Fifty Years of Golf Part 9

"Mention any inland course of which Tom Dunn has not said that it is the best of its kind ever seen."

His idea--and really he had but one--was to throw up a barrier, with a ditch, called for euphony's sake a "bunker," on the near side of it, right across the course, to be carried from the tee, another of the same kind to be carried with the second shot, and similarly a third, if it was a three shot hole, for the third shot. It was a simple plan, nor is Tom Dunn to be censured because he could not evolve something more like a colourable imitation of the natural hazard. A man is not to be criticized because he is not in advance of his time.

Moreover, these barriers had at least the merit that they were uncompromising. You had to be over them, or else you found perdition, and if you only hacked the ball out a little way beyond the first barrier with your first shot you could not carry the second barrier with your third. You were like a hurdle racer who has got out of his stride.

The course, constructed on these lines, on which I used to play most, from London, was Prince's at Mitcham--the most convenient of access of all, before the days of motors. I used to have great matches here with Jack White, before Sunningdale was made and he went there in charge.

Subsequently the mantle of Tom Dunn, as course constructor in chief, fell on the shoulders of w.i.l.l.y Park, and his ideas were more varied. He was also a good deal more thorough, more elaborate and more expensive in his dealings with the inland courses. He was the first to advocate the wholesale ploughing up of the soil of the course, and the re-sowing. He architected Broadstone, Sunningdale and a host more, and when he had finished with the Sunningdale green he had certainly produced the best thing in the way of an inland course that up to that time had been created. He did his work well, but it was not entirely or even mainly due to him that Sunningdale was so good. The soil was more light and sandy, more like the real seaside links, than that of any other inland course.

They had done wonderful things at New Zealand, where Mr. Lock-King, with Mure Ferguson aiding and abetting, had fastened mighty engines to pine trees and dragged them up by the roots, fas.h.i.+oning a golf course out of a pine forest.

That was pioneer's work in a double sense, for it not only engineered this particular course where the trees had covered all the land, but it also showed to other people how possible it was to make a course out of forest in other places. It is not only possible, but it is also a good deal less laborious, to grub up the forest trees than it is to get rid of a very dense growth of smaller undergrowth, such as there was to deal with at Le Touquet, in France, for instance. Then the soil in all this pine forest country, such as we see about Woking and Byfleet, is very light and sandy, as the inland soils go, so that it was fine natural material for golf when once the trees had gone. The latest construction of the kind is at St. George's Hill, near Weybridge, where the trees had been much better cared for for generations and in consequence were far larger and more difficult of up-rooting than at New Zealand. There they had to blast the boles of the trees with dynamite before they could get them out of the ground. But of course the bigger timber was of greater value and helped to pay the labour bill.

These forest courses have done another thing for us, they have taught us the value of a tree as a golfing hazard. Our forefathers would have scoffed at the idea of a tree on a golf links, although there was for many a long year opportunity for the golfer to find trouble in the trees which came out threatening the course at a certain point at North Berwick. But then they did not have their actual roots in the soil of the links itself. They were outside it, over the boundary wall. But as for the opportunities which the tree hazard gives for those subtleties of slicing and pulling round, or of cutting the ball up with a very vertical rise, let those who have seen Harry Vardon on a course of this tree-beset kind bear witness. And the tree has at least this virtue: that it is permanent. It does not get trodden down and hacked out of existence by a niblick as the faint-hearted whin does.

At Woking the natural trouble on the ground was heather rather than trees, and a fine course they have made of it. But of all, that at Sunningdale has always seemed to me just about the best of the inland ones--certainly the best of the earlier made ones. Then I was at Walton Heath, as a guest of Mr. Cos...o...b..nsor's kindly hospitality, when that great inland green was opened. Harry Colt had by that time gone to Sunningdale, and was making improvements on the original plan of w.i.l.l.y Park, but Walton Heath was a monument to the skill of that other of our amateur course constructors, Herbert Fowler. He made a very good thing of it, as the wonderful success of that Club has testified since. But it soon pa.s.sed out of the hands of Mr. Bonsor, and for how much the energy of Sir George Riddell, who acquired the chief interest in it, counted in its popularity it would be very hard to say. a.s.suredly it counted for a great deal. Then they had James Braid, importing him from Romford, and his attractive personality and great fame helped the Club. Another like him, our old friend Taylor, was by this time established at Mid-Surrey, and the Club there was a power, by reason of the goodness of its green, its numbers and the strong players belonging to it.

