.
There was the course ready to be played on, and a very good course it
is--long, difficult, and for the most part entertaining.
The turf is good and springy, and where it is intended that the player
should get a good lie, he gets an excellent one; where it is intended
that he should be in trouble there is likewise no mistake about it. He
may lie in a wood, though this is only the penalty for a very heinous
crime, and the trees are for the most part kept skilfully in reserve
as a second line of defence. He may at one or two holes lie in a lake;
and he will often, if he be crooked, lie in a compound of bracken and
long grass, which will adequately test his powers of recovery. There
are also bunkers, though these, with commendable wisdom, have been put
in but sparingly at first, and, at the moment of writing, the foozler's
cup of anguish is not yet filled to the brim.
As is increasingly becoming the fashion with modern courses, there are
a good many one-shot holes; there are, to be precise, four, or, if
we can drive a quite abnormal distance, we may include the tenth and
say there are five. Of these the seventh hole over the brook before
mentioned is the best: indeed it is quite one of the most charming of
short holes. Its special virtue is to be found in the fact that we have
to approach it at a peculiarly diabolical angle, so that the green
becomes exceedingly narrow; a slice takes us into the brook, a pull
into a road, and, in short, nothing but a good shot will do. Of the
other short holes the most superficially terrifying, to those at least
who sometimes drive a little lower than the angels, is the sixteenth,
where we must stand on a little peninsula that juts out into the lake
and carry some hundred or more yards of water.
[Illustration: CASSIOBURY PARK
_The new eighteenth hole_]
Of the longer holes, all need sound and straight play, and some are
thoroughly interesting. There is perhaps just a tinge of monotony about
the sequence of long holes that begin after the eleventh; they are all
good holes, but we might reasonably yearn for a little break in the
middle. The twelfth is perhaps the best of them, since not only is it
narrow, but it has the peculiar quality, granted to some holes, of a
terrifying appearance. There is really plenty of room; the trees and
the lake to the right are, in fact, a long way off, and ought to be
omitted from our calculations, but it is hard not to keep one eye
on them--and off the ball. The seventeenth is another difficult hole,
especially as it comes on us before we have fully recovered from the
watery terrors of the sixteenth. There is a fine carry for the second
over a stream that runs just in front of the green, and the brave man
goes for his four, and haply takes six, while the coward plays his
second with an iron and a measure of contemptible prudence, trusting
thereby to secure a steady five; let us hope that he hits his pitch off
the heel of his club and takes six after all.
Of all the race of park courses, it would scarcely be possible, in
point of sheer beauty, to beat =Cassiobury Park=, near Watford in
Hertfordshire. Neither by laying too much emphasis on its beauty do
I mean to cast an oblique slur upon the golf itself, a great deal of
which is very good. Of course you will not think it good if you hate
trees, because there are a great many trees; and you will probably be
at least once or twice hopelessly stymied by them in the course of the
round. Even the most confirmed tree-hater, however, might find his
heart softening, because these particular trees are so very lovely.
There are the most glorious avenues, elms and limes and chestnuts and
beeches, that stretch across the park, and a fine day at Cassiobury
comes within measurable distance of heaven. It is even beautiful on a
wet day, and the last day that I spent there was wet, quite beyond the
ordinary. I remember it very well from the circumstance of having to
wade breast high into drenching nettles after a ball which my wretched
partner had put there. This occurred at the third hole--a hole which
is rather a remarkable one in itself, and was never more remarkably
played than on that occasion.
The green can be reached easily enough with one honest blow, but there
is a huge tree immediately to the right of the green, and a still more
huge and infinitely more alarming pit immediately under the tee. The
pit is very deep and its sides precipitous, and it is altogether a very
formidable affair. Our opponents drove off, I remember, and perpetrated
an ordinary 'fluff' or foozle, which left the ball on grass, it is
true, but at the very bottom of the pit.
"Now," said I to my partner, no doubt foolishly, "here is our chance."
By way of answer he struck the ball violently on some portion of the
club that lay far behind the heel. The ball dashed away at a terrific
pace in the direction of square leg, came into collision with the
branch of a tree some fifty yards off the line, whence it bounded back
into the bed of nettles before mentioned. By some miracle the ball was
dislodged from the nettles, and joined its fellow at the bottom of the
pit. Then began a game the object of which an intelligent foreigner
would probably have imagined to be the hitting of the ball up the bank
in such a way as it should roll down exactly to the place whence it
started. Ultimately, for I must pass over the intervening events, I
missed a short putt to win the hole in eight.
[Illustration: SANDY LODGE
_The first green, looking towards the club-house_]
If this third hole is the most terrifying to the habitual foozler, the
more mature golfer will be a great deal more frightened of the fourth
and tenth, which were really very good holes indeed. That drive at
the tenth down a pretty glade between the trees is, as far as
appearances go at least, one of the narrowest I know, and the second
shot is a good one too, though by no means so long as it used to be,
with a gutty. After this tenth comes another capital 'two-shotter,'
which has been made by the expedient of running two poorish holes into
one, and in this case two blacks have emphatically made a white, for
the second shot over another pit, only a little less disastrous than
the first, is excellent.
There are several more long, slashing holes on the way back, and at
one of them I recollect that our adversaries in this same adventurous
foursome lost their ball within four yards of the tee, and, in spite
of the most arduous and unremitting search, had to give up the hole.
I must add that the drive was neither a high nor a straight one, and
that the grass at the edge of the course, or as I once heard an Irish
green-keeper call them, the 'sidings,' were distinctly long.
One good point about Cassiobury is the smooth and velvety surface of
the green. They are a little slow and easy perhaps, but very true and
soothing to putt upon, and have been wonderfully improved of late
years. Time was when the very springy park turf seemed determined never
to settle down into a good putting substance, but unremitting care and
hard work has changed all that. Finally, I ought to add that owing to
the taking in of some new land and the abandoning of some of the old
holes, the course is practically in a transition stage, and so I must
be pardoned if I have used the antiquated numbering of the holes.
Of the courses to be reached from the Baker Street end of London,
such as =Northwood=, Chorleywood, Harewood Downs and Sandy Lodge,
Northwood is perhaps the best known, and there we come upon a somewhat
different kind of golf; perhaps it would be more accurate to describe
it as a mixture of two different kinds of golf. There are holes among
the gorse, and there are holes of a more agricultural character among
the hedges and ditches. Regarded in the abstract, gorse-bushes, or,
as I ought to call them, whins, are not an ideal hazard. It is often
impossible to play the ball out of them, and still more often unwise
to make the attempt without a suit of armour, while the local rule, to
be found on some courses, that the ball may or even must be lifted and
dropped under a penalty is thoroughly unsatisfactory.
If, however, whins are from their nature a bad hazard, they have
nevertheless very distinguished sanction. They are to be found on links
of undoubted eminence, and were found on many more till they were
literally hacked and hewed out of existence by the niblick shots of
their infuriated victims. Moreover, say what we will, they are rather
entertaining, and the very fact that a serious error will almost ruin
us gives a poignancy which is lacking in any but the most desperate of
sand-pits; we trifle pleasurably with our terrors and snatch a fearful
joy. Certainly there is a great deal of amusement to be extracted from
the Northwood whins, and our achievements or disasters among them
are those that remain graven on the memory. Yet there is one hole in
the county of ditches and hedges (such colossal hedges as those
at Northwood were surely never seen before) that leaves as vivid an
impression on the mind as the spikiest of gorse can leave elsewhere.
This is the eighth, which rejoices, I believe, in the appropriate name
of 'Death or Glory.' It supplies a standing refutation of the theory
that a hole cannot be a good one if it is of that mongrel length
known as 'a drive and a pitch,' or, as it has been brilliantly though
indelicately expressed, 'a kick and a spit.'
[Illustration: NORTHWOOD
_'Death or glory' (the eighth hole)_]
We walk to the very brink of destruction without knowing it, for there
is nothing particular to mark the drive; we have but to hit moderately
straight, as it appears, over a flat and somewhat muddy space towards
a bunker in the distance. Then as we walk up to the ball the full
horror of our situation bursts upon us. We have to pitch over a bunker
straight in front of the green, but that is mere child's play, and
only the beginning of our task. On the left-hand side, eating its way
into the very heart of the green, is another bunker, very deep and
shored up by precipitous black timbers, and the very slightest pull on
our approach shot will land us in it. The obvious thing to do would
appear to be to push our approach out to the right at any cost, but
that will not do either, for on a bank on the right hand side grows a
perfect thicket of thorn bushes, where there is very snug lying for
the ball and great scope for the niblick. It is surprising and rather
humiliating to find how difficult it is to play a perfectly ordinary,
straightforward mashie pitch, if only there are enough difficulties
to strike terror into the soul. Were there more holes like this, the
reproach implied in the term 'a drive and a pitch' would very soon
disappear.
From Liverpool Street Station the municipal golfer of London takes
his way either to Chingford, where he plays in a red coat under the
auspices of the Corporation, or to Hainault Forest, where the County
Council has recently made a playground for him. The best known,
however, and probably the best of these Essex courses is =Romford=,
which was for a good many years the home green of the great Braid.
Indeed even now 'J. Braid (Walton Heath)' looks just a little
unfamiliar to me; I still feel as if Romford ought to be the word
inside the brackets. I recollect that almost the first time I played at
Romford was in an open amateur competition, for which there was a very
good and representative entry of London amateurs. I think it shows how
much the general standard of amateur golf has gone up, that the winning
score was 164 (84 + 80) by Mr. Mure Fergusson. Certainly Mr. Fergusson
was not in his best form, but this score was good enough to win, and
to win quite comfortably. There was, as far as I can remember, nothing
amiss with the weather, and even making every allowance for gutty
balls, it does seem extraordinary that so many people should play so
supremely ill. It would be far less likely to happen to-day.
[Illustration: ROMFORD
_The sixth green_]
Nevertheless Romford is not a course that one would choose for the
doing of a low score, for it is neither short nor easy, and is a great
deal better golf than it looks. Its appearance is not particularly
attractive, because in the first place it is flat, and in the second
there are hedges and trees to be seen. Braid himself speaks of
it in Nisbet's _Golf Year Book_ as a "very good park course." The
adjective may well be allowed to pass, but to call it a 'park' course
conveys a wrong impression, to my mind at least; it is too open for the
description to be quite appropriate, though I admit I can think of no
better word.
If a course has really good putting greens and demands that the ball
should be hit consistently far and straight, then there is a good deal
to be said for it, and these virtues must be conceded to Romford. You
must hit straight or you will be in a bunker, or 'tucked up' behind
a tree; you must hit far or you will not get up to the green in the
right number of strokes. The fourth and fifth are two as long holes
as come consecutively on any course, except Blackheath, and the fifth
is an especially good one. Better than either I like the seventh with
its narrow tee-shot between the trees and that out of bounds territory
that comes creeping in to catch you on the right. It is a hole that, in
colloquial language, 'wants a lot of playing.'
There are really quite a lot more fine holes--the tenth, for instance,
with a tremendous carrying second over a pond, and the fourteenth,
where the player is fairly hemmed in with trees and hedges, and must
drive as straight as an arrow. When Braid was there he accomplished
some ridiculous scores in the sixties, but ordinary people will find
that anything in the seventies is quite good enough for them, and that
many a hole that ought to be done in four will, in fact, be done in
five or more. Especially is this the case when the going is at all
heavy, for Romford can on occasions be just a little soft and muddy.
It is probably, like a great many other inland courses, at its best in
spring or autumn, for then the putting greens are really a pleasure to
putt upon.
Now we come to the links of the Royal =Blackheath= Golf Club, which
is very justly proud of the fact that it was instituted in 1608.
That is indeed a great record, and, as we hack our ball along with a
driving mashie out of a hard and flinty lie, narrowly avoiding the
slaughter of a passing pedestrian, we feel that we are on hallowed
ground. Moreover, though we may speak flippantly of the bad lies and
the numerous live hazards on the course, the golf is good golf--far
better and more searching than is to be found on many smoothly shaven
lawns covered with artificial ramparts. If we desire to test our real
sentiments about any particular course, it is no bad plan to imagine
that we have to play a match over it against some horribly good
opponent--an enemy whom, even in the moment of our most idiotic vanity,
we admit to be our superior. Out of this test Blackheath comes well,
for I can hardly imagine that anyone would choose to play a match with
Braid, for example, over those famous seven holes if he had any other
battle-ground open to him.
[Illustration: BLACKHEATH
_Signalling 'all clear'_]
There are but seven holes; but of those seven, two are of a truly
prodigious length, and, to make the matter worse, they are consecutive.
Some idea of the length and difficulty of the course may be gleaned
from the record score for the twenty-one holes, which constitute a
medal round. People have been struggling round since the reign
of James I., and the record stands at 95, which, according to my
arithmetic, is eleven over an average of four a hole. The record of
nearly every other well-known course in the kingdom is under an average
of four. To accomplish a score of under 100 at Blackheath is something
to be proud of, and in the gutty days, in which I sometimes struggled
round the historic course, an average of five a hole was considered,
not without reason, quite good enough to win one's match against highly
respectable opponents.
They let us down easily to begin with at Blackheath with quite a short
first hole, only a good cleek shot being required to carry a sort
of shallow pit that has very poor lying at the bottom of it; so we
ought to have one three to reduce the average of the sixes and sevens
that are sure to follow. The second and third are longer, but yet not
hideously long, and we play them reasonably well, if we do not come
into collision with public highways and the posts and rails that guard
them. We may possibly have to thread our way through two teams of small
boys playing football, and there are almost certain to be a nursery
maid or two in the way, or an old gentleman sitting on a seat, blandly
unconscious that his position is one fraught with peril to himself and
annoyance to us. However, as we are forcibly clad in red coats for a
danger-signal and preceded by a fore-caddie, as if we were traction
engines, we may with luck and patience do fairly well.
After the third we are confronted with the two long holes, and the
piling up of our score begins. It is now some time since I played them,
and they are, besides, too long to describe in detail. I have a vision
of reaching, after several shots on the flat, a deep hollow on the
left, and spending some further time in hacking the ball along its hard
and inhospitable turf, finally to emerge on to the flat again and reach
the green in a score verging upon double figures. The fifth hole may be
described as the same, only not quite so much so, and the round ends
with two holes of a somewhat milder character, but neither of them in
the least easy. Then off we go over the pit again for our second round,
and there is yet another one left to play. To play three rounds over
Blackheath on a cold, blustery winter's day is a man's task.
It is sad that there was no contemporary chronicler to do for the old
golfers of Blackheath what John Nyren of immortal memory did for the
cricketers of Hambledon; but the club has not lacked its _vates sacer_,
and in Mr. W. E. Hughes' book is a store of pleasant and interesting
history. Most golfers know the delightful picture of the gentleman in
a red coat with blue facings, gold epaulettes and knee-breeches, who
stands in so dignified an attitude, his club over his shoulder. It is
dedicated to the "Society of Golfers at Blackheath" with "just respect"
by their "most humble servant Lemuel Francis Abbott," and, like the
artist, we too salute with just respect a venerable and illustrious
society.
[Illustration: WIMBLEDON
_On the common_]
The Royal Wimbledon Club was founded some two hundred and sixty years
after the Royal Blackheath, and yet golf is still so young a game in
England that the two appear of almost equally hoary antiquity. There is
an old-fashioned air about the golf at =Wimbledon=--an atmosphere
of red coats and friendly foursomes made up at luncheon, which is
exceedingly pleasant--nor is the actual golf on Wimbledon Common by
any means to be despised. It has at least one supreme virtue--that of
naturalness; those great clumps of gorse and the deep ravines where
the birches grow were put there by the hand of Nature herself, who, if
she be not so cunning, is at any rate infinitely more artistic than
any golfing architect. When Mr. Horace Hutchinson wrote the Badminton
volume he wrote of the golf at Wimbledon that it was almost "an insult
to the game to dignify it by the name of golf," adding that he would
rather call it a "wonderful substitute for the game within so short a
distance of Charing Cross." It is perhaps a just criticism, but what
would Mr. Hutchinson say of the hundred 'mud-heaps' that have sprung
up within a short distance of Charing Cross since these days? He would
probably keep silence lest he should fall a victim to the law of libel
and an unsympathetic jury.
Certainly the lies at Wimbledon are not good; they are hard and flinty,
and at certain places, in particular the long second hole, they
have seemed to me at times almost the worst in the world. But there
is this measure of compensation in hard turf, that it always bears
some resemblance, however dim and remote, to the 'real thing'; it is
infinitely more inspiriting than the soft and spongy lawns, which may
be truer and smoother, but are removed by a far wider gulf from the
golf that _is_ golf.
If the Royal Wimbledon golfer dislikes a crowd or a red coat, or
if, being a very wicked man or a very busy one, he wishes to play
on Sunday, he need nowadays only walk out of the back door of his
club-house instead of his front door, and he is on his own private
course at Cæsar's Camp. A wonderful place is this new Wimbledon course,
for as soon as we are on it all signs of men, houses and omnibuses, and
the other symptoms of a busy suburb disappear as if by magic, and a
prospect of glorious solitary woods stretches away into the distance in
every direction. Only at one place, where the new course verges on the
Common, do we see such a thing as a house, and our friend Charing Cross
might be a hundred miles away. Like the egg, the course is good in
parts: very good as long as we are among the whins on the hard ground
which is the ground of the Common: rather soft and muddy when we are
on the meadows lower down. Taking the two courses together, the men of
Wimbledon have much to be thankful for.
There is still one London course that assuredly deserves mention, that
of Prince's Golf Club on =Mitcham Common=. Roads and lamp-posts and,
ugliest of all, tramways have not added to its loveliness. But it is
still a delightful place, with a good deal of solitary beauty left.
There is abundance of gorse here too, but the impression produced is
quite different from that at Wimbledon. The ground is flatter, and one
can take in a greater stretch at one glance; it is not broken up, as it
were, into districts by gullies and ravines, and one misses the pretty
birch trees of Wimbledon.
[Illustration: MITCHAM
_The seventh green_]
Courses that are not protected by a ring-fence of privacy are not
as a rule notable for the goodness of their greens, since every now
and then a cantankerous commoner is apt to drive a waggon across them
by way of asserting his rights. At Prince's, however, they have really
beautiful greens, big and rolling and grassy, which are a joy to putt
upon, and there is a further distinction between Mitcham and other
common courses, that the making of artificial bunkers has been allowed
to supplement Nature in an unobtrusive measure.
There are plenty of good two-shot holes where, if we do not quite need
the brassey for our second shot, we must yet give the ball a downright,
honest hit with some iron club that is not too much lofted.
The first, seventh, fifteenth, and seventeenth--to mention only
four--are all good holes, the drive at the fifteenth being rendered the
more alarming by a pond which traps a hooked ball. The twelfth hole
also has a rather frightening tee-shot over the corner of a garden--a
sort of Stationmaster's Garden in miniature--with the possibility of
slicing into what was once a manufactory of explosives.
Mitcham is essentially a course for the leisured golfer. It is
comparatively useless to the busy man, since he may not play there on
Sunday, and to do so on Saturday is a vexation of spirit. Granted,
however, a reasonably dry day in mid-week, and there is certainly no
pleasanter golf to be found within so short and easy a journey from
London.
CHAPTER III.
KENT AND SUSSEX.
There is always something stirring in a roll of illustrious names, and
for the mere sensual pleasure of writing them I set them down in order
at the beginning of the chapter--Sandwich, Deal, Prince's, Littlestone,
and Rye, in the counties of Kent and Sussex. Each of the five has
devoted adherents who will maintain its merits against the world in
heated argument, but there can be little doubt which has the right to
come first. It would be showing a sad disrespect to golfing history,
very recent history though it be, to begin otherwise than with the
links of the Royal St. George's Golf Club at Sandwich.
[Illustration: SANDWICH (1)
_The 'Sahara'_]
For a course that is still comparatively young--the club was instituted
in 1887--=Sandwich= has had more than its share of ups and downs. It
was heralded with much blowing of trumpets and without undergoing
any period of probation, burst full-fledged into fame. For some time
it would have ranked only a degree below blasphemy to have hinted at
any imperfection. Then came a time when impious wretches, who had the
temerity to think for themselves, began to whisper that there were
faults at Sandwich, that it was nothing but a driver's course, that the
whole art of golf did not consist of hitting a ball over a sandhill and
then running up to the top to see what had happened on the other side.
Gradually the multitude caught up the cry of the few, till nobody, who
wished to put forward a claim to a critical faculty, had a good word
to say for the course. Then the club began to set its house in order,
lengthening here and bunkering there, not without a somewhat bitter
controversy between the moderates and the progressives, until the
pendulum has begun to swing back, and poor Sandwich is coming to its
own again.
Throughout all this controversial warfare one fact has remained
unchanged, namely, that, whatever they may think of its precise merits
as a test of golf, most golfers unite in liking to play there. The
humbler player frankly enjoys hitting over his sandhill largely because
of the frequency with which he hits into it: the superior person may
despise the sandhill and may be utterly bored with it anywhere else,
but he retains a sneaking affection for it at Sandwich. It attracts him
in spite of himself and his, as some people think them, tedious views.
Sandwich has a charm that belongs to itself, and I frankly own myself
under the spell. The long strip of turf on the way to the seventh
hole, that stretches between the sandhills and the sea; a fine spring
day, with the larks singing as they seem to sing nowhere else; the
sun shining on the waters of Pegwell Bay and lighting up the white
cliffs in the distance; this is as nearly my idea of Heaven as is
to be attained on any earthly links. "Confound their politics,"
one feels disposed to cry, "frustrate their knavish tricks! Why do
they want to alter this adorable place? I know they are perfectly
right, and I have even agreed with them that this is a blind shot
and that an indefensibly bad hole, but what does it all matter? This
is perfect bliss." Of course Sandwich is capable of improvement, and
will doubtless be improved; whatever happens, the larks will continue
to twitter, the sun will still be shining on Pegwell Bay: the charm
can never be gone. It is at any rate very delightful now, and so let
us go and play the first hole and enjoy ourselves without being too
desperately critical.
One great characteristic--I think it is a beauty--of Sandwich is the
extraordinary solitude that surrounds the individual player. We wind
about in the dells and hollows among the great hills, alone in the
midst of a multitude, and hardly ever realize that there are others
playing on the links until we meet them at luncheon. Thus, on the first
tee, we may catch a glimpse of somebody playing the last hole, and
another couple disappearing over the brow to the second, and that is
all; the rest is sandhills and solitude.
[Illustration: SANDWICH (2)
_Playing on to the green from 'Hades'_]
And now we must positively cease from our reflections and get off
that first tee, with a fine raking shot that shall carry us over the
insidious and fatal little hollow called the 'kitchen.' If we are clear
of it, another good shot will take us home over a deep cross-bunker
on to the green, big, smooth, and beautiful, as are all the greens at
Sandwich. At the second we have a bunker to carry from the tee--it
was sometimes a terrible carry for a gutty--and then a pitch on to a
plateau green, the sides whereof slope down steeply into hollows on
either side. This shot was once a great bone of contention, and in
truth success was formerly somewhat a matter of luck, for the ball
pitched on a hog's back and kicked sometimes straight on to the hole
and sometimes to the right or left. Now, however, the hog's back has
been smoothed and flattened, and if we play the proper shot we shall
get a four to hearten us up for the drive over the Sahara.
When a name clings to a hole we may be sure that there is something in
that hole to stir the pulse, and in fact there are few more absolute
joys than a perfectly hit shot that carries the heaving waste of sand
which confronts us on the third tee. The shot is a blind one, and we
have not the supreme felicity of seeing the ball pitch and run down
into the valley to nestle by the flag. We see it for a long time,
however, soaring and swooping over the desert, and, when it finally
disappears, we have a shrewd notion as to its fate. If the wind be
fresh against us, we must play away to the right for safety, and the
glorious enjoyment of the hole is gone, but even so a good shot will
be repaid, and every yard that we can go to the left may make the
difference between a difficult and an easy second.
On the very next tee another bunker of terrible aspect lies before us,
this time a towering mountain of sand, and the ball is soon out of
sight. However, at the second shot we get a good view of the green,
away in the distance perched up on a plateau hard up against a fence.
There is rough to the right and a bunker almost in the line to the
left, but a good shot will carry it, and, after the ball has vanished
for a moment, it will reappear, trickling gently along the plateau to
the hole side; it is really a grand two-shot hole.
At the fifth the sandhills begin to close in upon us, but a fair
straight drive should land the ball safely in the valley; this hole is
now in the melting pot, and is being transformed from a three into a
four. We will, therefore, avoid a painful controversy and tee our ball
before the famous 'Maiden.' Few bunkers have a more infamous reputation
than this Maiden, but the new-comer to the Sandwich of to-day will
think that she has done little to deserve it. There stands the Maiden,
steep, sandy, and terrible, with her face scarred and seamed with
black timbers, but alas! we have no longer to drive over her crown: we
hardly do more than skirt the fringe of her garment. In old days the
tee was right beneath the highest pinnacle, and sheer terror made the
shot formidable, but the tee-shots to the fifth endangered the lives
of those driving to the sixth, and the tee had to be put far away to
the right. The present Maiden is but a shadow of its old self, and the
splendour of it has in a great measure departed.
My pen has run away with me over the first six holes, as I knew it
would, and there still remain twelve more holes to play. 'Hades' will,
no doubt, deserve its name if we top our tee-shot, though otherwise
it is a reasonably easy three, but the ninth is in reality a far more
formidable affair. The hole will doubtless be called the 'Corsets'
for ever, but the second of these two famous bunkers now plays but an
inconsiderable part, for the reformers have moved the green far on and
away to the left and, it must be admitted, have made a good hole out of
a very bad one.
We may still drive into the first Corset, however, and if we do, Heaven
help us! We shall be playing a nightmare game of racquets against its
unflinching sides, and the other man will win the hole.
With the turn at Sandwich the nature of the course begins to alter,
and in place of doing threes--or perchance sevens--among the hills,
we shall be travelling over the flatter ground in a series of steady
fives, with, let us hope, an occasional four. There are plenty of good
holes--better, perhaps, than some on the way out--but they do not make
the same appeal to the imagination, nor are they so characteristic.
One, at least, deserves a special word of mention, the fourteenth, or
'Suez Canal,' where many and many a second shot has found a watery
grave. Those who love the hopes and fears of a lucky-bag will enjoy the
seventeenth, where the hole lies in a deep dell with sharply sloping
sides. Man can direct the ball into the dell, but only Providence can
decide its subsequent fate, and whether it will lie stone dead or a
round dozen of yards away is a matter of chance. There is no chance
about the last hole, where we must hit two good, long, straight shots;
it is a fine finish, and will leave us with happy recollections as we
take our way to one or other of the neighbouring courses. We are in
the midst of a perfect tangle of courses, since within easy reach are
Deal, Prince's, Kingsdown, and St. Augustine's, at Ebbsfleet.
The =Deal= course is little more than a stone's throw away from
Sandwich. It is the same kind of country, the same, or very nearly the
same, kind of turf, and yet the general impression produced by it is
quite different.
There is this difference to begin with, that it is less remote and
solitary. The club-house stands on a high road and the outskirts of
the town come creeping out to the edge of the links. Men, women and
children, butchers' and bakers' carts pass and re-pass along the road:
there are live creatures to be seen engaged in other avocations than
golfing, and, altogether, as compared with Sandwich, the scene is one
of business and bustle. The links themselves are more open: one might
almost say more bleak of aspect; there are not so many little secret
hollows and valleys between the hills; Deal is altogether less snug (I
can think of no better word) than Sandwich.
To say this is to make no comparison of the merits of the two courses,
which is an unnecessary and invidious thing to do. It is quite enough
to say that the golf at Deal is very good indeed--fine, straight-ahead,
long-hitting golf, wherein the fives are likely to be many and the
fours few. There are those that contend that it is almost superhumanly
difficult, but unless there be a high wind, I think that they
exaggerate a little. The difficulty lies in hitting far enough, and not
so much in the intrinsic terrors of the holes. If we can hit far enough
to carry the hummocky country and attain the region of good lies: if,
in short, we are long drivers, we need fear no particularly subtle
devilry, but the driving has to be something more than merely decent.
[Illustration: DEAL
_Playing the 'Sandy Parlour'_]
It seems a topsy-turvy procedure, but a description of the Deal course
ought to begin with the last four holes, for they are its particular
joy and pride, and have attained a fame equal to that of the last
four holes--the 'loop'-at Prestwick. Certainly they make a spirited
and exciting finish to a round, for they need good play and--this
with bated breath--good luck. The difficulty of the fifteenth lies in
the second shot, which must be played with a measure of accuracy and
fortune on to the crest of a ridge, from which it will totter slowly
down a sloping green to the hole. Play the shot the least bit too
gingerly and the ball will refuse to climb the ridge; too hard and
it will inevitably race across the green into rough grass, while the
chances of recovering from a faulty second with a little pitching shot
from off the green are not great. Certainly it is a difficult hole,
and so is the next; indeed, with the wind in the right quarter, this
sixteenth hole is one of the finest imaginable. We see the flag away
there in the far distance, waving upon a small plateau. Immediately
below the plateau to the left lies a little valley of inglorious
security, but away to the right and beyond the green are ruts and long
grass, and the second shot has to be as accurate as it is long. That
is supposing that we can get there in two at all, but alas! that is
often impossible, and therein, to my thinking, lies a certain weakness
of the hole. A particularly elastic tee or series of tees seems to be
needed so that the hole can be made a two-shot hole, even when the
wind is adverse. At present the longest driver must often be content
to reach the green with a pitch for his third, and is denied the
crowning triumph of a critical second shot successfully accomplished. A
wind against us at the sixteenth diminishes sensibly the sum total of
enjoyment of the round, for that second shot is such an inspiring one.
The green stands there waiting to be won, defying us to reach it, and
to abandon the attempt without a struggle is sad work.
Of the seventeenth I feel bound to say, with all just respect, that
it appears to be one of the very luckiest holes--in the matter of
approaching--that ever was made, but the eighteenth is a noble hole,
with that little narrow plateau green that will yield to no mere rule
of thumb approaching. If we pitch the ball on the face of the slope,
nothing will induce it to go further, while if we pitch on the green we
are almost inevitably too far. He reaps a rich reward who can play a
low, skimming shot which shall pitch on the flat and then run on full
of life and clamber up the hill. It is _the_ hole _par excellence_ for
the man who learned to approach at St. Andrews.
There are many holes at Deal which are in every respect as good as the
last four, if indeed they are not better. What could be finer than the
second, where we travel almost from tee to green along a ridge that
kicks away to right or left anything but the perfect shot--what, too,
of the sixth, where, with a great shot and a big wind at our backs,
we may hope for a three, but where far more often we must play the
cunningest of pitches on to the most slippery of table-lands in order
to get a four? What a jolly view there is from that green with the sea
close beneath us and perhaps a glimpse of a big liner in the distance!
The fourth hole, 'The Sandy Parlour,' had for some years a great name,
but, like some other blind short holes, has come gradually to live on
its reputation. The shot is a blind one over a big sandy bluff, and we
shall now have a far more difficult shot at the reformed fourteenth,
wherein we can see from the tee exactly where we have to go in order
to avoid a very great deal of trouble. When all is said, however, the
short holes at Deal are not its strong point, and it is those long,
raking holes which we ought to have done in fours that leave the
pleasantest memories.
Close to the links of Sandwich, so close that in trying to carry the
Suez Canal we may slice to within its precincts, lies another very
fine golf course, =Prince's= to wit, the newest among the select band
of really first-class seaside courses. Here is a course upon which as
much care and thought and affection have been spent as on any in the
world, and they have certainly not been spent in vain. It was laid out
with the very highest of ideals; it was to be the good player's course,
and was to trap and test and worry that self-satisfied person till he
became doubtful whether he was a good player at all. A first glance at
the course shows that strict attention to business is meant. Here are
no fascinating mountains, no spacious water-jumps: but there is fine
golfing country, broken and undulating, with smooth strips of fairway
showing here and there amid the rough grass and the myriad pot-bunkers.
Those who laid out the course at Prince's kept one aim very steadily
in view, that of compelling the player to place his tee-shot. "It is
not enough," they said in effect, "for him to keep out of the rough;
not only must he be on the course, but he must place his ball sometimes
to the right-hand side of the course, sometimes to the left. He must,
if he desire to play the holes as well as they can be played, often
greatly dare, but his great daring shall have its due reward." Now the
best plan, in order to give a practical shape to this high ideal, is to
make the hole, to use a familiar expression, 'dog-legged,' that is to
say, the player does not drive his first ball straight at the hole, but
has to turn at an angle to play his second shot. A hole so devised can
give a great advantage to the long and daring driver who is likewise
straight. The bunkering can be so arranged that he who takes great
risks and hugs the rough more closely shall have an easy and an open
approach, while the man who either from over-caution or insufficient
accuracy has merely gone straight down the middle of the course is
confronted by a more difficult second shot over a formidable array of
bunkers. For this reason we find at Prince's the apotheosis of the
'dog-legged' or 'round-the-corner' holes, and some, nay nearly all of
them, are about as good as they can be.
[Illustration: PRINCE'S
_The drive from the eleventh tee_]
There is something of the dog-leg about the very first hole, where we
drive at an angle over a ridge covered with bents. The third needs two
fine shots, and the pot-bunkers rage furiously together in innumerable
quantities. Then at the sixth we have one of the most charming two-shot
holes to be seen anywhere, with just a suspicion of a bend in the
narrow strip of fairway, a wilderness of sandhills on the right, and
rough to the left. At the eighth we need not place the shot with quite
such dreadful accuracy, but instead we must hit prodigiously hard and
far, for after we have hit the tee-shot a steep hill rears its sandy
face between us and the hole, and a really fine carrying brassey shot
is needed if we are to be on the green. It is more like a Sandwich hole
than a Prince's hole, and might perhaps feel more at home on the other
side of the boundary fence, but after all variety is a pleasant thing,
and this eighth brings back memories of the mighty Alps at Prestwick,
and has a splendour and a dash about it which makes an instantaneous
appeal. The eleventh is another good hole, where, if we push our drive
far enough out to the right over the big hills, we may hope to put our
second on the green, where it nestles amid a guard of hummocks. Nor
must we omit some mention of the short holes, all excellent in their
different ways and all fiercely guarded, where a shot has got to be
something more than decently straight, since--and this applies to the
approaching in general--the ball does not run to the hole unless it is
hit there, and the ground falls away towards the edges of the greens.
Now after this very exacting golf we may turn to something rather
easier and more straightforward and take our tickets for New Romney in
order to play at Littlestone.
New Romney is a pleasant, quiet, sleepy spot with a fine old church,
once a thriving seaport, now left high and dry a mile or more inland.
=Littlestone= consists of a long and somewhat unprepossessing terrace
of grey lodging-houses, arranged with mathematical precision along
one side of a straight, flat road. On the other side of the road is
the sea, and this is the saving clause at Littlestone. It is not
beautiful--very far from it--but we are right on the edge of the sea;
we snuff it fresh and salt in our nostrils, and can almost believe that
one wave, just a little larger than the others, could overwhelm the
road and the terrace and the very links themselves.
Yet, though we are so near the sea, and there is as much sea and sand
as anyone could wish, the course itself has just the suspicion of an
inland look. The fairway is so beautifully flat and shaven and runs so
straight and so precisely between two lines of thick tufty grass, which
might at certain seasons be irreverently called hay. The soil itself at
the first two and last two holes is not altogether above the accusation
of being clay; it can be rather muddy in winter and terribly hard in
summer. No; I cannot get it out of my head that Littlestone does look
like one of the trimmest and smoothest of inland courses picked up by
some benevolent magician and dumped down again by the sea.
[Illustration: LITTLESTONE
_The carry from the seventeenth tee_]
However, we have all been taught that we ought not to judge by
appearances, and that people cannot help their looks. Bearing this
in mind, we shall find that the appearance of Littlestone does not
do it justice, and that there is in fact very good golf to be played
there. Moreover, it is much better golf than it used to be, since with
Braid, as the villain-in-chief, and Mr. F. W. Maude, as second
conspirator, a vast number of pot-bunkers have been scattered about
the course, and Littlestone is no longer the paradise it once was for
the erratic slogger. If the course has a weakness now it is no longer
a lack of bunkers; rather is it something, that no human ingenuity can
alter, a uniform flatness of stances and lies. Shot after shot has to
be played from a perfectly smooth, flat plain; there are none of the
little hills and hummocks that add so much to the fascination and the
difficulty of Deal and Rye.
