Fifty Years of Golf Part 3

All this while the only golfing playground at Oxford was still the cricket grounds on Cowley Marsh, and still there was no play at all in the summer term, when the cricketers occupied the ground. But a few years later some of us were asked to go up and take part in an informal kind of Past _v._ Present match, more or less to celebrate the fact of the Club taking occupation of new ground in Mr. Murrell's park, on Headington Hill. Andy Stuart and I went up, among others. We found the course rather pleasant, in its inland way, with hedges for the chief hazards and undulating gradients that formed rather a blessed change from the sheer flatness of Cowley Marsh. And what the match was that we played, or its result, I do not in the least remember, but one remark of a distinguished lady in the gallery I very well recollect--for it was retailed with great joy to Andy and me by one who overheard it--"Those men," she said, indicating him and me, "are very nicely dressed--for professionals."

That is the kind of compliment one really does appreciate, because it is of the sort that is so rarely paid. I speak for myself, only, in this: Andy Stuart was always most careful in his attire, so as to merit such appreciation frequently, and doubtless may have received it often. Of course it would be impossible even for a lady of the kindest heart and most flattering tongue to pay such an encomium now. The professionals are by far the most smartly clad of all golfers. It was not so much so then.

I do not know whether I have given the impression that the golf was very good at Oxford. It is rather a mistaken impression, if I have conveyed it. On the other hand, Oxford University was not a bad place for the golfer. It had the large merit that its vacations were long. Then I would go home to Wellesbourne and play golf from there, at Westward Ho!

all day and every day, and it was during my time at Oxford that there came to Wellesbourne as "odd boy"--that is to say, to do certain odd jobs in the morning--a little, singularly white-flaxen-haired boy from Northam village. It may seem surprising that the coming of such a little boy to Wellesbourne should be worthy of a place in this grave page of golfing history, and I do not know exactly what the duties of an "odd boy" are, but you may be very certain that he performed them very efficiently when I tell you that his name was John Henry Taylor. He used to do these odd jobs, whatever they were, like a champion, I am very sure, and then he used to go down to the links and carry my clubs for me whenever I was at home. The pay of a caddie at Westward Ho! in those days was not exorbitant--sixpence a round, and a hard walking and sandy round too, of eighteen holes; and they had to walk down a mile and a half from Northam village to begin to earn it. But all wages were low and all living was cheap in North Devon at that date and the boys were glad to earn it, particularly with a bottle of ginger beer generally thrown in of the royal bounty of the employer. On occasions, and for valid consideration, they would develop a spirit of independence which made money seem no object, as in the instance, which has become historic, of the small boy throwing down, in the middle of the round, the clubs of his master, a gallant general officer, and making his way without a word across the Burrows. "Where are you going, boy?" the irate man of war shouted after him. "I be goin' 'ome," came the firm reply.

"There be goose for dinner."

CHAPTER IX

GOLFING PILGRIMAGES

It is a singular thing that not a seaside course was designed, or opened for play, in the decade from 1870 to 1880. I, at least, cannot remember nor can find record of any such inst.i.tution. In 1880 the Felixstowe Club was started. I have a vivid recollection of my first visit to it, for I tried the wrong line of approach, going to Harwich, which left the whole of the river estuary to be crossed before Felixstowe could be reached.

It was late in the evening, the ferry had stopped running, but I got myself and portmanteau and clubs put across in a row-boat. The mariner landed me on the far side in the gathering dusk, got into his boat and commenced to row away home again. "But," I said, as he moved off, "how far is it to the hotel?" "About two miles," he answered, resting on his oars. "But how am I to get there?" I asked. "I don't know," he said; and then rowed away. I sat in the fast increasing gloom on my portmanteau, and wondered. Then I saw the light of a providentially sent farm cart in the distance. I hailed it. The carter was a kindly man, and in due time I arrived at the Bath Hotel. Felixstowe course was of nine holes only, if memory is a true servant, at that date, and the club-house was that Martello tower which even now comes in as something of a hazard. So this was the third of the English seaside courses. In 1882 four more were added, Minehead, Hayling Island, Bembridge and Great Yarmouth.

Therefore, by the time I left Oxford there was already that beginning of the chain of links around the island which has now been riveted so close. Coming South, down the West coast of England, there was Hoylake, a far cry from there brought you to Minehead, then Westward Ho! thence round the Land's End and the South Coast till you came to Hayling Island and Bembridge, then Felixstowe and up the East Coast to Great Yarmouth.