It would be a very dull and futile business to go into all the development of the inland golf which went on during these years. Enough has been said. But you could not draw anything like a full picture of the golf of the last fifty years without noticing this development. The inland Clubs, and especially those about London, have become a force. As their members go forth to play from the big City which is the common centre they are the better able to make their opinion felt; and their word has become of importance in modern golf. It is possible that it is destined to have a larger importance yet. But I have no business with prophecy.

And also there are big inland Clubs, which have already brought weight to bear on golfing counsels, in the Midlands. They have a.s.sociated themselves into a Union, as have several other cl.u.s.ters, and all these help in the forming and expression of opinion. But, apart from all this, the great reason why they attract members and why they are able to carry weight at all is that their courses are so good. The course constructor has been learning, and so has the greenkeeper. I had a delightful letter from Peter Lees, the famous greenkeeper to the Mid-Surrey Club. He writes: "When I find the worms too numerous, I reduce them." The worm used to be the great trouble and despair of the guardian of the inland putting green in the old days, but here we have Lees writing of dealing with them as it were by the very nod of Jove. When he finds them too numerous, he "reduces them." The mode of reduction is so well known and so easy that he does not think it worth while to waste a word of explanation on it. We have the nice story of a certain greenkeeper of the olden school being asked, "What kind of gra.s.s is this?" the inquirer referring to a sample that he had just picked up from the course. "Oh,"

came the puzzled reply, "there's only one sort of gra.s.s--green gra.s.s."

That is a reply that is almost typical of the "green-ness" of the greenkeeper in the earliest days of the management--if that is the right word for it--of the inland greens, but the modern keeper has to "discourse in learned phrases" of such varieties as fescues and poas, and hardly thinks himself ent.i.tled to full respect unless he can fire you off all the Latin names of the varieties of gra.s.ses that occur on our inland greens and courses. The keeping has really become quite a science.

And at their best, that is when the weather is treating them kindly, there is not that vast difference in quality between the best of our inland greens and the seaside greens which our forefathers have led us to suppose. The big merit of the seaside links, which the inland can never hope to match, is that it is such a good all-weather course. With its porous soil it does not become so water-logged in the wet years, nor does it become so dessicated in the dry. It is a more perpetual joy. But the days are long past when men could say that the seaside links were the only ones worth playing on, or that the seaside Clubs alone were worthy of attention.

CHAPTER XXVIII

VARIOUS CHAMPIONs.h.i.+PS AND THE WANDERING SOCIETIES

Whether on account of ill-health, or for what reasons, I do not know, I was not a very sedulous attendant at the champions.h.i.+ps in the later nineties. The consequence was that I missed seeing one or two very notable finishes. I was not at St. Andrews, for instance, that year when Leslie Balfour-Melville won, having carried each of his last three matches to the nineteenth hole, and each of his three opponents being obliging enough to plop his ball into the burn at that very crucial point of the business. What made it the more notable is that the last of these burn-ploppers was no other than Johnny Ball himself. Neither was I at Muirfield when Dr. Allan won, bicycling over each day, from a considerable distance, to the course, and playing without a nail in his boot--surely the most casual and unconcerned of champions. And I missed, too, that great finish between Johnny Ball and Freddy Tait, at Prestwick, when they were all even at the end of thirty-six holes, after playing the ball out of water and doing all kinds of conjuring tricks at the thirty-fifth hole: and then Johnny settled the affair by getting a scarcely human three at the thirty-seventh. But I was at Sandwich a year or two before when Freddy Tait did win the champions.h.i.+p, beating Harold Hilton in the final. I was even one of his victims on that occasion. He was playing well, but he gave me a chance or two going out and I was two up at the turn. Then, at the tenth hole I had a bit of bad luck: I lay, off the tee shot, in the middle of the course, right in a deep divot-cut left by a never identified but never to be sufficiently execrated sinner. So Freddy won that hole, and he out-played me soundly on the long holes coming in. I remember that I had a great fight the day before with that very gallant golfer, who never did himself full justice in the big fights, Arnold Blyth. We halved the round and I only beat him at the twenty-second hole.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Amateur Champions.h.i.+p, St. Andrews, 1901.

J.L. Low (driving) and H.H. Hilton.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Amateur Champions.h.i.+p, St. Andrews, 1895.

John Ball. F.G. Tait (studying his putt).]