Still if there are no little hills, there are, at any rate, some
alarmingly big ones, and the holes that we remember best are those that
are mountainous and more than a little blind. At the second, after
driving down a shaven avenue, we have an imposing second shot to play
over a big hill, which is made the more terrifying by two bunkers in
its face. The sixteenth is another fine slashing hole, where we have
to make a momentous decision, whether to try heroically for a four or
ingloriously for a five. In old days it was really a case of Hobson's
choice. It was hopeless to attempt to carry over that cavernous bunker
cut in the face of the hill, and there was nothing for it but to play
a dull, safe second, and hop over with the third shot. Now, however, a
short cut, a kind of north-west passage, has been cut through the rough
ground to the left, and two shots, perfectly steered and perfectly
struck, will see the ball disappear over the hill-top to lie in safety
on the big, flat green beyond.
These two are of the more flamboyant order of hole, but there are
others less imposing, but quite as good. At the eleventh there is one
of those uncomfortable tee-shots, which are so excellent. There is a
canal, a nasty, insidious serpentine beast of a canal, which winds its
way along the left-hand side of the course, and it is our duty, in
order to gain distance, to hug it as close as we dare; yet if we show
ourselves the least bit too affectionate towards it, this ungrateful
canal will assuredly engulf our ball to our utter destruction. To
push the ball too far out to the right is to make our second shot
unpleasantly long, and it is a hard shot, one that we desire to make
as short as possible. Bunkers guard the corners of the green, and the
putting is billowy and difficult; in fact, a four is far more likely to
win the hole than to halve it. There are plenty more good holes: the
ninth, a short hole, which demands the most accurate of iron shots, and
the fourth, with its green on a sloping, narrow neck among the hills.
The lies at Littlestone are flat and easy, but they will not be a bit
too easy for some of the shots we shall have to play from them.
"Kent, sir--everybody knows Kent--apples, cherries, hops and women,"
observed Mr. Jingle, and to-day he might properly add "and golf
courses"; but now we must leave Kent and cross the Sussex border to
get to =Rye=--and there are surely few pleasanter places to get to.
It looks singularly charming as the train comes sliding in on a long
curve, with the sullen flat marshes on the left and the tall cliff
on the right, while straight in front are the red roofs of the town
huddled round the old church. We have only a few yards to walk along
a narrow little street; then we twist round to the right up a
steep little hill and under the Land Gate and we are at the Dormy
House, old and red and overgrown with creepers. Rye is such a friendly,
quiet spot; never in a hurry, and never with the least appearance of
being full, save, perhaps, for a short time in the summer, when it is
infested with artists. It is the ideal place for the golfer who is
wearied out with a fortnight's fruitless balloting at St. Andrews,
which has resulted in his once drawing a time, and that at 12.30.
[Illustration: RYE
_The fifteenth green_]
At Rye we just loaf down, without the least anxiety, to the little
steam tram which is to carry us--with a prodigious deal of panting
and snorting--out to the links at Camber. This, indeed, is the one
disadvantage of Rye, that the golf is not at our front door-step. Rye
still stands upon a cliff, but it is a cliff that the waters have long
ceased to trouble, and Camber, where the links are, is two miles away.
However, when we do get there, the golf is as good, or very nearly as
good, as is to be found anywhere.
The two great features of golf at Rye are the uniformly fiendish
behaviour of the wind and the fascinating variety of the stances. The
wind presumably blows no harder than it does anywhere else, but the
holes are so contrived that the prevailing wind, which comes off the
sea, is always blowing across us. With a typical Rye wind blowing, it
may be said that there is but one hole where it blows straight in our
teeth, and one--and that a short one--where it is straight behind us.
At the other sixteen holes the enemy persists in making a flanking
attack upon us, and we never have a perfectly straightforward shot
to play. For the few who are artists in using the wind, Rye is a
paradise; for the majority who are not, it is a place of trial and
disillusionment.
Disillusioned too will be they who imagine that they know all that
there is to be known about wooden clubs, because they have attained
to some certainty in hitting a ball that lies teed on a smooth, level
plain. At Rye they must be prepared to hit brassey shots--and long,
straight brassey shots, too--with one foot on a hummock and the other
in a pit. If they cannot do it, they must be content to take five far
more often than they like.
For these two reasons it is a fine course on which to give strokes, and
an ideal battle-ground for golfing giants, from a spectator's point of
view, since it is scarcely possible, even with the most perfect golf,
to avoid two or three shots in the course of a round which shall be
difficult enough and unusual enough to be intensely interesting.
The subtlety of the short holes is the thing that will probably
impress the advanced student, while the more elementary will retain
vivid recollections of the knotted horrors of the Sea hole and the
utter hopelessness of the eighteenth bunker. Certainly that eighteenth
bunker--we never ought to get in it--is a pit of desolation; its
sides are so steep and so smooth that wherever the ball may pitch
down it will roll to the bottom, ultimately to repose in a footmark.
To the man who has a good medal score in prospect, it looms vast and
uncarryable--a thing against which it is useless to struggle. So
appalling is it that at one time some tender-hearted people thought
that it was refined cruelty to keep such a horror till the last; so
they shuffled the course round and turned the eighteenth hole into the
ninth, in order that, if a man was fated to ruin his score, he should
be put more quickly out of his agony. This was rightly considered,
however, to be mistaken kindness, and the big bunker is still kept as a
crowning joy or misery. The three short holes are certainly things of
beauty and of the three the best and the most paralyzing is the eighth.
To see Mr. de Montmorency play this hole against a wind with a hateful
little club which he calls his 'push-cleek' is to see iron play at its
highest; to attempt to play it ourselves is to realize how far we fall
short of that standard and to what a state of impotency and terror it
is possible to be reduced by the surrounding scenery. The appearance of
the hole is so frightening that the ball is as good as missed before we
address it. The distance on a still day can be compassed with a nice,
firm shot with the iron, but the green looks so small and the sides of
the plateau on which it stands so steep and unpleasant; the angle at
which we approach it is so awkward and the wind blows so persistently
on our backs that something is almost sure to go, and does go, wrong.
The fourteenth is another good and difficult short hole, built in
pious imitation of the eleventh at St. Andrews, as is also the fourth
hole at Worplesdon, and the imitation is carried so far that it is not
uncommon, after the tee-shots have been struck, to hear the agonized
cry go up to Heaven, "I'm in the Eden!" This is, unfortunately, the
one hole where the wind does not do its best for Rye, since it blows
for days together straight behind the player and makes the stopping of
the ball upon the green too much a matter of luck.
There are so many other good holes that it seems invidious to
distinguish between them. There is the first, with its narrow, curly
tee-shot between a stream and a road and its little square box of a
green protected on every side; there are the fifth and sixth, good
holes both, and one cannot leave out the third, commonly called the
'Dog-leg.' Then, coming home, what could be better than the eleventh,
with its uncompromisingly small green, guarded night and day by a deep
bunker and most magnetic cabbage-garden; or the sixteenth, with its
long hog-back? Surely there can nowhere be anything appreciably better
than the golf to be had at this truly divine spot.
[Illustration: EASTBOURNE
'_Paradise_']
Leaving Rye we may glance at two other Sussex courses of quite a
different kind--Eastbourne and Ashdown Forest. =Eastbourne= is, like
Brighton and Seaford, to name two other Sussex courses, a seaside
course only in name. It is one of the fairly numerous clan of down
courses, of which the main features, as a rule, consist of chalk,
thistles, steep hills, and perplexing putting greens. It may be because
I played on it at an early and impressionable age, but I think that
the old nine-hole course was better golf than the present full-sized
round. The best holes now to be found at Eastbourne were all among
the original nine, and the newer holes exaggerate the vices of the
old ones, while lacking some of their virtues. There was an old
Eastbourne golfing saying which Mr. Hutchinson has quoted, that "the
ball will always come back from Beachy Head," which, being interpreted,
means that there are certain slopes at Eastbourne so long and steep
that it is impossible to play the ball too much to the left or right,
as the case may be. No matter how crooked the shot, down will come the
ball, trickling, trickling, till it lies close to the hole. Now that
is not a very skilful or amusing or in any way good sort of golf, and
there is a good deal of it in some of the newer holes. The old ones are
not perhaps wholly free from the taint, and the putting is infinitely
deceitful, but still there is less of the deplorable use of the
side-wall.
Perhaps the two chief features of the course are Paradise and the
Chalk Pit, and with an unfortunate prodigality nature has so disposed
of them, that we have to encounter them at one and the same hole.
Paradise is a pretty wood, traversed by a public road and adorned by
one of those sham Greek temples which were beloved of our ancestors.
The chalk pit explains itself, and it is only necessary to add that
it is an extremely deep one. We drive over the pit, and a good drive
will go bounding down a hill a prodigious distance, leaving us with an
iron shot to play over Paradise wood on to a horse-shoe shaped green
in the neighbourhood of the temple. How it may be with rubber-cored
balls I do not know; probably everyone pitches jauntily and easily
enough over Paradise, but it was something of a feat to carry the wood
in the consulship of Plancus, and many a reasonably stout-hearted
golfer would sneak round the corner and, giving the timber a wide
berth, make reasonably sure of his five. One of the very finest shots I
ever saw was played at this hole by Mr. Hutchinson with a horrid, hard
little ball called the 'Maponite,' long since consigned to a deserved
oblivion. His ball lay upon the road, whence he hit it with a full shot
against the wind right over the wood on to the green.
The other hole at Eastbourne which leaves a vivid impression on the
mind is the seventeenth--a long hole that is skirted closely on the
right throughout its whole length by the grounds of Compton Place, a
house that belongs to the Duke of Devonshire. The tee-shot gives a
great opportunity for the ambitious driver who can carry just as many
trees as he has a mind for, and thus make the hole a good deal shorter
and easier; but the second is never a very easy one, with a spinney on
the left and a sunk fence on the right guarding closely the side of the
green.
To putt at Eastbourne is an art of itself. It is not that the greens
are not good, for they are often excellent, but the hidden slopes
in them are like Mr. Weller's knowledge of London, "extensive and
peculiar." For the stranger, the safest rule is that he should take
a great deal of trouble in determining where to aim, and then aim
somewhere else. To add to the piquancy of the situation, the course is
visited by a persistent and violent wind, rendering the golf eminently
healthy, but almost exasperatingly difficult.
[Illustration: FOREST ROW
_The fifteenth green_]
The =Ashdown Forest= course lies in that most delightful but alas!
most rapidly built-over country near Forest Row and East Grinstead,
and not very far from Crowborough, where is another very charming
course. Like Eastbourne, it can boast of some very curly and puzzling
putting greens, but there the resemblance ceases. It lies not upon the
downs, but upon the forest, which means among the heather, and alone
of all the heathery clan, indeed almost alone among golf courses, it
is as nearly as may be perfectly natural. The greens, I take it, are,
some of them, in a measure artificial, but there is no such thing as
an artificial hazard to be seen. Nature has been kind in supplying a
variety of pits and streams to carry, and so we certainly do not notice
any lack of trouble or incident. It is only at the end of the round
that we realize with a pleasurable shock that there is not a single
hideous rampart on the course, or so much even as a pot-bunker.
Nature is really a wonderfully good architect, when she is in a
painstaking mood, and she has made few better two-shot holes than the
second at Ashdown. First comes a sufficiently frightening tee-shot over
a big pit, and then a really long second on to a small green, guarded
in front by a stream and on either side by small grips or ditches,
beyond which again is the heather. The short and humble player, or
the long driver who has perforce to be humbler because of a misplaced
tee-shot, can play short in two, and so home in three, but that is
but poor fun; we must go for that second if we are to extract a full
measure of joy from the round.
A fine slashing hole again is the sixteenth, where the green is guarded
by a grass ground ditch and a low wall of earth, which one would take
to be an artificial bunker that has fallen into disuse, except that it
dispels the illusion by looking infinitely less ugly and more artistic.
When the wind is not too strongly against us, here is a grand chance
of hitting out with the brassey and reaping a due reward. Then again,
for sheer terrifying splendour of appearance, what could be better than
the tee-shots at the thirteenth, commonly called 'Apollyon,' and the
home hole? In both cases we drive from one hillside to another, and in
both cases there flows at the bottom of the valley a stream that shall
engulf the feebly struck ball, to say nothing of heather and bracken
and other things.
Probably, however, the best-known hole at Ashdown is the 'Island' hole,
although it must be admitted that the recent alteration--and vast
improvement--of the fifth hole has robbed the Island of some of its
terrors. The green, which is divided into two terraces, is surrounded
on all sides by streams that have clayey and precipitous banks. It
can be reached from the tee with a pitch of a very modest character,
and, as the hole is played now, so long as the ball is hit reasonably
straight there is no such pressing need for nicety of judgment in
strength. It was a different matter from the old tee, when the angle
from which one played was such that the green was fairly broad but
alarmingly short. A measure of crookedness went unpunished, and a
certain pusillanimous shortness was not always fatal, but many a fine
bold straight shot overpitched by the merest fraction of a yard found
a watery grave. Moreover, it was fatally easy to lift under a penalty
from one ditch only to plump into another, and so on for ever and
ever. This hole has the further unique distinction of being the only
endowed hole in the United Kingdom. Some time ago a member of the club
settled a sum of £5 upon this hole, and the accumulated interest is to
go to anyone who shall do the hole in one at the Easter, Whitsuntide,
or Autumn meetings. So far the feat has been too much for the skill
of the members, and the bait has apparently not grown great enough to
tempt them from the paths of truth, for the interest on the £5 is still
without a claimant.
No account of Ashdown would be complete without some mention of the
great golfing family of Mitchell. It is very curious how artisan golf
will make great strides upon one course and be non-existent at another,
with no apparent reason to account for the difference. There seems no
particular reason why it should flourish so greatly at Ashdown Forest,
and yet the Cantelupe Club, which is the local workmans' club, can
put an extraordinarily strong team in the field, and in their annual
match with them regularly give the Ashdown Forest Club to the dogs and
vultures. Of this team some seven or eight are usually Mitchells. One
or two of them have become professionals, but the amateur members of
the family, who stay at home and work at their ordinary avocations, are
also redoubtable players, and successfully to beard the Mitchells in
their own den, on the tricky, sloping Ashdown greens, would want a very
good side indeed.
CHAPTER IV.
THE WEST AND SOUTH-WEST.
It would clearly be unbecoming to treat the western and south-western
courses in strict geographical order, because there is one honoured
name which must come first, that of =Westward Ho!=--the oldest seaside
golf course in England. The Royal North Devon Club was founded in
1864, and when the golf at Westward Ho! was in its infancy it was
fostered and encouraged by Mr. George Glennie of St. Andrews celebrity,
who played much of his golf at Blackheath, so that the famous flinty
old course on the heath may claim to be a kind of god-parent to the
sandhills and rushes of Northam Burrows.
To go to Westward Ho! is not to make a mere visit of pleasure as to
an ordinary course; it is, as is the case of a few other great links,
a reverent pilgrimage. Was it not here that Mr. Horace Hutchinson and
J. H. Taylor, besides a host of other fine players, learned the game?
and surely, it may be added in parenthesis, no golfing nursery has
ever turned out two infant prodigies with such unique and dissimilar
styles. Has it not the tallest and spikiest rushes in the world, and
the biggest bunker to carry from the tee? and, lastly, has it not
lately been remodelled and reformed and made so difficult that many
will compare it, not even with bated breath, to St. Andrews. Therefore,
the stranger, as he jogs along in the little train from Bideford and
looks out at the white horses in Barnstaple Bay, may be pardoned if he
is in a state of suppressed excitement and full of the highest hopes.
In truth, it is a splendid course for which he is bound, and not only
is it wonderfully difficult and wonderfully interesting, but it has a
charm that is given to but few links. It looks more like a good golf
course than almost any other course in the world. Not perhaps when we
first emerge from the club-house, for the first three holes lie upon a
rather flat and marshy piece of ground, but as soon as we get to the
fourth hole it is obvious that the burrows were ordained by providence
for no other than their present purpose. From the high tee to the fifth
hole we get a view of a perfect stretch of golfing country, broken and
undulating with the sandhills on the left and a vast expanse of rushes
on the right, for, in spite of much pruning and uprooting, there are
still plenty of the famous rushes left. It is a sight to make glad the
heart of man, and at the same time to fill him with gloomy doubts as to
whether he is quite good enough to play upon such a course.
Another great attraction about Westward Ho! is its supreme naturalness.
It looks for all the world as if some golfing adventurer had merely
had to stroll out with a hole-cutter, a bundle of flags, and perhaps
a light roller, and had made the course in less than no time. Many
bunkers have been cut, of course, but with one exception they look
quite inartificial, and do not take away from the wonderful impression
of naturalness made by the greens. Sometimes the hole is on a plateau
or in a hollow, and then it is obvious that Nature and not any human
architect has been at work; no man could have devised those jutting
promontories, those little irregular bays, which are so alluring.
Sometimes, again, the greens lie flat and open, and then they blend
so imperceptibly and harmoniously with the surrounding country that
it is impossible to say where the green ends and "through the green"
begins, for the turf is quite beautiful. Some years ago a pestilence of
weeds seized upon it, and the lies and greens of Westward Ho! were in
grave danger of losing their reputation, but with infinite patience and
trouble the weeds have been removed and the turf is once more itself
again, crisp and smooth, and withal full of life and run.
It has often been said and written that the feature of the golf at
Westward Ho! is that the ball must be placed with each shot, and it
is, I think, on the whole, a sound criticism. It is often possible to
hit the ball very crooked without being immediately punished, but in
nearly every case the next shot will be an exceedingly difficult one. I
do not know the course quite as well as I could wish, but the seventh
hole comes into my head as a good example. Here it is possible to
pull considerably from the tee without getting anything but a perfect
lie, but then, between the player and the hole, close to the green,
there stretches a phalanx of pot-bunkers, whereas the man who has
played well out to the right over the guiding flag, has an easy and
open approach. At the ninth, again, there is vast prairie into which to
drive, but it is only by keeping well out to the right that we shall
be able to hook the ball round on to that cunning plateau green; that
little pot-bunker in the face of the plateau will most effectually put
the man who has hooked from the tee, into a quandary.
[Illustration: WESTWARD HO!
_The carry at the fifth tee_]
It is not perhaps quite justifiable to include wind in a list of the
permanent difficulties of any course, but, as far as my experience
goes, it is always blowing hard at Westward Ho! I am told that when
Braid did his 69, he had a still day, and I certainly believe it, for
the reason that no human man could play such a round in a high wind; it
is almost incredibly good in a dead calm. Personally, however, I have
never found anything but a fine fresh wind blowing, a wind from the
west that causes one to slice woefully on the way out and hook horribly
on the way home. I revisited Westward Ho! after a lamentably long
absence of some ten years, and found the same wind still blowing, and
it brought vividly back to me the recollections of how for one solid
week I had sliced my tee-shots twice daily at the fourth, fifth, sixth,
and seventh holes.
No course ever had more convincing testimony paid to its difficulties
than did Westward Ho! at that Easter of slicing memory in 1900. There
was a team of the Royal Liverpool Club with Mr. Hilton to lead it--Mr.
Ball and Mr. Graham were not there; there was a strong team of the
Oxford and Cambridge Golfing Society; and there were all the local
champions. Yet out of that field Mr. Horace Hutchinson won the Kashmir
Cup with a score of 179, which represents, unless my arithmetic be at
fault, but one under an average of five strokes a hole. It was in truth
the most desperately difficult golf, and there was but one player who
seemed able to triumph over it. That was the late Mr. J. A. T. Bramston,
then a freshman at Oxford, who for the first time showed the world
in general what a magnificent golfer he was. He played in four team
matches against the most redoubtable opponents, and beat them all. He
beat Mr. Hutchinson by a number of holes so large that it would be
kinder to draw a discreet veil over the details, and Mr. John Low by a
smaller but still very sufficient margin. Mr. Hilton and Mr. Humphrey
Ellis (then at his very best, and how terribly good that best was!) he
defeated by some two or three holes apiece. It was the most brilliant
week in a brilliant and all too short career.
If Westward Ho! was difficult then--albeit with a gutty ball--how
difficult must it be now, when Mr. Fowler has stretched it and bunkered
it, so that there are some ready to rise up and call him not blessed.
The one alleviation is that the rushes have been cut away in a good
many places, and though bunkers have replaced them, no bunker is so
fatal as a Westward Ho! rush, which is as tall as the golfer himself,
and a great deal stronger. Practically the only criticism now to be
made is in its essence a futile one, namely, that it is a pity that
providence did not see fit to bring the true sandy golfing country up
to the club-house door, instead of interposing that short stretch of
low-lying and rather depressing marshland.
There the marsh is, however, and the best has undoubtedly been made
of it, so that the first three and the last two holes, if they
have no particular fascination, are thoroughly good and difficult:
more difficult, indeed, than some of the more attractive ones. The
first hole demands two very long, straight shots, for there is a
ditch to catch a slice and only a narrow opening to the green. The
second, again, is a fine, long driving hole, a little 'dog-legged'
in character, and at the third, which is a short one, the green is
beleaguered with pot-bunkers on every side. Yet this third hole shows
that there are limits to what human ingenuity can do, for the hole is
as difficult as can be, and yet of so flat and melancholy an appearance
that one could scarcely feel any warm affection for it.
By this time we are close to the famous 'Pebble Ridge,' and the real
golfing country begins with the fourth hole, a fine two-shot hole with
a well-guarded green. Next comes the fifth, and in front of the tee
there is a bunker so colossal that the carry looks at first sight to be
impossible. A good long carry it certainly is, but it is not nearly so
appalling as it looks; a well struck ball will career gaily over it,
and, if we feel frightened, we can make the carry a little shorter by
going to the right. A moderate pitch will take us home after the drive,
and this is true not only of the fifth, but of the sixth and seventh
also.
It is just a little unfortunate that these holes, which have a good
many features in common, should come so close together, for their
doing so imparts just a suspicion of weakness to this part of the
course. In each case there is a stirring tee-shot from a high tee, and
if that be well struck we may then pitch easily home, although the
greens are very well protected, and should have a comfortable string
of fours. There is a spot further on among the hills to the left where
some desire that the green should be placed, and if ever it is done,
not only the sixth but indirectly the fifth and seventh will also be
benefitted.
The eighth is an interesting little short hole--an extremely difficult
one from the back tee--and after that come two of the finest holes in
golf, the ninth and tenth.
The ninth green lies in a hollow on the top of a small plateau at the
range of two very full shots from the tee, and the superlative virtue
of the hole consists in a little unobtrusive pot-bunker, before alluded
to, in the face of the hill. We can hardly hope to drive far enough to
carry the bunker in our second, and if we could it would scarcely be
possible to stay on the green. Therefore, we must drive well out to
the right, and hope to reach the green with a subtle hook. The ground
breaks in towards the hole from the right, and so a perfectly played
shot, with just sufficient hook, will keep turning and turning towards
the hole, till it totters with its last gasp down the last slope
and lies close to the hole. Often, of course, it will be out of the
question to get home in two, but the hole will still be interesting,
and our approach shot anything but a simple one.
The tenth affords a standing example of what a 'dog-legged' hole
should be, and it is here that we come really to close quarters with
the rushes. There is a vast tract of them in front of the tee, and if
we could carry some three hundred and more yards no doubt we could
reach the green in one. Assuming, however, that our driving powers
are more limited, we drive well out to the right, carrying just as
many yards of rushes as we safely dare; then, turning to the left, we
play our second between the rushes on one side and rough country on
the other over a bunker and on to a narrow gully of a green. With a
favourable wind we may hope to get home easily enough with an iron, but
when two really full shots are needed, it is a hole for gods and heroes.
Next we come to some of the new holes. At the eleventh we drive not
over but down an avenue of rushes, and must then play a shot which is
curiously rare at Westward Ho!--a high, quickly stopping pitch over a
cross-bunker. The twelfth and thirteenth are both good two-shot holes,
the former, with a green most sternly bunkered, and the latter, with a
lovely little plateau green. This plateau looks so eminently natural
that I have once fallen into the error of describing it as such,
thereby doing grave injustice to Mr. Fowler, who built it in the middle
of a flat plain.
Fourteen is a short hole with a bunker in front and rushes in the
neighbourhood: a good hole, but comparatively ordinary, and certainly
not so attractive as the other short hole, the sixteenth. This is
but the length of a mashie pitch, but what a difficult pitch it is!
When I last played it the wind blew strongly from left to right, and
the inhuman green-keeper had cut the hole in the left-hand corner
of the green. To pitch right up to the hole was to run far over the
green; to be at all short meant a pot-bunker, while a ball with the
least suspicion of cut would tear away to the right and end, in all
probability, in another bunker. It seemed to be almost necessary to
pitch on a particular bump, on a particular hill just short of the
flag--a desperate task.
I must go back for a minute to praise the fifteenth, a hole which
has the added interest of alternative routes, according as we drive
to right or left of a formidable hedge of furze, and then we come to
a parlous long hole, the seventeenth. There is a ditch guarding the
green, but before we arrive at the approaching stage, we must hit first
of all a good tee-shot, and then a good brassey shot, over a rampart
of terrible appearance. This is the one bunker on the course which is,
from an artistic point of view, unworthy of it. It does indeed look as
if it had been transplanted from some inland park, but do not let us be
too hard on it, for there is much joy in the carrying of it.
At the last hole we should, with a good second shot, carry the burn and
get a four, but there is a gentleman waiting with a net to fish our
ball out if we fail, and the sight of him is apt to have a horribly
destructive effect. If we go into the burn we shall be reminded of
the fact when we are paying for our caddie, by the demand for the
recognized toll of one penny for its rescue. Finally, no account of
Westward Ho! would be complete without a reference to the tea at
the club-house. There is a particular form of roll cut in half and
liberally plastered with Devonshire cream and jam. Epithets fail me,
and I can only declare that the tea is worthy of the golf.
From Westward Ho! we may cross the border into Cornwall, a thing
infinitely more easy to do in the imagination than in a train. Cornwall
has several pleasant courses--Newquay, Lelant, St. Enodoc, and Bude,
amongst others. Of these, St. Enodoc is a course of wonderful natural
possibilities, and for that matter there is a rather solitary,
inaccessible piece of land near Hale, not far from Lelant, where might
be made one of _the_ golf courses of the world. So at least it seemed
to me as I wandered once on a Sunday morning amongst its hills and
valleys.
=Bude= is a place beloved by many summer visitors, and the course is a
good course if there are not too many of them upon it. The turf is of
the seaside order, and there are many hills that must once have been
sandhills, so that perhaps in some earlier geological epoch the course
might have been more exciting than it is now. These hills are now,
for the most part, covered with grass, but the sand appears quickly
enough if a bunker has to be cut. There is one fact which is perhaps
a little sad about Bude, and that is, that though there are the most
magnificent waves to be seen there, the golf course is not the place to
see them from, and we do not really catch sight of them till we come to
the sixteenth hole, which a friend of mine has christened the 'Nursery
Maid' hole. Here we have to play across a road that leads inland from
the beach, and, as we are often finishing our round at precisely the
same moment when the nurserymaids are conducting their young charges
in for lunch, it becomes necessary to wait while an apparently endless
procession wends its way homeward with much purposeless halting of
children and screaming of maids.
Perhaps the best hole on the outward journey is the third, where there
are really a variety of reasons why we should very likely play a bad
second shot. In the first place, we shall not improbably have rather
a hanging lie from which to play our pitch, and, to make things more
difficult, the green is sloping away from us. Guarding the green is a
fine natural bunker, where the punishment is apt to be very severe, and
beyond it is a sandy road, so that altogether our pitch cannot possibly
be called easy. We can so place our tee-shot as to modify its terrors,
but we can by no means do away with them altogether.
After the agonies of the third there is a partial relapse into
mildness, but there are good carries from the sixth and seventh tees;
at the latter of the two over a big hill, the face of which has been
cut out and converted into a bunker. The ninth too has a good tee-shot
over another big bunker on to a green which is well protected on
every side. At the tenth a punchbowl green brings hopes of a perhaps
undeserved three, and then for a space we play in and out of some land
that was once a garden or orchard: we can still see where the wall
and the ditch used to run. We enter the garden by means of a good
cleek shot over a big hill thickly covered with bents; leave it at the
twelfth and re-enter it at the thirteenth, a hole not unlike the
eleventh. At the fourteenth we may break the windows in a terrace of
houses by a well executed slice; and at the sixteenth the aforesaid
nurserymaids have to be circumvented. When we have paid for the windows
and buried the nurserymaids, we play quite a short but deceptive iron
shot to the seventeenth, avoiding a bunker and a sandy road, and so
home with a good two-shot hole to end with.
[Illustration: BUDE
_The 'Nursery Maid' hole_]
We can go no further west than Cornwall, so let us turn back to
=Burnham=, in Somersetshire. Whenever a golfing conversation turns upon
blind holes, and one party boasts of the giant hills and deep valleys
of any particular course, it is almost certain that another will say,
"Ah, but you should just see Burnham in Somerset." Thus it happens that
we go there for our first visit in the frame of mind of one who sets
out for the Alps after having seen nothing perceptibly higher than
Constitution Hill.
A first glance at the course assures us that we shall not be
disappointed, for as we take our stand upon the tee we are ringed
round with sandhills, and wherever the first hole may be, this much is
evident, that we shall have to drive the ball over a mountain in order
to get there. Hole succeeds hole, and still the endless range of hills
goes on, and from the summit of each one we get the most lovely views:
to the right a chain of hills, with the Cheddar Gorge in the distance;
to the left the Bristol Channel, with the islands of Steep Home and
Flat Home and an expanse of dim country on the other side. When we
turn for home at the ninth, we still see the sandhills stretching
tumultuously away towards Weston, with their strange fantastic shapes,
and occasionally a narrow, meandering ribbon of turf in between. There
seems to be material for at least one other course, and, indeed, the
difficulty would appear to be not to find bunkers, but to find an open
place where there are not too many of them.
With this wonderful stretch of country to work upon, it is small wonder
that those who originally designed the course made a number of blind
holes. They would have been hard put to it to do anything else, and
there are, in fact, on the old course, if my reckoning be correct, no
less than six blind one-shot holes, to say nothing of several longer
holes, where the approach shot is played merely at a guide flag waving
upon a hill top. I say the old course because, as I write, Burnham
is in a transition stage, and what may be called the new course is
practically in working order. Thus some of the blind short holes will
disappear for ever, not, perhaps, without leaving a pang of regret
behind them, and in their place come some flatter, and longer, and
more open holes, which are not so characteristic of Burnham, but are
none the worse for that. The hills will be all the more enjoyable when
occasionally contrasted with the plains, and these new holes now give
the course just that extra length that it needed.
[Illustration: BURNHAM
_Among the sandhills_]
Now let us play in imagination over the course in its altered
condition, and tee up our ball for the first hole. There is a little
dip between two grassy hills--a horribly narrow one it looks--and that
is where we have to drive. A really fine shot may take us to the edge
of the green, and we may go on our way rejoicing with a three, for
the green is big and good. A drive and a pitch in the country of hills
should suffice for the second, and then come two excellent holes, where
we cease to drive over the hills, and are set the far severer task of
hitting straight down the gully that lies between them.
"This reminds me very much of Wallasey," I remarked, not without hopes
of having made an interesting and original comment, and my guide
answered in a tone, in which courtesy struggled with weariness, that he
had often heard the same comment made before. Of these two holes the
fourth, which is 'dog-legged,' and gives a well-deserved advantage to
the fearless hitter, is particularly good; and then there comes a most
fascinating hole, the fifth. Two full shots are needed, over some very
broken and billowy country, to reach a green that lies at the bottom of
a deep hollow. This hollow has merits, which are not given to all of
its kind, for its sides are abruptly precipitous and not possessed of
those gentle and flattering slopes, which coax the indifferently struck
ball in the direction of the hole. The sixth, on the other hand, which
is a one-shot hole, has all the vices which the fifth avoids, for here
all roads lead to the flag, and the perfect shot, the paltry slice, and
the too vigorous hook, may all meet together at such a range from the
hole that a two is by no means improbable.
After being unduly pampered by this sixth hole, we are brought face to
face with the sterner realities of life, and must be prepared to play
a series of long and accurate brassey shots if we are to do anything
better than five for each of the next three holes. Of these three the
eighth and ninth are new, and the only thing to be said against them
is that there is such a family likeness between them that it is a pity
they come immediately together. Nothing but long, straight hitting will
do here along a narrow tongue of grass that is flanked on either side
by sand and bents.
The tenth deserves a special word, if only for the fact that a huge
sandhill has had its head cut off--this is regarded as quite a minor
operation at Burnham--in order that we may see the flag from the tee.
There it is, a terribly long way off, as it seems, but one really good
shot should reach the green, avoiding some little nests of pot-bunkers
on the way, and there is a three to reduce the average of fives for the
homeward journey. Another three should come at the twelfth, when only
a short pitch is needed, but eleven and thirteen are very likely to be
fives; long, narrow, flat holes, with broken ground and little clumps
of rushes that are intensely business-like. The fourteenth is, I think,
almost the best hole on the course, and certainly the tee-shot is the
most alarming. We can see all our troubles only too clearly here--a
sandy road full of the deepest ruts on the right, called in spirit of
ostentatious levity the 'Old Kent Road,' and on the left a prickly
and seductive hedge. If only there was a mountain in the way at this
hole, we should probably come less frequently to grief. As it is, we
concentrate all our attention on being straight, and are all the more
terribly crooked in consequence.
The next two holes both need accurate approach shots, and then comes
the last and best of the blind holes, 'Majuba.' There is a steep hill
of a rather curious conical shape to drive over, but the chief of the
dangers lie on the far side, where the green lies in a narrow little
gorge between a bunker on the right, and on the left a hill thickly
covered with bents. This is as good a blind short hole as one could
possibly wish for, and makes a sufficiently critical and exciting
seventeenth, while the new eighteenth should be one of the best last
holes to be seen anywhere. Two raking shots will be wanted, and the
second of them, if it go as straight as an arrow between two flanking
bunkers, will be rewarded by as good a piece of turf as the heart of
the putter can desire.
Still travelling back in an easterly direction, we come to Broadstone,
in Dorsetshire, not far from Bournemouth. =Broadstone= is, I think,
rather an easy course to remember, which is the same as saying that the
holes have each got very definite characters of their own; at any rate,
although I have seen them but once, I can play them all quite clearly
in my mind's eye, save only the park holes, which, truth to tell, are
not much worth remembering. These park holes are certainly one of the
drawbacks to the course. For six holes we are playing excellent golf in
the right golfing country, with heather, and sand, and everything as it
should be. Then we go through a wicket gate, the whole scene instantly
changes, and, behold! we are playing a hole of the typical inland kind.
There is no heather and no sand, save such as has been transplanted to
fill up a number of conscientious little bunkers, and it is no great
injustice to liken the turf to that of a good smooth field. For six
holes we are playing in the park, and then the tyranny is overpast,
and we emerge once more upon the heather for the rest of the round. In
fact, the course is divided into three slices of six holes each, the
first and last slice being good, and the middle slice being of very
ordinary stuff indeed.
It is a little hard to understand why these park holes were ever made,
because there is a glorious and apparently illimitable tract of heather
waiting to be played over, only divided from the course by the railway.
I believe there is a scheme afoot to make some further holes upon this
heather, that is now so lamentably wasting its sweetness, and if this
is done, Broadstone should be able to hold its head very high among
inland courses.
In point of mere looks, it is very hard to beat now, and especially is
there a most lovely view, with Poole Harbour in the distance, from the
fifteenth hole, which is on the highest part of the course. This hole
has likewise a unique feature in the shape of a genuine Roman tumulus,
which at first sight the stranger is apt to attribute to the genius of
Mr. Herbert Fowler, or some other maker of hazards. It stands almost
exactly in the middle of the fairway, and those who drive too straight
must deal with the situation as best they can with their niblicks.
[Illustration: BROADSTONE
_The fourth hole_]
A vast deal of trouble and money must have been spent on the putting
greens, which are very smooth and good, and enormously big. They
are, in fact, too big, and a revolutionary leader who should dig
bunkers in the edge of them would be doing the course a service.