The golfing plot is thickening.

Bembridge had always a charming little course, though crossing like a cat's cradle in places and more dangerous than most battles when there were many players. I gave dire offence there by writing that after my first tee shot, which was heavily pulled on to the seash.o.r.e, the ball was at length found inside a dead and derelict dog--emphatically a bad lie! But there was not more than the licence almost permissible taken in this account: the ball actually was very near a dead dog; and why should there be offence in the suggestion? It was not implied that it was part of the duty of the Bembridge green committee to scavenge the seash.o.r.e.

However, the dog has been washed away now, and, I hope, the offence also.

But the chain of links did not stop, northward, at Great Yarmouth. As long ago as 1869 a nine-hole course had been made and a Club started at Alnmouth, only a little South of the Border. I believe it will surprise most people to know that there was this girdle of links thus early--in 1882--although the gaps were long and many.

An Oxford education is all very well, but it does considerably interfere with the whole-souled attention that a man ought to apply to golf.

Nevertheless it has the aforesaid merit that the vacations give leisure for many a golfing pilgrimage, and it was in course of these pilgrimages that I made acquaintance with most of the English sea-links, as they came into being. It was in 1879 that I paid my first visit to Hoylake.

Several of us went there from Westward Ho! to the autumn meeting. There was much going to and fro between golfers of Westward Ho! and Hoylake, and indeed of Scotland too, at this time. So much was this the case that in arranging the dates of the spring and autumn meetings we used always to have a care that they did not clash, and it was usually contrived that the Hoylake meetings should fall sandwich-wise between those of St.

Andrews and of Westward Ho! so that Scottish golfers might work South and take Hoylake on their way to Westward Ho! The golfing population of the day was not a very large one, but it was very friendly. All, with few exceptions, knew each other. Moreover, partly because they were a small brotherhood, there was more _camaraderie_ amongst them than there is now, and a term in common use then "the Freemasonry among golfers"

had its meaning. At that time if you met a man in the train or waiting at a station with golf clubs, you would be sure to say to him, "I see you are a golfer," and he would respond with a glad pleasure, saying, "Yes--are you?" and you would begin comparing notes. To meet a fellow golfer was something a.n.a.logous to the meeting between Stanley and Doctor Livingstone in the heart of Africa. It was a date at which such white men as golfers were rare.

Going to Hoylake, therefore, we were sure of finding ourselves among friends. I think there were at that time, at Hoylake, in pilgrimage from Westward Ho! besides myself, Captain Ashton, a sound golfer of the second cla.s.s, Major Hopkins, the golfing artist, Captain Logan White, most amusing and caustic-tongued of companions. The native people showed us no little kindness. Only a short while before I had taken part in a match at Westward Ho! got up by the never-failing keenness of Captain Molesworth--he and I against John Dunn, a famous man at Hoylake (there is a hole named after him there to-day) and Jack Morris. We had won that match handsomely, but there was no sc.r.a.p of ill-feeling. Then there was Kennard there--Colonel Hegan Kennard--ever most courteous, and arrayed with beautiful neatness; a player of great neatness besides, and winner of many scratch medals. There were also three generations of John Ball at the Royal Hotel, and already the youngest of the team was of great local repute and of such skill that his father would often issue the proud challenge to the company a.s.sembled in the bar-parlour of the hotel: "I and my son'll play any two." But those two were not very eager in coming forward. The rooms of the Royal Liverpool Club were in those days under the same roof as the Royal Hotel itself and the course started with what is now the eighteenth hole. Argyll Robertson was there, from Scotland, a first-cla.s.s golfer, and surely the finest advertis.e.m.e.nt of his own profession, which was that of oculist, that ever was seen, for he was a singularly handsome man altogether, but the most striking feature of his fine looks was an eye more eagle-like than I ever saw in any other human face. There was also another little Scot of very different aspect, short, rather round-about with sloping shoulders like a champagne bottle, yet a terrible golfer and a thrice-champion--Jamie Anderson. Him I knew, he had been down to Westward Ho! taking part against Jamie Allan in a campaign of revenge for that defeat which the latter had put upon Scotland (for we looked on Jamie Allan's golf as wholly English) and on the man whom Scotland had previously pitted against him, Bob Kirk. Jamie Anderson, playing him on the same four greens of St. Andrews, Prestwick, Hoylake and Westward Ho!

had defeated him--not heavily, but sufficiently. But Jamie Allan at that time was not playing as he had played against Bob Kirk. It was a fine game enough, but it had not the same force and sting. I had even enjoyed the honour of playing a foursome at Westward Ho! with Jamie Anderson, and had wrung from him a compliment which pleased me more than a little, for at one hole I had pitched up a long iron shot with some cut on it, and a happy chance decreed that the ball should stop about six inches from the hole. All Jamie said to me at the moment was "Ah--that's the sort that saves a lot of trouble;" but afterwards he had counselled me, "You should come up to St. Andrews: they shots of yours that pitch sae deid are just what's wanted there."

