Probably it is true that golf carries its votaries farther in enthusiasm than does any other game or sport. It is characteristic of the golfing enthusiasm that it does but increase as time goes on, and that not in the case of one man in twenty does it show any diminution, while the game is such a jealous mistress that it is rarely the convert to golf maintains any regular association with other sports unless he is of such complete leisure that it is impossible for golf alone to fill up his hours. Practically every golfer, therefore, is a keen enthusiast, and though we dislike to hear the phrase come from the lips of those who are not of us, we have to confess that there is some justification for the extremity of this enthusiasm being described as “golf fever”; for indeed at times it provokes the player to the doing of many things which in the cold light of reason afterwards would not be regarded as completely rational. We are all enthusiasts; but who was the greatest enthusiast who ever was? An impossible question to answer, of course, if for no other reason than that the limit appears to have been reached by hundreds; but tradition can always settle matters of this kind in its own way, and it has determined for us who was the keenest golfer, and has seen to it, moreover, that his memory shall be safely perpetuated. Thus we have old Alexander M?Kellar as the patron saint of the man who likes to get his three and four rounds a day in the summer-time, and is miserable unless he has a club in his hand in his resting hours.

It is something to have become regarded as the keenest golfer, for it goes without saying that every other worldly consideration of every description whatsoever must have been sacrificed to the attainment of that vast distinction. Such a man must have really earned the title of “Cock o’ the Green,” which was given to M?Kellar, and with that title his fame will be handed down through the generations as it is affixed to an historic print. This picture of the old worthy, who indeed was fairly “mad” on the game, was first circulated more than a hundred years ago, and has become one of our most cherished golfing antiquities. His enthusiasm brimmed over when in the act of play, and “By the la’ Harry, this shall not go for nothing!” as he used to say involuntarily when addressing the ball, became something of a catch-phrase in his district. He did his golf from Edinburgh, and Bruntsfield Links was his playing ground. How often does one find that they are the keenest golfers who do not take up the game in their youth? It may be true that generally the man who does not swing a club as a child has not such a good chance of becoming a player with pretensions to championship form as have those who made such early acquaintance with the game; but do we not find that these men become the fondest and most thorough players, making up in enthusiasm and real enjoyment what they lack in skill? Thus there is a grand compensation after all, and let us weep no more for the golf that we missed in our schooldays; for some of those who played it then are they who now find their greatest ease of heart for some weeks of the year at fishing, shooting, or some other sport in which something has to be killed.

And so the “Cock o’ the Green” did not begin his golf at all until he was quite a middle-aged man, and all likelihood of his ever becoming a really finished player had completely vanished. And he was of comparatively humble means. He had saved a little money, such as went for some justification for his constant idleness; but his wife found it necessary to keep a tavern in Edinburgh when they went to live there. M?Kellar gave no hand in the management of this tavern; he had no time for anything but golf, and bitter were the upbraidings that he had to endure from his worthy and industrious dame as a consequence. Mrs.M?Kellar may indeed be set down as the first that we know anything about of that long line of sufferers who go by the name of golf-widows. This lady might have borne her isolation better if it had not been the fact that she was somewhat mocked for it, and found the name of her lord a byword in every neighbour’s house and at every street corner for his over-indulgence in the game of golf, fair “cracked” on it, as everybody took him to be. She tried to shame him once, but had much the worse of the experiment. She thought to make him a butt for the laughter of his companions by taking to the links one day his dinner and his nightcap. But when she arrived there he was in the throes of a hard-fought match, and when she offered him the meal he answered her kindly, but with some touch of impatience, that she might wait if she chose until the game was completed, when he would attend to her, but that for the time being he had no leisure for dinner. And the game went on. So she came to loathe the very name of golf, and was scarcely civil to the tavern customers who were players and friends of her good man. But one day she had a sweet revenge upon him. She set out for a journey to Fife, and was expected to be away for at least a day. No sooner was her back turned than hospitable M?Kellar went forth to bid his golfing friends to his house, which, when its lady was in residence, they might in no wise enter. A fine feast was prepared, and the party was a merry one, when the door opened, and there stood, with a countenance drawn with suppressed wrath, Mrs.M?Kellar, who had been obliged to return, through the ferry being impassable as a consequence of the severe weather that prevailed.