I cannot help thinking, also, that rather too many of them are upon
plateaus--not the plateaus of St. Andrews, but the plateau that is cut
out of the side of a slope and has a back wall to cover a multitude of
approaching sins. The bunkering is something of a patchwork, in which
the theories of two opposite schools have been blended. We see, first
of all, the remains of an older civilization in the shape of deep sandy
trenches, with the accompanying ramparts dug right across the course.
Then, as golfing opinion has progressed, or at any rate altered,
there have been added, under Mr. Fowler's guidance, a good number of
pot-bunkers, which seem to have some of the qualities of those we know
and fear at Walton Heath, being easy to get into and hard to get out
of. Besides these, the heather is always there to trap us at the sides
of the course; there are also trees in places, and likewise whins,
while one of the park holes so far demeans itself as to be guarded by
an ordinary hedge.
The course begins very well with a fine, long, two-shot hole, a little
'dog-legged,' where the second shot will just creep on to the green
between two sentinel bunkers. The second is another fine one, save that
the plateau green has a terribly steep bank; and the third is wholly
admirable, with its cheerful tee-shot from a height, followed by an
iron shot down the middle of an avenue of trees. The fourth I believe
to be likewise an excellent hole, but my attention was distracted from
the hole by the scene I witnessed on the tee. There was an irascible
gentleman and a small caddie; the caddie had made an inefficient
tee, and the irascible gentleman was the possessor of a prolonged and
solemn waggle. The waggle began and the ball fell off; the irascible
gentleman made opprobrious remarks, and put it on the tee again,
while the small caddie showed a dreadful tendency to laugh, which he
restrained with obvious difficulty. This happened really innumerable
times, till both the gentleman and the small boy appeared certain, from
different causes, to die of apoplexy, and, indeed, I had serious fears
for myself. The ball was ultimately despatched into a neighbouring
ditch, and I passed on without having disgraced myself, but remembering
very little about the hole. Both the fifth and sixth are short holes,
though the sixth needs a long, straight shot, and then we pass into the
park, or better still, by a short cut along the high road, which brings
us back to the heathery country and the thirteenth hole--a good short
hole, where a wood to the right of the green has doubtless slain its
tens of thousands.
At the fourteenth we need a long, straight drive, followed by an iron
shot that must be played firmly and boldly home on to a plateau guarded
in front by a steep and unclimbable bank, and to the right by a pit
of destruction, where the horrors of sand and whins are intermingled.
Of the remaining holes, the seventeenth and eighteenth are both good,
especially the former, which, with its tee-shot among the whins, has an
air of Huntercombe about it. The sixteenth, however, does not seem at
all worthy of its fellows, being, as it appeared to me, as essentially
vicious as a hole can be. The ball is struck--with a measure of
straightness, I admit--to the brow of a hill, then the hill does the
rest. The ball hops, and skips, and jumps down the slope till it
reaches a green built out from the hillside, and, lest it should jump
too far and run over, there is a back wall of wire-netting. This is
the kind of hole--I can think of nothing worse to say of it--that some
people call 'sporting.'
Having given relief to my pent-up feelings on the subject of that
sixteenth hole, I feel entirely at peace with Broadstone, which has
some really fine holes, and is as pleasant a spot to play golf in--as
breezy, and pretty, and quiet--as anyone could desire.
Besides Broadstone and the new course at Parkstone, which can be
reached by a very short train journey, Bournemouth has two courses
of its very own, Meyrick Park and Queen's Park. Both are situated
in very pretty spots, amid the fir trees that are always with us at
Bournemouth. =Meyrick Park= is rather a miniature affair, although it
is not so short as when Tom Dunn originally laid it out. Then there
was one green that could be reached with a shortish putt from the tee,
and the most decrepit might hope for a round under eighty. There are
still many threes for the accurate iron player, but there are also one
or two good long holes, particularly the ninth, where we play, as it
were, into the narrow neck of a bottle among the pine-woods. It is not
unamusing, but the serious golfer will rather betake himself to the
newer course at the Boscombe end of the world, =Queen's Park=. Both
these courses belong to the Corporation, and all we have to do is to
pay our shilling and play our round. We get plenty for our money at
Queen's Park, for the course is over 6000 yards in length, which is
certainly not too short for the wants of old gentlemen who totter round
it.
It is really good golfing country, with big, rolling undulations and
plenty of heather and sand. There are long, narrow gullies running in
between the hills, rather reminiscent of another very pretty course,
Hindhead. For the most part, however, we are not playing along the
gullies, which would have tested our accuracy to the full, but rather
go leaping from one hillside to the other; in fact, if we are virtuous
we are always on a hill, and the valleys represent the infernal
regions--it is only the wicked who go down into them. This is just a
little monotonous, and we might rashly call it a fault in architecture.
There is, however, a reason for it, in that all the best soil is to be
found in the highlands, while the low-lying ground is in that respect
unsatisfactory.
The course is still comparatively young, and has not yet put forth
any very thick crop of bunkers; but the heather is wiry and tenacious
and the fairway narrow. There are two consecutive holes of a most
paralyzing narrowness--the seventh and eighth--where the ball has to
be steered between a fir wood on the right and a high road, which is
out of bounds, on the left. The third hole, again, is a fine two-shot
hole, and there are plenty more. They are perhaps rather too similar
in character owing to the recurring valleys, but they one and all need
good play.
[Illustration: QUEEN'S PARK, BOURNEMOUTH
_The eleventh green and twelfth tee_]
Even among the heathery courses, which are nearly all good to look
upon, Queen's Park takes a very high place for beauty, and it is a joy
to find anything so pretty and peaceful on the very edge of a big town.
Every prospect pleases, and only the old colonel, who is in front of us
and plays fifteen more with his niblick, is entirely vile.
The reader must now make in imagination the short and generally
innocuous crossing to the Isle of Wight, in order to see one of the
most charming of nine-hole courses at =Bembridge=. The Royal Isle of
Wight Golf Club can boast of a comparatively hoary antiquity, since it
was founded in 1882, and Bembridge was perhaps rather more famous when
there were fewer links in existence. It is still, however, very good
golf, and has many faithful and affectionate friends. The nine holes
dodge in and out after the manner of a cat's cradle, so that Bembridge
has earned a reputation for being one of the most dangerous courses in
the world, and it used to be said that all the local players expected
to be hit once at least in the course of a year. To cry a brisk 'fore'
is to absolve oneself from responsibility, and one may then let fly at
any impeding player with a clear conscience. There is one particularly
perilous spot, where the ball is apt to lie after a straight drive
of moderate length on the way to the first hole. Here the player is
in the midst of a veritable ring of death, since a hot fire may be
opened upon him simultaneously from the seventh, eighth, and ninth
tees, to say nothing of the first tee to his immediate rear. It is
perhaps owing to this exciting characteristic of the course that that
pleasant anachronism, the red coat, is still occasionally to be seen
at Bembridge.
The course lies upon a spur of land between Bembridge harbour and the
Solent, and one is rowed over to it from the hotel in a boat. Small
things remain absurdly graven on the memory, and I remember nothing
at Bembridge more clearly than the nautical gentleman who used to
row us over a great many years ago, and his expression when Mr. John
Low genially hailed him as "You licensed brigand." Once the stranger
arrives on the course he will be struck, possibly by a ball, and
certainly by the ubiquitous character of a road which winds about the
course like a snake, and is an almost ever-present menace throughout
the round; indeed, it has some say in the matter at every one of the
holes, save only the third and the fifth. Some of its glory--or its
horror, according to the light in which we view the matter--has,
however, departed, for whereas it was once uniformly sandy and soft
and full of the direst ruts, it is now metalled in many places, and so
is naturally much less terrible. Another feature of the course, which
is now less pronounced than it used to be, is the luxuriant growth of
whins. These have become sadly thinner, and one who knows and loves
his Bembridge well tells me that this is in a measure due to the havoc
wrought among them in the early days of the rubber-cored ball, when a
Haskell was infinitely precious and was not to be given up for lost
till the entire neighbourhood had been laid waste with the niblick.
[Illustration: BEMBRIDGE
_A loop of the 'cat's cradle'_]
The first hole is one of the best on the course, requiring a
drive, followed by an accurate cleek-shot on a still day, and against
the wind two really fine shots. The whins lie in wait for a sliced
shot, while on the left is the strong shore of the harbour. There is a
delightful account of a round at Bembridge, written years ago by Mr.
Horace Hutchinson, in which the writer pulls his shot at this hole on
to the beach, and ultimately finds his ball lying upon a 'dead and
derelict dog'--a grisly and, I trust, an unusual hazard. The next two
holes are of very similar length, and can both be reached with a drive
and a pitching shot; there are whins and a big bunker to trap the
erring tee-shot, and in both cases the approach has to be played on to
a green which is difficult to the verge of trickiness.
The fourth is a really good hole, some 460 yards in length, and has a
thoroughly difficult tee-shot, since the most contemptible of golfing
vices will be punished by a large bunker, while the more manly but
still reprehensible pull lands the ball in a grassy pit. The fifth is
a short hole, gifted with no particular merit and a number of whin
bushes, but at the sixth we come to a hole which can hold its own
in the very best of company. It has the virtue of presenting to the
player the choice of two alternative routes, so that, according as
he is long or short, courageous or cautious, he can vary the length
of the hole for himself. If he is a strong and ambitious hitter,
he will go straight for the second green, carrying the road on the
way; the situation is the more poignant because the road is here not
metalled, and failure must entail a measure of disaster. On the other
hand, if the road be safely carried, he is left with a comparatively
short and straightforward second shot, though he has still to cross
a bunker of magnificent proportions that guards the green. The more
careful, on the other hand, push their tee-shot to a spot further
out to the right and short of the road, whence it is still possible
to get home, but only by means of a shot that is both longer and
harder. There are, I believe, many persons of sound judgment who think
that the playing of the tee-shot on to the second green should be
prohibited by law, both because all unnecessary risks of doing murder
are undesirable and also on the ground that the second stroke by the
right-hand line is more difficult and more interesting. Two holes of
the drive and pitch type follow; indeed, a strong hitter may hope,
under very favourable conditions, to get home with his tee-shot; but
at the eighth in particular the drive must be a very straight one, for
there are whins to right and left, and our old enemy the road lurks at
the edge of the green. Finally, the green is a very tricky one, and
altogether discretion at this hole lives fully up to its proverbial
characteristics.
At the last hole, which calls for a drive and a good full iron-shot,
a four is never to be despised, and with that we start off once more
between the whins and the beach, and pass pale and trembling again
through the fiery zone. The golf at Bembridge is most certainly
attractive, and that it has other and more sterling qualities is shown
by the fine players it has produced, the two Toogoods and Rowland Jones
amongst them. "By their fruits ye shall know them" is true of golf
links as well as of other things.
CHAPTER V.
EAST ANGLIA.
Of the many good courses in East Anglia, I have the tenderest and most
sentimental association with =Felixstowe=, because it was there that
I began to play golf. Till quite lately, however, I had not seen the
course for a very long while, and my recollections of it were those of
a small boy of eight or nine years old. The small boy wore a flannel
shirt, brown holland knickerbockers, and bare legs, from which the
sun had removed nearly all vestiges of skin. He used to dodge in and
out among the crowd, hurriedly playing a hole here and there, and
then waiting for unsympathetic grown-ups in red coats to pass him.
Willy Fernie was the professional there in those days, and in the
zenith of his fame; it was not long before that he had beaten Bob
Ferguson for the championship by holing a long putt for a two at the
last hole at Musselburgh. Occasionally also another great golfer, Mr.
Mure Fergusson, would come down from London to shed the light of his
countenance upon the course and be breathlessly admired by the small
boy from a respectful distance.
As far as I can remember, my best score then was 70 for one round of
the nine-hole course, and so I always pictured Felixstowe to myself
as possessing longer holes and bunkers infinitely more terrible than
those to be found on any other course. Felixstowe revisited appeared
naturally enough to have shrunk a little; the Martello tower that
stands on the edge of the first green is not quite so tall as I had
pictured it, and some of the holes are quite short, but I still found
it one of the most charming and interesting of courses. I came back
to it on one of the most perfect of winter golfing days, with the
sun shining on the sea and the red roofs of Baudsey in the distance;
it was a day to accentuate every romantic feeling, and it was with a
perceptible thrill that I teed my ball in front of the very modest
bunker, the carrying of which had once been among my wildest dreams.
As far as I could see, the course was almost exactly the same as
it always had been. One or two of the bunkers had been rather more
abruptly 'faced' with walls of turf; and the little hut, which once
served Fernie for a shop, and whence he used to issue in a white apron
and with a half-made club in his hand, had become a ladies' club-house;
but otherwise the whole nine holes appeared entirely unchanged. Their
names came back to me as I played them--the 'Gate,' the 'Tower,'
'Eastward Ho!' 'Bunker's Hill,' the 'Point'--and the only thing as to
which I felt doubtful was the position of a certain bunker that used
once to be known as 'Morley's Grave,' and was faced, if I remember
rightly, with black timbers that have now vanished.
[Illustration: FELIXSTOWE
_General view of the course_]
Looking at the course as impartially as possible, it seems to me now to
possess a striking mixture of very easy and extremely difficult shots.
There are several tee-shots, for instance, where one may hit out in a
very gay and careless spirit and with but the very smallest fear of
disaster; there are other shots, and especially second shots up to the
greens, where the ball has to be played to a very exact spot, and where
no other spot will do. The thing, however, that in a great degree makes
the golf at Felixstowe is the truly magnificent finish. With a breeze
against the player, as it was when I was there, it is hard to conceive
two more splendid and exacting holes than the eighth and ninth,
'Bunker's Hill' and the 'Point,' and--here is one of the advantages of
a nine-hole course--we have to battle with them four times in one day's
golf. At the risk of exaggerating, I will boldly assert that I have
never seen two such fine holes coming consecutively at the end of any
golf course.
Those two I will keep till their proper place, and we will begin at the
first with a drive over a sandy hollow into open country. A bad slice
may see us labouring upon the seashore, but if we keep well to the left
there is no great difficulty, and a firm pitch over a cross-bunker
should land us safely on a big open green--it is, in fact, a double
green--between the hut and the Martello tower. The second, or 'Gate,'
is a short hole with a very billowy green; indeed, one little valley,
in which the hole is sometimes placed, is shaped for all the world
like a horse trough, and the ball will always come rolling back from
its steep sides, and must almost infallibly end very near the hole.
After this come three thoroughly good two-shot holes--the 'Bank,' the
'Tower,' and 'Bent Hills'--at all three of which the tee-shot is quite
easy, and the second shot both interesting and difficult; at both the
fourth and fifth there is an old-fashioned, honest cross-bunker, which
has to be carried if we are to get near the hole, and if the wind is
adverse and the ground slow, nothing but a really good brassey shot
will suffice. At the sixth--'Eastward Ho!'--a drive and a running shot
with the iron takes us close up to Baudsey Ferry and another Martello
tower, and then we turn homeward for the 'Ridge'--a drive and a short
pitch; at both these holes we should be hoping and trying for threes,
and they are neither of them possessed of any particular difficulty.
So far we may have done very well, and our score should not greatly
exceed an average of fours, but now comes Bunker's Hill, to be played,
as we will imagine, against a fair breeze. The drive is comparatively
simple, but for the second we must hit a very full shot as straight
as an arrow; the green is quite a small one, guarded on the right by
a road and a wilderness of thick grass beyond, while in front and to
the left is sand in abundance. To play short is the act of a coward,
and there will be a certain splendour even in our failure, for it
will be failure on a grand and expensive scale. This is true, even in
a greater degree, of the 'Point,' a hole that must have wrecked the
hopes of many a prospective medal winner; nay, there cannot be such a
thing as a prospective medal winner at Felixstowe till he has played
the second shot to the Point for the second time. There is some chance
of trouble from the tee, for besides the bunker immediately in front,
there is a long tongue of sand that stretches inwards from the road at
such a distance that it may well catch a fairly well-struck ball. We
will assume, however, that we are safely on the crest of the hill, with
the ball neither very far above or below us--this latter a considerable
assumption. The flag is fluttering in the distance close to the first
tee at the range of an absolutely full shot, and on the very narrowest,
most tapering strath imaginable. To the right is a field, which is out
of bounds; to the left is a hollow of broken, sandy country; close
to the hole is the seashore, but that we shall hardly reach against
the wind. Here, if our score be good or our adversary in trouble, we
may play short without much shame, but even so we shall have to play
very short and very accurately, and the third shot will not be without
peril. It is a grand four--something more than a steady five, a likely
six; really a tremendous hole with which to end. Everybody must long to
go back to Felixstowe, solely in order to master the Point thoroughly,
but they will never do it; it is a hole of such transcendent quality
that is must beat us in the end.
There are four courses in Norfolk, which naturally divide themselves
into two groups of near neighbours, Cromer and Sheringham, Brancaster
and Hunstanton. The two former are of the type which may be not too
respectfully denominated inland-super-mare. The sea is there, and very
nice it looks. The courses are close to the sea--so close that they
spend some of their time, especially at Cromer, in falling into it;
but the turf is not the crisp and sandy turf of the links. It is the
down turf, such as we find at Eastbourne or Brighton, very pleasant
and springy to walk on, but--not quite the right thing. There is a
considerable family likeness between the two courses. Both are situated
on the top of a cliff; both have fine, bold sweeping undulations and
hillsides dotted here and there with gorse bushes, and both are to a
large extent dependent on the artificial bunker.
=Cromer=, like Felixstowe, makes me feel a very old golfer, because,
when I first played there, there was a little ladies' course along the
edge of the cliff, which has many, many years since toppled peacefully
over into the German Ocean. Later on I saw an excellent seventeenth
hole share the same fate, and I suppose the poor first hole must go the
same way some time. It is particularly sad, because the holes on the
down land near the cliff constitute the most attractive part of the
course. The holes inland, which were added later, are long and well
bunkered, and have doubtless all the Christian virtues, but they are
just a little agricultural and uninspiring.
It is certainly to the old holes that the memory returns most fondly.
The club-house stands in the bottom of a deep hollow, with hills rising
pretty steeply out of it on three sides, and the first tee-shot has to
be driven straight up a gully between two of them. Then comes a shot
demanding the agility of a chamois and a maximum of local knowledge.
With the left foot a good deal higher than the right we play an
iron-shot into the distance, and if all goes well, shall find the
ball on a green which is walled in by cops and bunkers. If all goes
ill, it is possible that we lose it over the cliff, but for such a
disaster we shall need hooking powers of no mean order.
[Illustration: CROMER
_The sixteenth tee_]
The third is another spirited hole, where we plunge down a steep hill
between two lines of bracken to a green in the bottom of the valley.
Then we retire to a vantage point on the left, and fire over the heads
of our immediate successors on the putting green. After some little
dodging about among gorse bushes, we dash down hill again--a very long
way this time--and then play an adroit little pitch up to a plateau
cut out of the face of the neighbouring mountain. Then we leave the
nice down turf to pass for a while on to undisguisedly inland holes,
which stretch away towards Overstrand. As I said before, there is
nothing very thrilling about these holes, but we shall need good,
honest flogging if we are to cope with them successfully. I prefer to
come back to the sixteenth, which, with a strong wind blowing, as it
not infrequently does, takes a great deal of playing. There is more
plunging to be done--down into one valley with precipitous sides,
then up a long hill, and finally on to a green that sits perched on
the crest; there are also cross-bunkers, and there is bracken to the
left and the mighty ocean to the right. Finally, for the last hole we
drop down once more into the deep hollow from which we started our
mountaineering. No more than a nice firm iron-shot is needed, and we
shall be holing out in a comfortable three in front of the club-house;
but the distance is infinitely deceitful, so much so that once--on the
occasion of an exhibition match--Herd taking his brassey, and relying
on the misleading advice of his caddy, carried not only the green, but
the club-house as well.
From Cromer to Sheringham is but a few miles, and we may play a
morning round on one course and an afternoon round at the other. At
=Sheringham= we shall be called upon to do only a moderate amount of
climbing and some of the very stoutest hitting with the brassey that
has ever been required of us. The theory of the good-length hole has
been carried almost to its ultimate limit there, and unless the wind
be favourable and the ground uncommonly fast, cleeks and driving irons
will be no manner of good to us. Strenuous punching with the brassey is
the order of the day, and even so, unless we have been hitting the ball
as clean as a whistle, we shall say to the long-suffering Mr. Janion,
"Hang it all; you never ought to have put the tee back at the ninth
hole. Braid himself with a Dreadnought could not get there in two."
Some of these two-shot holes at Sheringham are really of extraordinary
splendour, and give the lie to those who say that with a rubber-cored
ball golf is no longer an athletic exercise. There are the second and
fourth, for example, which run parallel to one another, so that by no
means can we hope to have the wind with us both ways. The fourth needs
a particularly long second, for there is a deep cross-bunker in front
of the green. It is just a little like the last hole at Muirfield,
and we must pick the ball well up--no scuffling and scrambling will
do--and hit a ball with a long, swooping carry that shall fall spent
and lifeless on the green beyond. After this hard work we are let
down more easily, and a drive and a pitch should suffice at the fifth
and sixth. The latter is a very attractive hole, with the most glorious
tee-shot from a high hill, a fine view of the sea, and a fascinating
approach-shot at the end, which we can pitch or run according as seems
best to us.
[Illustration: SHERINGHAM
_Out of bounds (on the way to the seventh hole)_]
At the eighth we carry a lifeboat house from the tee--an unique hazard
in my experience--and play a long second shot full of interest and
possible disaster. Then, alas! we have to leave the sea, which we
have been keeping on our right-hand side, and go further inland. All
the home-coming holes are good and difficult, but we miss the sea
terribly. It is so pleasant to have it there as a reminder that we are
really playing on a seaside course and not inland. The finish is a
particularly good one, the seventeenth, especially against a breeze,
being quite one of the best on the course, since there is a railway
which terrifies us into a hook just when we must go straight if we are
to get the requisite distance.
All this time I have been talking of nothing but long holes, and that
is to do the course an injustice, for there are some very pleasant
short ones. The third is a hole that one might expect to find at
Hoylake--a pitch over the angle of a field, which is bounded by walls
of turf; it is one of the remnants of the old nine-hole course, and
therefore regarded with a jealous and quite justifiable affection. The
greens are excellent throughout the course, and the number of people
who drive off between sunrise and sunset on a summer's day shows that
Sheringham does not suffer from a lack of popularity.
I should imagine that =Brancaster=, before golf was introduced there,
must have been quite one of the quietest and most rural spots to be
found in England. Even now it is wonderfully peaceful, and has a
distinct charm and character of its own. We get out at Hunstanton
Station, and drive a considerable number of miles along a nice, flat,
dull east country road till we get to the tranquil little village, with
a church and some pleasant trees and an exceedingly comfortable Dormy
House. In front of the village is a stretch of grey-green marsh, and
beyond the marsh is a range of sandhills, and that is where the golf is.
The great defect of Brancaster used to be the thinness and poverty
of the turf. The holes were splendidly conceived, and the carries
blood-curdling; but the sand was so near the surface that the lies
were none of the best, and the putting greens sometimes of the worst.
I retain a vivid recollection of a visit to Brancaster with a somewhat
irascible friend. He greeted me at the Dormy House door with the
depressing words:
"It's utterly impossible to play here. We had better take the next
train back."
"Oh, no," I said cheerfully. "As we have come here, I think we had
better play."
"Very well," he rejoined. "Of course, you won't mind putting with your
niblick. A mashie is no good at all."
We stayed, and personally I enjoyed myself; I don't think my
friend did, and certainly the greens were of a surpassing vileness.
All that is changed now, and by some miracle of industry the course
is a velvety carpet, and the greens are as of the greens of Sandwich,
with plenty of good, holding grass upon them. Good greens are all
that Brancaster needed, and now it has got them. Perhaps there is one
more thing needed, and that is a stout man with a spade to dig a few
more bunkers; but that want, I believe, is in course of being or has
actually been remedied by now.
[Illustration: BRANCASTER
_The ninth green and tenth tee_]
In the days of the gutty it was most emphatically a driver's course,
since nobody could get over the ground without exceptionally honest
hitting. Even now, when the pampering Haskell has noticeably reduced
its terrors, it is still a driver's course, in the sense that it is one
on which one derives the maximum of sensual pleasure from opening one's
shoulders for a wooden club shot. Moreover, long driving does pay--for
the matter of that, it pays anywhere--because there are several second
shots which are enormously more formidable, when they have to be played
with something like a full shot. There is, for instance, the ninth--a
hole of which men used to speak with the same reverential awe with
which they alluded to the 'Maiden' at Sandwich. Certainly that bunker
in front of the green is sufficiently desperate, and to be compelled
to approach the hole with a brassey may well inspire fear, but a good
drive on a calm day should leave us little more than a firm half-iron
shot to play, and then we can afford to treat the bunker almost with
contempt. The same remark applies in a measure to the fourth hole, and
likewise to the fourteenth. There are beautifully guarded greens and
alarming bunkers, and just the extra yards gained by a good drive make
a world of difference in easiness of the approach.
Few things are more terrifying than the first hole at Brancaster on a
cold, raw, windy morning, when our wrists are stiff and our beautiful
steely-shafted driver feels like a poker. There is a bunker--really
a very big, deep bunker--right in front of our noses, and stretching
away for a hundred yards or so, and the early morning 'founder' that
would send the ball ricochetting away for miles at the first hole at
Hoylake or St. Andrews brings us to immediate grief. There is nothing
very thrilling about the second shot, and the next two holes, although
good enough, must remain unsung. At the fourth, however, we come to a
thoroughly entertaining hole; the second shot has to be played from a
plain, over a hill, and on to something that one might call a plateau,
were it not that such a term hardly does justice to the curliness of
the green.
There is a fascinating little pitch over a kind of gorge, and on to
another plateau for the fifth; but the hole on the way out is, I think,
the eighth. There is nothing quite like it anywhere else, as far as I
know. I can think of no better simile to describe it than that of a
man crossing a stream by somewhat imperfect stepping-stones, so that
he has to make a perilous leap from one to the other. There are, as
it were, three tongues or spits of land; on the first is the tee, on
the third is the green, and between them lie strips of marsh, a sandy
waste on which we may get a good lie, but are infinitely more likely
to get a bad one. There is a safe, conservative method of playing the
hole, which consists of a second shot along the second tongue, followed
by a hop over the marsh on to the green. On the other hand, there is
a more dashing policy, whereby we go out for a big shot off the tee,
and try to reach the third tongue in our second stroke. The first plan
is reminiscent of the methods of Allan Robertson, who, we are told,
used to play a certain hole at St. Andrews in three short spoon shots;
the second belongs to the more daring methods of to-day. The wind, of
course, has a great deal to say to our tactics, but, however we play
the hole, we have got to hit all our shots as they should be hit, and
that is as much as to say that the hole is a good one.
The ninth I have already spoken of, and with an adverse wind it is
undoubtedly a magnificent hole. With the wind behind it becomes much
more commonplace, but wherever the wind, we are not likely to be quite
happy till we have left it behind in a scoring competition. In a match
we may treat it cavalierly enough, and therefore successfully, but in
a medal there is a chance of an overwhelming disaster as a punishment
for just one bad shot. We may carry the bunker itself, and yet with
a pull we may plunge into a hedge of brushwood or on to the seashore
beyond it. We may be just short with our second--a matter of six inches
perhaps--and we shall be battering the bunker's unyielding face till
our card is shattered and wrecked. If a bunker be only big enough and
bad enough, it is undeniably difficult to treat it with just the right
admixture of contempt and respect.
The first few holes on the way home do not appear to me particularly
thrilling, but when we get to the fourteenth there is a really good
second to be played over a ghastly bunker on to a small well-guarded
green. The sixteenth provides an ingenious example of the plateau hole,
and there is a bunker that takes no denial guarding the home green.
Brancaster is like one or two other courses--Harlech and Sandwich
are those that come into my mind. The golf is not desperately
difficult golf if one is hitting the ball steadily into the air, but
the occasional top which we may allow ourselves with something like
impunity on more difficult courses spells ruin. If the punishment of
the utterly bad shots was the aim and object of all golf, these three
courses would be the best in the world. I don't think they are any of
them quite as good as that, but they all provide the very jolliest of
golf, and Brancaster is not the least jolly of the three.
[Illustration: HUNSTANTON
_Under snow_]
=Hunstanton= is very amusing golf; it is more than that, for it is
for the most part very good golf. Perhaps it is a little unfairly
overshadowed in public estimation by its near neighbour Brancaster,
which is altogether on rather a bigger and grander scale. Brancaster
has the faults which are apt to go with its peculiar virtues; it gives
the player just a little too much rope, an accusation that is not
lightly to be made against Hunstanton. They had a visitation from Braid
at Hunstanton a year or two back, and he left a most destructive
trail of bunkers behind him; wonderfully cunningly devised they are,
so that if we narrowly avoid one we are very likely to be caught
in another or 'covering' bunker, just as we were rejoicing at our
unmerited escape.
The outgoing nine holes at Hunstanton are nearly all good; the
home-coming half is much more unequal in quality. The last two holes
always made a fine finish, but some of the preceding holes were once of
rather poor quality. Braid's bunkers, however, and the stretching of
tees, and a radical change at the thirteenth have worked wonders, and
nowadays a low score at Hunstanton, though perfectly possible, has to
be earned by sound and accurate golf.
We begin just as at Brancaster, with a most terrifying bunker to carry.
It is a magnificent bunker and a very good one-shot hole, but these
caverns in front of the nervous starter do most sadly retard progress
on a crowded green. The second and third are really fine holes both
of them, especially the second, which wants two good shots and a
pitch, with accurate going all the way. The fifth demands two of the
best shots to carry a cop in front of the green; there is, moreover,
a chance of slicing into the river Hun. At the sixth we play a blind
pitch into a kind of amphitheatre among sandhills--a hole which is
picturesque but fluky; but at the eighth we come to a really fine
hole--the best on the course--with a fine slashing second over the
corner of a field that is out of bounds. It is a hole where we must
decide on our own policy on the tee, and either go as close as may
be to the field to begin with or else reluctantly put aside all our
noblest ideals and play pawkily to the left for a five.
On the way home we have at the tenth an excellent and teasing tee-shot
along one of those narrow necks which every 'architect' must long for,
and a good eleventh as well. Then the course suffers rather a relapse,
but the seventeenth and eighteenth are worth much fine gold. Certainly
there is an element of luck about the lie off the tee-shot at the
seventeenth, but if only we are lucky and the wind be not too strong
against us, we can hit out manfully, and the ball will sail away over
a hill and a prodigious big bunker in its face on to a nice big green.
The last is even better, with its narrow and billowy green, guarded by
a bunker in front, another to the right, and a horrid hard road to the
left. If I add that I once did these two holes in consecutive threes
it is not in a spirit of boasting, but merely to recall a sensation of
exquisite bliss. Hunstanton is very good golf of the most genuine and
sandy kind. If it is not in the highest class, it is at least agreeably
near to it.
[Illustration: SKEGNESS
_The second shot at the ninth hole_]
Now leaving Norfolk behind, we ought to see one course in Lincolnshire,
that of the Seacroft Club at Skegness. =Skegness=, as is well known
to everyone from Mr. Hassall's delightful poster, is 'so bracing,'
and I would not for the world dispute the fact. I had, however, the
misfortune to visit it on one of the most stifling days in July, when
the whole flat expanse of Lincolnshire fen lay panting under a hot
haze, and our progress round the links was quite unlike that of the
gentleman depicted by Mr. Hassall, skimming buoyantly over the ground
with a cooling sea breeze behind him. If, therefore, I have
pleasant recollections of Skegness, it must surely be a good course;
and so it is, lacking, I think, only one thing, a wind that blows from
two places at once. It is one of those courses that runs, roughly
speaking, straight out and home, and the nine holes that we play with
the wind in our face we think really beautiful, while with the wind
behind us we are just a little bit disappointed. This is, of course,
only the impression of a casual visitor; and, moreover, it must often
happen that wind is neither for us nor against us, but blows straight
across the course. Then the golf must be really difficult, for the
fairway is uniformly narrow and the rough wonderfully tenacious;
indeed, I have only met with more clinging rough at Le Touquet, where
is to be found a diabolical undergrowth, which the caddies call by the
name of 'les épines,' and the golfers by a variety of epithets--all of
them unprintable.
The course begins admirably with two narrow and difficult holes, where
it is equally easy to heel the ball out of bounds or to hook it into
the rough before described. The third is blind but exciting--a drive
on to the top of a hog-backed ridge, followed by a little pitch over
the brow of the hill on to a green in a dell. Of the other outgoing
holes, the two best are perhaps those called respectively 'Spion Kop'
and 'Gibraltar,' and of these 'Gibraltar' is the best. Here there is
a really fine second shot to be played over a whole range of sandy
mountains, and if, perhaps with some mistaken idea of making the ball
rise quickly, we impart any cut to the ball, it sails away out of
bounds, and we are left with the sandy mountains still uncrossed.
'Gibraltar' is certainly the most memorable hole on the way out, and
'Sea View' strikes equal terror into the soul on the homeward journey.
Here the hole stands on a small plateau, and in front is a big bunker
in the face of the hill. With a wind behind we may hope to get home
with a high, hard hit with an iron, but on a still day it must need the
very best of brassey shots, and a shot, moreover, that shall soar high
in the air and then fall comparatively straight to earth. Beyond the
green is a waste of sand, and the hole lives up to its name, for there
is a view of a big stretch of sea. The sixteenth is a 'dog-legged'
hole that makes some demand upon our cunning, and we must hit long and
straight along the bottom of a gully for the last two holes, so that
the course ends as it began, very well.
Given straight hitting from the tee, we should return something better
than a respectable score, but the demand for straightness is great,
and, indeed, the constant avenues of rough remind one rather of the
best of modern inland courses. It is genuine seaside golf, however,
with good turf and plenty of sand, and the sea itself, although
we do not often see it. Neither do we see--and this is an unmixed
blessing--the teeming swarms of trippers that come to Skegness to be
braced.
CHAPTER VI.
THE COURSES OF CHESHIRE AND LANCASHIRE.
Of all the links in the north of England, =Hoylake= comes first on
account of its historic traditions, the eminence of its golfing sons,
and, as I think at least, its own intrinsic merits. At Hoylake the
golfing pilgrim is emphatically on classic ground. As he steps out
of the train that has brought him from Liverpool he will gaze with
awe-struck eyes upon surroundings in which the irreverent might see
nothing out of the ordinary.
"Perhaps it was here," he will muse, "that the youthful Johnny Ball
once toddled to school, his satchel on his back. The infant Hilton may
have been wheeled by his nurse upon these very paving stones. Nay,
Jack Graham may even now, perchance, be seen at this identical station
at which I have just got out of my train taking his train to go into
Liverpool every morning."
By the time that these remarkable thoughts have flashed like lightning
through his mind, the pilgrim will find himself wandering down a
straight, dusty, unattractive road, which is flanked by villas of a
comfortable though prosaic appearance, and wondering where on earth
this famous links can possibly be. Then he will discover that what he
thought was another and particularly gorgeous villa was really the
Royal Liverpool Club-house, and dashing upstairs, he will see out of
the smoking-room window the famous links of Hoylake spread out beneath
him.
On a first view they are not imposing. All that appears is a vast
expanse cut up into squares and strips by certain cops or banks, partly
walled in by roads and houses, with a range of sandhills in the far
distance. Yet this place of dull and rather mean appearance is one
of the most interesting and most difficult courses in the world, and
pre-eminently one which is regarded with affection by all who know it
well.
[Illustration: HOYLAKE (1)
_Looking out to Hilbre from the ninth tee_]
That the course is either interesting or difficult all will not agree,
but those who disagree most loudly with the statement will, I venture
to assert, usually be found to be the worst of players. "I call Hoylake
a rotten course: there are no bunkers to get over; the fellow I was
playing with topped all his tee-shots and never got into trouble."
Such is a verdict often heard after a first visit to Hoylake. The
critic should then further be asked his opinion of St. Andrews, and
it will generally be found that he classes St. Andrews and Hoylake
together as the two worst courses he has ever seen. He may forthwith
be treated with silent contempt, and his opinions may be ignored. He
has effectually written himself down an ass. What this person says
is absolutely true; there are very few bunkers in front of the
tee at Hoylake, and the man who tops his tee-shot does escape condign
punishment more often than he would on a golf course designed on
principles of perfect equity. Those short drives, however, though they
do not plunge the culprit waist high in sand, bring their own penalty
by making it practically impossible for him to reach the green in the
right number of shots. Some of the holes that we are supposed to reach
in two shots are desperately long, and with a top from the tee all
hope is straightway gone. At least if Hoylake does not demand that the
ball should always be hit into the air--a matter that is not after all
of very great importance among the reasonably competent--it does make
very exacting demands in the matter of length and straightness. How
fiendishly narrow is the third hole, with that fatal cop on the left
and rushes on the right. How we do have to press if we are to hit far
enough at those last five holes--'Field,' 'Lake,' 'Dun,' 'Royal,' and
the home hole; what splendid names they have, and what splendid finish
they provide for a match--surely the most exhausting finish to be found
on any links in the world.