I quote that saying princ.i.p.ally for the sake of my own greater glory, but secondarily because it is noteworthy as a comment on the St. Andrews of that day, for if there is a quality of St. Andrews now which is eminent above others it is that which puts value not on the pitched, but on the running up approach. It may be noted that this was all before the introduction of the mas.h.i.+e and while the use of the niblick for the approach was still looked on as a _tour de force_. We did all that work with a broad bladed iron.

Jamie Anderson walked round with Ashton and myself when we played for the Kennard medal at Hoylake on that occasion. I played fairly well and won it with a score which was then good--I am not sure it did not make a compet.i.tion record--of 83. Jamie was very friendly, though he did not say much all the way round, but I was told that afterwards he had remarked to somebody about my play that "It's a fine game, but it's no gowf." I think I know what he meant by the dubious compliment. In those youthful days my great idea was to hit as hard as ever I was able: the result was numerous mistakes which were sometimes sufficiently redeemed, when fortune favoured, by recoveries. Jamie Anderson's theory of the game was very different. He never put anything like his full power into the shot, but he was so desperately accurate that Mr. Everard has it on the record that the little man (and he was anything rather than a boaster) once told him that he had played ninety holes successively without a shot that was not played as he intended it to be played. Quite certainly, if that and that only was golf, it was not golf that I played.

CHAPTER X

WESTWARD HO! HOYLAKE AND ST. ANDREWS IN THE EARLY EIGHTIES

In 1882 I left Oxford, with the intention of reading for the Bar, and actually did go so far as to eat a number of Inner Temple dinners at the extraordinary hour of six o'clock. I do not think they are quite digested yet. I had been suffering from a series of severe headaches all through my last year at Oxford and perhaps the dinners put a finis.h.i.+ng touch on them. At all events the doctors advised me to give up all reading for a time--an instruction which I have observed rather faithfully up to the present. Their very wise counsel gave me all the more time for golf--the rules were not quite so many and headachy then and a man could play golf, or so it seems to me, with a lighter heart.

Perhaps it is only because the heart had less weight of years to carry on it then, but it strikes me that the game and its players had more humour. I do not mean that they were more witty; but greatly because they were so immensely serious and solemn and earnest they were more amusing. Their tempers were more tempestuous, their language was infinitely more picturesque. At Westward Ho! I am inclined to think that there were some with special gifts of the kind. We had many old Indian officers, with livers a little touched, and manners acquired in a course of years of dealing with the mild Hindoo, and because the golf ball would not obey their wishes with the same docility as the obedient Oriental, they addressed it with many strange British words which I delighted to hear and yet stranger words in Hindustani, which I much regretted not to understand. But a sight that has been seen at Westward Ho! is that of a gallant Colonel stripping himself to the state in which Nature gave him to an admiring world, picking his way daintily with unshod feet over the great boulders of the Pebble Ridge, and when he came to the sea, wading out as far as possible, and hurling forth, one after the other, beyond the line of the furthest breakers the whole set of his offending golf clubs. That the waves and the tide were sure to bring them in again, to the delight of the salvaging caddies, made no matter to him. From him they were gone for ever and his soul was at rest.

Of course he bought a new set on the morrow, so it was all good for trade and Johnny Allan. It also afforded a splendid spectacle to an admiring gallery. Really we have lost much at Westward Ho! even if we have gained much, by the bringing of the Clubhouse across the common. It was delightful, after golf or between the rounds, to bathe off that Ridge, or sit on it and watch the sea tumbling.