Every morning the “Cock o’ the Green” hurried through his breakfast, and away he went to Bruntsfield Links with all the haste possible, never returning home again until night had fallen. Sometimes, indeed, he did not come then, if there were any good golfing excuse for not doing so. Many were the times when he was discovered playing at the short holes by the dim glimmer of a lamp, and a moonlight night was an almost irresistible temptation to him. Heat and cold did not diminish his ardour; and in the winter, when the snow covered the course, he would do his utmost to persuade an opponent to share a round with him; and if he failed he would go out alone and wander the whole way round playing his ball from flag to flag, the greens and holes not being discoverable. Like all keen golfers he loved the foursome, and preferred to be tested by it if he could find a partner of any quality whatever. One day he was in Leith and fell in conversation with some strangers there, glass-blowers they were, and, as always, the subject turned upon the game, and from the game in general to the prowess of the “Cock o’ the Green” in particular. The men of Leith affected to think little of his play, and challenged him to a match, upon which moment a Bruntsfield youngster made his appearance. “By gracious, gentlemen!” exclaimed M?Kellar, “here is a boy, and we will play you for a guinea!” The match took place, and victory lay with M?Kellar, who was so excited when the last hole had been played that he ran post haste to the shop of the clubmaker, screaming, “By gracious, gentlemen, the old man and the boy have beat them off the green!”

The artist Kay, who made the picture of him, went out on to the links one day to draw it from the life unbeknown to the hero, and when he came to know about it afterwards he was sorely disappointed that he had not been given the opportunity of posing. “What a pity!” he lamented. “By gracious! If I had but known I would have shown him some of my capers!” Perhaps it was as well he did not. When he won his match he would sometimes be so mad with joy that he would dance round the hole for a minute. Such delight was pure, for though he did wager a little on his matches he did not risk more than he could well afford to lose, and it was the game he tried to win and not the little that he bet. On Sundays, when there was no golf to be played, he fulfilled the duties of doorkeeper to an Episcopalian church, and held the plate. Douglas Gourlay, the famous ballmaker, one day put a ball into the plate by way of joke, guessing what would happen. He was right, M?Kellar’s golfing cupidity was too much for him. His eyes glistened, and in an instant the ball was transferred to his pocket. Poor old M?Kellar! Weak enough he may have been, but he did love his game as absolutely nothing else in life, which for him ended nearly a century since.

II

It is an ancient game; but let no man think yet that we have realised a fair part of the curious situations that may arise on the links when the golfer hits a ball, or that we have a full appreciation of the possibilities of their complexity. Very quaint are some of the difficulties that twice a year are presented to the Rules of Golf Committee sitting at St.Andrews for the special purpose of discovering solutions thereto.

From far Manawatu once there came a plaintive cry for help. These New Zealand golfers confessed that in all the holes on their greens there is an iron box with a small flag on the top to mark the holes. In an inter-club match the caddie of one of the players before leaving the green, when replacing the box, put it into the hole, flag downwards, exposing a sharp point on the top. One of the next two players, when approaching to that hole, landed his ball on the top of the box in the hole, and it remained there. Then the arguments began, and not until a letter had sailed the seas from the Antipodes, and the Royal and Ancient Club had sent her answer back to this outpost of her empire of golf, did they subside. The man who had executed this wonderful shot had held that he could reverse the box and put it into its proper position and claim the hole. It hurt St.Andrews to think that away there in New Zealand, left to their own resources, they should give themselves up to such queer-fangled contrivances as hole flags with boxes on them. If a bit of cloth and a stick of sorts is good enough for the old course, why should Manawatu want what these Royal and Ancients sarcastically referred to as “mechanical contrivances”? The high authority begged leave to observe that the Rules of Golf did not provide for such “mechanical contrivances,” and the New Zealanders were recommended to make local rules to suit them.

You may always tell from the form of the answer when the St.Andrews lip has curled at the question that has been asked of it. Nowadays the committee can hear the mention of a hedge without a rise in its temperature; but when the secretary, in reading out the problem of the moment, has to say “mud” there is uneasiness still. The committee move in their chairs, they fidget, they scowl, somebody mutters “Tut, tut!” and they all cough to hide their agitation. “Mud” is the word you must not say. I have not seen the committee in this agitation; nobody except its own members has, for it is a very private committee; but this sudden disturbance can be imagined most clearly. Yet these inconsiderate golfers will keep on mentioning mud, and St.Andrews answers them back with as much asperity as is consistent with the preservation of its own dignity. One time in a matter of this kind they gave a snubbing to a Kentish course. The club there, in all seriousness and innocence, propounded a very pretty point. “Playing in a foursome,” they said, “A is left by his partner’s approach shot a six-inch putt for the hole; but A’s ball pitched in a small piece of wet mud left on the edge of the green (presumably from the boot of a player in front). A small piece of this mud clung to the ball, and was on the side of the ball A had to strike. A played the stroke, and the ball and the mud stuck to his putter, and the head of the putter and the ball on it were exactly above the hole.” This was surely a most delightful situation! See how pretty is the combination of this foursome pair, and how they do play each the game to suit the other, thus: “His partner then with his putter tapped the ball off A’s putter and it fell into the hole.” A charming incident! “Did A or his partner lose or halve the hole, and would A have been within his rights in shaking the ball off into the hole, or what should they have done?” Said the Committee to the secretary, “Tell these good people that the Committee have no experience of such tenacious mud, and such a contingency should be provided for by the local rules,” and then they hurriedly spoke of the weather and the wind and the state of the eighteenth green, and how the Major got a bonny 3 there the night before—anything to get this taste of Kentish mud out of their St.Andrews mouths.