I was at St. Andrews, too, in 1901 and saw the finish between Harold Hilton and Johnny Low, one of the best that ever has been played. Here, too, I was the victim of the ultimate winner; and I do not know that I had any need to be beaten by him, for though Hilton won this champions.h.i.+p, he has said himself in his memoirs that he was not playing as he should, at the time. I believe the truth to have been, as he himself suggests, that we were all a little frightened of him. I remember we started in pouring rain, and he won the first three holes off me. Then the weather improved and so did I, so that I wore off these three holes and got one up with five to play. At this fatal point I pulled my tee shot into one of those pernicious little bunkers on the Elysian Fields called the Beardies, and the final holes Hilton played more strongly than I did and won by two and one to play. It is a curious thing that the only other time of my meeting him in the amateur champions.h.i.+p, which was at Hoylake in the year that Johnny Ball won from Aylmer in the final, the match was almost a replica of this former one.

Again he won the first three holes, again I wore him down and got one up with five to play, and again I chucked away the advantage, and it looked almost sure that he would again win by two and one. But I holed a good putt at the seventeenth to save that hole. He gave me no chance of winning the last, and so again he beat me. These are the only two meetings we have had in the champions.h.i.+p, and neither, from my point of view, is very glorious in the telling.

The year 1900 was a very unhappy one in the history of golf. In that year a Boer bullet ended the life of one of the most gay and gallant-hearted fellows that ever took up a club, Freddy Tait, and incidentally took a good deal of the interest out of the golf of our generation. That year, and also the next, Johnny Ball was out at the war, and did not take part in the champions.h.i.+p; and I think that these are actually the only two occasions since the inst.i.tution of the amateur champions.h.i.+p that he has not had a hand in it. He is very capable of taking a master hand still.

I have said little of the open champions.h.i.+p during these years, for the reason that it has never had anything like the same attraction for me, either to play in or as a spectacle, as the amateur, in which golfers are brought together in matches, and there is the clash of temperaments, the man to man contest, the one bringing out (or driving in, as the case may be) all that is best in the other. I cannot see that any scoring compet.i.tion ever competes, in the human and psychological interest, with such duels as these.

But the story of the open champions.h.i.+p for very many a year now--that is to say, from 1899 right away to 1913--is the story of the repeated triumphs of three men, Taylor, Vardon, Braid, one or other accounting for the champions.h.i.+p in no less than fifteen of these years, and for the rest allowing a win each to Harold Hilton, to Herd, to White, to Ma.s.sy and to Ray--a wonderful record, but one which shows a certain monotony.

Of the champions.h.i.+p of 1902, both amateur and open, the story has its peculiar interest, because this was the year of the introduction of the indiarubber-cored--then called Haskell--b.a.l.l.s, about which many fables are to be narrated. And I am going to cut the story of these champions.h.i.+ps rather short, at this point, because I seem to have so much to say both about the first Haskell ball champions.h.i.+p and also about the amateur champions.h.i.+ps of 1903 and 1904, that either one of them cries aloud for the dignity of a chapter all to itself.

These, or just about these, were the years of the formation of the wandering teams, notably of the Oxford and Cambridge Golfing Society, formed on the model of the wandering cricket clubs, such as the I.

Zingari and the Free Foresters. These admirable inst.i.tutions had no club-house, no green, only a corporate existence, and they said to the various Clubs, "Now, you give us the free run of your course and a free luncheon and other entertainment, and if you do this we'll be so good as to come down and play a team match against your members and probably give them a jolly good beating." That was the kind of proposal which they made to the Clubs, and the pleasant sign of the times and of good sportsmans.h.i.+p and feeling is that the Clubs were so very ready to entertain it--both the proposals and the societies. There were the Bar Golfing Society, the Solicitors', the Army--every self-respecting profession had to have its Golfing Society. The Oxford and Cambridge, of which I had the honour to be first president, being succeeded in that honourable post by Mr. Arthur Balfour, went on pilgrimage actually as far as the United States; and very well they did there, under the leaders.h.i.+p of Johnny Low and with Johnny Bramston, the Hunter brothers and other fine golfers a.s.sisting. But as for the most part of these golfing enterprises of the wanderers, who, generally speaking, had their headquarters in the great metropolis, it is evident that they had to find their happy hunting grounds somewhere round about London, within reasonable reach, and that was only possible by virtue of the rise of all those inland greens within a short distance of the big town, which has had the further effect of drawing down into what we call the "Southern Section" the very big majority of the best professional players. This geographical golfing phrase of "Southern Section" is one that has arisen only out of the conditions created by that great tournament for the professionals promoted by the _News of the World_ newspaper; and that compet.i.tion itself is a witness to the growing recognition by the English world of the importance of golf and of its financial meaning. Golf was of use in the way of big advertis.e.m.e.nt.