There were more "characters" in the golfing world in those days. Who is there now like the Chieftain at Hoylake or like Mr. Wolfe-Murray and many more at St. Andrews? But Hoylake, more than the others, had its humorists not so strictly of the unconscious type. There was great fun in the musical evenings in the Bar Parlour of the Royal Hotel--bar parlour sounds a little ominous, but I never remember seeing a man in it who could not talk straight nor walk straight out of it--and some of the golfers had great voices. Tom Potter, well-known with the Free Foresters' Cricket Club, was honorary-secretary of the Club, then and for many a year, and he was a fine singer. There was "Pendulum" Brown, singing about "The Farmer's Boy," and ever so many more; and these evenings were the occasions for great match-making. Mr. Brown, nicknamed Pendulum, by reason of something clocklike about his swing, on one night, unlighted, so far as I remember, by a moon, but with some stars in the sky, backed himself to play the five holes round the field, then and there, in an average, I believe it was, of fives. Whatever the bet was, I know he won it easily, and also that he did those five holes in several strokes less than he took for them in the compet.i.tion, played in broad daylight, the next day. The only stipulation he made with the gallery that turned out to see this nocturnal performance was that they should be silent for a moment after he drove off, so that he might hear the ball pitch. The night was very still and he seemed to get the place of the ball with wonderful precision by the sound of its fall. I know that his putting was extraordinarily good--far better than an averagely good putter's daylight putting.

There were many mirth-makers at Hoylake, besides the song-makers. Of this number were Alec Sinclair, with a fund of anecdote that never failed and was very seldom guilty of vain repet.i.tion; George Dunlop, bubbling over with wit and always ready to make a good after-dinner speech, and a crowd more.

At St. Andrews the fun of the fair was less hilarious; there was less noise about it; but there were some witty and many amusing people. My first host there, Logan White, was the very best of company in himself; there were George Young and Mr. Hodges of a most sardonic humour, and very many with that sly and dry sense of fun which the Scot calls specifically "pawky."

Also, there was Old Tom Morris--"born in the purple of equable temper and courtesy," as Lord Moncrieffe, I think it is, well describes him. It would be a mistake to picture Old Tom as a witty man, or even as a clever man, unless a tact and temper that never fail be the very best kind of cleverness. But we do not find any very witty or pungent sayings attributed to Old Tom. It was his rich nature, with its perfect kindliness and charity, that made him so lovable, and such a valuable possession to St. Andrews in reconciling the golfing interests, which ran with counter currents, of the Town and of the Club. As a peacemaker he had no equal. I, deeming myself wronged by some infringement of golfing rule or etiquette on part of another, might go to Tom--would go to him as a matter of natural course--and pour out my woes. He would listen with a charming smile in his old eyes under their bus.h.i.+ly arching grey eye-brows, and when I had done he would take his pipe out of his mouth and say, "Ou aye." That was all, but it was enough to convince of his perfect sympathy. Then, from the big window of the club, or from Logan White's house on the links, I would see that wicked man, my late opponent, go up to the old man--for the scene was always that eighteenth green, just before Tom's house, where he would usually stand and smoke his old clay pipe after his two daily rounds were played--and there I would see exactly the same smile of sympathy for my opponent's recounting of his woes likewise, and at the end the pipe being withdrawn from the mouth; and I might know, though I might not hear, that precisely the same two words were being given for his sufficient consolation likewise--"Ou aye." So we both went away from him greatly comforted and in a disposition to make it all up again before the sun should go down on our wrath.

Old Tom was good enough to give me his friends.h.i.+p from the very first moment I came to St. Andrews, prompted thereto, as I think, largely by a comment that one or two of the old stagers made to him that my style was not unlike young Tommy's. I am sure that even at that time this must have been a comparison not quite just to that great young player of old, for although it is more than likely that I have cherished very many illusions in regard to my golf, I am quite sure that I have never been so deluded as to deem my style either good or graceful. But the criticism was endorsed by Tom and gave me a place in his heart. There was another point in which he gave me praise (he could give no higher) for a likeness to his talented lost son:--"Ye're like Tammie--ye'll tak'