A point of some curious interest was that which arose in the course of medal play on the course of the Higher Bebington Club some time ago. A player had one of those most tantalising putts a yard in length to play, and, like many a man before him, he missed it! In his aggravation at the circumstance he snatched back his ball, and, without having holed it out, he replaced it where it was before, in order to try his putt over again, to satisfy his amour propre that the holing of such a putt was not beyond his mortal capacity. This is an old way of attempting to gain some small crumb of satisfaction from a very disappointing business. At the second attempt he holed that putt, but his partner then told him that he was obliged to disqualify him from the entire competition for not having holed out when making his putt. The competitor agreed that he had done wrong, and accepted this fate; but some time later, when he had fully thought over the business, and read up the rules, he protested. Yet his committee maintained that he really should be disqualified, and after much argument the seers of the Royal and Ancient were begged to give their decision. And it was a very interesting decision. The high court held that Rule10 of stroke competitions applied, and that, therefore, if the player replaced his ball directly behind the spot it occupied after he had missed the putt, the penalty was two strokes only, the second putt thus counting as in the competition, though it is fairly clear that the competitor never intended it for it. “But,” said the committee, “otherwise he was disqualified.” Those who discover feelings and frames of mind behind the mask of simple sentences would be moved to say, in this case, that in that last simple sentence St.Andrews was trying to cover up somewhat the absurd position to which the rules brought this case; for it was clear that the essence of the problem in relation to the law was as to whether the player replaced his ball behind the spot where it first stopped, which came simply to this—Was he short of the hole the first time, or did his ball run to either side? If he was short, then he was saved, and he is allowed to go on under penalty of two strokes; but if he over-ran the hole—which from the golf point of view was better than to be short—or if he went to either side, then he would be disqualified. That ruling has grown since then.

Pity the club committees in their constant troubles. Was ever committee so sorely beset as that which had come, by devious means, to knowledge of the faults of its members, and when honour seemed to forbid that the knowledge should be acted upon, though otherwise would an injustice be done to the sinless golfers. It was in County Sligo. A medal competition had been played, and when all was over the members of the committee—as such high officers constantly solicitous for the welfare of things will—wandered through the rooms and the corridors of the club. And it came to pass that one of them overheard a conversation that he was not supposed to overhear, between two members of the club, in which it was alleged that certain competitors had played on the putting greens before starting. The committeeman knew then that these men should be disqualified; but how was he to act? He told his colleagues, but they likewise were sore in mind as to whether they were justified in taking notice of the fact that had thus come to their knowledge. Were they bound to investigate this matter, and prove it one way or the other, or was it sufficient if they waited for someone to lay a formal objection? In their despair they appealed to St.Andrews; but this again is one of the nice points that the chief authority would rather others settled for themselves, and they said accordingly, that the committee must use their own discretion as to whether it was a case for their interference.

Upon other occasions the committee at St.Andrews has been called upon to indicate the proper course of procedure when a ball, after being played, lodged in the turned-up part of a player’s trousers. It has been somewhat naÏvely asked by Kenmare whether, in a mixed foursome, when the lady missed the ball off the tee, she should “try” again, or whether her gallant partner should rid the tee of that persistent ball. It had to tell the County Down Club that a player could not carry a special flat board round with him from which to make his tee shots; and it has had to straighten out some quite frightful mix-ups in ladies’ competitions. Sometimes it happens that some casual decision of this sort serves a good purpose in bringing the portion of the golf world that has been somewhat inclined to wander, back to its duty in the observance of the strict letter of the law, as in the autumn of 1906, when on the appeal of Aldeburgh it declared how, when in long grass or anything of the kind, the player was only entitled to move so much of the obstruction as would enable him to find his ball in the first instance, and was not entitled to arrange things so that he could see it while attempting to play it. A player is not so entitled to a full view of his ball, though he will sometimes tell you that he is.

III

That which was regarded by our ancestors as a most amazing feat, namely, holing with the tee shot, has become exceeding common. One week not long ago it was done in five different parts of the country, and in three other separate weeks there were four cases reported. Why this increase, then, of doing holes in 1? The reason is simple after all. It is not that it is any easier to do the trick than it used to be. Probably it is rather harder, since it is more difficult to flop the rubber-cored ball down plump on the green at the short holes than it used to be in the days of the late lamented gutta, and a good deal harder to make it sink down into the hole as it ought to do when it gets there, instead of running around it and then away, and generally behaving badly. If it were any easier to do than it was formerly, would not the champions be doing it? But they are not. Harry Vardon has still only one hole in 1 to his credit, and while Braid gets his 2’s very often, the 1’s don’t come his way. The simple reason for the frequency is the great increase of golf. Everybody plays golf now and is always playing, and in such circumstances somebody must always be holing in 1, or very nearly. That is the simple fact, and the man who now performs this feat is no longer worthy of a paragraph all to himself in the morning newspaper. He will simply go along with half a dozen others in the weekly list.