Then, too, there is always a rich reward at Hoylake for the man who
can play his approaches really straight and with a firm, sure touch.
There are some courses where the greens are always helping us and the
ball is always running to the hole. We may play a most indifferent
iron shot on to the outskirts of the green, and behold! a kindly slope
has intervened on our behalf, and the ball finishes within comfortable
putting range. Hoylake is emphatically not one of those easy and
enervating places; there the greens are always fighting against the
player, and he must hold his shot straight on the pin from start to
finish. If he does not, the chances are that the ball will take a
vindictive leap, and his next shot will still come under the category
of approaching. There is none of your smug smoothness and trimness
about Hoylake; it is rather hard and bare and bumpy, and needs a man
to conquer it. The game, as I have said, is not made easy for us,
and this is true--a little too true, alas!--of the putting greens.
Sometimes they are good enough, though hardly ever easy; but very
often, unless I have been exceptionally unfortunate in my experience,
they are rather rough and lumpy, and make the holing of short putts a
very anxious business. Time was when the greens were the particular
pride of the course, and Mr. Hutchinson wrote in the Badminton Library
that "The links of Hoylake are associated, in the mind of every golfer
who has played upon them, with the most perfect putting greens in all
the world." Since that eulogy was written the building of houses and
the consequent drainage operations are said to have drained some subtle
and beautiful quality out of the greens, and they may now be said to
form the weakness rather than the strength of the course. Even now,
however, they are not so rough as they often look, and the man who has
a delicate and withal a fearless touch of his putter will still be
rewarded at Hoylake.
One more good quality of the holes at Hoylake deserves a word of
mention; it has been called by Mr. Low their 'indestructibleness.'
By this most useful, if inelegant, word, he means that they are good
whether played with or against the wind, and that is very high praise,
particularly as there are few courses on which a change of wind more
completely alters the character of each individual hole. Blessed indeed
is the hole which can keep its good character whichever way the wind is
blowing.
The first hole is so good and difficult that it seems almost a pity
that we are compelled to play it before we have got thoroughly into
our stride. Whatever the wind, it is our duty to begin with a long,
straight drive between the club-house railings on the left and a sandy
ditch and cop on the right. At about the distance of a good drive from
the tee the cop turns at a right angle to the right, and we must follow
the cop, skirting it as near as we dare. The wind cannot be either
with or against us for both our first and second shots, and we shall
have a fine opportunity of showing our skill in the use of it. If it
be blowing strongly against us on the tee we shall hardly get home in
two, and our second must needs be played over the corner of the cop
and the out-of-bounds region that lies within it. If it blow behind us
we shall be well clear of the cop with our drive, and may hope to be
home with a low, running second with an iron club, but it must be a
parlous straight one. Altogether there are few finer holes to be found
anywhere, and it would always find a place in my eclectic eighteen
holes.
Passing over the second--good hole though it be--we come to an
unpleasantly narrow one--the third or 'Long' hole. If the wind is
blowing freshly behind us we may aspire to reach the green in two very
long and very straight shots, but as a rule we shall require two
drives and a pitch. Along the left-hand side runs a sandy ditch beneath
a turf wall with absolutely precipitous sides, and woe betide the man
whose ball lies tucked up hard under the face of that wall; he will be
lucky if he can get it out backwards, forwards, or at all. I saw Mr.
John Ball extricate himself from this predicament by an extraordinary
stroke, or so it seemed to me. He stood on the top of the wall, far out
of reach of the ball, then leaped down into the ditch, hitting as he
jumped, and out came the ball most gallantly; it needs something more
than local knowledge to play such a shot as this.
The fourth is a short hole--the 'Cop' by name, so called from yet
another bank that guards it. Then follow two good two-shot holes, of
which the sixth, or 'Briars,' has the distinction of having been halved
in nine in the final of an amateur championship. The tee-shot must be
struck straight and true over the angle of hedge, while anything in
the nature of an attempt to sneak round by the right entails a prickly
death among the whins. Safely over the hedge, we have yet two sandy
trenches to carry, and the green is guarded by rushes and pot-bunkers,
so that if nine be an excessive total, four is a comparatively small
one. Next comes one of the finest short holes in the world, 'The
Dowie,' which is not only very good, but really unique. There is a
narrow triangular green, guarded on the right by some straggling rushes
and on the left by an out-of-bounds field and a cop; there is likewise
a pot-bunker in front. To hit quite straight at this hole is the feat
of a hero, for let the ball be ever so slightly pulled, and we
shall infallibly be left playing our second shot from the tee. Nearly
everybody slices at the Dowie out of pure fright, and is left with a
tricky little running up shot on to the green. The perfect shot starts
out of the right, just to show that it has no intention of going out of
bounds, and then swings round with a delicious hook, struggles through
the little rushy hollow, and so home on the green; it is a shot to
dream of, but alas! seldom to play.
[Illustration: HOYLAKE (2)
_The twelfth tee_]
A long and reasonably narrow eighth hole takes us to the confines of
West Kirby, and we turn our faces once more towards the club-house in
the far distance. Two perfect shots that turn neither to the right nor
to the left but keep down a narrow valley between two ranges of hills
may see us safely on the ninth green, and we have reached the turn
possibly, but by no means probably, in some 38 shots. The tenth is
another longish hole of no particular features, but the eleventh hole
consists of one big feature--the mighty Alps over which we must hit our
very best shot if we are to gain a three. In the Amateur Championship
of 1898 this hole was done in one in a rather singular way, the ball
going full pitch into the bottom of the hole and staying there. The
'Hilbre' we may hope to reach with a drive and a cunning run up, and
then we have a chance of another three at the 'Rushes.' Here we have
nothing to do but play quite a short pitch over a cross-bunker and a
little wilderness of rushes, but the hole is very close to the bunker,
and the green is hard and full of unkind kicks, and a three is not to
be despised. This is undoubtedly the last chance of a three we shall
have, for from now onwards to the finish it will not be surprising
if we have an uninterrupted run of fives. First comes the 'Field,'
where the hole is most cunningly guarded by a triangle of rushes. A
very respectable five is the 'Field,' and so is the 'Lake,' even if we
go as straight as a die for the hole through 'Johnny Ball's Gap.' So
again is the 'Dun,' where for two shots we have to keep clear of our
old enemies, the cop and the sandy ditch, before playing a deft little
pitch over a cross-bunker. At the 'Royal' we may hope for a four, since
we have a fine wide expanse for the tee-shot, and a really accurate
iron-shot should do the rest. There is plenty of room at the last hole
again, but we shall need two absolutely clean-hit shots if we are to
get home, and once more there is a cross-bunker in front of the green,
at just such a distance from the hole that even if we get out in one we
are likely to take three putts. And so at last we have finished those
last five strenuous holes, and may go to the particularly excellent
lunch provided by the Royal Liverpool Golf Club. They are not much to
look at, those last five, but they are horribly good golf, and if you
are only all square at the thirteenth with one of the Hoylake champions
your chances of ultimate success are exceedingly small. As I write
about Hoylake I can see it all with a misty and sentimental eye. There
are the white railings in front of the club; and Mr. Janion is standing
in the porch in benignant contemplation, and Mr. Ball is wandering anon
from the seventeenth green with his red-topped stockings, chipping
the ball along with his iron as he goes; and I, knowing that somebody
is going to beat me by seven up and six to play, yet long to be back
there again.
* * * * *
Next in fame to Hoylake comes =Formby=, and there are many to be
found who prefer it to the Cheshire course, though personally I do
not consider their judgment a sound one. Formby is at any rate a most
delightful course, and with that let us leave comparisons alone.
There is a particularly clear-cut distinction between the two parts
of the course, which is in that respect a little like Sandwich. There
is the country of the plains, on which the round begins and ends, and
there is the country of hills wherein are all the middle holes. There
is no doubt which are the prettier and more popular; the sand-hills
would come out easily first in a general poll, but I have an uneasy
sort of suspicion that the flat holes supply perhaps a better test of
golf. There are, for instance, few better seventeenth holes than that
which is to be found at Formby; just at the most crucial part of a
hard-fought match it is as long and narrow and nerve-wracking as can
be. Yet it is as flat as a pancake, and might from its appearance be
a great many miles away from the sea. Still it is impossible to get
over its intrinsic merits. There is the tee and there is the hole in
an exact straight line, distant about two full shots away, and there
is literally nothing in the way. That sounds terribly dull, but there
would be nothing in the way if we drove down a Roman road, and yet it
would be far from easy to keep on the course. To the right is a dreary
tract of out-of-bounds, which is, to the morbid imagination, white
with the countless balls that have been driven there. To the left is a
narrow little ditch, and beyond the ditch rough and tussocky grass. To
hit the tee-shot with reasonable accuracy ought not to be beyond our
powers, but the second shot is undeniably a beast. We are undecided
whether to aim out to the right and try for a hook or to the left for
a slice, since for some reason it is horribly difficult to play a
perfectly straightforward shot down a straightforward road of turf.
We shuffle with our feet, become thoroughly uncomfortable, and--the
precise form of disaster must be left to individual fancy.
The sixteenth, at which we traverse the same flattish country, is
no bad hole either; nor are the first two or three, where we drive
straight ahead, with plenty of cops and bunkers to keep us on the
straight and narrow path. In old days there used to be an attractive
tee-shot to the fourth hole over the corner of a group of trees,
which seemed to be for ever heeling over under the force of the wind
and mesmerically luring the slicer to his fate. That is changed now,
however, and we go straight on to the old fifth green, and make
our entry into the mountainous country rather earlier. Our first
introduction to the hills comes at the old seventh, where there is
a blind second shot into a big crater--a type of hole not now so
favourably looked upon as it was once. Then comes a hole which we shall
always remember, along an ominous gorge with frowning hills on either
side of us. There is something romantic and mysterious about it, and if
we retained the imagination of our childhood we should inevitably play
at being an invading army, with the enemy's sharp-shooters hidden
in crevices among the hills.
[Illustration: FORMBY
_The old seventh green_]
After this comes the new country which has lately been taken in,
and there are some fine two-shot holes--so fine that they will be
three-shot holes for some of us--and some that are less strikingly
excellent. We continue to dodge about among the great hills, roughly
speaking, until we reach the fifteenth hole, but before that we shall
have played another and particularly excellent hole along a narrow
gully--the thirteenth. The last four holes lie on flatter country,
although there is still every opportunity of getting into sand, and
we finish with a good two-shot hole on to a fine big green in front
of a fine big club-house. The greens are beautifully green; they are
likewise very true and keen enough, without ever being bare and hard.
The lies, too, are excellent, and it is altogether one of those courses
where the player's fate is entirely in his own hands. If he plays well
everything will conspire to help him on his way, but he has got to play
really well--good, sterling, honest golf: there is no mistake about
that at Formby.
* * * * *
=Wallasey=, where we come back to Cheshire again, is another course of
mighty hills: indeed I do not think I have ever seen a course on which
the contour of the hills and valleys was so infinitely picturesque.
At several of the holes we play, or try to play, in the trough of two
great waves of sand that tower on either side of us, and feel rather
overpowered by the vastness of our surroundings. There was a time when
Wallasey, though amusing enough, was too short and blind and tricky
to be taken very seriously, but all that is changed now, and, with the
addition of heaven knows how many hundreds of yards, the course is a
long and punishing one. It is still perhaps a little too blind for
those of very rigid and spartan views, but whatever the exact place
which may be assigned to it on the day of judgment--and this sort of
question will never be settled at any earlier date--it is undoubtedly
good golf.
[Illustration: WALLASEY
_The fifth green_]
Certainly the first hole is the blindest of the blind. Wallop the
first, and the ball vanishes over a hill; wallop the second--this time
with a mashie--and it flies over another on to the green. This is not
the best of beginnings, but the second has a much more interesting
tee-shot, where we try to hug a bank covered with a particularly
pestilent form of bush, and then at the third we are in the country
of hills and valleys. The view at the third, as we look down the long
winding gully that leads to the hole, is one of the most charming in
golf; and the fifth is another wonderfully picturesque hole, with a
terrifying second shot. After the seventh we leave the sandhills for
a while, and play backwards and forwards for a spell along some flat
holes that seem to radiate from one solitary house that stands alone
in the middle of the course. They are very good holes some of them,
and the ninth, eleventh, and thirteenth especially need long, straight
hitting, but the last four or five holes take us back to the more
characteristic country, and the finish comes in a blaze of glorious
sandhills. A rather blind, and to the stranger a puzzling, tee-shot
should land us safely on the table-land, and then far away and
rather below us to the right we see the promised land, the seventeenth
green, and with a good shot the ball will swoop away for an apparently
incredible distance, and finish by the hole side. The eighteenth, too,
is full of charm, and when we have successfully carried the spur of a
big hill and played our second over some more bold and broken ground,
we can hole out in a deep hollow, with the eyes of the whole club
watching us from above as they sit in front of the club-house. It is
quite likely that we have played very far from well, since this country
of mountains and deep dells is always difficult for the stranger, and
our host has probably ways and means of reaching the green that we are
apt to regard as ways of darkness, but we shall have found the golf
infinitely pleasant and exhilarating.
* * * * *
There are other Liverpool courses, Leasowe, Blundellsands, Hesketh,
Birkdale, and Southport, which are fully worthy of more extended
notice, but we must be getting away from Liverpool to the links where
the man from Manchester often plays his weekly golf--the course of the
Lytham and St. Anne's Club. =St Anne's= is not far from Blackpool,
where there is incidentally quite a good course, and after the day's
golf we can, if we have sufficient energy, go and dance in the largest
dancing hall in the world or climb the highest tower in the world, or,
in short, consult the advertisements of Blackpool. This, however, is
not business, and we have to play serious golf at St. Anne's, for the
opposition is very good and very keen, as the members of the Oxford
and Cambridge Golfing Society have discovered to their cost.
[Illustration: LYTHAM AND ST. ANNE'S
_The seventh tee_]
As compared with Hoylake, St. Anne's is very smooth and trim, and just
a little artificial. If the day is calm and we are hitting fairly
straight, the golf seems rather easy than otherwise; and yet we must
never allow ourselves to think so too pronouncedly, or we shall
straightway find it becoming unpleasantly difficult. If there is a
strong wind blowing we shall not even be tempted to think it easy, for
there is plenty of rough grass on either side, and the hitting of a
good straight tee-shot, which seemed so simple and made the holes seem
simple, will be a cause of considerable anxiety. Whatever the weather
and the wind, there is one thing that we ought always to do well at St.
Anne's, and that is putt, for the greens are as good and true as any in
the world, and can even challenge comparison with those in the Old Deer
Park. Given an opponent who is a really fine putter--Mr. Lassen or some
other inhuman fiend--and till he has played two more while our ball
lies stone dead we can never feel quite happy; the truly-struck putt
comes on and on over that wonderfully smooth turf and flops into the
hole with a sickening little thud, and there are we left gasping and
robbed of our prey. There is no kind of excuse for bad putting at St.
Anne's, and in fine weather there is indeed little excuse for any form
of error, for the lies are uniformly good and the stances uniformly
smooth, save perhaps at two holes, where the land lies in ridges and
furrows, and we may need a measure of skill to persuade the ball to
fly from the hanging sides of a ridge. The trouble, besides
rough grass and pot-bunkers, consists of sandhills, both natural and
artificial. To build an artificial sandhill is not a light task, and
it is characteristic of the whole-hearted enthusiasm of the golfers of
St. Anne's that they have raised several of these terrifying monuments
of industry. They are still in their infancy, and look just a little
new and raw, but they will destroy the golfer's card and temper just as
effectively as those that have stood from time immemorial. They are,
moreover, covered with bent grass, which will no doubt increase and
multiply to the greater glory of the hills and ruination of the golfer.
The course begins with a short hole of no particularly coruscating
virtues, but the second and third are both good, and the railway on the
right scares us into a hook: and the hook takes us into a bunker, and
the bunker loses us the hole. The fourth has a very pretty green, well
and naturally guarded by hummocks; and Nature has been very kind again
at the sixth, where there is a deep crater, to be comfortably reached
in two good shots. Indeed these natural craters are rather a feature of
the course, for there is something of the same kind to be found at the
seventh, and a very perfect example at the fourteenth. The worst that
is to be said against them is that they give some encouragement to a
second shot off the back-wall, but the attendant risks are very great,
and the back-wall shot that just misses the mark brings with it a peck
of troubles.
The ninth has a fine tee-shot and a long, difficult, and blind second
shot, in which the stranger always finds that he has aimed at the wrong
chimney pot in a row of houses at Ansdell. The tenth has a hut for
drinks and a tee-shot that fully justifies such an indulgence; while
at the eleventh we must go on driving and driving till we reach the
green, which, contrary to our expectations, we shall ultimately do.
The thirteenth is of an unattractive and inlandish appearance, but is
as good a hole as is to be found on the course, and needs the very
straightest of play to avoid a network of bunkers. Out of a puddle in
the bottom of one of these bunkers I once holed a pitch, and have never
played the hole so well either before or since. Then comes the crater
hole, the fourteenth before mentioned; and after that we may hope to
get home with a three and three fours, but the four at the seventeenth
is not a particularly easy one, and there is always a chance of too
strong an approach being bunkered in a flower bed beyond the home
green, to the great amusement of the spectators in the smoking-room
window.
There is nowhere in the golfing world where keener opponents and more
friendly hosts are to be found than in the counties of Lancashire and
Cheshire, and I cannot help saying that I, along with my brothers of
the Oxford and Cambridge Golfing Society, owe them a very deep debt of
gratitude.
[Illustration: TRAFFORD PARK
_The club-house from the eighteenth tee_]
Before finally quitting Lancashire, we must look at one inland course,
namely, =Trafford Park=, which may be accepted as the foremost among
the purely Manchester courses. I was interested and surprised to find,
in reading a little history of the Manchester Golf Club, that golf was
played in Manchester at a date so utterly prehistoric as 1818.
However, a few enthusiasts really did play upon Kersal Moor at that
remote period, and they called themselves the Manchester Golf Club.
They had no imitators till sixty-four years later, when Mr. Macalister
founded the Manchester St. Andrews Golf Club that played in Manley
Park. The birth of this second club happened almost simultaneously with
the death of the first. Kersal Moor, for all its solitary and savage
name, fell a prey to the builder, and in 1883 the original Manchester
Golf Club ceased to exist, and its name was assumed by the Manley Park
Club. Since then, it should be added, it has, happily, come to life
again under the title of the Old Manchester Golf Club.
Meanwhile, Manley Park came to share the fate of Kersal Moor, and a
move was made to Trafford Park, which has now been the home of the
Manchester Golf Club from 1893 to the present time. It has flourished
ever since, and has played a prominent part in the golfing life of
Manchester.
Trafford Park is a good course in spite of the most unpromising
surroundings. All round the fine old park, formerly the home of the de
Traffords, manufactories now raise their hideous heads, while along one
side runs the Manchester Ship Canal, and the man who desires an excuse
for a bad shot may allege that an ocean liner insisted on coming behind
him just as he was playing. These are certainly not recommendations,
but there are compensating advantages in good turf, good greens, good
length holes, and the old mansion-house, which has been converted into
one of the most comfortable and palatial of club-houses.
The turf is excellent. It is certainly not muddy, nor is it precisely
sandy. One who has played much golf at Trafford describes it as
'peaty,' and I will leave it at that. The hazards are of the usual
park description: trees, artificial bunkers, and at one hole a pond,
while the ground is pleasantly undulating for the first nine holes, and
rather too flat for the second.
We begin by driving downhill, which is always a comforting thing to
do, although we ought to have warmed to our work a little in order to
get full value out of a downhill drive. This takes us into the lower
ground, and after a moderate first we have a really good two-shot
hole for the second; well over four hundred yards long, and with a
thoroughly interesting second shot on to a raised green. The third,
which is a one-shot hole--there are four of these in all--takes us up a
hill again, and of the holes that follow the fourth and the seventh are
especially good, the former demanding a long, straight, iron shot on to
a particularly well bunkered green.
Coming home the course suffers a little, as I said, from being too
flat, and, so as with many of these park courses, it is rather hard to
pick out any one hole from among its fellows. Good sound golf will be
repaid, and so will the golf that is unsound and bad, but neither the
rewards nor the punishments are of a thrilling or heroic order. There
is one hole, however, that calls for special mention, the sixteenth,
where two really fine shots are needed to reach the green, and the
only thing to be said against the hole is that it would be better still
if it were number seventeen instead; not that the present seventeenth
is bad, but that the sixteenth is so eminently well adapted to occupy
that critical and important position. Gaudin has been round the course
in 65, but the intending visitor will be disappointed if he imagines
that he himself will necessarily do a particularly low score on that
account. In these days of expanded courses--against which one begins to
see some signs of a revolt--Trafford Park is not vastly long, but it
calls for good, honest golf for all that.
CHAPTER VII.
YORKSHIRE AND THE MIDLANDS.
With an open mind and a golfing friend I started in the month of March
on a short pilgrimage to the courses of Yorkshire and the Midlands.
Two rounds a day on a new course, to be followed by some hours of
travelling, constitute a strenuous life for the ordinary golfer,
although no doubt it is mere child's play to the great 'showmen' of
golf, as Mr. Croome has christened them. On my remarking on this point
to my companion that we now knew what it must feel like to be Braid or
Taylor, he replied that personally he did not feel in the very least
like them, and that he did not think my play was any justification for
my doing so either.
[Illustration: GANTON
_The carry at the eighteenth tee_]
In spite of this slight unpleasantness, we had a most agreeable
pilgrimage, which was begun by taking a train to Scarborough, in order
to play at Ganton. =Ganton= sprang into fame as being the home course
of Harry Vardon. It was there that he played the second half of his
great match with Willy Park, and having gained a small but serviceable
lead at North Berwick, played one of his most overpowering games
on his own course, and never gave his adversary even the faintest of
chances. Some of the glamour of Harry Vardon still hangs round Ganton,
although he has left it now for some years, and has a worthy successor
in Edward Ray, the hitter of mighty drives and smoker of many pipes.
The course has been a good deal altered since Vardon's days, for with
the advent of the Haskell, it suffered the common lot and became rather
too short. Now it has been stretched and rearranged and pretty severely
bunkered; most noteworthy of all, the hole of which the visitor to
Ganton formerly carried away the most vivid impression, has been
altered out of recognition. This is the present twelfth hole, where in
old days the tee-shot consisted of a mashie pitch, played mountains
high into the air in order to clear the tops of a row of tall trees.
Now the trees have been ruthlessly cut down, and we have a one-shot
hole, demanding not a mashie but a brassey shot, very good and very
orthodox. No doubt the old hole was a bad one, and the new one is good;
nevertheless there must have been some bitter regrets over the felling
of the trees. Unless we are utterly consumed with a fire of reforming
zeal, we can well afford to drop a tear over the disappearance of
these holes--once the pride and joy of their creators, now destroyed
or altered beyond recognition. The once-famous short holes are meeting
with the same fate all over the country. The 'Maiden,' long since shorn
of much of its glory, is undergoing yet another metamorphosis, and it
is even rumoured that some day it will be a blind hole no longer. The
'Sandy Parlour' has even been threatened, and indeed it may be laid
down that if the golfers of a dozen years ago praised a hole as being
'sporting,' that hole will be the first marked down for the reformer's
attack. It is all very splendid no doubt, but it is also just a little
bit sad.
So much for the twelfth hole of blessed memory; and now we must get
back to the course in general. To begin with, Ganton is a course of
sand and fir trees and gorse bushes. It is a little like Woking,
a little like Worplesdon; and, generally speaking, it is the type
of course that one would expect to find in Surrey rather than in
Yorkshire. Needless to say, however, it has plenty of character of its
own, and in particular it possesses by far the vastest and generally
most gorgeous bunker that is to be found, as far as I know, on any
inland course. It is a huge pit of sand, with just the depths and
shallows, the bays and promontories of the genuine seaside article. It
is so large that, by its unaided efforts, it provides highly effective
bunkering for the tee-shots to the two last holes; and as regards its
dimensions, I shall not be flattering it very grossly if I compare it
to the bunker in front of the fifth tee at Westward Ho! It is the more
striking because it lies on the other side of a road away from the main
body of the course; and after a series of trim little pot-bunkers, one
comes quite suddenly upon it, rugged, natural, and magnificent.
Nature has done nearly all the bunkering work for these last two holes;
at the others she has had to be assisted by man, and man has been very
busy cutting pot-bunkers, and mostly towards the sides of the fairway
and the edges of the green. The bunkering seems to me, if I may say
so, to be exceedingly well done, and for the most part one has to keep
reasonably straight--sometimes very straight indeed--from the tee. The
sixth, seventh, and eighth I remember particularly as all demanding
scrupulously accurate tee shots, and of these perhaps the eighth is the
most difficult, with serious bunkers on opposite sides of the course
at just the distance of a moderately good drive; it is not unlike the
tee-shot to the sixth at Woking, or the eighth at Walton Heath; and to
say that is not to call the shot an easy one.
There are whins in fair profusion, and they play an important part at
both the second and third holes. The approach to the second is a really
difficult one, for the green lies in an angle made by two lines of
whins, which are partially protected from the infuriated niblick player
by formidable bunkers, so that any perceptible error is likely to bring
with it a disaster either sandy or prickly. At the third, again--a
very full one-shot hole--the whins guard the entire left-hand side of
the course. It is, to be sure, possible to hit over them, but the feat
entails a carry of some two hundred yards, and even Ray admits that a
long shot is wanted to get clear to the left.
The criticism I feel disposed to make, very tentatively, of the first
nine holes at Ganton is that they are a little too much of the same
length. There is the third hole aforementioned, and there is the
fifth, demanding an extremely pretty little pitch from the tee; nor
must I forget the ninth, a really fine two-shot hole that winds its
way along the bottom of a little valley. At the other six one seems
to be playing the second shot with the same straight-faced iron club.
They are individually very good, but the least little bit in the
world monotonous, and there is a more attractive variety about the
home-coming nine.
Of these last nine nearly all are good; but the last three are, I
think, the most attractive, being all interesting and all different.
The sixteenth is a fine straight-hitting two-shot hole over undulating
country. The seventeenth brings us face to face with the big bunker,
and if the wind be favourable we may hope to reach the green with a
really good hit, but the green is curly, tricky, and difficult of
access. Finally, we have another drive over the big bunker for the
last, taking care to avoid being stymied by a clump of firs, and then
we may pitch comfortably home across the road with a four well in sight.
[Illustration: HUDDERSFIELD
_The club-house_]
We had two rounds of Ganton on the first day of our pilgrimage--a warm,
delightful, sunny day--and then took train to Huddersfield to play at
Fixby. =Fixby= is as different from Ganton as chalk is from cheese, or
as a watering-place is from a manufacturing town. Ganton is charmingly
pretty in a way that is comparatively ordinary to anyone who has seen
Surrey and Berkshire. Fixby has for the southerner's eye a kind of
grim and murky romance. For some two miles we have to wend our way up
a long slope through Huddersfield and its outskirts, looking rather
drab and ugly and intensely prosperous. Then suddenly the romance
begins. We climb up a steep hill through a pretty wood, albeit the
trees are black with the smoke of many chimneys, finally to emerge
rather breathless in a new land. Now we are perched on the top of a
hill, in wild, solitary, moorish country. A long way down below us are
Huddersfield and its mills, and all around is a great stretch of view,
rather bleak and sombre, but possessed of a very distinct beauty of
its own. We are not really on the moors, but we feel as if we were,
and all the colouring is moorland colouring. Everything is a subdued
grey or green, and even the stone walls, which abound on the course,
have a gloomy tint of their own--a kind of purplish black that I have
never seen anywhere else. It strikes us at once that this course could
only be in the north; there is nothing southern about it, and by this
strangeness and strong character it casts something of a spell over the
southern visitor. This is how I saw Fixby, with a grey leaden sky and a
mighty wind blowing the misty rain that is called 'moor-grime' strongly
in my face. In summer it must possess quite a different sort of beauty
when the great clumps of rhododendrons are all in bloom, as the artist
has depicted them, and the club-house in the centre of a blaze of
gorgeous colour.
To turn from the scenery to the golf, there is a very clearly-marked
distinction between the two rounds of nine holes, each of which
begins and ends near Fixby Hall, which is used as the club-house. The
first nine holes might be described as park golf; and yet this would
be perhaps to give a false impression, for the trees do not play an
important part, and the turf is harder and dryer than the normal park
turf. It is plain-sailing, straightforward golf, in which we can see
where we are going, and the trouble consists mainly of artificial
bunkers of the ordinary type.
The second half is much more _sui generis_. We emerge from the park
land into country which is more open and much more undulating. We have
to play a great many more blind shots--in fact, we have rather too
many of them; and there are one or two holes--exceedingly difficult
holes they are--which would be, I venture to think, much better if
only we could get a good view of the flag. Another feature of the
second half is the ubiquitous stone wall. Sometimes it is an ordinary
wall; sometimes it partakes of the nature of a sunk fence, and we only
realize its presence by seeing our ball suddenly plunge, like another
Curtius, into the bowels of the earth. I should not like to pledge
myself as to the exact number of walls, but we shall be lucky if we
do not make acquaintance with more than one of them upon a windy day;
and, in parenthesis, the wind can blow at Fixby with an energy worthy
of the strongest seaside gale. The two halves may fairly be summed up
by saying that the first half provides the sounder golf, and the second
the more exciting; and that both need a man to play them.
On the way out the holes that I personally think the more attractive
are the fourth--a nice single shot, 170 yards long, on to a plateau
green--and a group of three that come together, the sixth, seventh, and
eighth. Of these the eighth is a pretty enough little short hole with
a very well-guarded green, but the seventh is the best of the three
and also the most interesting, from the fact that it owes its merits
almost entirely to ingenuity in construction rather than to natural
advantages.
The green has certainly a good natural protection to the right in the
shape of a ditch, to which has been added a bunker on the left; but
still, if we were allowed to make a direct frontal attack upon the
hole, we should have no great difficulty to contend with. A frontal
attack, however, has been forbidden us by Mr. Herbert Fowler's
ingenuity. In the straight line between the tee and the green have been
erected a series of formidable fortifications, wherefore we must drive
out to the right and then approach the hole from the side. The further
we go to the right the more difficult the approach will be, but if we
can play with a judicious hook, and so 'pinch' the fortifications as
close as we dare, we shall obtain a reasonably open and easy approach.
This device of compelling people to play the hole as a 'dog legged'
hole has made all the difference between a good and an ordinary hole.
Of some of the longer holes on the way out I have said nothing, not
because they are not sufficiently testing in character, but because
they are for the most part straightforward holes that do not lend
themselves to distinctive description.
After the turn comes, as I have said, the region of blind shots
and stone walls. The twelfth is a curious hole, because of the
extraordinary difficulty of judging the direction of the second shot
over a high grassy mound. Even those who are steeped to the eyes in
local knowledge are never quite certain if their ball will be lying
close to the flag or thirty yards away, and race feverishly to the top
of the mound to see what has befallen them. The thirteenth, again,
has a puzzling, blind uphill approach, after a really good tee-shot
across a wall. There is a good long, punishing finish, all the last
three holes being over, and two of them well over, four hundred yards
in length. At the last there is a chance, if the breeze be favourable,
of a really fine second shot from the crest of a hill that shall send
the ball soaring away for an apparently immeasurable distance, avoiding
stone walls and trees, and ultimately reaching the green.
There is plenty of hard work to be done in reaching the greens at
Fixby, and still more when we have reached them, for they are fast and
curly to a degree, although very true when at their best, and there is
much allowance to be made for borrow and much gentle trickling of the
downhill putt. That Fixby is a difficult course is proved by the fact
that the redoubtable Sandy Herd has never accomplished the full round
of this his home course under 70. If 70 is Herd's best, anything under
80 is not to be despised by the ordinary mortal.
[Illustration: HOLLINWELL
_Looking across the second green_]
Continuing our journey of discovery in a southerly direction, we
next took the train to Nottingham, and thence some few miles out to
=Hollinwell=, passing on the way Bulwell Forest, formerly the home of
the Notts Golf Club, but now converted into a very popular municipal
course. Though Hollinwell is some miles out of Nottingham, the factory
chimneys are not so far away, but that the ball, which starts its
career on the first tee a snowy white soon passes through a series of
varying greys till it is coal black, unless its complexion is
renewed by the use of the sponge. The southern caddie's simple and
natural method of cleaning a ball is not here to be recommended.
Hollinwell is a wonderfully sandy course, and when there is a strong
wind one may see great clouds of sand blowing down the course after the
most approved seaside fashion. The course is rather curiously shaped,
since nearly all the holes lie in a long, wide valley. Sometimes we
play down the valley, and sometimes we play across it, tacking this
way and that, so that we are never hitting monotonously either with or
against the wind. Sometimes also we scale the side of the valley and
play along the top of the slope, and herein lies a certain weakness
of the course, for these upland holes are not quite worthy of the
rest. They are of the downland order, with blind shots, big perplexing
slopes, and greens cut out of the sides of hills. Luckily there are but
few of them, for they are but poor golf, whereas most of the holes in
the valley are very good indeed.
I never saw a course that began with fairer promise, for the first hole
looks and is delightful--a good long hole of well over 400 yards in
length. To the right stretches a line of bracken, while on the left is
a small clump of firs, just near enough to the line to induce a slice
into the ferns. This first hole is so good that the other holes have a
high standard to live up to, and in one important respect they perhaps
do not quite succeed. That wilderness of bracken to the right holds out
a promise which is not quite fulfilled, because that which Hollinwell
lacks is rough ground severe enough to punish the erratic driver. I
have no doubt that I was lucky, but I remember several of the most
perfect lies for a brassey which were meted out to me, when in common
justice I should have been plying my niblick. The rough's bark is much
worse than its bite, and one may often hit very crooked and not be one
penny the worse. More bunkers--many more bunkers--at the sides of the
course, and perhaps not quite so many in the middle would be no bad
prescription for Hollinwell.
If, however, the course has some faults, it also has many merits, and
the most attractive, because the most characteristic holes, are those
in which the peculiar character of the ground comes into play. Thus at
both the seventh and ninth we play across the breadth of the valley
into little gullies that run some way in between the spurs of the hill.
If we are perfectly straight, the gully receives us with open arms, but
to be at all seriously crooked is to be perched on a hillside among
thick grass and red sandstone. These are both holes of a fine length,
and though with hitting an arrow-like straightness we may hope for
fours, we need not make undue lamentations over fives. The eleventh,
again, is a charming hole, where the way to the hole follows the
contour of a subsidiary valley that wanders away from the main valley
on some little expedition of its own; nor, to retrace our steps, must
the second be left out, with its pretty background of trees and water.
After the eleventh the golf degenerates for a while, when we leave
the lowlands for the highlands; but, just as we are feeling a little
sad, comes a marked improvement at the fifteenth, and we end with two
really good holes, one short and one long. To justify its existence
as a seventeenth hole, a short hole must needs be a very good short
hole, and this is an excellent one, save that the inordinately long
approach with the wooden putter should be prevented by a bunker on the
left. The eighteenth, except that it is a good deal longer, is almost
the converse of the first, and the clump of firs that made us slice at
the first tee will certainly trap us if we pull our second shot. This
last hole lives in my memory from the fact that it gave to my companion
a temporarily undeserved reputation among the golfers of Nottingham.
Having played a round of almost unbroken sixes, he placed the ball
close to the hole with a long iron shot for his third, and holed the
putt before an awestruck assembly in the club-house window with an air
and manner suggesting that four was the highest rather than the lowest
score that he had accomplished during the round. What is more, he only
just failed to do the same thing in the afternoon, although the hole is
555 yards long. Such is the inveterate habit that some people have of
playing to the gallery.