a' as much pains over a short putt as a long yin." Anything that had to do with a short putt touched the dear old man in a very sensitive place, for he was the worst short putter, for a great golfer, that ever was. It is known that Mr. Wolfe-Murray once addressed a letter to him, when on a visit to Prestwick, "The Misser of Short Putts, Prestwick," and the postman carried it straight to Tom. His own way was, in his sheer terror of missing the putt, to get done with it as quickly as possible, and often he would just go up to the ball and hit it in a nervous hurry, without looking at the line at all, so that he hardly gave himself a ghost of a chance of holing. He had a way, too, of dragging back the ball, with a quick movement of his putter, the moment it had missed the hole, to try the putt over again, and this habit had such possession of him, that I am quite certain I have often seen him s.n.a.t.c.h the ball back long before it came to the hole at all, and even, sometimes, when it would have gone in had he not done so. Once, but once only, I saw him beat his putter on the ground so hard after a missed putt that the shaft broke. I think it must have been sprung before, for he did not really give it such a very severe strain, but of course that was quite overlooked, and the joke served for many a day to tease the old man with--as "Tom, what is this I hear? Getting in such a rage that you're breaking all your clubs! Awful!" The poor old man would smile despairingly and generally solace himself with some quotation from his dearly loved poet Burns. "Scotland wi' a' thy faults I lo'e thee still"

was his most favourite text for consolation.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Old Tom."]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Douglas Rolland and Archie Simpson (driving.)

(Archie was younger brother of the Jack Simpson mentioned in this chapter.)]

CHAPTER XI

FIRST DAYS AT ST. ANDREWS

I have always had, and always shall retain, a very lively and grateful recollection of the kindness with which all the local members of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club and others at St. Andrews received me when I first went up there, a Sa.s.senach among the Scots. I was very fortunate in my host, Logan White, and found there also others that I had known in the South, Harry Everard, most keen of golfers and best of all judges of the game, Victor Brooke, most eager, most charming and most Irish of Irishmen, and many others who had been old friends of my boyhood at Westward Ho! Besides, there were many who retained a memory and an affection for my Uncle Fred, whose locker, with his name upon it, was still in the big room. I took possession of it as a heritage, though he still had many good years of life left in him at that date. I well remember, too, that at one of the first dinner parties I went to at St.

Andrews, at the most hospitable house of Captain "Dan" Stewart, Mr.

Wolfe-Murray greeted me warmly, saying that he had known my grandfather who, as he affirmed, was in the habit of declaring that he had "the best left leg in Bond Street, and," added Mr. Wolfe-Murray, "I think my left leg is better than my right." He was gloriously arrayed in the dining dress of the Queen's Archers, which permitted a display of legs; but this story of a day when legs were so draped as to be critically admired in Bond Street took the mind's eye back a long way. The point of my grandfather's claim, however, as to the beauty of his left leg, was that the symmetry of the right had been somewhat spoilt by a French musket ball.

And the kindliness that I met with, from many who had not any of these special links, was not to be forgotten--Mr. Gilbert Mitch.e.l.l Innes, Mr.

Balfour, the father of Leslie--now Balfour-Melville--Mr. Whyte-Melville, to whose surname the former succeeded, and very many more. Gilbert Innes was still, I think, the best golfer of all those named, and David Lamb and Jim Blackwell were about the best of the actual residents. Leslie Balfour came over from Edinburgh and I had many good matches with him.

But on my first arrival there I found that a match had already been made for me by Victor Brooke, that I should play Tom Kidd, at that moment thought to be playing the best game of all the professionals at St.

Andrews, receiving the odds of a third from him. Tom Kidd had been champion some ten years before, but, champion or no, I had no idea at that time of day of being beaten by anybody, professional or otherwise, at odds of a third. Besides, I had come rather fresh from a small triumph at Westward Ho! Somebody had made up a little purse for the three Allan brothers to play for, and in order to make an even number I had been asked to play with one of them. The prize was for the lowest score, and I was a proud man when I came in with the best score of the four. We had no formal definition of an amateur in those days, but in any case I should not have wished to take the prize, which, indeed, I do not suppose would have been given me. But this small victory put me into fairly good conceit with myself in respect of this match against poor Tom Kidd, who was certainly not as good a golfer as Jamie Allan; but the truth is that the Scots were rather sceptical in those days about the golfing ability of any Southerner. It was not very long before that young Tommy had given Arthur Molesworth a third and a beating, as recorded in a previous chapter. How that could have come about I could not, nor can now, conceive; but at any rate Tom Kidd was not Tommy Morris. I remember that I went out the first nine holes in 42. It does not sound very grand nowadays, but it was respectable then, and sufficiently good to work up Tom Kidd into elaborate explanations as to how impossible it was to give a third to a score of that kind. When a man gets into that explanatory mood it is generally all over with him; and of course it was not to be thought, if I could play anything of a game at all, that he could give such odds. I won an easy and inglorious victory, which would not be worth mentioning except to show the estimate likely to be made at St. Andrews at that time of the probable form of an English amateur in comparison with that of one of the native professionals.