Also, the largest proprietors of the _News of the World_ were, and are, very good golfers and sportsmen, and doubtless appreciate all the good sport that this tournament provides. But, at the same time, we should, I think, wrong their commercial instincts if we did not realize that they see good advertis.e.m.e.nt in it besides. Men's motives are mixed. How well that team of Oxford and Cambridge graduates that went to America performed, we hardly realized at the time. We had a tendency to under-rate the American ability for golf, and the very fact that these pilgrims did so well inclined us all the more to make light of the American prowess. We are now, in course of the story, within sight of the year when Mr. Walter Travis, coming over here, was to give us a very different idea of the American capacity. We then began, perhaps, to go to the other extreme and to over-rate what they could do. They seemed to have "established a funk," to put it in homely phrase, which only Harold Hilton, going to America as our amateur champion and coming back with all the glory of the American amateur champions.h.i.+p about him too, could altogether dissipate. But before that happened a lot of water had to run under the bridges.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE COMIC COMING OF THE HASKELL BALL

In 1891 my brother-in-law, returning from a visit to America, came down to stay and to play golf with me at Ashdown Forest, and brought with him a dozen or two of a new kind of ball which, he said, had lately been invented in the United States and was the best ball in the world. The b.a.l.l.s were called, as he told me, Haskells. We went out to play with them. He, as it happened, played very badly, and in a very short time he was perfectly ready to go into any court of law and take his oath that they were the worst b.a.l.l.s in the world. I had formed my own opinion of them, much more in accord with the verdict with which he had first introduced them to me than with that condemnatory one which he pa.s.sed on them after two days of being off his game; but I refrained from expressing my opinion too emphatically, with the result that when he went away he said that, as for the remnant of the b.a.l.l.s, he was not going to be bothered "to take the beastly things away," so that I found myself the possessor of a couple of dozen or so of excellent Haskell b.a.l.l.s--being, as he had said, in the first instance, the best b.a.l.l.s in the world--at a time when no one else in Great Britain had such a ball at all!

[Ill.u.s.tration: Old Leather Ball.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Hand-hammered Gutty.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Machine-marked Gutty.]

[Ill.u.s.tration:

Duncan.

Taylor.

Braid.

Vardon.

Gutty _v._ Rubber Core.]

It is quite true that some months previously, at North Berwick, I had been given to try, by a professional who had just returned from the States, a ball which I now recognized to be the same, in some of its essentials, as these Haskells which my brother-in-law brought over. It was the same, except for one external but extremely important essential--its nicks were ridiculously too light and slight, not nearly enough indented. So I tried that ball and found it wanting--it would not fly at all. But what I did not realize at the time was the reason why it did not fly; or, if I did realize, as one could not fail to do, that the nicks were not emphatic enough, I had not a suspicion of the merit of its interior qualities. I had not appreciated that it was an amazingly good ball if only this slight matter of its exterior marking had been attended to. I had taken no more thought or notice of it.

Armed with these new weapons I prepared to go out to Biarritz, where the annual foursome match against Pau was just impending. My partner was to be Evy Martin Smith, and as soon as I arrived I told him that we must use these new b.a.l.l.s for the match. He strongly objected, being a firm Conservative, tried the b.a.l.l.s, with every intention of disliking them, and disliked them accordingly. The fact is that I was, at this moment, just the last man in the world to appear on any scene as an advocate of a new ball. Only a year or two before I had taken an unfortunate interest in a patent substance called "Maponite," of which, in addition to a thousand and one other things for which gutta-percha and indiarubber are used, golf b.a.l.l.s were to be made. And wherein exactly was the weak point about the stuff as a material for golf b.a.l.l.s I never knew, for the trial b.a.l.l.s that they made for us were excellent--I remember that I won an open tournament at Brancaster with them--but as soon as ever they began to turn them out in numbers they were useful for one end only--for the good of the club-makers--for they were hard stony things which broke up the wooden clubs as if one had used the clubs as stone hammers.

So I was not a good apostle of a new ball--rather discredited in fact--but I did induce Evy Smith to play with the ball finally, under deep protest, and we justified its use by winning. Meanwhile the b.a.l.l.s were beginning to filter from America into England. It was difficult indeed to get people to appreciate their merits: the b.a.l.l.s were not numerous, and were still hard to obtain. At Johnny Low's request I sent him one for trial. He was writing at that time in the _Athletic News_.

He wrote a most amusing article about the ball--said that he had tried a stroke or two with it in his room, and had found it so resilient that it went bounding about the room like a fives ball in a squash court and finally disappeared up the chimney and was never seen again.