Still there is room for distinction in holing in 1 yet, and the men who crave for such notoriety need not despair. If every man can hole in 1, obviously the proper thing to do is to find some particular way of doing it that every man cannot equal, or at least is not likely to do. For example, J.S. Caird, the Newcastle-on-Tyne professional, was out playing the other day, when in the course of his game he took the fifteenth in 1 in a very strange way. He popped his ball up into the air with his mashie, and down it came plump into the hole, falling clean into the tin and never bouncing out again! Fancy pitching into the hole in 1! Luckily the caddie was standing there and took out the flag in time, and one cannot be surprised that he was so overcome with the strangeness of the thing that happened, that his imagination was fired until he saw something of the supernatural in it, and believed that his eyes had witnessed more than they really had. At all events, to the players and to the people afterwards he described in the most circumstantial and convincing manner how the ball at one time seemed to be flying far past the green, but how when just above him it came to a sudden stop in mid-air and then fell vertically into the hole! Why were we not told the name of this ball?

Another advance on the simple feat of holing in one stroke is to do it twice within a year. The first man to do this was Mr.L. Stuart Anderson, who took the tenth and fifteenth at Balgownie (Aberdeen) in 1 in 1895. Since then I have heard of three other men having done it, one at Fort Anne, another at Bristol, and the third at Tunbridge Wells. Mr.Anderson, by the way, who is now the secretary of the Royal Portrush Club, holds the record for the greatest number of times that one man has done a hole in 1; and here again is another suggestion to the ambitious one-stroke man. Mr.Anderson has done it seven times. He began by doing it at the expense of his sister, Miss Blanche, at North Berwick, which perhaps did not matter much, as sisters are indulgent, and wound up for the time being by doing it (the seventh at Tavistock) in the presence of and in a match against a parson, which, to say the least, was indelicate. I have heard of a lady who has done this thing four times. Another out-of-the-way feat is to hole in 1 just when you hear that someone else has done so. One April evening, when the course at Heaton Moor had not the appearance of stirring events happening upon it, such as would go down into history as records, two of the members of the club, not playing together, did two different holes in 1 each. At Christmas time in 1899 a most remarkable feat was performed by Mr.P.H. Morton, celebrated in his day as a Cambridge bowler, who took the first hole on the Meyrick course at Bournemouth twice in one day, morning and afternoon, with his shot from the tee. It is a better achievement than usual to take a tolerably long hole in one stroke, and, in this class, honours at present are with Mr.J.F. Anderson, who with a wind behind him and playing on a frost-bound course got the ninth at St.Andrews in a single shot, and the ninth measures 277yards. It must be accounted excellent also to do the trick one-handed, as did an amateur with the promising name of Willie Park when playing to the eleventh on the relief course at Troon. Mr.Park had to do it with one arm or not at all, for he has only one, and he was certainly to be congratulated on the fact of his unfortunate state not preventing him from graduating as a hole-in-oner.

Men who seem to have an abnormal sense of humour say that it is killing to do a hole in 1 when the other man is giving you a stroke. The other man has then to do it in nothing to halve, or 1 less than nothing to win, and the situation is delightful. I have authentic information of this situation having arisen, and it was rendered all the more interesting from the circumstance that the man giving the stroke was an Open Champion, and the other party was a lady. It was at the twelfth hole at Walton Heath, and one need not hesitate to say that the man who was giving the stroke was James Braid, who thought awhile on the wonders of this most interesting world, and then took a short cut to the next tee without troubling to play the short hole.

Concerning the coincidence connected with the name of Park, just noticed, it may have been perceived that two of our greatest heroes in these matters are of the name of Anderson. This coincidence can be carried a long step farther, for perhaps the most valuable hole in 1 ever gained was by another Anderson, and that was Jamie, the champion. He was playing for the championship at Prestwick and making his last round. He knew he was very close up, and that he had nothing to spare. He was playing the next to the last hole on the course as it used to be—not as it is—and was just about to hit his tee shot when a girl standing close by remarked to her father that the player had teed his ball outside the teeing ground, and that accordingly, if he played his shot from there, he would be disqualified altogether. Jamie heard, looked, and quietly removed his ball and placed it within the limited space. Then he made his shot and holed out in 1, and very properly he raised his cap to the little girl and said, “Thank you, miss!” for she had done him a very good turn indeed. A few minutes later he was in possession of the Championship Cup. That was in 1878. It is clear that the Andersons are the men who do the holes in 1, particularly as another of them, Mr.W.W. Anderson, once in 1893 worked most gradually and systematically up to a hole in 1 at North Berwick by taking the fourth in 3, the fifth in 2, and the sixth in the minimum 1. One in 1 and three in 6!