From Nottingham our way lay to Birmingham, where we were to play at
=Sandwell Park=. A train journey to a melancholy and mysterious place
called Spon Lane, followed by "a penny to the left and a penny to the
right" (as we were advised) in a tramcar brought us to West Bromwich.
West Bromwich is a name calculated to thrill the football devotee with
glorious memories of West Bromwich Albion, but it is not in itself a
particularly attractive spot. Yet Sandwell Park must once have been a
beautiful place before the houses began to crowd round its gates and
the colliery chimneys to pour black volumes of smoke across it. It is
a fine park still, if one can only blind oneself to the houses and the
chimneys; but that, save in one or two secluded corners, is a difficult
task--Birmingham is too all-pervading to permit of many illusions.
We did not see Sandwell under very favourable conditions as regards
weather. There was every now and again a flurry of snow, and a most
piercingly cold wind blew across the course, rendering useless any
number of waistcoats and mittens, and robbing the fingers of all power
of gripping the club. It is very difficult under such circumstances to
judge of the length of any particular hole, for the wind laughs at yard
measures, and reduces a good length hole to a drive and a pitch, and
converts a drive and a pitch into a three-shot hole.
Perhaps it was the effect of first going out to face the icy blast,
but I thought the first few holes at Sandwell rather poor, being of
a hybrid length and not particularly exciting. The golf improves
wonderfully, however, as it goes on, and from the seventh onward is
infinitely more interesting. The eighth needs a very straight drive,
followed by a very delicate second shot--a tricky shot in whatever
way we start to play it. If we pitch up the hill, we must pitch just
up and no further; while if we run the shot, the hill is just steep
enough to induce a lively fear that the ball will refuse to climb it.
Moreover, when I played it, the hole was cut with fiendish cunning very
close to the top of the hill, so that the very nicest judgment was
necessary in order to avoid a long, sloping and curly putt. The ninth
consists of an absolutely blind pitch with a small crater, reminding
one of a very old but not very highly esteemed friend, the 'Crater'
hole at Aberdovey. Then comes a hole that is really good, and it seemed
to me the best on the course--two honest shots along a narrow neck of
turf, which tapers perceptibly as it nears the green.
[Illustration: SANDWELL PARK
_Mr. Woolley driving from the 'Pulpit' tee_]
By this time we have reached the highest point of the links, and now
descend into the lowlands again, driving from the 'Pulpit' tee to a
green which lies in front of the big, white, gloomy house, whence the
owner has long since retired, smoked out by the colliery chimneys. A
good two-shot hole follows, and next comes one of the most amusing of
short holes, which, whether intrinsically good or bad, deserves to
escape the zeal of the iconoclast because of its singular character.
One hundred and thirty are all the yards it can boast, but between tee
and green a terrible monster rears its head in the form of some ancient
rifle butts. They tower so high above and so close to us that even with
a mashie and a teed ball we are all too likely to err. Moreover, it is
not merely a matter of getting over at any price. The hole is quite
close to the butts on the far side, and only the ball that shall just
drop over and no more should satisfy us. Circumstances alter cases,
of course, and with his opponent having the honour and failing to get
over, a man may well play his shot with a brassey if he have a mind to
it. Then, indeed, it is a case of over at any price, for the ground
short of the butts is terribly rough, and a brilliant recovery is not
in the least probable. It is the hole that must have been the grave of
many hopes, perhaps even of some foursome friendships; and yet, if we
were out practising with half a dozen old balls and no one to look at
us, we could do as many twos and threes as ever we wanted.
There are some other good holes to follow, but they appear
comparatively orthodox and ordinary after that quaint little
thirteenth. One of the best things about the course is the turf,
which is very springy and pleasant to walk upon. This old park turf
very often proves sadly disappointing when it comes to making putting
greens out of it, but the Sandwell greens are excellent, and in more
propitious weather must be delightful to putt upon.
[Illustration: HANDSWORTH
_The first tee_]
Not far from Sandwell Park is another very well-known Birmingham
course, =Handsworth=. This is the home green of that keenest and most
persevering of golfers, Mr. C. A. Palmer; he has tried as hard over his
own course as he did over his own game, and the system of bunkers, for
which he has chiefly been responsible, is marked by a great deal of
skill and ingenuity. The course is undoubtedly a good sound test of
golf, and there is one type of golfer who will be tested out of his
seven senses, and that is the victim of a chronic slice. All along the
right-hand side of the course there runs an out-of-bounds area, so that
the poor slicer is for ever dropping another ball over his shoulder.
Another hazard that plays an important part, especially in those holes
that come in the middle of the round, is a stream. Full and
ingenious use has been made of this stream, and there is a good deal of
rather cunning pitching to be done in order to circumvent it; anything
in the nature of a running shot is, naturally enough, at a discount.
The course begins quite excellently, and the first two holes are two of
the best on the way out. At the first there is a big pool on the right
and a generous supply of bunkers on the left, so that the very first
tee-shot of the day has to be hit quite unpleasantly straight. If it
is so hit, an iron shot of moderate length should see us safely on the
green with the orthodox two putts for a four; if it is not, it would
be rash to dogmatize as to what our precise score may be. The second
hole, again, has one of those interesting carries from the tee that the
player can make just as short or as long as he likes, according as his
tactics are those of Fabius or some more dashing hero. The green lies
on a hill-top some 380 yards away from the tee, and a bold tee-shot,
followed by a really well-struck second, may make a four hole of it,
but it is a good four.
The sixth is another good hole, although there is rather an aggravating
cart track at just such a distance from the tee as to be likely to trap
a respectable shot. The green, moreover, is very well guarded by a
brook on the left and some pot-bunkers on the right. At the eighth we
come to the first of the regular short holes, of which there are three
in all, though there are two more which may on occasion be reached with
a particularly shrewd blow, and it may be said in parenthesis that it
is something of a weakness in the course that none of the three can be
called passionately interesting.
It is to be hoped that we get a three at this eighth, for we shall need
a little cheering before facing the prospect of real, honest hitting
at the next three holes. The ninth is well over four hundred yards
long, and we begin the homeward round with a five-hundred-yarder, or
something very little short of it. It is not a very thrilling hole,
however, and the fourteenth and seventeenth, both good two-shot holes,
are certainly more interesting, and perhaps the best in the homeward
nine.
The whole course is in good order, and the greens thoroughly well kept,
although they are perhaps rather lacking in variety and err on the side
of flatness. The soil is good and light, and that is no small thing to
be thankful for in the very centre of England, when the nearest seaside
golf is as far off as the coast of Wales.
CHAPTER VIII.
OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE.
The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge are rich in many things, but
are very decidedly poor in the matter of golf courses. I should be more
precise if I said poor in their own courses, for in Frilford Heath and
Worlington (or as it is often called, Mildenhall) they are lucky to
possess hospitable neighbours, who provide them with very delightful
golf indeed.
The courses of Cambridge I know very well indeed, having played over
them at intervals during the greater part of my life. With those of
Oxford I have only, comparatively speaking, a bowing acquaintance,
founded on the annual match between the University and the Oxford and
Cambridge Golfing Society. Before turning to Frilford there is a word
to be said of Cowley, Radley, and Hinksey, the latter of which has now
ceased to exist. Cowley, so I have heard my friend Mr. Croome declare,
is now rather a good course, and as I have never seen it, I most
certainly will not venture to contradict him; but I can take my oath
as to both Hinksey and Radley that they call for some other epithet.
=Hinksey= was certainly amusing, and I have spent some not wholly
unpleasant afternoons there squelching through the mud and trying
vainly to hole putts by cannoning off alternate wormcasts. There was a
short hole--the fourth, I think--where one played a pitching shot into
the heart of a wood which was distinctly entertaining, but on the whole
it was not a good test of golf, or, if it was, then I would rather have
my golf tested in some other way.
When Hinksey ceased to exist =Radley= came into being, and it is most
decidedly a longer and more difficult course, but I am not certain
that it is such good fun. It is a good deal longer; indeed a great
many of the holes are of a very good length. There is a really good
seventeenth, where one skirts a wood on the right, and granted a good
lie--a thing which rests upon the knees of the gods--one may hit two
really fine shots and get a fine four. I imagine, however, that no one
will be prepared to deny that it is muddy--I will go so far as to say
extremely muddy--and in these days we are so pampered with beautiful
sandy inland courses that we no longer suffer mud at all gladly. So if
we are at Oxford I think we had better throw economy to the winds and
charter a 'taxi,' which shall take us up Cumnor Hill to Frilford Heath.
[Illustration: FRILFORD HEATH
_Approaching the ninth green_]
=Frilford= is only seven miles from Oxford, but it might be a hundred
miles from anywhere. It lies on a little unfrequented by-road, and is
as utterly rural and peaceful a spot as could be found anywhere. Here
is sand enough and to spare--a wonderful oasis in the desert of mud.
The sand is so near the turf that out of pure exuberance it breaks
out here and there in little eruptions on the surface or flies up in a
miniature sand-storm as the ball alights. The ground is for the most
part very flat, and there are fir trees and whins scattered here and
there. There is also a pretty wood of firs and birches, over which we
have to drive at the third hole, of which more anon. The greens are a
little rough as yet, and some of the bunkers have still to be made, or
at least had not been made when I last played there; but time alone
is wanted to make Frilford a very fine course indeed. It is already a
wonderfully charming one.
The first two holes remind one a little of Muirfield, since there is a
stone wall over which a pulled ball will inevitably vanish. The second
is a fine long two-shot hole, and at the first, which is somewhat
shorter, a highly ingenious use has been made of a solitary tree, which
forces the player to drive close to the stone wall if he is to have
an open approach. Then comes the third before mentioned, which is a
one-shot hole. The wood rises pretty steeply in front of the tee, and
the shot is made the more difficult because a cleek is hardly long
enough, and so we have to take a wooden club. Many a shot that would
under ordinary circumstances fill us with a mild degree of conceit will
only send the ball crashing into the forest. It is no hole for the 'low
raker' which we regard with complacency at Hoylake and St. Andrews. We
must hit a fine high towering shot, and then we may hope to find our
ball on the green--a pretty little green which nestles close under the
lee of the wood on the far side. After this come some long open holes
in a country of scattered whin bushes. Exactly how long they are I am
not prepared to say. I played them in the company of Mr. A. J. Evans,
and he appeared to regard them justifiably enough as two-shot holes,
but personally I found myself taking by no means the most lofted of my
iron clubs for my third shot. There is a pretty little pitching hole
over a stone wall--the seventh--which has a flavour of Harlech about
it; and the ninth, which brings us close to the club-house again,
is surely one of the most alarming holes in existence. The drive is
simple enough, but my goodness, what a second! In front of the green
is a mountain, and on either side of the green are deep pits, towards
which the ground 'draws' most unmistakably. Then the green itself is
quite small, and has in its centre a copy of the aforesaid mountain in
miniature. The approach shot, moreover, is by no means a short one, but
is for the ordinary driver a good firm iron shot, so that a four is
really an epoch-making score for the hole.
After the turn it seems to me that the golf shows a distinct falling
off. The holes are still long enough and difficult enough, and Mr.
Evans still seemed to require one stroke less to reach the green than
I did, but for the most part they lack the indefinable charm of the
first nine. There is, however, certainly one exception to this general
criticism, and that is the really fascinating seventeenth, which is
emphatically the right hole in the right place. There is a wood and a
stone wall to carry, and the angle at which we play is such that there
is a very real reward for the long ball which is judiciously hooked.
A good as opposed to an ordinary drive may make all the difference
between a four and a five, for the green is full of undulations, and
the nearer we are to it when we take our iron in hand the better.
Taking it altogether the golf is both good and difficult, and besides
that Frilford is essentially one of those places where it is good
to be alive with a golf club in one's hand--even if one uses it
indifferently--and whither one looks forward to returning with a very
keen enjoyment.
The undergraduates of Cambridge, when they have not the time to go to
Worlington, now play golf at Coton, a pleasant little village enough
that lies off the Madingley Road. I must spare a word or two, however,
for the old course at =Coldham Common=, because I am quite sure that it
was the worst course I have ever seen, and many others would probably
award it a like distinction. The way to Coldham was suggestive of the
pleasures that awaited one there, for it led down that most depressing
of Cambridge streets, the Newmarket Road, and through the most
unattractive slums of Barnwell. After voyaging for some distance along
the Newmarket Road, one turned down a particularly black and odorous
lane, crossed a railway bridge, and reached a flat, muddy expanse of
grass, of which the only features were a railway line and some rifle
butts. I should also perhaps include among its features a particularly
pungent smell, which we always believed--I know not with how much
truth--to proceed from the boiling down of deceased horses into glue.
On arriving outside the precincts of the club-house one was at once
surrounded and nearly swept from one's legs by a yelling mob of
caddies of most villainous appearance, who were supposed, quite
erroneously, to be under the control of a well-meaning but deservedly
superannuated policeman. Anyone who played there regularly soon found
himself made over, body and soul, to one of these ruffians, and then
exchanged the solicitations of the general mob for the unceasing
importunities of his own particular henchman in the matter of cast-off
clothing.
In addition to the regular corps of caddies there was an irregular
body of younger depredators who had no official position, and earned
a precarious livelihood by stealing or retrieving balls. They enjoyed
considerable opportunities, because there were on the Common a good
many muddy ditches--the only natural hazards--and along the edges of
these ditches the youth of Barnwell took up strategic positions at
stated intervals. Sometimes considerations of policy dictated that
they should retrieve the errant ball, and return it to its owner for a
penny. Sometimes they would dexterously stamp the ball into the mud,
pretend to hunt for it with a great show of energy, and pocket it at
their leisure when the owner had abandoned the search. This was an easy
matter enough, for the mud was of the softest and thickest, and the
ball would frequently bury itself on alighting without any help from
the human foot. How our visitors from Blackheath and Yarmouth could
bear it I now find a difficulty in understanding, and it says much for
their enthusiasm and friendliness that they came to play against us
year after year. They put up with it manfully, and very jolly matches
we used to have. Indeed, to quote J. K. S., "the smile on my face is
a mask for tears," and I could almost wish to strike another ball
at Coldham. I must admit to having enjoyed myself very much there,
almost as much as on another course of woeful greens and superlative
muddiness--the old Athens course at Eton.
Coton I do not know well, but though an enthusiastic captain of
Cambridge once told me that the greens were as good as the best seaside
ones, I am disposed to think he was romancing. There is another
flourishing course on the Gog-Magog hills, where there is at least a
charming view, and twelve or thirteen miles away is Royston. Here there
is a truly splendid view over miles and miles of the flat country, for
the course lies on a piece of breezy downland perched high above its
surroundings. A very jolly place it is whereon to play golf, though
the golf perhaps is not of the highest class. It is a course of steep
hills and deep gullies, and there is much climbing to be done and much
putting on perplexing slopes. Some of these gullies form wonderful
natural amphitheatres, and I always like to think that in one of them
was fought the battle for the championship of England between Peter
Crawley, the 'Young Rump Steak,' and Jem Ward, 'the Black Diamond.'
That the fight took place on Royston Heath we know from _Boxiana_, but
the exact battlefield has become obscured by the mists of time.
Better than all these courses, however, is =Worlington=, the home
of the Royal Worlington and Newmarket Golf Club, who kindly allow
the University to use their course and play their matches there. To
get from Cambridge to Worlington is rather a serious undertaking,
for although the station, Mildenhall, is but a little over twenty
miles away, the progress made by the infrequent trains is of the most
leisurely. Still, we do get there in time, passing poor deserted
Coldham Common on the way, and the golf is good enough to repay us for
all our trouble. Worlington is not unlike Frilford in appearance, being
extremely solitary, flat, and sandy, and dotted here and there with
fir trees. There are only nine holes, but of these several are really
excellent, and none can fairly be said to be dull. One curious feature
of the course is that one may play a round there which shall be made up
almost entirely of fives and threes. This was conspicuously the case
in the days of the gutty ball, for there were four holes that could be
reached from the tee, although the second hole certainly required a
very long shot, and five which were beyond the range of two full shots,
save for colossal drivers. Whoever laid out the course clearly had no
great opinion of Mr. Hutchinson's doctrine as to the length of a hole
being some multiple of a full drive, and had no objection to two drives
and a pitch. Nowadays with the rubber ball some of the old-time fives
have become fours, but they are difficult fours requiring in one or two
cases fine long-carrying second shots, and fives are still likely to
preponderate.
[Illustration: MILDENHALL
_The result of a bad slice at the sixth_]
Of all the courses that I know well, none shows so well as Worlington
the difference between the solid and the elastic ball, and a particular
instance, which is historic in a very small way, may be given.
The third hole is an extraordinarily good one, wherein the green
lies just beyond a marshy ditch and is also well protected by
pot-bunkers. After the tee-shot, one has to carry ditch, bunkers and
all, but a weak drive necessitates playing short, and the shot is an
extremely difficult one, because the ball has to be placed on a narrow
neck of grass which slopes down on either side to a ditch and other
horrors. Just before I went up to Cambridge there had been a great
foursome between Douglas Rolland, Willy Park, Hugh Kirkaldy, and Jack
White, who was then the professional at Worlington; and a certain
shot of Rolland's was spoken of with bated breath as being something
altogether superhuman. With a fair breeze against him, he had actually
reached the third green with his second shot. The hole is still the
same length: the tee is back as far as it will possibly go, and yet one
can as a rule get home with an iron club of no inordinate power, while
it takes a very strong wind indeed to make it necessary to play short.
This third is a wonderfully good hole still, but it was more heroic in
the old days.
A hole that does to-day require two heroic shots is the sixth; indeed
the green can only be reached in two with a favouring wind. Along
the whole length of the hole, on the right-hand side, runs a belt
of fir trees, while in front of the green is a ditch. If one clings
very closely to the firs with the tee-shot, and then plays a big,
high-carrying brassey shot, one may hope to see the ball just clear the
last fir tree and drop down close to the hole. Another hole that nobody
is ever likely to forget is the fifth. One may reach the green with a
pitch from the tee, but what a difficult pitch it is. The green is
something in the shape of a hog's back; immediately on the left of it
is a stagnant pool of water, and on the right is a stream, complicated
by overhanging willows. To reach the green is one distinct feat; to
hole out in two putts, when one has got there, is another. For the most
part the whole course is delightfully dry and sandy, in spite of the
presence of many ditches, and the greens, when they are good, are very
good, though they have sometimes a tendency towards getting a little
bare and tricky.
It is no small thing for the Cambridge teams to have this admirable
practising ground, and this alone should make for an improvement in
Cambridge golf. University golf, however, has naturally improved a good
deal in the last few years. Twelve years ago a freshman who should
come up to either University and show himself to be already a good or
even a goodish golfer was something of a phenomena. Nowadays thousands
of school boys play golf, and consequently there is nearly always a
supply of freshmen who can play a good game when they first come up.
In the last century--to use a formidable expression--there was usually
a considerable gap between the first two or three men and the last. In
the very earliest days Oxford had two very fine players in Mr. Horace
Hutchinson and Mr. Alexander Stuart, while Cambridge had Mr. Welsh,
now a tutor at Jesus, and the possessor of a monumental reputation at
Machrihanish. The other members of the side were generally of a very
different calibre, and some of them would be badly off nowadays with
any handicap under eighteen. Later on in the early nineties Cambridge
had some fine sides, with Mr. Low, Mr. Colt, Mr. Eric Hambro, and
other good players, and to this day probably the best University side
that ever played was the much quoted Oxford side of 1900, of which Mr.
Mansfield Hunter was the captain.
On the whole, however, the general standard of play is higher to-day,
and personally I was enormously struck with the golf in the match at
Hoylake in 1910. For one thing, the driving was wonderfully steady and
good, and some of it very long, and all the play was well worth the
watching, which is more than could have been said for some of it not so
very, very long ago.
CHAPTER IX.
A LONDON COURSE.
BY A LONG HANDICAP MAN.
I should like at the outset briefly to explain who I am and why I
am writing this chapter. I am known to every golfer--I play fairly
regularly, generally on a Saturday afternoon, sometimes in the evening
during the summer; I am genuinely keen on the game, and can honestly
say that I devote a good deal of thought and attention to it; I enter
for all the competitions at my club, but my name rarely appears on the
list of those who have returned scores--my card is generally torn up
about the fourteenth hole, frequently earlier. I believe that I come
in for a good deal of abuse at the hands of the very low handicap man.
"These chaps ought not to be allowed on the course," or "There should
be a special time for starting these long handicap men," or again, "My
good sir, I've seen the man in front of me play his third, and he's not
yet reached the bunker yet!" These and similar remarks are samples of
what one has to bear.
One might perhaps gently remind the impatient expert that, after all,
we long handicap men do serve some useful purpose; they, too, were
once even as we are now, and, moreover, without us the spoils of the
fortnightly 'sweep' would be distinctly lessened; now and again, also,
one of us suddenly 'comes on his game,' and, if it be in a knock-out
competition, spreads havoc and devastation among the players with
handicaps of under six.
I am sometimes inclined to think that the long handicap player gets
quite as much, if not more, enjoyment from his golf than does the man
who receives only a small number of strokes from scratch. We are not so
much depressed when we miss our drive, because it happens to us so much
more frequently, and the joy we experience when we execute a perfect
shot (and this _does_ sometimes happen) is all the keener because of
its comparative rarity. Furthermore, our anguish, when we are 'right
off our game,' can be nothing in comparison with that of the skilled
golfer who is in a similar condition (and I understand that this
happens to even the greatest--have we not heard of Vardon failing at
two-foot putts and Massy missing the ball altogether?)
I have been privileged to read Mr. Darwin's account of the famous
courses of the British Isles, and it has been suggested that the
thought might occur to long handicap players like myself that, reading
of these fours and threes which figure so frequently, one may be
tempted to despair and say, "This is all very fine for the plus man,
but what sort of a game could I play on such a course? _My_ low,
raking shot will not land me home on to the green; it will, I know,
inevitably take me into a bunker--in how many strokes may I reasonably
expect to accomplish the hole?"
I propose, therefore, under the kindly veil of anonymity, to describe
the course on which I habitually play, from my point of view; the
scratch man may skip this chapter or glance at it with amused scorn;
it may possibly be of interest to my long-handicap fellows, who will,
at any rate, sympathize with my appreciation of dangers and terrors
unsuspected by the more expert player.
The course is, like so many links in the neighbourhood of London,
essentially a summer course; in the winter it is little better than
a mud heap; we have a local rule which allows us (from October to
March) to lift and drop without penalty if the ball is buried--and
in the ordinary friendly match the wiser players agree to tee their
balls through the green rather than laboriously hack them out of the
villainous lies, where they are almost inevitably to be found during
the winter months.
But in summer it can hold its own with most inland courses; the
situation is delightful, the views extensive, and one can scarcely
believe that one is not far from the four-mile radius.
The course is crowded on a fine Saturday afternoon, and it is necessary
to put down a ball and give our names to a starter. We note that the
man who put down a ball just after us whispers to his opponent: we also
know quite well what he is saying, though we cannot hear him. "It will
be all right, they are sure to lose a ball at the first two or three
holes,"--to which the other replies under his breath, "No such luck,
they don't hit far enough to lose a ball!"
Our first drive is of the type described by Mr. Darwin as
'exhilarating'--that is, we stand on a height and drive down a hill.
The plus men take their cleeks (when the wind is behind them), and wait
until the party in front is off the green; we do not take a cleek, but
we wait, from pride of heart rather than fear of manslaughter, until
the starter says, "All right now, sir!"
After our stroke we say, "It's brutal driving off before a gallery!"
After his, he replies, "Yes, it always puts me off."
There are several other holes of an 'exhilarating' character--the
eighth, fourteenth and fifteenth--at the first-named there is splendid
opportunity of driving out of bounds; at the fourteenth we should
strongly advise the player to avoid the wire-netting about twenty yards
in front of the tee to the left; the stance for the second shot leaves
a good deal to be desired. A really fine slice at the fifteenth will
take us comfortably on to the green--but it is the fourteenth green,
and, choose we never so wisely the spot on which to drop our ball,
there still remains a hedge to negotiate: it is not an easy green to
approach--if you elect to play short of the green and run on, your
ball stops dead; while if you play a nice, firm shot on to the green,
it invariably abandons all idea of being a pitch at all, and suddenly
converts itself into a magnificent running approach and careers gaily
right across the green towards the ninth flag.
The third is our short hole; a good, honest thump with a mashie lands
us in the hedge on the left of the green, whence recovery is somewhat
difficult, while the ordinary foozle meets with an even worse fate in
a hedge just in front; in the ditch beyond the first hedge is a large
heap of cut grass. There is ample opportunity here for skilful niblick
work, which compels the admiration of the two or three couples behind
us, who have meanwhile collected on the tee.
The ninth is a shortish hole, for which one is popularly supposed to
take an iron club. As this course of action always results in our
having to play a long second out of the rough, we usually take a wooden
club and slice into the tennis courts or the field beyond. With our
third we may reach a cross-bunker, and a well-executed niblick shot
takes us into a ditch on the other side. We wend our way once more
behind the bunker (fortunately, we cannot hear the remarks of the
couple behind us), and with a skimming, half-topped mashie shot reach
the edge of the green. Three firm putts should see us down, winning the
hole from our adversary, who misses a 'very short one.'
The sixteenth is the long hole; it has, I believe, been done in four;
it has also been done in fourteen--I can vouch for the latter figure.
There is nothing very terrible about the drive: one may certainly go
unpleasantly near a tree and a hedge, but only a very long driver,
slicing his best, can hope to reach them; it is true, a bad pull
lands us in a ditch which runs parallel to the fairway, but the usual
topped ball merely comes to rest in very moderately rough grass. Our
second shot needs some 'placing,' for the path which runs through
the bunker is perilously narrow--we shall probably do better to play
short deliberately (in which case I always find that I can hit so much
farther than I had supposed); little by little, we make our way up the
slope to the ditch in front of the fourteenth tee, and from there you
may take any number of strokes to the green, according as you avoid the
very long grass.
Perhaps the best hole on the course is the thirteenth. A sliced drive
disturbs the equanimity of players coming to the seventeenth green,
but a long second takes us out of danger of sudden death, and lands
us comfortably in a cross-bunker. If, in addition to our crime of
topping, we have added that of slicing, we have brought ourselves well
up against some very awkward trees, and, in extricating ourselves from
these, anything may happen. If we escape double figures here, we may
consider that we are at the top of our form.
It is of no use to hope that your drive will jump the bunker at the
fifth: I have tried the long, low, raking shot here many times, but the
bunker is too high and too far away to be run through successfully;
it is much better to slice unblushingly into comparative safety. Our
second shot needs to be spared--my 'spared' shots usually travel about
ten yards--but a 'low, scuffling' shot runs obligingly down the slope,
and may (or may not) stop on the green. Another way, as Mrs. Glasse
says, is to play violently to the left, strike the bank and run down
towards the hole--it is necessary, however, to carry out the second
part of the programme, or we may be in serious trouble in the rough.
At the end of our round we return to the club-house, flushed with
healthy exercise, with a full and particular knowledge of the bunkers
of the course, but with the proud consciousness that we have not been
passed, and that we have faithfully replaced every divot.
CHAPTER X.
ST. ANDREWS, FIFE AND FORFARSHIRE.
Really to know the links of St. Andrews can never be given to the
casual visitor. It is not perhaps necessary to be one of those old
gentlemen who tell us at all too frequent intervals that golf was golf
in their young days, that we of to-day are solely occupied in the
pursuit of pots and pans, and that Sir Robert Hay, with his tall hat
and his graduated series of spoons, would have beaten us, one and all,
into the middle of the ensuing week. Such a degree of senile decay is
fortunately not essential, but one ought to have known and loved and
played over the links for a long while; and I can lay no claims to such
knowledge as that. I can speak only as an occasional pilgrim, whose
pilgrimages, though always reverent, have been far too few. I do not
know by instinct whether or not my ball is trapped in 'Sutherland'; I
only just know the difference between 'Strath' and the 'Shelly' bunker;
I could not keep up my end in an argument as to the proper line to take
at the second hole--I am, in short, a very ignorant person, who means
thoroughly well.
There are those who do not like the golf at =St. Andrews=, and they
will no doubt deny any charm to the links themselves, but there must
surely be none who will deny a charm to the place as a whole. It may
be immoral, but it is delightful to see a whole town given up to golf;
to see the butcher and the baker and the candlestick maker shouldering
his clubs as soon as his day's work is done and making a dash for the
links. There he and his fellows will very possibly get in our way,
or we shall get in theirs; we shall often curse the crowd, and wish
whole-heartedly that golf was less popular in St. Andrews. Nevertheless
it is that utter self-abandonment to golf that gives the place its
attractiveness. What a pleasant spectacle is that home green, fenced in
on two sides by a railing, upon which lean various critical observers;
and there is the club-house on one side, and the club-maker's shop
and the hotels on the other, all full of people who are looking at
the putting, and all talking of putts that they themselves holed or
missed on that or on some other green. I once met, staying in a hotel
at St. Andrews, a gentleman who did not play golf. That is in itself
remarkable, but more wonderful still, he joined so rationally, if
unobtrusively, in the perpetual golfing conversation that his black
secret was never discovered. I do not know if he enjoyed himself, but
his achievement was at least a notable one.
[Illustration: ST. ANDREWS
_The town in the distance_]
I am writing this chapter, when I am but newly returned from St.
Andrews, after having watched all the champions of the earth play
round the course for three strenuous days. The weather was perfect;
there was scarcely a breath of wind, and violent storms of rain
had reduced the glassy greens to a nice easy pace. Scores of under
eighty were absurdly plentiful, and, indeed, if someone had come in
with a score of under seventy I think the news would have been received
without any vast degree of astonishment. Yet, with all this brilliant,
record-breaking golf being played over it, the course never looked
really easy. The champions certainly got their fours in abundance, but
they had to work reasonably hard for most of them. Nor did one suffer
from the delusion, as one does when playing the part of a spectator
upon simple courses, that one could have done just as many fours
oneself. St. Andrews never looks really easy, and never is really easy,
for the reason that the bunkers are for the most part so close to the
greens. It is possible, of course, to play an approach shot straight on
the bee line to the flag, and if we play it to absolute perfection all
may go well; but let it only be crooked by so much as a yard, or let
the ball, as it often will do, get an unkind kick, and the bunker will
infallibly be our portion. Consequently the prudent man will agree with
Willy Smith of Mexico, who declared that it was unwise to "tease the
bunkers"; he will not attempt to avoid these greedy, lurking enemies by
inches or even feet, but he will give them a good wide berth and avoid
them by yards. The result of this policy is that the man who is getting
his string of fours has to be continually laying the ball dead with his
putter from a reasonably long way off, and so St. Andrews is a fine
course for him who can do good work at long range with a wooden putter.
Let not the reader hastily assume that his only difficulty at St.
Andrews will be to keep out of the clutches of the bunkers lying close
to the greens; he will find plenty more stumbling-blocks in his path.
There is the matter of length, for instance. The holes, either out or
home, do not look very long when Braid is playing them with the wind
behind him, but it is an entirely different matter when we have to play
them ourselves with the wind in our teeth. Then we shall very often
be taking our brasseys through the green, and yet be doing tolerably
well if we have nothing higher than a five. There are a great many
holes that demand two good shots, as struck by the ordinary mortal;
there are three that he cannot reach except with his third, and there
are only two that he can reach from the tee, of which one by common
consent is the most fiendish short hole in existence. Thus we have
two difficulties, that the holes are long, and that there are bunkers
close to the greens; now, for a third, those greens are for the most
part on beautiful pieces of golfing ground, which by their natural
conformation, by their banks and braes and slopes, guard the holes very
effectively, even without the aid of the numerous bunkers.
Providence has been very kind in dowering St. Andrews with plateau
greens, and they are never easy to approach. A plateau usually demands
of the golfer that a shot should be played; it will not allow him
merely to toss his ball into the air with a lofting iron and the modest
ambition that it may come down somewhere on the green. Again, a plateau
never gives any undeserved help to the inaccurate approacher, as do
the greens that lie in holes and hollows. Even in a more marked degree
than at Hoylake, the ground is never helping us; in its kindest mood
it is no more than strictly impartial. Finally, the turf is very hard,
and consequently the greens are apt to take on a keenness that is
paralyzing in its intensity.
Having by alarming generalizations induced in the unfortunate stranger
a suitably humble frame of mind, the time has now arrived to take him
over the course in some detail. The first thing to point out to him is
the historic fact that there were once upon a time but nine holes, and
that the outgoing and incoming players aimed at the self-same hole upon
the self-same green. That state of things has necessarily long passed
away, but the result is still to be seen in the fact that most of the
greens are actually or in effect double greens, and consequently the
two processions of golfers outward and inward bound pass close to each
other, not without some risk to life and much shouting of 'Fore!'
With this preliminary observation, we may tee up our ball in front
of the Royal and Ancient Club-house for one of the least alarming
tee-shots in existence. In front of us stretches a vast flat plain,
and unless we slice the ball outrageously on to the sea beach, no harm
can befall us. At the same time we had much better hit a good shot,
because the Swilcan burn guards the green, and we want to carry it and
get a four. It is an inglorious little stream enough: we could easily
jump over it were we not afraid of looking foolish if we fell in,
and yet it catches an amazing number of balls. It is now a part of
golfing history that when Mr. Leslie Balfour-Melville won the amateur
championship he beat successively at the nineteenth hole Mr. W. Greig,
Mr. Laurence Auchterlonie, and Mr. John Ball, and all three of these
redoubtable persons plumped the ball into this apparently paltry little
streamlet with their approach shots.
The second is a beautiful hole some four hundred yards in length, and
with the most destructive of pot-bunkers close up against the hole.
Here is a case in point, when the attempt to shave narrowly past the
bunker involves terrible risks, and it is the part of prudence to play
well out to the right and trust to the long putt. There are, indeed,
those who deem the hole unfairly difficult when it is cut in the
left-hand end of the green and quite close to the bunker; I have not
sufficient experience or pugnacity to argue with them.
The third is something similar in character, though shorter in length;
while the fourth again is a little longer. Indeed there is something
in these three holes that make them quite ridiculously difficult for
the stranger to disentangle one from the other. The fourth is guarded
in front by a small grassy mound, which has a wonderfully far-reaching
effect, since wherever we may place our drive the mound must needs play
some part in our calculations as to the second shot. I should add that
at all three of these holes a tee-shot that is badly sliced will be
caught in the fringe of rough ground that divides the old course from
the new; this rough, however, is not so severe as it once was, and
would be none the worse for a little artificial assistance in the way
of bunkers.
The fifth is the long hole out, when we shall need our three strokes
to reach the green, which stands a little above us on a plateau of
magnificent dimensions, where we rub shoulders with the incoming
couples who are plying the 'Hole o' Cross.' In ancient days, when the
whins were thick and flourishing on the straight road to the hole, the
only possible line was away to the left towards the Elysian fields. It
was from there, so Mr. James Cunningham has told me, that young Tommy
Morris astonished the spectators by taking his niblick, a club that in
those days had a face of about the magnitude of a half-crown, wherewith
to play a pitch on the green. Till that historic moment no one had ever
dreamed of a niblick being used for anything but ordinary spade work.
At the heathery hole we have a fine sea of whins on our right (there
are still some whins left at St. Andrews), although only a very bad
slice will make us acquainted with them; there are furthermore some
pots on the left to trap a pulled ball, but altogether the hole is, if
one may venture to say so, of no enormous merit, and by no means as
good as the High Hole, where is a green of horrible glassy slopes and
bunkers that eat their way voraciously into its borders.
At the eighth we do at last get a chance of a three, for the hole is a
short one--142 yards long to be precise--and there is a fair measure
of room on the green. So far the golf has been very, very good indeed,
but with the ninth and tenth come two holes that constitute a small
blot on the fair fame of the course. If they were found on some less
sacred spot they would be condemned as consisting of a drive and a
pitch up and down a flat field. What makes it the sadder is that ready
to the architect's hand is a bit of glorious golfing country on the
confines of the new course. However, we had better play these two holes
in as reverent a spirit as possible and be thankful for two fairly easy
fours, because the next is the 'short hole in,' and we must reserve
all our energies for that. The only consoling thing about the hole
is that the green slopes upward, so that it is not quite so easy for
the ball to run over it as it otherwise would be. This is really but
cold comfort, however, because the danger of going too far is not so
imminent as that of not going straight enough. There is one bunker
called 'Strath,' which is to the right, and there is another called the
'Shelly Bunker,' to the left; there is also another bunker short of
Strath to catch the thoroughly short and ineffective ball. The hole is
as a rule cut fairly close to Strath, wherefore it behoves the careful
man to play well away to the left, and not to take undue risks by going
straight for the hole. This may sound pusillanimous, but trouble once
begun at this hole may never come to an end till the card is torn into
a thousand fragments. With a stout niblick shot the ball may easily
be dislodged from Strath, but it will all too probably bound over the
green into the sandy horrors of the Eden. From there it may again be
extracted, but as it has to pitch on a down slope, it will almost
certainly trickle gently down the green till it is safely at rest
once more in the bosom of Strath. This very tragedy I saw befall Massy
in the Championship of 1910, and he took six to the hole. Many a good
golfer has taken far more strokes than that, and, indeed, it is a hole
to leave behind one with a sigh of satisfaction.