In fine, he gave the ball his banning, "not because it was an expensive ball"--it is to be remembered that it was rather a shock to be asked to pay two and sixpence for a golf ball, whereas before we had paid a s.h.i.+lling as the normal price--"but because it was a bad ball," meaning a ball "singularly ill-adapted for the purpose" of golf. So difficult is it for even a clever man and wise in the royal and ancient wisdom, as Johnny Low undoubtedly is, to keep an unprejudiced judgment about any new thing.

Expensive as the ball was in the beginning, it was soon found that it was far more economical than the solid "gutty"; both because it lasted in playable condition far longer and also because it did not knock about the wooden club to anything like the same extent. But within a very short while there came such a demand for those b.a.l.l.s, so greatly in excess of the supply, that there was a time when as much as a guinea apiece was paid for them, and numbers changed hands at ten s.h.i.+llings.

That was round and about the time of the champions.h.i.+ps, both open and amateur being held that year at Hoylake, and both these champions.h.i.+ps were won with the Haskell b.a.l.l.s.

I am calling these b.a.l.l.s Haskells, because that is the name by which they were known and spoken of, after their American inventor, at this time. The reluctance of players to use them, and the gradual overcoming of that reluctance, had many comic incidents a.s.sociated with it.

The amateur champions.h.i.+p that year was full of wonders. It was won by Charles Hutchings, he being then a grandfather and fifty-two years of age. He knocked me out, among other better men, beating me at the last hole. And then he beat that brilliant and greatly to be regretted young golfer, Johnny Bramston. In the final he had to play Fry, and established a very big lead on him in the first round. He had about six holes in hand with only nine to play, and then Fry began to do conjuring tricks, holing putts from the edge of the green, and so on. In the event Charles Hutchings just won by a single hole after one of the most remarkable final matches in the whole story of that champions.h.i.+p. And it is to be noted that these two finalists, who proved themselves better able than most others to adapt themselves to the new touch of these livelier b.a.l.l.s--for nearly all the compet.i.tors used the Haskells--were extremely good billiard players. Fry had won the amateur champions.h.i.+p of billiards more than once, and Hutchings was quite capable of such atrocities as a three-figure break. I think the sensitive fingers of these billiard players helped them to get the touch of these livelier b.a.l.l.s which were so "kittle" for the approach and putting.

After the amateur came the open, in which I did not take a hand, but I heard a great deal of the preliminary discussions about it. Of course, if the amateurs were difficult to convince about the merits of the new b.a.l.l.s, the professionals, who had their vested interest in the old, and did not know how these were to be affected by the coming of the new, were harder still to convince. However, the b.a.l.l.s were too good to be denied. Andrew Kirkaldy, a shrewd man, and one, besides, who had no interest in the sale of b.a.l.l.s, solid or rubber cored, was one of the first and most enthusiastic converts. "The puggy," he declared, "is a great ba'." He called it "puggy," which is Scottish for monkey, because it jumped about so. "Ye canna' tak' eighty strokes to the roun' wi' a puggy--the puggy will na' gae roun' in eighty strokes." However, on the morrow of making that brave statement, he contrived, even with the "puggy," to take several strokes more than eighty to go round the Hoylake course for the champions.h.i.+p. Alec Herd was one of the most uncompromising opponents of the new ball until the very day of the champions.h.i.+p. He had declared that he hoped everybody else would play with the Haskell, but that for his own part he meant to stick to his old friend. And then, on the day of the play, behold Herd, who had said these things, teeing up a Haskell himself on the first tee, and continuing play with it until he had won the champions.h.i.+p! It was a bit of luck for him, hitting on the truth about the merits of the ball just at the right moment. I do not think he would ever have won the champions.h.i.+p save for the Haskell ball. At the same time it is only fair to him to say this, that he was--at least I think so--quite unlucky not to win the champions.h.i.+p two years previously. It was the year that Taylor won at St. Andrews, and at that date, and for some little while before the champions.h.i.+p, Herd had certainly been playing the best golf of anybody. Then the weather changed, just on the eve of the champions.h.i.+p. There came abundance of rain, which put the greens into just the condition that Taylor liked. He won that champions.h.i.+p, and Herd, I think, was a little unfortunate not to win. But fortune restored the balance of her favours by giving him this win at Hoylake with the new ball long after we had ceased to think him a likely champion. Thus once again, "justice has been done." Therewith the Haskell ball made its reputation and came to stay. There was a talk of ruling it out, by the Rules of Golf Committee, but Hall Blyth, then chairman, agreed with me and others that it had won its way too far into popularity to be made illegal, and the idea of legislating it out was dropped.