The worst of these tricks is that you don’t get anything for doing them; you must pay instead. The injustice of this arrangement has been borne in to many minds, notably to that of Mr.Balfour. The right honourable gentleman has never holed in 1, but he has done a hole in two strokes when he received a stroke from his opponent at it, and his caddie ingeniously argued with him that this was exactly the same thing—2-1 =1. It was Point Garry out at North Berwick, and Mr.Balfour was playing with Tom Dunn. “I am astonished!” said Mr.Balfour, pretending that he was. “Am I to pay you for looking at me doing this? Should I not rather receive the money for performing the feat?” But he paid.

There is one hole in the world where you do get paid for achieving a 1, that is if you happen to do it at either the Easter, Whitsuntide, or Autumn meetings. This is what is called the “Island Hole” on the course of the Royal Ashdown Forest Club in Sussex. It is an excellent hole, and a gentleman who played it on one occasion fell so much in love with it that he endowed it with a sum of £5, the accumulated interest on the sum to go to the competitor at any of the meetings named who should do this trick of getting it in 1. Ever since the endowment was made the interest has been growing and growing, and nobody has qualified for it. Money accumulates so fast once it gets a fair start, that we can imagine this interest some day amounting to a fortune, and then what a scene there will be at the Island Hole at Easter when the golfer, having been training at the Redan, the Maiden, and a few like holes for a whole month previously, comes here with weird clubs and balls made of lead, and has greed written in large characters across his face.

The moral of the hole in 1 is excellently stated by a great master of the game. It demands not only a perfect shot but a perfect fluke. It is a case of the gods giving to them that have, and those that have not are cast into the bunker in front of the green.

IV

Curious, indeed, are some items in the list of the feats of golf. In the game heroic there is testimony to the pluck, perseverance, and enthusiasm of Mr.J.W. Spalding, who in the spring of a recent season came by an awful motor smash in France and lost an eye, but had no sooner risen from the hospital bed and been sent to Italy to recuperate than he was at his golf again, playing himself back with his single eye to the game of scratch quality that he enjoyed before, and—good for you, Mr.Spalding—but a few weeks went by ere one more scratch medal came his way. Nor shall we forget how a popular champion struggled home to the seventy-second green at Prestwick while the blood was oozing from his lungs.

There are feats of other kinds, as those which count as freaks, poor things enough but wondered at by some. What shall we say of the Pittsburg golfer who wagered four thousand dollars that he could play a ball over four and a half miles of the city streets in one hundred and fifty strokes? Beginning at five o’clock in the morning, he did this thing in one hundred and nineteen strokes, but lost a thousand dollars in damage done to property on the way. That man found an emulator in London who undertook to play a ball from Ludgate Circus to a fountain basin in Trafalgar Square. There are men who like to drive fine balls from the glass faces of other people’s expensive watches, and others who prefer the tamer sport of driving from the eggs of hens. There was the man of Sandwich, who, with a champagne bottle as his only “club,” played, and—Oh, shame upon it!—beat a neophyte who carried a full bag of the most improved clubs. There was the old-time golfer who lofted balls over the spire of St.Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh, and another who tooled his gutty from Bruntsfield Links to the top of Arthur’s Seat. Better and more purposeful was the practice which Mr.Laidlay used to undertake before championships, when, with Jack White for caddie, he would play a ball from the first tee at North Berwick to the Roundell Hole at Gullane, six miles away, by way of the Eel Burn Hole, the sands along the shore, the neighbourhood of the fishermen’s cottages, and away over Muirfield and the rough country to the top of the hill, playing from whatever lie his ball chanced to find, and once doing this course in a total of ninety-seven strokes.

V

Do we not sometimes hear one sort of sportsmen make it a complaint against golf, that the player does not run any personal risk of injury to his life or his limbs? Some of these men will tell you that you only arrive at real sport when such dangers are incurred. It may be so, but we shall not on that account seek to increase the risks of golf. It is one of the glories of the game that it is such fine sport and commands the wild enthusiasm of the best sportsmen, though it threatens the life neither of the player nor any of the living creatures made by God that give the fulness to Nature, and add, though it may be unconsciously, to the golfer’s joy as he strides over the links on a fine morning. In other sports, when man goes wandering over the hills, he takes his gun with him that he may kill something. Leave him alone with Nature, and as the lord of creation he is impelled to go forward to the attack on the lesser beings. In golf alone does he roam over the country and by the side of the sea with never a thought of what he may kill passing through his mind. He has a great joy in his own life, and he is all benevolence and wishful for the happy life of others.