The next hole would in any case fall almost inevitably flat, but the
thirteenth, the Hole o' Cross, is a great hole, where having struck
two really fine shots and escaped 'Walkinshaw's Grave,' we may hope to
reach the beautiful big plateau green in two and hole out in two more.
The long hole home comes next, and here we drive along the Elysian
fields, taking care to avoid a swarm of little pot-bunkers on the left,
which are called the 'Beardies.' A second, played cautiously away to
the left, will very likely bring us into collision with some outgoing
couple, while a bold shot straight ahead of us may see the ball plump
down into 'Hell,' a bunker that is now hardly worthy of its name. There
is a pretty approach to be played, with yet another plateau to climb,
and a five means good work, as does a four at the fifteenth, which is a
thoroughly admirable two-shot hole.
Although home is now in sight, there are yet two terribly dangerous
holes to be played. First of all we must steer down the perilously
narrow space between the 'Principal's Nose' and the railway line--the
railway line, mark you, that is not out of bounds, so that there is no
limit to the number of strokes that we may spend in hammering vainly at
an insensate sleeper. We may, of course, drive safe away to the left,
and if our score is a good one we shall be wise to do so, but our
approach, as is only fair, will then be the more difficult, and there
are bunkers lurking by the green-side.
The seventeenth hole has been more praised and more abused probably
than any other hole in the world. It has been called unfair, and by
many harder names as well; it has caused champions with a predilection
for pitching rather than running to tear their hair; it has certainly
ruined an infinite number of scores. Many like it, most respect it,
and all fear it. First there is the tee-shot, with the possibility of
slicing out of bounds into the station-master's garden or pulling into
various bunkers on the left. Then comes the second, a shot which should
not entail immediate disaster, but which is nevertheless of enormous
importance as leading up to the third. Finally, there is the approach
to that little plateau--in contrast to most of the St. Andrews greens,
a horribly small and narrow one--that lies between a greedy little
bunker on the one side and a brutally hard road on the other. It is so
difficult as to make the boldest inclined to approach on the instalment
system, and yet no amount of caution can do away with the chance of
disaster. There was a harrowing moment in the Championship of 1910
when Braid's ball lay in the little bunker under the green. Even if he
got it safely out, it was practically certain he would be two strokes
behind Duncan, with one round to go; if he did not get it out, or got
it out too far and so on to the road, his chances would be terribly
jeopardized. It was, as I say, an agonizing moment, but no one plays
the heavy 'dunch' shot out of sand quite so surely as Braid. Down came
the niblick, up spouted the sand, and out came the ball, to fall spent
and lifeless close to the hole and out of reach of that cruel road.
After this hole of many disastrous memories, the eighteenth need have
no great terrors. We drive over the burn, cross by the picturesque old
stone bridge, and avoiding the grosser forms of sin, such as slicing
into the windows of Rusack's hotel, hole out in four, or at most five,
under the critical gaze of those that lean on the railings.
No account of St. Andrews would be complete without some mention of the
new course, which runs more or less parallel with the old; the two,
to say nothing of the Jubilee course that runs along the spurs of the
sandhills, being all squeezed into a wonderfully narrow compass.
The new course has many merits, but it is curiously unlike its
next-door neighbour. Partly, of course, this is on account of its
youth. Myriads of feet have not trampled it into a state of adamantine
hardness, and when the greens on the old course are keen and fiery, the
new course remains soft, slow and easy. Besides this, however, there is
another difference, in that the new course is infinitely more ordinary,
and this comparative commonplaceness, if further inquired into,
resolves itself largely into the fact that there are not nearly so many
good natural greens. At both the third and the fifth there are plateau
greens, and the latter especially has the quality--so characteristic
of the old course--of demanding that the shot be played exactly right.
Most of the greens, however, are quite ordinary, and lack that
priceless gift of being naturally protected by their own conformation.
Mr. Low has written that "the new course is probably the second course
in Scotland," but I cannot help thinking that here he is a little too
enthusiastic. If we were to light upon the course somewhere else than
at St. Andrews, no doubt we should do it ampler justice than we do
now, when it is so completely overshadowed, but should we declare it
better than Prestwick, to name only one other famous Scottish course?
Personally I do not think so.
No doubt the new course does suffer some considerable injustice, and
always will do so. It has 'relief course' plainly written all over it.
On the last occasion on which I played there the daisies were growing
freely, and daisies, though extremely charming things in themselves,
are not pleasant to putt over, and do not give a workman-like air to
a course. It is a pity, because it is a good course, and we should
be delighted to play over it anywhere else, but with the old course
there--well, it is a waste of time.
Still there occasionally comes a time when we grow sick to death of the
crowding and waiting on the old course, and then we are glad enough to
steal away on to the new course and have a round, which will probably
be at any rate a comparatively quick one. We cross the burn; walk
through the middle of the putting course, where are many ladies armed
with wooden putters (since the sacrilegious cleek is wholly forbidden),
and tee off not far from where they are playing to the second hole on
the old course.
The first two holes are not at all exciting, but the course improves
as we go along. Three is a good hole, and five is an excellent short
one, with a most difficult iron-shot on to a plateau green. Nine,
again, is rather an attractive little hole, although there are two
opinions about this; a very accurate drive between bents and sand,
followed by rather a blind pitch on to a sunk green. Personally I like
it, though it is not at all the type of hole one expects to find at
St. Andrews, nor, for that matter, is the tenth. This is nevertheless
a really fine one, running down a narrow gorge between two ranges of
hills, with a fine, slashing second shot with the brassey, albeit more
or less a blind one. The twelfth is as good as the eleventh is weak,
and sixteen and eighteen are both long and difficult, but the two short
holes, thirteen and seventeen, are decidedly not exciting. Quite good,
difficult golf it is, but the "second course in Scotland"--no. Perhaps
it might be, but, my dear Mr. Low, I am sure on reflection you will
admit that, in fact, it isn't.
Though St. Andrews naturally enough dwarfs them all, there are other
courses, and fine courses, in Fife. There is Elie, which has produced
at least three very great golfers indeed, Douglas Rolland, Jack Simpson
and James Braid; and there are also, amongst others, Crail and Leven.
Leven, a truly charming course, has, alas! ceased to exist in its old
form. Nine of the old holes now belong to a new and reconstituted
Leven, and the other nine belong to Lundin Links. It is a sad pity,
but the difficulty of two different starting places made it in these
crowded times inevitable.
Forfarshire, too, is a county of many courses. Barry, Broughty Ferry,
Edzell, Monifieth, Montrose, and, best known of all, Carnoustie.
=Carnoustie= is comparatively unknown, save by name, to the English
golfer, but very popular indeed in its own country. So much so that
its popularity has rendered necessary an auxiliary course, and the
auxiliary course has taken a piece of good golfing ground that could
ill be spared. It is a fine, big, open sandy seaside course; very
natural in appearance; and in places, indeed, natural almost to the
verge of roughness; but it is none the worse for that, however, and
indeed it is altogether a very delightful course.
There is one curious feature, in that the taking in of some new ground
has caused one hole to be of a completely inland character. Certainly
this hole seems at first sight to be dragged in by the heels, but we
readily forgive it its inland character, because it is really a very
good hole indeed. This is number seven, 'South America' by name. It is
a good long hole, well over four hundred yards in length, and the green
is on an island guarded by a ditch. The soil is completely inland in
character--the green once formed part of an old garden--and as if to
emphasize that fact, a solitary tree has been left as a hazard, and
naturally plays a prominent part in the landscape.
[Illustration: CARNOUSTIE
'_South America_']
Burns, _anglicé_ streams, are a great feature of Carnoustie. Indeed one
friend of mine returned from a visit there declaring that he had got
burns badly on his nerves, and that the entire course was irrigated by
them. However, it is not so much burns as sandhills that are likely
to cause our downfall at the beginning. Of these hilly holes,
the second, by name the 'Valley,' is a really fine one, and decidedly
one of the best on the course. It is dog-legged in character, and has
a distinct flavour of some of the holes at Prince's, since with the
tee-shot the player carries just as much of the hill in front of him as
he dares, and gains a proper advantage for a bold and successful shot.
The drive is directed towards a guide flag on a hill top, and if all
goes well we are over in the valley. Then follows a beautiful second
shot up a narrow neck, with a bunker on the left and other trouble on
the right; 385 yards is the Valley's length, and Bogey does the hole
in four. It is certainly one of the holes that he plays in his best
form, for he very often takes five over holes that are no longer and
not nearly so difficult or so interesting. Of the other holes on the
way out, most are decidedly long, except the fifth, which is a simple
enough short hole, and 'South America,' before described, is as good as
any of them.
On the way home there is a somewhat awe-inspiring second shot at
the tenth, where we have to carry a hill, out of the face of which
two bunkers have been cut out and appropriately christened the
'Spectacles.' The twelfth has a pleasing name, 'Jockey's Burn,' and
the thirteenth has a pleasing putting green. The fourteenth, by name
the 'Flagstaff,' is a good long and narrow hole, where the hills crowd
in close upon us, and we must keep straight along the valley. The best
hole on the way home, however, is probably the sixteenth, or 'Island,'
where there is but one way to secure an easy and comfortable approach,
and that consists of pushing your tee-shot out to the right so that the
ball comes to rest upon a very narrow neck. Take an easier route from
the tee, and you will be left with as unpleasant a pitch as need be,
and the greedy waters of a burn running between you and the hole. Burns
play an important part at both the last two holes also, for one has to
be carried from the seventeenth tee and another menaces the pitch on
to the home green. There really is some justification for the nervous
golfer who has water on the brain after a round at Carnoustie.
CHAPTER XI.
THE COURSES OF THE EAST LOTHIAN AND
EDINBURGH.
There is probably no other golfing centre that is quite so good as
=Gullane=, in the East Lothian. If the golfer can only get up early
enough in the morning, and has the strength to do it, he can play on
seven courses on one long summer's day. At his very door is a trinity
of courses--Gullane, New Gullane, and New Luffness--which, to the eye
of the stranger, are indistinguishable the one from the other. From
Gullane Hill to the Luffness Club-house is one huge stretch of turf,
and such turf! the finest, smoothest, and most delicate that ever was
seen. It has been said of various people--I do not know who was the
original subject--that nobody could be so wise as so-and-so looked;
likewise, it might be said that no greens could be so good as the
Gullane and Luffness greens look. Nevertheless, they are very good
indeed, and so is the golf.
Till quite lately there was a marked distinction between the two
Gullane courses. The new course was long, testing, and difficult;
the old course was a place of divine putting greens and pretty
pitching shots; but it made no great demands on the athletic powers
of its devotees. There was no more delightful course in the world for
those whose game consists, to quote the _Golfer's Manual_, written
in 1857, in "Spooning a ball gently on to a table of smooth turf,
when a longer shot would land them in grief." Now all this has been
changed--the course has burst forth into new life and length, and its
older and gentler and, possibly, more lovable qualities have gone. It
was inevitable that there should be some to regret the change, but
the result is now that the visitor to Gullane has two really fine,
difficult courses at his own front door, both over 6000 yards long. The
old course runs right down to the sea, and there are fine views of the
Firth of Forth, while, from the new course, we look at another charming
view in Aberlady Bay.
Close to the two Gullane courses, a little further in the direction of
Aberlady, is New Luffness, another admirable course. Here we must keep
most particularly straight, for the fairway is narrow, and there is
plenty of rough at the sides, including some particularly pernicious
objects (I am no botanist, and do not know their names) which have
tall, wiry stalks and sadly impede the club.
It is really a beautiful bit of natural golfing country, and we are
far enough away from the houses of Gullane to enjoy a perfect sense of
peace and quietude. Not far off, again, is Kilspindie, on the west side
of Aberlady Bay, another charming spot where we may play golf that is
good without being too desperately difficult.
[Illustration: GULLANE
_The sixth green and seventh tee_]
We must get back to Gullane, however, where at the far end of the
village, on the road to North Berwick, is a course of greater fame
than any of those I have mentioned--=Muirfield=, the home of the
Honourable Company of Edinburgh golfers, and one of the select band of
championship courses. =Muirfield= has had rather a chequered career
in regard to public estimation, and has been at different times very
violently abused, partly because the Honourable Company, in leaving
Musselburgh, took the championship with them away from its ancient
home: partly on account of the intrinsic merits or demerits of the
links. The Open Championship was for the first time played at Muirfield
in 1892, and it is possible that the course was hardly good enough or
long enough for a championship course. Certainly the score with which
the championship was won was phenomenally low for those days of gutty
balls. It was altogether a memorable championship, for several reasons;
it marked the beginning of the decline of Musselburgh, it was played
for the first time over 72 instead of 36 holes, and it was won by an
amateur, Mr. Hilton. That change from one to two days' play may be
said to have robbed another great amateur of the honour of being open
champion, for at the end of the first day Mr. Horace Hutchinson had a
handsome lead. On the second day, alas! an unfortunate encounter with
that fatal wood at the very first hole was the beginning of a series
of disasters. There is always something bitterly hard about being the
first to suffer through a reform, however excellent it may be in the
abstract, and I have always felt dreadfully sorry for Mr. Hutchinson.
However, one amateur's loss was another's gain, and Mr. Hilton, after
being eight strokes behind on the first day, came away with a wonderful
game on the second, nearly doing the first hole in one, holing two
pitches, and racing so fast round the course as nearly to be the death
of an ancient partner. It is interesting to read in Mr. Hilton's
reminiscences that it was only two days before the event that he
decided to enter for this momentous championship, and that his course
of training consisted of three rounds in one day immediately following
a night journey. Here is a fine chance for a confusion of thought
between cause and effect.
Muirfield has been a good deal altered since then, and, if it will
never be among the most prepossessing of courses, it is now both sound
and interesting, while, given any appreciable amount of wind, it is
thoroughly difficult. It is curious that it has but little outward
attractions. There is a fine view of the sea and a delightful sea
wood, with the trees all bent and twisted by the wind; then, too, it
is a solitary and peaceful spot, and a great haunt of the curlews,
whom one may see hovering over a championship crowd and crying eerily
amid a religious silence. All this is charming, but there is a fatal
stone wall that runs round the course, giving the impression of an
inland park, and it is, I believe, this purely sentimental objection
that has brought Muirfield so many detractors. Not that there are
not or have not been other objections of a more practical kind. The
course has twice had to be lengthened, and there was, moreover, a
time when the ground near the edges of the greens was very spongy
and uncertain in character. The greens are rather small--this is
entirely a virtue--and, consequently, there are many little chips
and running shots to be played; these, when the greens were hard and
the surrounding country was soft, were apt to travel upon the wings
of chance, and there were many lamentations. Now, however, the ground
has hardened considerably, and at the last Amateur Championship there
were no complaints on this score, although the greens themselves were
difficult and, indeed, almost tricky.
[Illustration: MUIRFIELD
_The fourth and fourteenth greens_]
On a calm day it may be urged that there are not enough long second
shots, and that there are too many holes of rather similar length,
which can be reached with a drive and a moderate pitching shot.
Certainly, on the very still, warm days that preceded the Amateur
Championship of 1909, the golf appeared rather easy, and every
self-respecting person was coming in to lunch having done his 75 or 76,
but as soon as any breeze sprang up, there was a very different story
to tell. For one thing, the tee-shots in a wind impose a continual
strain. Sunningdale, Walton Heath, Worplesdon, and other inland courses
have their endless avenues of heather and fir trees, but at none of
them, I fancy, is the fairway quite so narrow as at Muirfield, and a
whole round without a single tee-shot going astray into the rough is
something to be proud of. I have heard one of the most accomplished of
wooden club players confess that a week at Muirfield had frightened him
out of his driving, and only the ampler spaces of North Berwick gave
him back his courage.
The rough consists of thick, coarse grass, and there is, of course, a
measure of chance in the lies that one may get; one may be able to use
a brassey, but a niblick is infinitely the more likely club. When Mr.
Herman de Zoete played so finely in the championship of 1903, it was
said, mainly as an argument against the rubber ball, that he was never
on the course at all, but it must be remembered that he was holing out
quite wonderfully well, and he is, moreover, gifted with exceptional
powers in the way of moving mountains of long grass. For weaker
brethren many excursions into the rough are almost certain to be fatal.
Muirfield is one of the comparatively few courses that begin with
a one-shot hole, with the result that the starting of a round is
rather a slow business, since there is wood to the left and some
alluring bunkers to the right, and the erratic are likely to be an
unconscionable time a-playing. Never was there a greater necessity to
resist the temptation to pull than there is at the second; instinct
keeps calling in our ears for a glorious, long hook, and there is
nothing so likely to prove fatal. It is one of those puzzling shots
where we drive at a wide angle on to a narrow fairway, whence, if
all goes well, a good iron shot will land the ball on to a very
well-guarded green, fast in pace and billowy in conformation. It is
a capital four-hole, and so is the third, which is really a splendid
example of how good a hole of no particular length can be. In the first
place, we must hit straight, and we must also be exceedingly careful
not to hit too far. If, indeed, we can send the ball flying like an
arrow from the bow, we may make for the little narrow neck, where
safety lies; but it is far more probable that our ball will trickle
gently down hill to the left, where a stream and a surrounding marsh
await it. Save, therefore, when with a strong wind behind we may hope
to get over all our troubles with one vast blow, we must play prudently
from the tee with an iron club, and we shall still be able to reach the
green very comfortably in our second. It is a slippery, elusive, and
vindictive sort of green, however, full of unexpected quicknesses and
slownesses, and it is one thing to be there in two and quite another to
be down in four: altogether a very interesting hole to see played by
somebody else.
Of the next few holes, the fifth is perhaps the outstanding one, on
account of its length: the others are all of them good and all of them,
as regards length, much of a muchness. We remember a different feature
at each of them--the big carry over the boarded bunker at the sixth,
the pond at the seventh, and the tall sandhill, rising rather abruptly
in front of the tee, at the ninth--but we generally have the same
iron club in our hands for the second shot. At the eleventh, however,
we come to a really splendid hole, at which each shot has infinite
terrors. The tee-shot has to be played down a narrow spit of land, with
thick, rough grass on the right, a bunker encroaching on the left, and
a continuation of the same bunker straight ahead of us. Nor must the
ubiquitous wall, also on the left, be entirely despised. The very least
hook will plunge us into the left-hand end of the bunker, a slice means
the long grass, and a very long, straight ball may go too far and
meet a sandy fate. The shot is so narrow and frightening that it is no
sign of cowardice to take a cleek, but then a very long second shot is
necessary, unless the wind is strong behind, in order to get home. This
second shot, too, is fraught with almost equal perils, for the wall to
the left comes very decidedly into the range of practical politics, and
there is a long bunker to the right. It is a hole at which one need
never despair, and I wish I could remember accurately the exact number
of balls Mr. Harold Hambro hit over the wall in 1903 and yet won the
hole from Mr. Edward Blackwell.
The twelfth needs a high carrying second over a deep bunker; and the
thirteenth has one of the most terrifying tee-shots that I know along
a narrow strath, with bunkers on either side. Moreover, not only is
it necessary to hit straight, but it is intensely profitable to hit
a long way, for if we can only hit far enough, we may play a running
shot on to that sliding, sloping green, whereas if we have to pitch
on to the slope over the corner of the right-hand bunker, a five is,
to put it mildly, far more likely than a three. The fifteenth, again,
is a beautiful drive and pitch hole, with a number of alternative
routes, all of which want accurate hitting, and all leading up to a
most difficult approach shot. At the sixteenth we play short of a huge
cross-bunker in our second, unless we are taking serious risks; and at
the seventeenth our second shot is once more a tricky pitch on to a
sloping green. I do not think I ever saw a hole better played than Mr.
Maxwell played this seventeenth in the final of the championship of
1909, when he stood one down with two to play. The only way in which
he was in the least likely to get the three, that he needed so sorely,
was to play his pitch along a certain gully that led to the hole. In
order to get at that gully, he had to play his tee-shot well away to
the left, keeping as close as he dared to the left-hand rough. He
played the shot perfectly, 'pinching' the rough successfully, and was
left with a pitch straight up the gully: played that perfectly too: was
left with a putt of some four feet, and holed it. The strokes were so
clearly intended, and so bravely played, and in all human probability
they made the difference between Mr. Maxwell winning or losing the
championship.
Finally, the last hole is a good, honest, two-shot hole straight up
to the club-house, with a trench bunker right across the course. In
respect to this hole, golfing history gives rather an interesting
example of the difference between the gutty and the rubber-core. When
Vardon won his first championship, he was left, at this hole, with a
four to win and a five to tie with Taylor. He debated long over his
second shot, and then played short with his iron, got his five, and
made sure of the tie--a tie which, as all the world knows, he won.
Nowadays, comparatively modest hitters often get home with iron clubs,
and it would need a very stiff wind to deter Vardon from attacking that
big bunker with his second. It is rather salutary for us sometimes to
be reminded of how much we owe to the rubber-cored ball, and Muirfield
is a course that is continually dinning the fact into our ears. There
are so many holes there that would be so much harder for the moderate
driver if he had to drive a solid ball; he could be dreadfully out of
conceit with himself at the end of the round.
It is quite a short drive--not with a club--from Muirfield to =North
Berwick=, but there is none of that resemblance between the courses
that one might expect between such near neighbours. Muirfield may be
called a narrow course of soft turf; North Berwick an open course of
hard turf. Moreover, one may chance to have Muirfield to one's self
and the curlews, whereas at North Berwick are to be found all the
advantages or disadvantages of a fashionable watering-place. Whatever
may be thought of their respective merits from a strictly golfing
point of view, it can hardly be gainsayed that North Berwick has the
best of it in point of looks. No golf course could look lovelier than
North Berwick on a bright summer's day, when the Bass rock, the home
of many gannets, is shining brilliantly white in the sunshine and only
holiday-making man is entirely vile.
[Illustration: NORTH BERWICK
_The second tee_]
No course has ever undergone a more complete metamorphosis, for whereas
it is now long enough for any reasonable person, it was once noted for
the abnormal number of threes that could be done in one round. Mr.
Hutchinson wrote in the Badminton of the "sporting little links of
North Berwick," and added "You might just as well leave your driver
at home. If you are even a medium driver, it is scarcely ever in your
hand." Incredible scores were recorded by Mr. Laidlay and Bernard
Sayers, perhaps the most astounding being Mr. Laidlay's 33 for the
first ten holes. Such a course was almost bound to produce a race of
wonderfully adroit pitchers. Of the older generation, Mr. Laidlay and
Sayers are still almost as good as ever, and the race of fine pitchers
is not extinct, for amongst others there is Mr. Maxwell, whose obvious
power rather blinds the unobservant eye to his beautiful short game;
and Mr. Whitecross, a player much less well known, but a wonderfully
deft wielder of the mashie. Mr. Whitecross's pitching at Muirfield
in 1909 more nearly approached the supernatural than anything I have
ever seen. If I remember aright, he actually holed two pitches in his
matches with Mr. Angus Hambro and Mr. W. A. Henderson, and laid the ball
several times on the lip of the hole; one shot in particular against
Mr. Hambro, wherein the ball trickled very slowly down the steep slope
of the seventeenth green and lay absolutely dead, was the most perfect
shot conceivable, and was played, besides, at an intensely critical
moment.
It would seem, therefore, that though North Berwick is no longer short,
it is still an exceptionally good school in which to learn the art of
approaching. There is even now a good deal of approaching to do, and
the man who is driving well may hope to reach the green fairly often
with pitching shots of varying length. For these shots not only is
plenty of skill essential, but a measure of local knowledge is also
useful, and the unaccustomed stranger is apt to think and say that
it is possible in two successive rounds to play the approach shots
equally well with vastly different results.
Personally, I have a considerable respect for North Berwick, born
of fear and conscious incompetence. I always have that respectful
feeling towards a course where the ground is a little hard and bumpy.
Given soft, velvety turf, one should be able, to a certain extent, to
disguise one's weakness, for it is then an easy matter to get the ball
well into the air, and the short putts may be firmly hit. When the
turf is bare, one has to do all the work one's self, and though North
Berwick has not the uncompromising hardness of St. Andrews, neither
has it any of the kindly and flattering qualities of Sandwich. The
unheeding multitude cut out many divots and leave a good many difficult
lies behind them, and the ball will very easily run away from one on
the putting green; indeed, at Point Garry, it is apt, if too vigorously
struck, to run into the sea.
It is a terrible place this double green of Point Garry, worn,
bare, and sloping down to the rocks and the beach, and we come to
it, besides, at two of the most agitating moments of the round;
at the first hole, when we have not had quite enough golf, and at
the seventeenth, when, if the match has been a fierce one, we have
perhaps had too much. Our terror is perhaps less acute at the first
hole, because we are then playing on the part of the green that is
furthest from the sea; but even so great trouble may befall us. I
always remember a newspaper account of Mr. Balfour, when he was Prime
Minister, playing in a medal at North Berwick. "The premier," so it
ran, "made an unfortunate start: put his second on the rocks and took
eight to the hole." We ought, generally speaking, to do better than
eight; indeed, we may hope for a three--that is to say, if we are
playing from the forward tee, and the wind is not against us. Then we
carry the road and reach the green in one most excellent shot, but if
the circumstances are at all unfavourable, we shall doubtless do better
to play short from the tee with an iron club and be well content with a
four.
The second and third are both fine holes, and at the second we have
an added interest in the possibility of killing some one upon the
sea-shore. With a fine long shot we may hope to carry a portion of the
beach that eats its way into the course, but it is not well to be too
adventurous; anything approaching a slice will leave us playing niblick
shots among the pebbles and nurserymaids, and we can play reasonably
well to the left and yet hope to get home next time with a well-struck
second. At the third, when we carry the wall in our second, we may
be content with a five, though a four is not impossible, and then a
rather unusual hazard awaits us at the hole called 'Carl Kemp.' If we
drive straight we shall have a sufficiently easy pitch to play, but
the green lies in a narrow pass, with rocks on either side, and no one
can predict the fate of a ball that pitches upon a rock; it may bound
incredibly both as regards distance and direction.
Soon after this we get into a country of flat and, if the truth be
told, rather dull holes. Of the holes at this end of the course, it
may be said that they are good enough when the wind is against, but
they never can be very thrilling. Even the quarry and the eel burn,
though they help to fix them in the mind, cannot make us love them very
passionately; and as for the ninth, when we drive down to the edge of
a cross-bunker and then chip over on to the green, that, I vow, is a
thoroughly commonplace and uninteresting hole. It has some compensation
to offer, in that it is the chosen pitch of a purveyor of ginger beer;
it was here that the famous Crawford used to abide, and no hole could
be entirely dull with Crawford on the tee.
It is not till we reach the wall that we come to a hole that makes a
very strong appeal to the imagination. Here we shall have to play a
cunning little pitch in our best North Berwick manner, for the green
lies immediately beyond the wall, and we must contrive to stop the ball
reasonably dead with our mashie. We can, however, make the shot more
or less difficult, according as we drive well or ill. If we can hold
the ball well to the left--close, but not too close under the wall--we
shall have more room to pitch, and may hope for a putt for three; but a
drive pushed far out to the right makes it almost impossible to stop at
all near the hole next time.
'Perfection' and 'The Redan' are two very famous names, and the 'Redan'
is one of the select holes, the features of which have been more or
less faithfully reproduced on the National Golf Course on Long Island,
U. S. A. First of the two comes 'Perfection,' the fourteenth, a very fine
two-shot hole. With the tee-shot we must hug as closely as we dare
the side of a big hill on the left, and if we fall into the opposite
extreme, we may slice our ball among the rocks of 'Carl Kemp.' All
being well, we have a reasonably easy second over a bunker; but we
cannot see where we are going, and have the uncanny feeling that we
are hitting straight into the sea. The 'Redan' is a beautiful one-shot
hole on the top of a plateau, with a bunker short of the green to the
left and another further on to the right, and we must vary our mode of
attack according to the wind, playing a shot to come in from the right
or making a direct frontal attack.
At the sixteenth we cross the wall once more, and may hope to reach in
two shots the 'Gate' hole, standing on another plateau--an exceedingly
diminutive one, by the way--close to the high road. Now we arrive at
that most destructive of holes, 'Point Garry,' and even if we do not,
like Mr. Balfour, make an unfortunate start, we are very likely to
make an unfortunate ending. In our second shot we shall have to decide
whether or not to carry a bunker that stretches across our path, and
then comes the crucial shot, the approach on to that dreadful green
that slopes right away from us to the sea--without the ghost of a
charitable back wall. It is so frightening that we are strongly tempted
to approach it on the instalment system, and it is really wonderful how
many instalments may be necessary, as with limbs palsied with terror,
we push and poke the ball over that treacherous and slippery surface.
'Point Garry' safely over, the last hole seems absurdly simple, and, if
we do not top into the road or pull into Hutchison's shop, we should
end with a four; indeed, our putt for a possible three should not be a
very long one. When all is over, we shall almost certainly agree that
the best golf at North Berwick is to be found at the beginning and end
of the course, but we could hardly bear it if all the holes were as
exciting as 'Point Garry.' Those flat holes at the far end serve, no
doubt, a useful, though unobtrusive, purpose.
So much for the East Lothian courses, but while we are within hail
of Edinburgh, we must pay a visit to =Musselburgh=, the home of
the Parks and once the home of the championship, now shorn of its
honour, and little more than a name to English golfers. The way to
Musselburgh lies for the most part through factory chimneys and slag
heaps, nor is the first glimpse of the course much more prepossessing
than the surrounding scenery. It looks like an ordinary common on the
outskirts of a town, rather flat, and devoid of features, rather hard
and rough, not unlike in character that blank stretch of turf at St.
Andrews which lies between the club-house and the burn. Yet if, after
we have played over the course, we adhere to this our first view, we
shall show ourselves to be persons of superficial minds and of little
discernment. It is true that there are comparatively few hazards, and
that we ought, therefore, not to get into many of them; but, at the
same time, it will gradually dawn upon us that nearly every hole has a
governing hazard, to which we must pay due regard--one that will direct
our policy for us whether we like it or not. We must not let ourselves
be lulled into a sense of false security by the fact that we have
occasionally a whole parish to drive into. There is a right line and
a wrong line, and if we are very fortunate, or very highly honoured,
we may have it pointed out to us and our clubs carried for us by Bob
Ferguson, who won the championship three times running, and might have
won it a fourth time if Willy Fernie had not done the last hole at
Musselburgh in two.
[Illustration: MUSSELBURGH
'_Mrs. Forman's_']
There are but nine holes at Musselburgh, and the whole area of the
links is extremely small. The first three holes go along the entire
length of the course on the right-hand side; then comes one hole
across, four down the left side, and then one more across the other
end. Of these nine, the first three are as good holes as you can desire
to meet anywhere, whether you play them with a stone-hard gutty, as
did the reverent pilgrims of the Oxford and Cambridge Golfing Society,
or with the soft and bounding rubber-core. The first rejoices in the
cheerful name of the 'Graves,' owing to the conformation of the putting
green, which, with its many little barrows, is like a grass-grown
burial-ground. Here two good shots should reach the green, and two
very good putts may reach the bottom of the hole. For the second we
shall need a five, although a vast hitter may get home with two of his
very best. The green is a small plateau at the end of a valley that
is long and shallow and narrow, and if we can place the ball with our
second shot on exactly the right place, we should have an easy run up
and a putt for four; if we are not in the right place, we must play
a difficult approach well in order to get a five. Next comes another
hole with a famous name--'Mrs. Forman's'--and we approach Mrs. Forman's
tavern with two shots to the left, followed by a run up, or--more
perilously--by two shots on the dead straight line. By the latter
method we may, indeed, get home in two, but we may also be under the
posts of the race-course or in an electric tram-car, or in a variety of
bunkers, and it may be added that they do not pamper us at Musselburgh
by raking the bunkers or trimming the steep over-hanging cliffs thereof.
The fourth is a long one-shot hole in a seaward direction, and the next
is 'Pandy.' 'Pandy' itself is now a flat, ugly bit of hard, dirty sand,
and if we do get into it, we should lie well enough to get a long way
out again, unless, indeed, we should be so unfortunate as to lie in a
tin-pot or a derelict boot. The green is one of which Willy Park has
made two famous copies--one at the fifteenth at Huntercombe, the other
the eighth at Worplesdon. Whereas, however, there is usually a generous
growth of velvety grass on the Huntercombe green, the original green at
Musselburgh is of a terrifying keenness. The seventh is a shortish hole
of no great interest, and the eighth is the 'Gas Works,' which can be
reached with a drive and a run up, and has a green which, like most of
the others at Musselburgh, seems to accentuate any putting error in an
exemplary fashion. Finally, for the ninth and last, there is another
short hole, having a big plateau green protected in front by a wavy
bank. Some will play to pitch at the bottom of the bank and run up;
others to toss the ball high and boldly on to the green. The latter
is probably preferable for those whose ambition does not soar above a
three, but those who spurn safety and aim at twos will adopt the former
plan. Thus ends Musselburgh, which can be compassed in some 35 strokes
or less, but will probably cost us appreciably more, for neither the
lies nor the greens are easy, and it is extremely easy to drop strokes.
To the English golfer there is something incongruous in the idea of
an inland course in Scotland. He goes there for his holidays, and so
naturally chooses a seaside course; but Scotland possesses a number
of inhabitants who are not always making holiday, and cannot go to
the sea as often as they would like, wherefore the necessity for this
seeming incongruity. Of the inland Scottish courses, probably the best
known is =Barnton=, near Edinburgh, the home of a golf club of great
antiquity and renown, the Edinburgh Burgess Golfing Society, who rank
in seniority second only to the Royal Blackheath Club.
The Barnton estate consists of a fine old house and a park, with
splendid trees, which was once known as Cramond Regis, and was
a hunting seat of the kings of Scotland. From royalty it passed
successively into the hands of several noble Scottish families, till
it fell into those of the Edinburgh Burgesses, when they decided to
leave Musselburgh. That move took place in comparatively modern times,
but before that golf had been played in the park by at least one very
distinguished golfer, Robert Clark, who wrote _Golf: a Royal and
Ancient Game_. He was at one time tenant of Barnton House, and, as I
learn from an interesting article by Mr. James Purves, had some holes
cut, including one which necessitated a drive right over the house.
When he was annoyed with his game at Musselburgh, he would declare that
he had a far better course at his own door.
Whether he would have upheld that pronouncement in cool blood is
perhaps to be doubted, for the best park golf in the world cannot
attain beyond a certain point, and Barnton is pure park golf. Still,
it has undoubtedly many merits, and not least among them is that the
greens are as good and true as any in the world. That at least is the
general opinion, and I see no reason to doubt it. I cannot, on the
other hand, confirm it, because I have only played at Barnton on a
Sunday, and the Scottish conscience, although it will let you play,
will not let the greens be swept for you, and Sunday golf at Barnton,
therefore, involves some encounters with worm casts. It also involves,
or did when last I went there, a drive out of Edinburgh with one's
clubs elaborately hidden under horse-cloths and rugs. The principle,
however, was that of the ostrich who buries his head in the sand, or
rather its exact converse, for the most sedulous burying of the bodies
of the clubs did not prevent the head peeping out and so advising all
church-going Edinburgh of one's scandalous project.
It is easy to see that on week days the course must be in absolutely
apple-pie order, and that it lacks nothing that the hand of man
could do for it. Nearly all the holes want good, straight, accurate
play; but, as is the case with this type of golf, they make no
passionate appeal to the imagination. There is a nice tee-shot from
a height at the ninth, where two really good shots down a valley
should take us home; and the eleventh, sixteenth, and seventeenth all
want long and straight hitting. At the thirteenth a pleasing variety
is introduced in the matter of hazards by two old tombstones, which
may catch a badly pulled ball. These, according to Mr. Purves, are
memorials of an overflow from the parish churchyard at Cramond at the
time of the plague.