Just about that time, that is to say 1883, Old Tom, who had been playing for him very poorly, began to enjoy a delightful Indian summer of his golf, which gave the old man and all the many who were fond of him immense delight. I do not mean to say that I suppose him to have played anything like the game of his best days. I could generally beat him, but he would always play me level and liked to gamble heavily.

Generally there was a dozen of b.a.l.l.s on the match, and a dozen on the score, for we used to keep the scores too, and often a dozen that I didn't, and another dozen that he didn't, go round in some set figure--say 87. A dozen b.a.l.l.s meant only a dozen s.h.i.+llings, in those days, but the number he was owing me soon arrived at huge figures.

However, I used to knock the debt off his playing fee, and he was perfectly happy, and so was I, in the arrangement. He was very methodical, invariably half-filling the bowl of a short-stemmed and ancient clay pipe as he hit off to the Short Hole Going Out, and knocking out its ashes as we came to the Short Hole Coming In: and that was all the smoke he ever took till the match was over.

On the occasion of this, my first visit to St. Andrews, I was not a member of the Club, but they did me the honour to elect me by next spring, and three of us tied for the first medal at the not very clever score of 91. Mr. Willie Wilson was one, I forget the other; and Wilson won on the play off. I remember that all went well with me till the sixth hole in the tie, where I got into a small bunker from the tee, took two to get out and left some of my temper behind in it. I had to take second honour then, but I won the first medal in the autumn, though I think it was rather that the rest played worse than that I played very well.

And then, immediately after the medal, came a message from Elie and Earlsferry--"Would any pair at St. Andrews give a match in a foursome to a couple of stonemasons from Elie?" Leslie Balfour asked me if I would play with him against them. I knew I was not in good form, and I do not think that he was, either, but still we said we would play them. They came over and seemed very nice young fellows indeed. The name of one was Douglas Rolland, and that of the other Jack Simpson. We had never heard of them before. We continued to think them very nice young fellows until the ninth hole, at which point we were two up. The truth is the masons had not got their hammers going at all. But we did not know that. On the way home we began to doubt whether they were as nice as we had thought.

Rolland began hitting the ball to places where we had never seen it hit before, and Simpson so followed up that they were reaching with a drive and an iron holes that it was at that date scarcely decent to approach in this metallic way. They were "gutty" b.a.l.l.s, mind, which did not fly away off the irons like the rubber-cores. They finished that round to the good of us, and in the afternoon made us look very foolish indeed. I do not think that Leslie or I ever got over that match till we read the result of the open champions.h.i.+p, played very shortly afterwards at Prestwick. It went "Jack Simpson first, Douglas Rolland second." After that we could make a better reply when we had to listen to the very kind and pointed enquiries of friends as to "What sort of golfers are the stonemasons of Elie? Are they any good?"

I think, but am not sure, that it must have been in the interim between that match of ours and the champions.h.i.+p, that there was a great home and home match, with something of a Scotch and English flavour about it, got up between Douglas Rolland and Johnny Ball. Captain w.i.l.l.y Burn wrote me an account of the first part of the match at Elie, which he went over from St. Andrews to see, and one of the phrases in it I remember now: "Both men drove like clockwork." It seems that Rolland, for all his great hitting, had nothing the better of Johnny--who was a very fine driver in his youth--in that respect, but hole after hole went from Johnny on the putting green. He came to Hoylake, for the second half of the match, no less than nine holes to the bad. The local people said that he would pick it all up on his own green. But he did not: on the contrary he lost more holes. Then, on the following day a second match was arranged--of thirty-six holes, all to be played on his own Hoylake.

Of course he must have started with the moral effect of his previous hammering still deeply impressed upon him, but his friends still had all confidence in him. And he seemed to justify it grandly, playing such a fine game that he was five up and six to play and the match was virtually, as probably Rolland himself deemed, over, when suddenly he struck a very bad streak, lost hole after hole until all the lead was gone, and Rolland, winning the last hole too, actually won this extraordinary match. It was a very sad day for Hoylake, and that is the aspect of the match which seems to have impressed everybody. But, after all, there is another aspect--perhaps well realized at Elie--what a first-cla.s.s fighting man that Rolland was! Johnny Ball had in fact to go through a very long baptism of fire before he was able to bring his wonderful powers and skill to their full use at the moment they were most needed.