Things have been killed—accidentally—at golf. Many luckless birds have got in the way of tee shots, and even a fish lost its life on a golf course, and is now in a glass case in the clubhouse at Totteridge. By some devious means it got on to the course one day when there had been heavy rains and much overflowing all about. And—let it be whispered to the shooters and the mighty hunters!—men have been maimed, and even killed on golf links, though we pray that, despite the extra sport, there may be no more of them, and that the single pain of the game may be the skin-blisters and corns that sometimes will come up at the bottom of the left forefinger and elsewhere. I did not think better of golf as a sport when one day, in playing my way outwards on the North Berwick links, a ball from a hidden tee came upon me unawares and carried the pipe that I was smoking away with it for some twenty or thirty yards, while I stood to wonder what was happening. And even by his own deeds may a man court perils, for we heard the other day that one was playing at Ravenscar when he took a full mashie shot with the object of clearing a stone wall; but the ball struck the wall and rebounded with great force against his head. And from his head it rebounded again over the wall, so it was said; and it was not astonishing to hear that the player was slightly stunned! If adventure in the form of fierce conflict with wild beasts and reptiles is what the full-blooded sportsman wishes, he may have it. A member of the Royal Sydney Club played his ball down a hole, and he put his hand down it to see if he could recover the ball. He seized hold of something soft and drew out a venomous brown snake—which he hurriedly pushed back. I am told by my golfing directory that at Umtala, in Rhodesia, “the course consists of nine holes. In addition to other hazards, lions are occasionally in evidence.” I happen to have had some private confirmation of this report, and it is told me that if ever a golfer in Umtala indulged himself in such a freak as golf by candlelight, as players have been known to do elsewhere, he might not complete the game that he had projected, for the king of beasts is accustomed to prowl over the land at night, and picks up any little living thing that he may find about. In other respects there is something quaint about this golf at Umtala, for I am informed that in the daytime the course is frequented by crows with white bands round their necks, which go by the name of “Free Kirk Ministers.” They are thieves, and now and again they swoop down and fly away again with the ball.

They are fine pioneers of the game in South Africa, and it deserves to prosper there. They have needed strong hearts and much patience and forbearance. I have been to golf with a man who has lately come back from a short visit there, and he says that their “greens” look as if they were covered with millions of garnets; and poor as the putting may be from some points of view, it can be performed with marvellous accuracy, and the people of the Colonies deny that anybody loves the game more than they do, or is more enthusiastic in it than they are. Their trials are uncommon and severe, but they become accustomed to them. At Wynberg, or some place like that, there is a lake to carry at a short hole, and one knows what sometimes happens when there is a water hazard between the tee and the green, one shot away. Here the avoidance of it is not made any the easier, because a long line of Kaffir boys is formed up on the near side of the lake, stripped, with eyes aflame with eagerness, and wildly gesticulating with their arms and hands, and jostling and scolding at each other while they seem to be appealing “Me! me! me!” to the golfer on the tee. Away the ball goes from the tee, and at the slightest indication that it was struck with dangerous inaccuracy, splash go all the Kaffir boys into the water. It is very much like the game of throwing sixpences overboard when your ship of voyage is at anchor off some Eastern port.

VI

Rummaging through a second-hand book shop in Oxford Street one day, I came upon an old volume of sporting anecdotes published far back in 1867, and long since out of print and forgotten. Turning over the pages in the evening, and encountering therein many stories of doughty deeds by river and on field and moor, I came at last upon what must evidently be the original version of the story which has been more briefly told by others of the golf match at night for £500 a hole, and I cannot do better than quote it direct from the book. One of the contributors was quoting from a letter he had received from a well-known sporting friend of his, in which this gentleman gave him a short description of golf, about which nobody else belonging to the book appeared to know anything. In his prefatory remarks concerning the game the correspondent said: “The game of golf is quite a Scotch game; it is played at Blackheath, Wimbledon Common, and a few other places in England; but the players are always Scotchmen. It is a game requiring a good eye and great skill; and people who get over the first difficulties of the game are generally quite as fond of it as the English are of cricket.” With no disparagement of the attractions of cricket, one would be inclined to say that in these days the English who get over the first difficulties of the game of golf, and even those unfortunates who do not get over those difficulties, are much fonder of it than the said English are of cricket.

Then, concerning that great match, the correspondent writes: “Lord Kennedy and the late Mr.Cruickshank, of Langley Park, were good players, and had frequent matches for large sums of money; but the most remarkable match ever played by them came off during the Montrose race week many years since. At the race ordinary they got up a match of three holes, for £500 each hole, and agreed to play it then and there. It was about ten or half-past tenp.m. and quite dark. No light was allowed except one lantern placed on the hole, and another carried by the attendant of the player, in order that they might ascertain to whom the ball struck belonged. We all moved down to the golf course to see this curious match. Boys were placed along the course, who were accustomed to the game, to listen to the flight of the balls, and to run to the spot where a ball struck and rested on the ground. I do not remember which of the players won the odd hole; it was won, I know, by only one hole. But the most remarkable part of the match was, that they made out their holes with much about the same number of strokes that they usually did when playing in daylight. I think, on an average, that they took about five or six strokes in daylight, and in the dark six or seven. They were, however, in the constant habit of playing over the Montrose course.” Surely this must be accounted one of the most extraordinary games of golf we have heard of.