[Illustration: BARNTON
_Park golf in Scotland_]
Barnton is a great resort of the lawyers of Edinburgh, and there
is a nice little joke with a legal flavour to it at the end of the
candidate's application for membership, wherein, after declaring that
he is an "ardent admirer and player of the ancient and manly game of
golf," he concludes, "and your petitioner will ever play." What is
more, he has got to play in his club uniform, a red coat and a black
velvet cap--he is fined if he doesn't--and very pretty the red coats
look on a summer day amid the pleasant greenery of Barnton.
CHAPTER XII.
WEST OF SCOTLAND: PRESTWICK AND TROON.
Gullane is usually cited as the headquarters from which it is possible
to play the largest number of rounds in one day, each round being on a
different course, but it is by no means certain that the distinction
which is thus given to East Lothian does not really belong to
Prestwick and Troon. As one approaches Prestwick, the train seems to
be voyaging through one endless and continuous golf course--Gailes,
Barassie, Bogside--I write them down pell-mell as they come into my
head--Prestwick, St. Nicholas, St. Cuthbert, Troon, and several more
beside. Moreover, Troon "surprises by himself," a prodigious assemblage
of courses. There is the course proper, and there is the 'relief'
course; there is another course, which may be termed the 'super-relief'
course; and there are various practice grounds consecrated to
women and children. The turf is something softer--at least in my
imagination--than that of the East Coast courses, and the greens are
wonderfully green and velvety, and looking as if they get plenty of
rain, as in fact they do.
Of all this galaxy of courses, =Prestwick= is first and foremost. It
is the original home of the Open Championship, one of the championship
courses of to-day, and admittedly one of the best of them. A man is
probably less likely to be contradicted in lauding Prestwick than in
singing the praises of any other course in Christendom. There are
probably more people who would put St. Andrews absolutely at the
top of the tree, but, whereas nearly everyone would rank Prestwick
in the first three, the Fifeshire course has a certain number of
bitter enemies who rank it very low indeed. One might almost say that
Prestwick has no enemies; everyone admires it, though, naturally, with
slightly different degrees of enthusiasm. To say of a human being that
he has no enemies is almost to insinuate that he is just a little
bit colourless and insipid; but those adjectives have certainly no
application to Prestwick, which has a very decided character of its own.
Nowhere is to be found a more beautiful stretch of what is called
"natural golfing country." The ordinary golfer, whose head is not
too full of modern architectural ideas, would jump with joy on first
beholding Prestwick. There is nothing subtle or recondite about it;
it has a beauty which explains itself. There are the great sandhills
bristling with bents and the little nestling valleys beyond them, a
rushing burn and a stone wall, and it is perfectly clear that man was
meant to hit the ball over them. All the ground on the near side of
the wall, which is the ground of the old twelve-hole course, is of
this glorious 'natural' character. "Hullo," says the player, "here's
a hill: let's drive over it." Yet, although it is a little blind
and has a measure of what Mr. Hutchinson has euphemistically termed
"pleasurable uncertainty," it is for the most part incontestibly fine
golf. "Like Sandwich, only much better," I have heard it described;
but I dislike this slandering and backbiting at poor, dear Sandwich.
In one respect, however, it may be permissible to make a comparison
very much in favour of Prestwick, that is in the size of the greens. On
both courses we hit the ball over a high hill, but whereas at Prestwick
we must hit it straight, unless we wish to be left with the trickiest
and hardest of little pitches, at Sandwich a far more than reasonably
crooked shot may yet land the ball on the edge of a vast green, where a
bang with the wooden putter will make up for our deficiencies.
When once the wall is crossed, and what was once called the new ground
is reached, the character of the ground changes considerably. There
are, it is true, two blind and mountainous tee-shots over the famous
'Himalayas,' but they appear rather esoteric than otherwise. The holes
on the far side of the wall are in their nature essentially flat, and
in one or two instances a little artificial. As one plays the eighth
hole alongside the railway by Monkton Station, one cannot repress the
feeling that one might as well have stayed inland. Well bunkered and
difficult enough is that particular hole, and yet so utterly lacking in
the least breath of the sea, and the fairway is just a smooth avenue
mowed out of a big field. Still some others of these flattish holes--I
shall come to them in their proper places--are undoubtedly very
fine holes, and if anyone likes to say that they are in reality better
golf than those within the wall, we may still respect his judgment and
regard him as a man and brother. Equally we may form a low estimate of
his appreciation of the beautiful and romantic, and remain perfectly
steadfast in our own allegiance to the 'Alps,' the 'Cardinal,' and the
'Sea-He'therick.'
[Illustration: PRESTWICK
_Looking back at the 'Alps'_]
The first hole is so good that, as with the first at Hoylake, it is
a pity that we have to play it while we are still, perhaps, a little
stiff and nervous. The crime against which we have chiefly to be on our
guard is that of slicing, for the railway runs along the entire length
of the hole on the right-hand side, quite unpleasantly near us. We must
not hook either, for rough country awaits the ball hit unduly far to
the left, and, indeed, the shot is such a narrow one that there are
some strong hitters who advocate the taking of a cleek from the tee.
The second shot may be described on a calm day as a longish pitch, and
there is a big bunker in front of the green, rough ground and a sandy
road behind, the railway to the right, and tenacious undergrowth to
the left. There is apt to be an engine snorting loudly on the other
side of the wall just as we are playing a critical and curly putt,
and the said putt is none the easier from the engine having liberally
besprinkled the green with cinders. Altogether, we shall have done
good work if we get a four, and what a hole to do in three, when it is
the thirty-seventh, as did Mr. John Ball in his great final with Mr.
Tait--as good a hole under the circumstances that I ever saw played in
my life.
The second is quite one of the shortest of short holes on any
first-class course, but it is not a bit easy, for a bunker behind the
green has now been cut to reinforce the one in front, and the green is
generally very keen.
The third is the 'Cardinal,' and has done a vast deal of mischief in
its time. A topped brassey shot into the cavernous recesses of the
bunker was generally thought to have cost Mr. Laidlay a championship
when he played Mr. Peter Anderson; and, to come to more modern times,
it was in this very same bunker that his supporters saw with horror the
great Braid trying to throw away the championship in 1908 by playing
a game of racquets against those ominous black boards. Yet, in the
ordinary way, if we can but hit a reasonably straight tee-shot, we
ought to send our second flying far over the Cardinal's sandy nob and a
good long way on towards the green. Then comes a delicate little pitch
over some hummocky ground, or, if we are lucky, a running-up shot, and
we find ourselves on a small green under the shadow of the wall, and
should obtain a respectable five; a four is, as a rule, the score of
heroes only.
At the fourth we cross the wall with a drive that varies in direction
with our bravery and skill. If we are very brave, and very skilful,
we shall hit a ball with a suspicion of a slice that shall keep close
to the rushing waters of the burn, and shall be rewarded with an easy
pitch, and haply a putt for three. If we do not trust ourselves, we
shall give the burn a wide berth and pull far away to the left, where
we should still get a four--but only by means of a longer and harder
approach shot.
The fifth is the 'Himalayas,' a hole of great fame, but no transcendent
merit. A good cleek shot should see us safely over this big hill and on
to the green on the other side, which is now guarded by pot-bunkers.
All these holes at Prestwick seem to have some tragedy connected with
them, and the 'Himalayas,' in all human probability, lost Mr. Hilton
his third Open Championship in 1898. Just one bad shot--he can hardly
have played another during the four rounds: but he made this one fatal
mistake with a club that was strange to him (he has told the sad story
himself), and took eight to the hole. Yet he finished in the end but
two strokes behind the winner, Harry Vardon, and at one time he had
actually caught him in this terrible stern chase.
After the 'Himalayas' come several holes which do not, like the
earlier and later holes, cry aloud for description. The sixth has a
sufficiently difficult second on to a plateau green, and there is
fierce punishment for the slicer among the bents. The seventh is a long
short hole (this is such a convenient expression that it must pass),
with rushes to catch a slice; and of the eighth, which runs alongside
the railway, I have already said something.
The ninth and tenth are really fine two-shot holes; as far as length
is concerned, there are none better on the course, and they are both
thoroughly difficult into the bargain. The green at the ninth is
especially attractive and difficult, consisting of a little hilly
peninsula of turf that seems to jut out from a mainland of rough
and bents. At the tenth we sidle along parallel with the range of
'Himalayas,' and at the eleventh we cross them with a drive--no cleek
this time--for we have to carry as well the burn that runs beyond them.
Then we turn our noses for home and make for the wall that we left
behind us at the fourth hole. We shall need two full shots, and then
a little chip on to a typical Prestwick green; long, narrow, and well
guarded by lumps and bumps of various shapes and sizes. If, perchance,
the wind is blowing very strongly behind us, we may try to carry the
wall in two, and the ball will very likely light on the coping of
the wall to bounce thence into unfathomable bents, while we are left
lamenting our lack of contemptible prudence.
Now comes the 'Sea He'therick'--a charming hole with a charming name,
where the ball must be driven for the distance of two very full shots
along a sort of gully or channel between the sand and bents on the
right, and some rough and hillocky country to the left. There is a
narrow little green, with odd corners and angles sticking out and well
guarded by hummocks, so that if we do get a four we shall probably have
to lay a singularly deft little pitch close to the hole. A drive over
the 'Goose-dubs' brings us to a fairly ordinary fourteenth hole close
to the club, and we turn back to play the last four, the famous loop.
The chief characteristic of the fifteenth is that no two persons are
agreed on the best way of playing it. We may lash out for death or
glory with a driver, or play short with the pusillanimous iron: we may
go out to the right, or away to the left, but wherever we try to go we
shall heave a sigh of relief if our ball finishes its agitating career
upon a piece of turf. Neither is the second an easy shot, for the green
is sloping and treacherous, and there are bunkers to right and left.
At the sixteenth--the 'Cardinal's Back'--there is an insidious little
pot-bunker in the middle of the course, and we must drive either to the
right or left of it, or perhaps, wisest of all, aim straight at it in
the sure and certain hope of a sufficient measure of inaccuracy.
Now we come to the 'Alps,' one of the finest holes anywhere, and _the_
finest blind hole in all the world. The drive must be hit straight and
true down a valley between two hills, and then comes the second, over
a vast grassy hill, beyond which we know that there is a bunker both
wide and deep. The ball may clear the hill and yet meet with a dreadful
fate, but there is glorious compensation in the fact that if we do
clear the chasm, we should be fairly near the hole, and may possibly
be putting for a three. With no wind and a rubber-cored ball there is
nothing very tremendous in the achievement, but nevertheless it is of
the tremendous order of holes, and it takes a stout-hearted man to get
a four there at all square and two to play. With a gutty ball it was
really a fine long, slashing carry, and to play short was sometimes
the better part of valour. Old Willy Park wrecked his chances of yet
another championship here in 1861, owing, to quote the appropriately
solemn words of the _Ayrshire Express_, to "a daring attempt to cross
the Alps in two, which brought his ball into one of the worst hazards
of the green, and cost him three strokes--by no means the first time
he has been seriously punished for similar avarice and temerity." It
was in this bunker also that Mr. Tait played his ever-famous shot out
of water, and Mr. Ball followed it with a superb niblick shot out of
hard wet sand, which is not half as famous as it ought to be. Truly the
'Alps' is a hole with a great history.
After this the last hole is easy enough--a flat hole, just a little
too long for the ordinary mortal to reach from the tee, save with a
wind behind him. It can be reached, however, with a very fine shot,
and I shall never forget the scene at the Open Championship in 1908,
when Mr. Robert Andrew nearly holed it in one. It was in the qualifying
competition, and Mr. Andrew, a strong local favourite and a truly
magnificent player, had to do a two to equal Harry Vardon's record for
the course of 72. He struck a gorgeous blow, and the ball sailed away
straight as a die, and finished absolutely stone dead. With one wild
yell of joy the crowd broke away from the tee, and raced down the slope
for the green, even as the British square dashed down the hill after
the flying French guard at Waterloo. It was at once a most thrilling
and amusing spectacle.
So ends Prestwick; and what a jolly course it is, to be sure! What a
jolly place to play, too, for we shall probably have had it reasonably
to ourselves. It shares with Muirfield, among the great Scottish
courses, the merit of being the private property of the club, and that
is a merit that grows greater every year. It is a beautiful spot,
moreover, and we may look at views of Arran and Ailsa Craig and the
Heads of Ayr if we can allow our attention to wander so far from the
game.
Tradition and romance cluster thickly around Prestwick, for it was here
that old Tom Morris came in 1851--a little while after he and Allan
Robertson had had a difference of opinion about Tom having played with
the gutty ball. Here he stayed fourteen years before returning once and
for all to his beloved St. Andrews, and it was here that the immortal
Young Tom was born and first swung a precocious club. Prestwick was
the home of the championship belt, which was competed for there every
year from 1860 to 1870, when it passed into the permanent possession
of Young Tom, who had won it three times running. If by some potent
magic one could summon up the past at will, there is no golfing picture
that I should like to see so much as that of Tommy's third win; 149
was his score for three rounds of the twelve-hole course, and he
finished twelve strokes ahead of the two men who tied for second place.
Whenever one is too much inclined to laud the golfers of the present
to the detriment of those of the past, it is always a wholesome thing
to remember that score of 149 round Prestwick. There must have been at
least one very great golfer in those days.
The course at =Troon= is perhaps a little overshadowed by its more
famous neighbour, but it is a very fine course nevertheless, especially
since it has been lengthened of late years. It has, moreover, one
of the finest short holes to be found anywhere. Here dwells Willy
Fernie, and here it was that Braid and Herd went down so memorably
before Vardon and Taylor in the great foursome over four greens. The
Scottish pair left St. Andrews with a small advantage, but in Ayrshire
a terrible thing befell them. Taylor and Vardon won so many holes--the
number was well in double figures--that they came to the two English
courses, St. Anne's and Deal, with a lead that nothing but a second
miracle could take from them--and such miracles do not happen twice; it
was surely one of the most extraordinary day's play in all the history
of big matches. Troon, oddly enough, is one of the last places that one
would expect such a collapse to occur. We know that when the greens
are fast and fiery and not a little rough, a man who becomes afraid of
his putter can lose an unlimited number of holes, but the greens at
Troon are smooth and true, and of an almost velvety consistency that
encourage us to putt above our form. They are certainly one of the
features of the course.
[Illustration: TROON
_The new short hole_]
Another pleasant feature of Troon is that the holes are known not
simply by dull numbers, but each by its own name--'Dunure,' the
'Monk,' the 'Fox,' 'Sandhills'--they are good names; and what is
more to the purpose, they are familiarly and habitually used, and
not merely printed on the scoring cards. The first three holes run
straight forward along a narrow strip of turf, having the seashore on
the right-hand side; while at the third hole there is a small burn to
be crossed. The fourth is 'Dunure,' a good two-shot hole, if the wind
be not too strong against us, with big bunkers to right and left to
catch the crooked tee-shot. 'Greenan' is the fifth--that takes its name
from Greenan Castle on Carrick shore; and then comes one of the
new holes, 'Turnberry' by name, in which the old 'Ailsa' is swallowed
up. Here we need two full shots and a good iron to reach the green,
which lies close to the Pow burn--the same burn that we have been
trying to avoid on the links of Prestwick.
So far we have been going forward and hugging the shore, but now we
turn inland to the left to play 'Tel-el-Kebir,' where is a narrow
sloping green with a face in front of it. We may hope for our first
three at the next, a short hole, that takes us back again towards the
Pow burn; and then, turning inland once more, we come to the 'Monk,'
with an exciting tee-shot over a big hill.
At Sandhills is another blind tee-shot over the sand dunes, followed by
an accurate second into a green that lies close to the railway line. On
the hill straight above the line is 'Sandhills,' the house from which
the hole takes its name and the home of a family of many golfers, of
whom one in particular, Mr. 'Nander' Robertson, is a very fine dashing
player when he has a mind to it. The eleventh is a new hole, when we
sidle along the railway; and then we drive out to sea once more at the
'Fox.' The covert which once gave this hole its name, has now been cut
down, but it is good that the name should remain, though the foxes are
gone. With a drive and a full iron we should reach the green here, but
the prevailing wind blows off the sea, and may very easily elongate the
iron into a cleek-shot. 'Burmah,' an ordinary four hole, and 'Alton,'
which should be a three, give us a little breathing space before
'Crosbie' and the 'Well,' which are both long holes, when we must rest
content with fives--a thing which, in these days of long driving, we
are a little apt to resent as a grievance. At the seventeenth one good
full shot should take us on to a plateau green, tricky and difficult of
access; the hole is called, somewhat singularly, the 'Rabbit,' but we
must not be too hopeful of a low score in reliance of the cricketing
significance of the word. A more or less commonplace four at the home
hole brings a very good course to an end.
The turf is softer than that of Prestwick, and the ball runs but little
after it pitches, so that, although Prestwick is possibly the longer
by the chain measure, there is in the matter of playing length little
difference between the two.
CHAPTER XIII.
IRELAND.
There is no country where the golfers are more keen or more hospitable
than in Ireland, and the friendliness with which the inhabitants
welcome their guests is only equalled by the earnestness with which
they endeavour, and very often successfully, to beat them. It is a
fine country for a golfing holiday, and this fact is now so thoroughly
appreciated that Englishmen and Scotsmen pour over to the Irish courses
every summer, and more especially to the particular course on which
the Irish Championship is being played for. At this meeting may be had
fierce golf, tempered by a proper measure of cheerfulness, on which
those who have played in it--sad to say I am not one of them--are never
weary of descanting. My own very delightful experience of Irish golf
has come to me chiefly as one of two marauding bands, the English Bar
and the Oxford and Cambridge Golfing Society, who periodically batten
upon the hospitality of Dublin.
The chief Dublin courses are two--Dollymount and Portmarnock--though it
would be unfair to omit some mention of Malahide--'the Island'--where
there is golf to be had, which may legitimately be called sporting in
the best sense of the word. Dollymount and Portmarnock are both also
island courses in the sense that we have to cross the water to get to
them. At Portmarnock this perilous feat is performed by car or boat,
according as the tide is low or high; but at Dollymount there is a long
causeway, and the worst possible sailor need not blench at the prospect.
I have a very great affection for =Dollymount=. I have played some
very strenuous and delightful matches there, and, save possibly at St.
Andrews, I feel as if I had been in more bunkers at Dollymount than on
any other course. This seems to be _the_ feature of Dollymount, the
amount of low cunning, if I may so term it, with which the bunkers are
placed. In writing that sentence I find that I have been guilty of a
criminal pun without meaning it, because Mr. Barcroft, the secretary,
is a great disciple of Mr. John Low in the matter of bunkering. He has
saturated his mind in that most charming and instructive of books,
_Concerning Golf_, and then he has gone forth valiantly with his
shovel. The result is that there are many pitfalls, which are worthy of
Mr. Low's definition of what a bunker should be. "Bunkers, if they be
good bunkers and bunkers of strong character, refuse to be disregarded,
and insist on asserting themselves; they do not mind being avoided, but
they decline to be ignored." There are some fine, towering hills at
Dollymount, but it is not these that make the player's knees to knock
together; it is the little pots of innocuous aspect that most
emphatically decline to be ignored.
[Illustration: DOLLYMOUNT
_The first tee, looking towards Howth_]
A first glance at the course produces much the same effect on the mind
as does Hoylake. It looks a little flat, and bare, and even dull; we
do not see where the holes are and whence and whither the players
are going and what they are trying to do. As at Hoylake, the first
impression is utterly wrong, as we soon discover when we begin to play,
more especially if we have been maltreated by the Irish Channel on the
previous evening. The first thing that strikes us is that we ought
to be beginning with a nice symmetrical row of fours, and that ugly
disfiguring fives will insist on creeping in. At the first we really
ought to do a four, but still there are a variety of things to prevent
such a consummation: a pot-bunker to catch a pulled tee-shot, a bunker
in the right-hand side of the green, and a considerable possibility
of taking three putts on a green which is as good as it is usually
fast and difficult. At the second the trouble is of a bolder and, in
a sense, a more commonplace character, a large and ravenous bunker,
which must be carried with a good second shot, and then turning back
towards the club again we play a hole where almost meticulous accuracy
is necessary if we are to get the perfect four, wherein the fourth
shot consists of our opponent saying, contrary to the recommendations
of the Rules of Golf Committee, "That will do." Crooked driving may be
definitely punished by pot-bunkers, or, if we are lucky, it may only
entail the most difficult of approach shots, in which we may have to
try a pitch of really desperate difficulty over flanking bunkers. Only
if we drive with absolute accuracy we shall be properly rewarded by
being able to play a pitch and run shot straight--or let us hope so at
least--up to the flag.
There is to be no pitching or running at the fourth--not at any rate
with the second shot--but a fine, high carrying stroke with a wooden
club to take us home on to a green that lies well protected by hollows
and hummocks; a really good four this time, and we must do a man's
work to get it. These first four holes always run together in my mind
partly because of their uniform excellence and partly because we now
branch off into somewhat different country, a country of bents and big
sandhills. The fifth is chiefly notable for what I may call a typical
Sandwich shot from the tee, and then comes a region that I know only
by sight, for there have lately been some new holes made there. It is
a region of rolling dunes and bristling bents; I am told the new holes
are long and difficult, with narrow and exacting greens, and knowing
the country and Mr. Barcroft I can well believe it.
Of the other holes on the way out I must spare a special word for the
eighth--it was old seventh--one of the very best 'round-the-corner'
holes that I know. The whole face of nature bids us slice from the tee,
and the wind generally encourages us to do so, and yet we must pull
resolutely out to the left in order to open up the way for our approach
shot on to a green that nestles among the hills. If we fail to pull,
or if we are tempted to use the wind too freely, we may have a very
long drive on which to plume ourselves, but shall have an impossible
second, and we shall take five to the hole.
It seems to me that the first few holes on the way home are not so
good as the outgoing ones, save that there is a fine tee-shot to be
played at thirteen, between the marsh on the one side and a series of
pot-bunkers on the other. The sixteenth, however, is good, with the
green lying in a long, narrow hollow; and the seventeenth is really
very good indeed. It is long and narrow and all the more frightening
because there is hardly anything in the way on the straight line to the
hole. There are bunkers at the side, however, and more alarming still
is the fact that we are always playing along a hog's back, with marsh
to the right and rough to the left. Finally, there is a green not very
fiercely guarded, but full of terribly difficult curves and angles,
wherein the holing of the very shortest putt is a matter for much
prayerful 'borrowing.' I cannot help regretting the old eighteenth,
which has now disappeared. That tee-shot, with the chance of breaking a
club-house window, tempted one very strongly to the taking of a cleek,
and that is a testimonial in itself. However, on high days and holidays
the general public congregated there so freely that the death of one of
them was probably only a matter of time, and so the hole had to go. The
old seventeenth now promoted to being the home hole is a very fine hole
if there is much adverse wind, for then there is a fine long second to
be played over the corner of a territory, which is out of bounds, and
those shots in which the ball has to leave the limits of the course for
part of its career are never pleasant, when it comes to a pinch.
The last few holes are all quite sufficiently unpleasant, when the
struggle is a keen one; worst of all, of course, when a lead that once
seemed thoroughly satisfactory is fast vanishing away. I have vivid
recollections of two such matches--one with Mr. Cairnes and one with
Mr. Lionel Munn--and I can still very well remember two odious, curly,
short putts on the seventeenth green--it was the sixteenth then. Heaven
be praised! the ball on both occasions trickled in somehow, but I still
shudder at the recollection.
I also feel just a little uncomfortable at the thought of the last
occasion on which I crossed over from Portmarnock to the mainland. When
the tide is low, one can drive across an expanse of soft, wet sand
while clinging ungracefully but tenaciously to an outside car, but on
this occasion the tide was not low, and we had to make the journey by
sailing boat. A snowstorm was raging intermittently, and the wind blew
piercing, cold and strong, reminding one with its every blast that on
the morrow all the horrors of the Irish Channel had to be faced. On
such a day the causeway at Dollymount is infinitely preferable; but, on
the other hand, when the weather is pleasant, the necessity for this
crossing in miniature gives to Portmarnock a fascination of its own.
There is an element of romance in playing golf even on a temporarily
sea-girt island.
[Illustration: PORTMARNOCK (1)
_The second shot at the eighteenth hole_]
Perhaps the outstanding beauty of =Portmarnock= lies in its putting
greens. They are good and true, which is a merit given to many
greens, and they are very fast without being untrue, which is given
only to a few, and is a rare and shining virtue. For a worse than
indifferent putter to praise keen greens shows him to be a nobly
impartial critic, for there is nothing that finds out so quickly the
bad putter, that sifts so surely the wheat from the chaff. Most of
us fare passably well as long as we are on a slow and velvety lawn,
but with increased keenness comes an enormously increased difficulty
in hitting freely and firmly--those two cardinal points of putting
skill--and behold! we are entirely undone.
I have never seen the Portmarnock greens when they are presumably at
their keenest, namely, in hot, dry, summer weather, but even on a raw
day at Easter time they demand that the ball should be soothed rather
than hit towards the hole. I have read somewhere a story of a famous
Scottish professional who declared that on his first visit to the
course he arrived on the first green in two perfect shots, and had
ultimately to hole a four-yard putt for a seven.
To praise the greens too vehemently is very often to cast an undeserved
slur on the rest of the course; it is rather like saying of a man
"He is a good short-game player," for then one is always understood
to mean that in regard to his driving he is one of the great family
of scufflers. I therefore make all haste to say that Portmarnock
does not live by greens alone. Far from it: it is a good, long, bold
course, with plenty of natural features, and, moreover, it has of late
years been considerably lengthened and otherwise altered for the
better. Before the alterations the golf was not, I say it with fear
and trembling, particularly difficult. So long as a man played with a
reasonable degree of accuracy and did not lose himself on the greens,
he might expect to do quite a good score. Now, however, the course has
been 'bolstered up,' if I may say so, in its weakest parts, and in the
region of the sixth and seventh holes the golf is much longer and more
difficult than it used to be.
It is rather characteristic of Portmarnock that at some of the best
holes the player's course lies along the bottom of gullies that wind
their way between hills on either side. Of such is the fourth hole--a
really fine hole--where the gully bends as it goes, so that there is
plenty to be gained by hugging the left-hand side with a judicious
but not a doting affection. The hole is of a good length, needing at
least two shots, and possibly infinitely more, for on both sides of
the little gully are sandy slopes well covered with tenacious bents.
Before, however, we get to the fourth there is a very distinctly
good tee-shot to be played to the third along a strath of turf that
stretches, narrow and hog's-backed, between hills on the one side and
bare sand upon the other.
[Illustration: PORTMARNOCK (2)
_Coming home_]
The fifth, again, has a fine tee-shot over a big bunker, which should
see us safely at the bottom of another gorge between the hills, with a
good second shot to follow. Then follow some of the newer holes amid
a broken country of smaller undulations, and then we come back to the
club-house again for the ninth. The tenth has a very interesting
and difficult second on to a green that lies in a little nook or angle
guarded by a turf wall; and the twelfth is a short hole that may be
deserving of criticism, but appeals to the affections of many. Need
I add that the shot is a blind one, but it is a fascinating pitch,
nevertheless, into a crater green with its concomitant admixture of
hopes and fears. After this the golf, though good, is for a while less
attractive. The land is flatter, and though the holes are long, there
is just that depressing suggestion of an agricultural character such as
we have in some of the holes beyond the wall at Prestwick. The course
ends splendidly, however, with a really fine hole, its green narrow,
well guarded, and difficult to stay upon. The turf throughout is a joy
alike to walk or play on, and altogether Portmarnock is a place to
leave with a very genuine regret, even in a snowstorm.
On leaving Dublin we may betake ourselves southward to the very
charming course of =Lahinch= in County Clare, where, if the holes are
rather unduly blind and put a great premium on local knowledge, the
golf is yet intensely enjoyable. The greatest compliment I have heard
paid to Lahinch came from a very fine amateur golfer, who told me that
it might not be the best golf in the world, but was the golf he liked
best to play. Lest this may be attributed to patriotic prejudice, I may
add that he was an Englishman born and bred. Delightful though Lahinch
is, however, it is rather to the north that we must go to get a variety
of good courses. In Donegal there is Buncrana, on Lough Swilly, a
really good nine-hole course which has nurtured the best player than
has yet come out of Ireland, Mr. Lionel Munn: there is also Rosapenna,
and there is Portsalon, which lies at the far end of the lough, a truly
lovely spot, with a thoroughly entertaining golf course. I must put in
one word for the quaintest and most charming little nine-hole course
at Macamish, also on the shores of Lough Swilly, which can be reached
by sailing across from Buncrana or by driving from anywhere else an
interminable number of Irish miles over a rocky make-shift of a road.
It is the most purely amateur course in the world, and also, if more
than two or three are gathered together upon it, the most perilous.
The holes cross and recross each other and everybody aims at his own
particular hole in a light-hearted, pic-nicking frame of mind, and
perfectly regardless of the lives of others. For pure, unadulterated
fun I have yet to see the equal of this course.
However, we must leave the frivolities of Macamish and betake ourselves
for some serious golf to Portrush, in County Antrim. =Portrush= has
many claims to fame, and amongst others is that of having produced a
wonderful race of lady golfers. Considering how keen they are, and
how good are the courses on which they play, the men of Ireland,
albeit there have been some fine players amongst them, have not so far
particularly distinguished themselves, but as regards ladies' golf,
Ireland was for a time supreme. Miss Rhona Adair and Miss May Hezlet
(they are both married now, but the old names sound the more familiar)
used to win the championship one after the other with monotonous
regularity, and close on their heels flocked further and innumerable
members of the Hezlet family.
[Illustration: PORTRUSH
_Coming to the seventeenth green_]
Whether there are any subtle qualities about the course which naturally
tend to the development of female champions I cannot say; I at least
have not discovered them. At any rate it is a very delightful place
in which to play golf, for persons of either sex. The air is so fine
that the temptation to play three rounds is very hard to overcome,
while I may quote, solely on the authority of a friend, this further
testimonial to it, that it has the unique property of enabling one to
drink a bottle of champagne every night and feel the better for it.
Portrush stands on a rocky promontory that juts out into the Atlantic,
and, if I may allude to such trivialities, the scenery of the coast is
wonderfully striking. On the east are the White Rocks, tall limestone
cliffs that lead to Dunluce Castle and the headlands of the Giant's
Causeway. On the west are the hills of Inishowen, beyond which lie
Portsalon and Buncrana and the links of Donegal. It is, however, a
remarkable thing that though golf courses are often in lovely places it
frequently so happens that the beauties of the landscape are to be seen
from anywhere except the course. Who, for instance, ever heard of a
self-respecting sea-side course where one could get a view of the sea!
One may hear it perhaps roaring or murmuring, according to its mood,
beyond an interminable row of sandhills, but save with the artificial
aid of a high tee one never dreams of seeing it. So it is at Portrush,
in accordance with the best traditions, and only two or three times
in the course of the round does a view of the surrounding beauties
threaten our mental concentration on the matter in hand.
Again, according to the most approved Scottish traditions the course
begins, as one may say, in the middle of the town. Thence during its
outward journey it skirts the sandhills on the landward side, and one
or two of the holes are just a little inland in character and not
particularly entertaining. The homeward journey is, on the whole,
the more fascinating, and from the eleventh hole onwards there are
a succession of hills and valleys of a truly heroic character. If,
however, there are one or two dullish holes on the way out, the course
begins splendidly with as good a two-shot hole as can well be; too
good a hole almost to play so early before the match has had time to
develop. A ridge running diagonally and away towards the left calls
for a fine tee-shot if it is to be cleared in the straight line, while
a sandy hill covers half the green on the right-hand side, and repays
the man who has hit a good tee-shot by punishing his opponent who has
not. This first used to be followed by another equally good, if not
better, two-shot hole, but the old second and third have, as before
mentioned, now been run into one, and there are many who say that
one more has been added to that long list of crimes which have been
committed through the desire for length. The fifth is another good hole
on the way out--two reasonable shots for a reasonable hitter to a green
that lies just on the top of a high, swelling slope: one of those holes
where for some inscrutable reason it is very easy to be either too far
or too short, and very difficult to hit off the distance exactly.
Thence I will make so bold as to skip to the big hills and dales of the
last few holes, which are cast, as I have said, in a distinctly heroic
mould. There is the thirteenth, which is a fine one-shot hole, although
it is a blind; the fourteenth, the famous 'Long Valley,' which was once
knee-deep in soft moss, and is now as hard as St. Andrews in the middle
of a hot, dry August; and the fifteenth and sixteenth, where in each
case a real straight, well-hit drive reaps its due reward.
All these are excellent, but a tear may legitimately be shed over the
old seventeenth, which, like the old second, had to disappear through
the desire for length and the subsequent reconstruction. This old
seventeenth was a splendid one-shot hole, for with this one shot the
ball had to be struck over one of the hugest of bunkers on to a green
of saucer shape. So alarming was this bunker that it is recorded that
two gentlemen of oriental origin, who were playing a match for a stake
of ten pounds, were simultaneously smitten with terror and remorse when
they saw it, that, although the match stood all square at the time,
so they resolved to reduce the wager to the sum of one shilling. It
was surely wrong to do away with a hole that could produce a result so
wholly admirable.
Another very beautiful place with a very delightful course is
=Newcastle= in County Down. Newcastle has lately been altered and
extended, and has consequently risen to a position of greater dignity
among golf courses. It was always looked upon with great affection by
all who knew it, but this was a love a little akin to that which the
frequenters of Burnham used to feel for the many high hills and blind
holes of the Somersetshire course. Everybody liked Newcastle, but they
spoke of it as "a wonderful natural course," or "the best fun in the
world"--expressions which rather begged the question as to its exact
golfing merits. That is all changed, however, and to-day Newcastle
is as long as anyone can desire: indeed, in places almost too long.
I remember meeting a very distinguished player on his return from
Newcastle soon after the alterations had been made, when there was
still practically no run in the new ground, and he solemnly averred
that he had never played so many brassey shots in all his life.
The course lies among the sandhills under the shadow of Slieve
Donard, the tallest of the Mourne Mountains, and so close to the sea
that we may reach the shore with our first tee-shot. No amount of
reconstruction has done away with the original character of the course;
we still have many big carries to compass with the tee-shot, and a good
deal more pitching than running to do with our iron clubs. However,
we must not run away with the idea that we shall have done all that
is demanded of us when we have hit a ball hard and high over a hill
somewhere or other into the distance. Trouble lurks at the sides as
well as in the centre of the fairway, and for all the boldness and
bigness of the hazards it is really a straight rather than a long
driver's course. The greens are good, and sometimes inclined to be
slow; they lie, moreover, in a good many instances, in those pleasing
little hollows which are the most adroit flatterers in the whole world
of golf. The turf on the outward journey is of the ideal sea-side kind,
but on the way home we fancy that we detect something more of an inland
character about it.
[Illustration: NEWCASTLE
_The ninth carry and the club-house_]
Flitting, like arbitrary bees, from one hole to another, we must
pause a moment over the first, which is one of the best of the long
holes, and has an admirable tee-shot. So has the second, while there
is an approach shot of much interest and delicacy to be played at the
third. The sixth again is a memorable hole, of no great length, but
considerable difficulty. We need but one shot to go from the tee to the
high plateau green where the hole is, but the sides of the plateau fall
very quickly away, and there must be plenty of stop on the ball or it
will inevitably overrun its mark.
On the way home, again, there is another arresting hole, the sixteenth.
We mount a high tee on one side of an enormous bunker, and must hit a
sheer carry of goodness knows how many yards on to a green also perched
high in the air upon the further side. It is a distinctly heroic
hole; and the seventeenth and eighteenth, in trying to live up to its
standard, have grown so long as to be just a little bit dull. They are,
however, I believe, to be lopped and pruned of their superfluous yards,
and should then make a fine finish. It should be added for those who
like to play their golf in comfort, that the first tee, the tenth tee,
the club-house and the hotel lie, all four of them, close together; not
that Newcastle really needs these adventitious advantages, for it is
one of the very pleasantest places for golf in all Ireland.
CHAPTER XIV.
WALES.