VII

In days gone by the position of the lady in the great world of golf was something of a doubtful quantity, but there can be no question that she is now an established institution, and that she will stay. There have been men who have said that golf is not a lady’s game, and many who still stoutly maintain that it is at all events only a game for very young ladies who have not taken upon themselves any serious domestic cares. But it makes little difference what they say. For the first time in history a married lady won the Ladies’ Championship in 1906. The ladies have a golf union of their own, which is the kind of thing that a large section of rebellious men have been sighing for for many years, but are apparently still far from getting. Moreover, they have an inter-county championship, which again is what men say they ought to have, but cannot get.

Some of the oldest but least common golf traditions have reference to women, and it seems to be the fact that one of the first monarchs in England or Scotland who ever sought pleasure and relaxation in trundling a golf ball over the links was Mary Queen of Scots, and that she played on golfing ground no less celebrated than St.Andrews. This was in 1563. During that winter Mary occupied a house in South Street, and it is generally believed that she yielded to the spell of the place and played golf on the links with Chastelard, the favourite, who was subsequently beheaded. Although the evidence that she did thus play at St.Andrews is not conclusive, it is very likely that she did so, for it is quite certain that she played at Edinburgh and elsewhere, and it is variously quoted as a specimen of her heartlessness on the one hand and of her enthusiasm for the game on the other, that she was found playing it only a few days after the murder of her husband.

It is suggested that the golfing ancestors of the present lady players were fish girls, and the evidence on the point is comprised in a minute of the Royal Musselburgh Golf Club, dated 14thDecember 1810, which reads thus: “The club to present by subscription a handsome new creel and shawl to the best Female Golfer who plays on the annual occasion on 1stJanuary next, old style (12thJanuary, new), to be intimated to the Fish Ladies by William Robertson, the officer of the club. Two of the best Barcelona silk handkerchiefs to be added to the above premium of the creel.—(Signed) Alex.G. Hunter, Captain.”

But the modern golfing ladies absolutely ignore all this ancient history, and, in a manner, started afresh with a Year1 on the inception of their championship, like the French people did at the time of their big Revolution. What happened before did not count. Thus, from their point of view, they arrived at a sort of millennium straight away, having no brakes of custom and conservatism on their wheel of progress.

Consequently it is no business of the modern writer to argue as to whether the fair sex ought or ought not to play golf; the fact is there that they do, and that more of them do so every week. And they do it very whole-heartedly. In the box-rooms of the houses of golfing ladies are sundry old tennis racquets with their stringing limp, despised and rejected, and their once favourite croquet mallets have been cut down in the shaft and are now used for odd jobs of carpentering about the house. It is said that the golfing girl does not care a jot what she wears on the links or—mirabile dictu!—what she looks like, so long as she has boots or shoes on with which she can get a firm stance, or upper arrangements which enable her to swing with ease. Thus one hears that she has enormous nails in her footgear, wears the loosest of Irish homespun costumes, and wouldn’t be seen in a picture hat. And she is a fine, robust, healthy creature, who loves the game as much as anyone. The great professionals say that she is a splendid pupil—better even than the men. Harry Vardon holds that the American ladies—whom he has studied on their native links—are better and more thorough than ours; but he thinks that ours are very good when they roll up their sleeves and give up the big hats. “They seem (ladies in general, that is) to take closer and deeper notice of the hints you give them, and to retain the points of the lesson longer in their memories,” says Vardon, and James Braid concurs in the judgment. The only drawback to all this big hitting, hard tramping, and devil-may-care spirit of the girl on the links is that, according to Miss May Hezlet, one of the queens of the links, it enlarges the hands and feet! But think of the freedom!

When the ladies play among themselves—as they generally do—they employ, according to report, a golfing vocabulary of their own, which, though unconventional, let it be said in haste, is quite proper. Elsewhere than in happy England, the blessedness of whose sporting girls has been sung by Gilbert of the Savoy, it may not be the same; indeed it appeared in the newspapers a little while since that the minister of a fashionable church in Halifax, Nova Scotia, declared from his pulpit one Sunday that information had reached him that “women who went to church on Sunday, went to golf on Monday and swore like troopers!” When this was brought to the attention of the English ladies, they said that the information that had been given to the reverend gentleman was very likely true, as those ladies probably played such a very bad game. In England there was no occasion to make use of such expletives as were suggested, and a “Dash!” and “Oh, you naughty, naughty little ball” were generally found sufficient to meet the exigencies of the most trying situations. At one time there seemed to be some considerable rivalry and jealousy, quite characteristically feminine, between the British and American lady golfers. But Miss Rhona Adair as was went over to the States and won all her matches, the strain of the effort—believing that she really had the credit of her country at stake—being, so it was authoritatively said, largely responsible for the breakdown in her health that ensued. Then the Americans sent over a big team of ladies to try to capture our Ladies’ Championship with one of them. The battlefield was at Cromer, and such a scene was there as one by one the American flags were hauled down! At the end of the meeting the British lioness held undisputed possession of the field, and she placed the Cup on her tea table.