There are several very excellent courses in Wales, but I am quite
determined to put Aberdovey first--not that I make for it any claim
that it is the best, not even on the strength of its alphabetical
pre-eminence, but because it is the course that my soul loves best of
all the courses in the world. Every golfer has a course for which he
feels some such blind and unreasoning affection. When he is going to
this his golfing home he packs up his clubs with a peculiar delight
and care; he anxiously counts the diminishing number of stations that
divide him from it, and finally steps out on the platform, as excited
as a schoolboy home for the holidays, to be claimed by his own familiar
caddie. A golfer can only have one course towards which he feels quite
in this way, and my one is =Aberdovey=.
I can just faintly remember the beginning of golf at Aberdovey in
the early eighties. Already rival legends have clustered round that
beginning, but the true legend says that the founder was Colonel Ruck,
who, having played some golf at Formby, borrowed nine flower pots from
a lady in the village and cut nine holes on the marsh to put them in.
The first five holes as the visitor knows them now were then but a
wilderness. There was no 'Cader' and no 'Pulpit'; we had a long weary
walk along the road to the level-crossing, and began with the present
sixth hole, which was then guarded by a fine clump of gorse, long
since cut to pieces by merciless niblicks. Then came a period when we
began and ended on the piece of land which now serves Aberdovey as a
cricket ground, and there was a wonderful last hole in which we drove
off from the present eighteenth tee, carried with our second shot
the railway line and a mighty pile of sleepers, and holed out on the
present cricket pitch. Finally, at the time of the first meeting at
Easter, 1893, the course had taken something like the shape which it
has kept ever since, save for the quite recent introduction of the new
home-coming holes. I have in a dusty old album a group taken at that
first meeting by a local photographer. I cannot count more than ten
players, nor do I believe that there were any more. They stand ranged
with their caddies in front of a bunker and a turf wall most curiously
and artistically castellated, while behind is a motley gathering of
local spectators arrayed in bowler hats. That humble little meeting,
with its ten players, was considered a vast success, though I cannot
think that the play was very good, since I remember winning the scratch
medal with 100, and the best actual score returned during the three
days was but three strokes lower. Aberdovey has made great strides
since those days. The golf is very good, and will soon, I suppose,
be made better, although, if one only loves a course well enough,
even the most obvious improvement feels to be almost a desecration.
Moreover, the place has a charm which brings the same people back to it
year after year with a wonderful constancy of affection.
[Illustration: ABERDOVEY
_The village from the second tee_]
Aberdovey stands at the mouth of the Dovey Estuary, and the links are
on a long, narrow strip of turf stretching between the sandhills and
the shore on the one side, and a range of hills on the other. The
sandhills are many and imposing, but nature has not disposed them with
a very kindly hand. There is no turf on the far side of them--nothing
but the shore and the waves--and so, although they make a most
effective series of lateral bunkers, it is not possible to dodge in
and out amongst them in quite the same fascinating way as at Prestwick
or Sandwich. Moreover, till quite lately we could not use them at all
in the home-coming nine holes, owing to the difficulty of properly
draining some of the marshy ground at their foot. That difficulty has
now, however, been done away with, at least as regards the summer, and
there are some fine new holes, still a little rough, but improving
rapidly, where we have to play with something more than ordinary
accuracy between a never-ending range of hills on the right, and thick,
unyielding clumps of rushes on the left.
As I said before, the course lies on a long narrow strip of golfing
country, with the result that the holes have to go straight out and
home again, and we have often either to struggle all the way out
against the wind, and then be blown homewards, or _vice versa_. This
is, of course, a disadvantage, since the holes in one direction are
apt to become too long, and those in the other too short. I remember
that on one occasion there was a Bogey competition, and a terribly
strong wind, which blew dead ahead all the way out; it blew so hard
that no human creature could hope to reach any of the first nine greens
in anything like the right number of shots, and I believe the man who
ultimately won the competition was eight down to Bogey at the turn.
There is probably no course that has its first tee so near the station.
We tee up within the shortest possible stone's throw of the platform,
and drive over a waste of sand and stones, that is still fairly
formidable, though neither so sandy or so stony as it was in the days
when it served as an impromptu football ground for the villagers. A
good drive lands us in a country of those grassy hummocks, which are a
conspicuous feature of the course, and a firm iron shot over a bunker
should get us a four. The pitch, however, has to be an accurate one,
and this applies to the approaching throughout, since the greens are
decidedly small and there is no great chance of recovering by a very
long putt laid dead. To do a low score at Aberdovey a man must either
be keeping his iron shots ruled rigidly on the pin, or he must lay
a number of little chip shots from off the edge of the green within
holing distance; this, moreover, is not a particularly easy thing to
do, since the greens are full of natural dells and hillocks. The second
and third holes have very similar tee-shots; there are several small
sandhills to carry, and severe punishment for a pulled shot. The
approach to the third hole is a particularly attractive one, since the
green is almost entirely circled round with small hills, and there is
only a very narrow opening through which to play; against the wind the
ball may be pitched up boldly enough, but down wind there is nothing
for it but a running shot, and that a very accurate one.
The fourth hole is known to all Aberdoveyites as 'Cader,' and is as
good a specimen of the blind short hole as is to be found. There is a
big hill in front of the tee, shored up with black timbers, and the
green has the transcendent merit for this type of hole that it is not
too big. There is no vast meadow of turf to play on to, like the Maiden
green at Sandwich, and the ball has to do something more than carry the
hill-top. Cader used to be particularly memorable a few years back,
when the small caddies, stationed on the top to watch the fate of the
ball, used to cry out "On the green," with a curiously melancholy,
piping note. Now alas! they have become more sophisticated, and merely
signal with the hand in the orthodox manner. It is but a poor exchange,
and we sadly miss the old familiar cry.
After Cader we must take a short walk along a winding path among the
hills which takes us on to the 'Pulpit' tee, where we stand high above
all the world, with the sea on our left and the whole course stretching
away before us in the distance. The tee-shot is by no means one of the
most difficult, but certainly one of the pleasantest that I know, and
gives a full measure of sensual delight. Then we must leave the hills
for a while and strike inland to play some flatter holes that wind
their way by the side of the railway. The sixth and seventh are both
very fine two-shot holes, and then at the long eighth we meet with a
characteristic Aberdovey hazard, familiarly and affectionately known
as the 'leeks.' They are in fact irises, but they have always been the
'leeks' since Peter Paxton christened them so, under the impression
that the national emblem must naturally be found upon a Welsh course.
Paxton is not the only man who has found sad trouble in the leeks, for
they are wonderfully thick and retentive, and the wise man pulls very
wide away to the left at the eighth and ninth, and does not try to run
things at all fine.
So far we have gone practically straight ahead, but at the tenth we
turn sharply to the left and prepare for our homeward journey. This
tenth is a truly beautiful short hole: in length about a cleek or long
iron shot on a still day, with a really horrible bunker, long, deep,
and wide, stretching before the green and throwing out a sandy tentacle
far to the right to catch a long sliced shot. It is really a better
hole than Cader, in that we can see far more clearly where we are
going, and, when the wind is against us and we must needs take a wooden
club, there is no finer one-shot hole in the world.
Now we come to the parting of the ways, where the new holes break away
to the right towards the sandhills, and the old holes are on the flat
ground, over which we journeyed outwards. There is among the old holes
a beautiful thirteenth, with a narrow little green beset on every
side, so that the tee-shot had to be accurate in order to make the
second possible. That hole we shall miss sadly, but otherwise the new
holes are far the better: long raking holes between hills and rushes
that give the course just the extra touch of length and difficulty that
it wanted. We emerge on to the old ground again to play the 'Crater,' a
hole that we are fond of for old sake's sake, though it is in reality a
bad and fluky one, as 'punchbowl' holes generally are. The sixteenth,
however, is a really good one, with a horribly narrow tee-shot between
the railway on the left and a wilderness of sandhills on the right; it
is capable of ruining any score, and no man is a medal winner till he
has played that shot--with a cleek, if he is prudent--and sees the ball
lying safely on the turf. The seventeenth has a fine tee-shot from one
of the spurs of Cader and another punchbowl green, which follows all
too soon after the fifteenth, and then we finish with a fine, long,
free-hitting hole over clumps of rushes.
Thus ends the course, and I know it so well that I find it very hard to
criticize or appraise at its just worth. One thing may safely be said,
that it provides a fine school for iron club shots, whether short or
long. There are a great many holes--perhaps too many--which need a long
iron shot for the second, and these shots have to be played from every
variety of stance and lie on to greens that are good, but uniformly
small. There is, too, no better course for teaching the little chip or
run up, play it how you will, from the confines of the green--the shot
which professionals play so wonderfully well, and many amateurs play so
badly.
The tee-shots are good, without being very remarkable, and there is
perhaps a lack of full brassey shots to be lashed right up to the hole;
that, however, is a criticism to which, in these days of mighty hitting
and rubber-cored balls, many courses are open. Yet when the wind is
adverse, and the iron shots become wooden club shots, the comparative
smallness of the greens makes them wooden club shots of the very best,
and I ask for nothing pleasanter to look back upon than a string of
fours going out against a wind at Aberdovey.
I have tried as a rule to avoid invidious comparisons between course
and course, but it may be pardonable to make a short and wholly
friendly comparison between Aberdovey and Harlech, because, although
near neighbours, they have such very different characteristics. At
Aberdovey the holes go straight out and home again; at Harlech they
tack backwards and forwards, this way and that. In the same way the
Aberdovey sandhills run in one unbroken line, while at Harlech they
are more scattered, and can therefore be used in more different ways.
Aberdovey is a course of small, undulating greens, while Harlech has
larger and flatter ones. Finally, the charms of Aberdovey grow on one
slowly, but also, I think, surely, while Harlech fascinates at the
first glance.
[Illustration: HARLECH
_Looking across the fourth hole_]
Small wonder if the visitor falls in love with =Harlech= at first
sight, for no golf course in the world has a more splendid background
than the old castle, which stands at the top of a sheer precipice of
rock looking down over the links. Wherever we go it is never out of
sight, and though we may glance away at the hills with Snowdon in
the distance, we always come back to the castle with a never-satisfied
longing. It is so obviously splendid that we might imagine that we
should in time grow tired of it, but we never do.
The holes at Harlech that have always left the most vivid impression
on my mind, perhaps because, owing to the rather leisurely Cambrian
trains, I have not been there half as often as I should like, are those
at the beginning and end of the course. Those in the middle, possibly
because they have been altered at times or because they are not so
markedly characteristic, are more blurred in the memory. Yet it is, I
hasten to add, that all the golf is good, very good indeed, and fit to
test the very best of players.
At the first hole there is a kind of ditch and bank to carry, a little
severe when the player is stiff and ill at ease with his clubs, and a
particularly excellent green. Then we turn almost directly back and
get rather nearer to the first of those stone walls, which are so
common an object in the landscape in North Wales, and quite one of the
distinctive features of Harlech. At the third we are fighting with
stone walls all the way, and a most effective hazard they make. This
third is a really fine hole, for there is a whole stroke to be gained
by a drive that is long and bold and clings as near to the wall as
safety permits. The first shot has to be played parallel to the wall,
or rather to two neighbouring walls, between which lies a sandy cart
track full of unspeakable ruts. Then at the second we have to make up
our minds whether or not to go for the green, which lies beyond the
two walls, and is further guarded by yet a third wall, which runs at
right angles to the other two. If we have not gone far enough, or if
we have kept too much to the left, there is nothing for it but to play
another shot straight along, and so home with a pitch for our third.
If, however, we have driven far and sure, we may take the brassey,
carrying all three walls at one fell swoop, and accomplish a four.
Moreover, it is a four that is a real joy to do. It is none of your
'Bogey fours,' for the miserable old gentleman would never attempt that
dashing second, but would proceed pawkily and by stages, pitching on
to the green with his third, and getting a commonplace and respectable
five. Thereby he will often win the hole from us who have died a
glorious death in the sandy road, but at least we shall have tried to
quit ourselves like men.
The fourth is a one-shot hole, which likewise calls for hard hitting.
It is never short, and against the wind a really big shot is needed to
carry the bunker, which is made the taller and more frightening by a
timbered face. The green is flat and easy, and if we can reach it there
should be no excuse for more than two putts.
The holes that come after this have undergone a good many alterations
at different times. They are good sound golf every one of them, but
it is when we turn our faces homeward toward the castle, and are
approaching the almost equally famous 'Castle' bunker, that Harlech
becomes most memorable.
At this fourteenth, if we are fighting a fierce match, we feel that
the crucial time is coming, for we are now going to plunge into the
heart of the hills for five eminently critical and exciting holes. The
first of them entails a shot over the 'Castle' bunker, and never was
a bunker that more thoroughly belied its true character by a mild and
harmless exterior. All that we see in front of us is a grassy bank,
with a guiding flag fluttering on the top; and, ignorance being here
most emphatically bliss, we may hit a fine shot as straight as an arrow
and be congratulated on reaching the green. It is only when we have
climbed to the top of that innocent-looking bank that we shall see what
we have escaped, a perfect Sahara of sand that stretches nearly to the
edge of the green. This green, too, is guarded by a series of knolls
and hummocks--there are perhaps rather too many of them--and we may
have been very nearly straight and yet be confronted with an extremely
awkward little pitch. The hole is a terribly blind one: rather too
blind to be classed among the greatest of one-shot holes, but it is
impossible not to be swayed by our emotions rather than by pure reason,
and our emotions tell us that it is a glorious hole.
There is another hill to carry at the fifteenth, while the sixteenth
has a green of almost infinite possibilities in the matter of tortuous
and tricky putts. There is nothing tricky about the seventeenth,
however--nothing but straight, honest hitting, and the chance of a
clean stroke to be gained by it. The green lies in a hollow at the foot
of the hills, and in front of it is a bunker and a most uncompromising
stone wall. Two really fine shots will carry the wall; let the tee-shot
be a little less than good and we must needs play short and be content
with a five: that is the entire story of the hole, and a very fine
seventeenth hole it is. The eighteenth is mild by comparison, but a
good straight tee-shot is needed to reach the green, which is well
guarded by pot-bunkers.
Harlech is rich in the possession of one of the best secretaries in
the world, Mr. More, and also in one of the most popular of handicap
competitions, the Harlech Town Bowl. The fields that enter for this
tournament every August are really enormous, and to win it is no mean
feat. In this same tournament Mr. Hilton, when he was at his very best,
played some of the most extraordinary golf of his life. I am almost
afraid to say how heavily he was penalized, but I am nearly sure that
he owed eight. I know that in one round he had to give a third to Mr.
Palmer, who, if not quite as good as he is now, was at any rate a very
good player, and, what is more, played well in this particular match.
However, Mr. Hilton beat him after a great struggle, fought his way
into the final, and there trampled on an unfortunate and probably
awe-stricken adversary. He was laying his brassey shots within a few
feet of the hole, and generally making light of difficulties which any
visitor to Harlech will find are not to be treated lightly.
To get from North to South Wales is not so easy a matter as might be
supposed. It entails much waiting at junctions, which have been placed
in some of the most melancholy and deserted spots on the face of the
earth. However, once arrived in South Wales, there is plenty of golf
to be had, some of it very good. There is a very fine course near
Llanelly, Ashburnham by name, which, alas! I have never seen; and there
is Southerndown, in Glamorganshire, which is growing fast into fame.
Near Cardiff there is Radyr and Penarth, the latter having a truly
glorious view over the British Channel, but being sometimes afflicted
with muddiness. Then, also in Glamorgan, there are the very excellent
links of Porthcawl.
Links they may worthily be called, for the golf at Porthcawl is the
genuine thing--the sea in sight all the time, and the most noble
bunkers. True to its national character, the course also boasts of
stone walls. Of my visits to Porthcawl I retain two particularly vivid
recollections. The first is of a hole that has long since disappeared,
since that part of the ground is no more played over. As I remember it,
it was by far the longest hole in the world, Blackheath not excepted.
Perhaps it has become stretched in my memory, or possibly the reason
is that I played the hole against a most prodigious driver, Mr. Edmund
Spencer, who was one of the hopes of Hoylake in these days, but has
now most reprehensibly given up the game. I do not think there were
many hazards in the way; one was simply told to aim at a white rock
in the dim distance, and to keep on hitting till one got there. To
make matters worse, it was the very first hole, so that one was nearly
prostrate before the round had really begun.
My other recollection of a more cheerful nature is of a hole which
was far easier to get into than any other hole in the world. The hole
was not in itself by any means a simple one, involving a struggle
with a stone wall and a long shot up a hill, but the green-keeper had
selected a delightful spot for the hole at the bottom of a hollow with
shelving sides. Once arrived within approaching distance of the hole,
one had only to play the ball some few yards beyond the hole and it
would topple gently back, not merely to lie stone dead, but actually
to go in. The Welsh Championship meeting was going on at the time, and
all sorts of wonders were recorded. One competitor holed a full brassey
shot, and threes were as common as blackberries. The putting was
becoming almost farcical, when one day there came a day of reckoning.
I remember being left with a putt of some eight or ten yards, and,
banging the ball past the hole with a light and careless heart, fully
prepared to see it come trickling in. Alas! the green was a little
wet that morning, and the ball stuck firmly on the opposite slope and
refused to come back. I can still see that ball perched upon the bank
and grinning at me. "Sold again" it was obviously and impudently saying.
[Illustration: PORTHCAWL
_Going to the eighteenth green_]
At Porthcawl, as it is now, there are some very good holes. Of the
two-shot holes, the fourth is excellent, and has a formidable second
shot over a big and boarded bunker. The sixth is very similar, both
as regards quality and quantity. Then there is the eleventh, where a
really long, raking second over a big bunker should entail a four, and
the utter destruction of Bogey and other cautious players who duly
play short with their second shots. Another good one is the ninth, with
a long carry up a hill on to a crater green--a green which I suspect
of having been the scene of the putting exploits that I have narrated,
though my memory is a little vague on this point.
Of the single-shot holes there is a fine long carry--the shot has to
be practically all carry--on to the third green. The sixteenth is
another that is good, and the course ends with an exceedingly difficult
single-shot hole. There is in the minds of many a prejudice against
finishing with a short hole, and it is certainly an ending which is
not to be found on many good courses. Nevertheless, if the shot be
only difficult enough, it is a little hard to see why a short hole
should not make a really fine finish. There is an unpleasant feeling of
finality about the tee-shot at any short hole, which never allows us to
feel wholly comfortable, and certainly 'Hades' or the 'Maiden' would be
infinitely more alarming if they came at the end of the round instead
of in the earlier part of the round, when no mistake is irreparable.
From the spectator's point of view, it is desirable to get the player
to the eighteenth tee in the last state of nervous exhaustion, and
a tricky, difficult one-shot hole accomplishes that rather inhuman
purpose to perfection.
Not far from Porthcawl--as the aeroplane flies--is another excellent
course, Southerndown. It is perched high aloft and looks down on
Porthcawl, amid the many other glories of a beautiful view. You may
look out far over the sea, or again over a wide stretch of the best
kind of English--or rather Welsh--landscape. The breezes blow cool and
fresh here, and on a still and stifling August day, when the golfer is
almost too limp to crawl round Porthcawl, he will be wise to refresh
himself by a round on the heights of =Southerndown=.
In one way the course is rather singular. Being high in the air and not
down on the level of the shore, it has many of the characteristics of
the typical downland courses. It has their big rolling slopes and deep
gullies, but it has not, curiously to relate, the typical down turf.
The winds of centuries have blown so much sand up from the seashore
that they have practically succeeded in imbuing the turf of the downs
with a second sandy nature. The sand does not go very deep down;
indeed, if you dig far down you come to uncompromising rock; but this,
so to speak, veneer of sand has a great deal to do with making the
course the good and pleasing one that it is. An example of this blowing
of the sand is to be seen in a huge sandhill, which forms a prominent
feature of the landscape in the direction of Porthcawl. It has all
appearance of a natural phenomenon, since out of the sand, where by
all the laws of Nature there should be no trees, a fine clump of trees
nevertheless persist in growing. The explanation apparently is that the
trees grew first and the sand was blown afterwards in such quantities
as entirely to obliterate the soil underneath. That at least is the
story as it is told to me.
[Illustration: SOUTHERNDOWN
_Looking to the last green_]
The course, as I said, has some of the features of downland
courses, but there is one that it mercifully lacks, namely, those
detestable greens which are cut out of the sides of steep hills, and so
have a back wall on one side and a sheer drop on the other. The greens
at Southerndown are for the most part thoroughly natural in character,
and their slopes and undulations are not unduly exaggerated. Another
point wherein the course entirely differs from others on the downs
is to be found in the presence of bracken, which traps the wandering
driver at the sides of the course, and, in the summer at any rate,
punishes him with commendable severity.
Three good two-shot holes begin the course: the second and third being
particularly testing, so that three fours is perhaps a little too
good to expect. Then at the fourth comes our first chance of a three.
This is a good and difficult short hole, and deserves some particular
description. It is 170 yards long, and the ground slopes fairly
briskly from right to left. That being so, one's first instinct would
be to play well out to the right and trust to the ball scrambling and
kicking down on to the green. This simple little plan has, however,
been frustrated by the making of the bunker of the right-hand side.
Therefore, we must not push the ball to the right for fear of the
bunker, and we must clearly not pull it to the left, lest it run down
a steep place away from the green and into troublous country into the
bargain. There is nothing for it but to hit the ball quite straight,
or, if we want to make the game unnecessarily difficult for ourselves,
here is a good chance for trying a 'master-shot.'
Another short hole on the way out, though hardly such a good one, is
the eighth; we have to play a typical downland hole, jumping from
hillside to hillside over a gully. It is one of those shots that is
entirely perplexing to the stranger, who finds the distance almost
impossible to judge correctly. At one time the green lay far down at
the bottom of the very deepest part of the gully, but that had to be
abandoned. To get the ball down was easy enough, but to get it up the
hill again was, on a hot day, too tremendous a task, and so the climb
has now been made less exhausting by playing only across the shallower
part of the ravine. The ninth is a fine two-shotter, where we must hit
a high ball from the tee in order to carry a big bunker cut out of the
face of a hill; and then, after two comparatively uneventful holes, we
come to a third short hole, the twelfth. It is only 130 yards long, but
it is not in the least easy for all that. The green is of the island
type, surrounded by a generous profusion of bunkers, and the fact
that there is usually a fine high wind blowing makes the iron shot a
sufficiently difficult one, short though it be.
The thirteenth, a 'dog-leg' hole, is one of the best on the course,
where we have to play carefully for position from the tee and must
avoid some heavy bracken and thick long grass. The green, too, is well
guarded and full of excellent undulations. The fifteenth brings us
right up to the club-house, and there is some temptation to curtail the
round and fall a victim to lunch, especially as the sixteenth takes in
the length of two full drives up a hill and directly away from the
club. At the seventeenth we get a most lovely view and a four for the
hole, if we play two good shots, and then an easy drive and pitch down
a flattering hill brings us safely home.
INDEX.
Aberdovey, 143, 231-238.
Adair, Miss R., 224.
'Ailsa,' 213.
'Alps,' The, 16, 56, 205, 209.
'Alton,' 213.
Anderson, Mr. Peter, 206.
Andrew, Mr. Robert, 210.
'Apollyon,' 66.
Ashburnham, 243.
Ashdown Forest, 62, 64-67.
Ashford Manor, 27.
Auchterlonie, Mr. Laurence, 170.
Balfour, Mr. A. J., 192, 195.
Balfour-Melville, Mr. Leslie, 170.
Ball, Mr. John, 111, 116, 118, 170, 205, 210.
'Bank,' The, 96.
Barassie, 202.
Barcroft, Mr., 216, 218.
Barnton, 199-201.
Barry, 178.
'Beardies,' The, 173.
Bembridge, 89-92.
'Bent Hills,' 96.
Birkdale, 123.
Blackheath, 1, 38-40.
Blackwell, Mr. Edward, 188.
Bleakdown, 2.
Blundellsands, 123.
Bogside, 202.
Braid, James, 5, 10, 15, 36, 37, 56, 71, 100, 106, 168, 174, 175,
177, 211, 212.
Bramshot, 2.
Bramston, Mr. J. A. T., 72.
Brancaster, 97, 102-6, 107.
'Briars,' The, 116.
Brighton, 62, 98.
Broadstone, 83-87.
Broughty Ferry, 178.
Bude, 77-79.
Buncrana, 223, 225.
Bunkers, Mr. Low on, 216.
'Bunker's Hill,' 94, 95.
Burhill, 5.
'Burmah,' 213.
Burnham, 79-83, 228.
Byfleet, 2.
'Cader,' 232, 235, 236.
Caesar's Camp, 42.
Cairnes, Mr., 220.
Camber, 59.
Cantelupe Club, 67.
'Cardinal,' The, 205, 206.
'Cardinal's Back,' The, 209.
'Care Kemp,' 193, 195.
Carnoustie, 178-180.
Cassiobury Park, 31-33.
'Castle,' The, 240, 241.
'Chalk Pit,' The, 63.
Cheshire and Lancashire Courses, 111-129.
Chingford, 36.
Chorleywood, 34.
Clark, Robert, 199.
Coke, Chief Justice, 28.
Coldham Common, 151.
Colt, Mr. H. S., 8, 11, 157.
Combe Wood, 2.
'Cop,' The, 116.
'Corsets,' The, 49.
Coton, 153.
'Country Club,' 27.
Cowley, 147.
Crail, 177.
'Crater,' 143, 237.
Crawford, 194.
Cromer, 97, 98-100.
Croome, Mr. A. C. M., 130-147.
'Crosbie,' 214.
Cunningham, Mr. James, 171.
Deal, 6, 44, 50-53.
'Death or Glory,' 35.
De Zoete, Mr Herman, 186.
'Dog-legged' holes, 54, 62, 75, 81, 110, 137, 248.
Dollymount, 216-220.
Dormy House, 59, 102.
'Dowie,' The, 116, 117.
'Dun,' 113, 118.
Duncan, George, 174.
Dunn, Tom, 1, 87.
'Dunure,' 212.
East Anglian Courses, 93-110.
East Lothian and Edinburgh Courses, 181-201.
Eastbourne, 62-64, 65, 98.
'Eastward Ho!' 94, 96.
Eden, The, 173.
Edinburgh and East Lothian Courses, 181-201.
Edinburgh Burgess Golfing Society, 199.
Edzell, 178.
Elie, 177.
Ellis, Mr. Humphrey, 72.
Elysian Fields, 171, 173.
Evans, Mr. A. J., 150.
Felixstowe, 93-97.
Ferguson, Bob, 93, 94, 197, 211.
Fergusson, Mr. Mure, 36, 93.
Fernie, Willy, 93, 197, 211.
'Field,' 113, 118.
Fife and Forfarshire Courses, 165-180.
Fixby, 134-138.
'Flagstaff,' The, 179.
Forman's, Mrs. 198.
Formby, 119-121.
Fowler, Mr. Herbert, 11, 17, 72, 75, 84, 137.
'Fox,' The, 212, 213.
Frilford Heath, 147, 148-151.
Gailes, 202.
Ganton, 130-134.
'Gas Works,' The, 198.
'Gate,' The, 94, 95.
'Gate' Hole, N. Berwick, 195.
Gaudin, 129.
'Gibraltar,' 109, 110.
Glennie, Mr. Geo. 68.
'Goose-dubs,' The, 208.
Graham, Mr. John, 111.
'Graves,' The, 197.
'Greenan,' 212.
Greig, Mr. W., 170.
Gullane, 181, 182, 202.
'Hades,' 48, 245.
Hale, 77.
Hambro, Mr. Angus, 10, 191.
-- Mr. Eric, 157.
-- Mr. Harold, 188.
Handsworth, 144.
Harewood Downs, 34.
Harlech, 106, 238-242.
Hay, Sir Robert, 165.
'Hell,' 173.
Henderson, Mr. W. A., 191.
Herd, Alexander, 138, 211.
Hesketh, 123.
Hezlet, Miss M., 224.
High Hole, 171.
'Hilbre,' The, 117.
Hilton, Mr. H. H., 71, 72, 111, 183, 184, 207, 242.
'Himalayas,' The, 204, 207.
Hindhead, 88.
Hinksey, 147, 148.
'Hole o' Cross,' 171, 173.
Hollinwell, 138-141.
Honourable Company of Edinburgh, 183.
Hoylake, 101, 104, 111-118, 124, 149, 157, 169, 205, 217.
Huddersfield, 134.
Hunstanton, 97, 106-8.
Hunter, Mr. Mansfield, 157.
Huntercombe, 5, 86, 198.
Hutchinson, Mr. Horace, 41, 63, 64, 68, 72, 91, 114, 156, 183, 192,
204.
Irish Courses, 215-30.
'Island,' The, 179.
'Island' Hole, 66.
Janion, Mr., 100, 118.
'Jockey's Burn,' 179.
Johnny Ball's 'Gap,' 118.
'Johnny Low,' 20.
Jones, Rowland, 92.
Jubilee Course, St. Andrews, 175.
Kashmir Cup, 72.
Kent and Sussex Courses, 44-67.
Kersal Moor, 127.
Kilspindie, 182.
Kingsdown, 50.
Kirkaldy, Hugh, 155.
Lahinch, 223.
Laidlay, Mr., 191, 206.
'Lake,' 113, 118.
Lassen, Mr. E. A., 124.
Leasowe, 123.
Lees, Peter, 25.
Lelant, 77.
Le Touquet, 109.
Leven, 177.
Littlestone, 44, 56-58.
London Courses, 1-43.
'Long' Hole, 115.
'Long Valley,' 227.
Low, Mr. John, 72, 90, 114, 157, 176, 177, 216.
Lundin Links, 177.
Lytham and St. Anne's, 123-126.
Macamish, 224.
Machrihanish, 156.
'Maiden,' The, 13, 48, 103, 131, 235, 245.
'Majuba,' 83.
'Maponite,' 64.
Martin, 22.
Massy, Arnaud, 173.
Maude, Mr. F. W., 57.
Maxwell, Mr. Robert, 188, 189, 191.
Meyrick Park, 87.
Mid-Surrey, 22, 23-27.
Mildenhall, 147.
Mitcham Common, 42-3.
Mitchell family, 67.
Monifieth, 178.
'Monk,' The, 212, 213.
Montmorency, Mr. de, 61.
Montrose, 178.
More, Mr., 242.
'Morley's Grave,' 94.
Morris, Tom, 211.
Morris, Tom, jr., 171, 211.
Mrs. Forman's, 198.
Muirfield, 100, 149, 183-190, 191, 210.
Munn, Mr. L., 220, 224.
Musselburgh, 183, 196-199, 200.
National Golf Course, Long Island, U. S. A., 194.
New Gullane, 181.
New Luffness, 181, 182.
New Romney, 55.
Newcastle, co. Down, 227-230.
Newquay, 77.
_News of the World_ Tournament, 10, 13, 26.
North Berwick, 130, 183, 185, 190-196.
Northwood, 34-36.
'Nursery Maid,' Hole, 77.
Old Deer Park, Richmond, 23, 24.
'Old Kent Road,' 82.
Old Manchester Golf Club, 127.
Oxford and Cambridge Golf, 147-157.
Oxford and Cambridge Golfing Society, 71, 124, 126, 147, 197.
Palmer, Mr. C. A., 144
'Pandy,' 198.
'Paradise,' 63.
Park, Willy, 4, 29, 130, 155, 198, 209.
Parkstone, 87.
Paton, Mr. Stuart, 19.
Paxton, Peter, 236.
'Pebble Ridge,' The, 73.
Penarth, 243.
'Perfection,' 194.
'Point,' The, 94, 95, 96, 97.
Point Garry, 192, 195, 196.
Porthcawl, 243-245.
Portmarnock, 216, 220, 223.
Portrush, 224-227.
Portsalon, 224, 225.
Prestwick, 51, 56, 176, 203-10, 214, 233.
Prince's, 44, 50, 53-55, 179.
'Principal's Nose,' The, 19, 173.
'Pulpit,' 143, 232, 235.
Purves, Mr. James, 200, 201.
Queen's Park, 87-89.
'Rabbit,' The, 214.
Radley, 147, 148.
Radyr, 243.
Ray, Edward, 10, 131, 133.
'Redan,' The, 194, 195.
'Ridge,' The, 96.
Robertson, Allan, 105.
Robertson, Mr. 'Nander,' 213.
Robson, Fred., 26.
Rolland, Douglas, 155, 177.
Romford, 36-38.
Rosapenna, 224.
'Royal,' 113, 118.
Royal Liverpool Club, 71.
Royal North Devon Club, _see_ Westward Ho!
Royal St George's, _see_ Sandwich.
Royston, 153.
Rusack's Hotel, 175.
'Rushes,' The, 117.
Ruck, Colonel, 231.
Rye, 44, 57, 58-62.
'Sahara,' The, 13, 47.
St. Andrews, 4, 13, 19, 52, 59, 61, 68, 69, 85, 104, 105, 112, 149,
165-180, 196, 203, 211, 212, 216, 227.
St. Anne's, 123-126, 212.
St. Augustine's, 50.
St. Cuthbert, 202.
St. Enodoc, 77.
St. Nicholas, 202.
'Sandhills,' 212, 213.
Sandwell Park, 141-144.
Sandwich, 13, 18, 44-49, 50, 53, 55, 103, 106, 192, 204, 218, 233.
Sandy Lodge, 34.
'Sandy Parlour,' The, 53, 131.
Sayers, Bernard, 191.
Seaford, 62.
'Sea-He'therick,' 205, 208.
'Sea Hole,' Rye, 60.
'Sea View' 110.
'Shelly' Bunker, The, 165, 172.
Sheringham, 97, 100-1.
Simpson, Jack, 177.
Skegness, 108-110.
Smith, Willy, of Mexico, 167.
'South America,' 178.
Southerndown, 243, 246-249.
Southport, 123.
'Spectacles,' The, 179.
Spencer, Mr. Edmund, 243.
'Spion Kop,' 109.
'Station-master's Garden,' The, 16.
Stoke Park, 27.
Stoke Poges, 27-31.
Stonham, 29.
'Strath,' 165, 172.
Stuart, Mr. Alexander, 156.
Sudbrook Park, 27.
'Suez Canal,' 49, 53.
Sunningdale, 2, 4-11, 17, 185.
'Sutherland,' 165.
'Switch-back' Hole, 9.
Tait, Mr. F. G., 205, 210.
Taylor, J. H., 68, 189, 212.
'Tel-el-Kebir,' 213.
Toogoods, The, 92.
'Tower,' The, 94-96.
Trafford Park, 126-129.
Trees, 23, 31.
Troon, 202, 211-214.
'Turnberry,' 213.
'Valley,' The, 178.
Vardon, Harry, 130, 131, 189, 207, 210, 212.
Vardon, Tom, 9.
Wales, Courses of, 231-249.
'Walkinshaw's Grave,' 173.
Wallasey, 81, 121-123.
Walton Heath, 2, 4, 11-17, 85, 133, 185.
'Well,' The, 214.
Welsh, Mr., 156.
Welsh Courses, 231-249.
West of Scotland Courses, 202-214.
Westward Ho! 68-77, 132.
Whins, 34.
White, Jack, 9, 155.
Whitecross, Mr., 191.
Wimbledon, 1, 41-42.
Woking, 1, 2, 17-22, 132, 133.
Worlington, 147, 153-157.
Worplesdon, 2, 61, 132, 185, 198.
Yorkshire and the Midlands Courses, 130-146.
GLASGOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
BY ROBERT MACLEHOSK AND CO. LTD.
Transcriber's Note:
On p. 243, the author comments on Penarth having "a glorious view over
the British Channel". The "Bristol Channel" was no doubt intended, but
"British" is retained.
The following table describes any textual issues encountered, and their
resolution. Where the errors are most likely to be those of the printer,
they have been corrected. Where compound words appear both with and
without hyphens in mid-line, they have been retained. Should the
hyphenation occur on on a line break, the most frequent variant is used.
p. 60 straightforward shot to play[,/.] Corrected.
p. 69 has [is/it] not lately been remodelled Corrected.
p. 85 The bunkering [in/is] something of a patchwork Corrected.
p. 95 I will bold[l]y assert Added.
p. 143 the zeal of the i[n]conoclast Removed.
p. 160 at any[ ]rate Added.
p. 168 he will find plent[l]y more Removed.
p. 243 My other recollection[s] ... is of a.... Removed.
p. 254 'Switch-back['] Hole Added.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Golf Courses of the British Isles" ***
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