VIII

Perhaps there is more to be said for keeping one’s score for the round when playing a match than is allowed by many people who occasionally discuss this matter with some heat. It may be agreed at once that the golfer who consistently subordinates the importance and interest of his match to his anxiety regarding his aggregate score is to be condemned, and more than ever so when his reckoning of his figures is done openly and audibly, and when he is guilty of remarking, for example, a splendidly fought match being all square at the eighteenth tee, that he has a 4 left for 79, showing in what direction his strongest ambition lies for the time being. Such a person is an undesirable opponent, and a nuisance on the links. In match play the match is the thing, and those who do not want the match, but only the score, should go out alone with their caddies. Yet at the same time it must be remembered that a man’s scores for the round are often the only real indication that can be afforded him of knowing what exactly is his form for the time being, and how well or badly he is playing, and it is eminently desirable that he should from time to time be posted with this knowledge, which in either case should act as an incentive towards the improvement of his game. A man may be winning all his matches with two or three holes to spare, and if he is of a placid temperament and not given to any closely discriminating analysis of the details of his own game, he may often be living in a fool’s paradise with regard to the quality of his golf and the accuracy of his handicap. It may be true that handicaps are provided chiefly for match-play purposes, and that if a man can win half his matches with the handicap that is given him, there is not much cause for fault-finding; but, after all, handicaps are supposed to represent the relative strengths of all players, even though they do not, and it is reasonable to expect that the holder of a certain handicap should be able to go round his course, say, one time in three or four at a net score that would come out at par. One must doubt whether the average seven or eight handicap man does this, which, of course, leads to the usual conclusion that the general tendency in medium handicaps in these days is to make them too flattering.

And, again, when a player finds himself winning his match with so much ease that the match itself has really very little interest for him, if any at all, when he is playing well and his opponent’s game has gone completely to the dogs, it is surely pardonable for him to concentrate his chief attention upon his score for the round, so long as he does not do it obtrusively, and does nothing to indicate to his opponent that he has other things in mind besides the question as to whether he shall achieve victory at the twelfth or thirteenth hole. It is simply a matter of common sense and good manners, and all scores should be kept mentally, and should not be spoken of until the round is over. The keeping of a score will often urge a man to greater effort and the display of greater skill in a particular emergency, and will thus tend to the improvement of his game. Nearly all players of great skill and long experience agree that there is nothing in the world like much score play for the betterment of the golfer. It strengthens the sense of responsibility, and of the need for the utmost concentration of thought and effort upon every shot that is made, and when a golfer has taught himself to do this he has gone a long way towards the achievement of that severe self-discipline which is an essential characteristic of the good and sound player whose game has always to be feared. It is because they have not that self-discipline and have not cultivated that sense of responsibility, that the majority of amateurs are absolutely terrorised by a card and rendered incapable even of playing anything like their real game. They do not so much fear to make a bad shot when it will only mean a lost hole, which may be won back five minutes later; but it is a different thing when the bad shot may cost three strokes, which have to enter into the final reckoning. Yet the bad shot is equally bad in either case and ought to be equally regretted, but is not. And if an amateur does not keep some mental account of his score when engaged in matches, he has scarcely any other opportunity of practising medal play, since it is not customary and is not desirable that pairs should go out together matched with each other on the strokes for the round and not on holes.

Apart from the objections which have been urged against it, and which it has been suggested may not be quite so well founded as some people appear to think, one is inclined to fancy that in many cases one of the drawbacks to the continual counting of one’s score is the inclination that is bred in the player to self-deception, and in the course of our golf we come across many curious instances of it. The simplest and most frequent is the waiving of the lost stroke for a stymie. If the player’s ball is within two feet of the hole when the stymie is laid him, it may be legitimate enough for him to reckon that if he had been engaged in pure score play he would have holed the putt that he was in the actual circumstances unable to hole, and therefore to deduct a stroke from the actual number taken on the round. But in the weakness of their human nature many who are thus engaged in score counting go much farther than this in giving themselves the benefits of doubts. It is difficult or impossible for them to draw any line between that which it was very likely they would do and that which they might possibly do. If for the purposes of their score they give themselves the two-feet putt which they would have holed but for the stymie, then surely there can be no objection to giving themselves a thirty-inch putt, and if that, then one also at a yard, and a yard and a half—two yards, three yards, four. And, pursuing this process of self-cheating, you will find the golfer submitting it to himself that he may count it as one stroke to get down, when he is fifteen or twenty feet from the hole, on the reasoning that many a time in his life before he had holed such putts, and was certain to do so again, so why not this time?

This is but one of the many frauds that players are brought to practise upon themselves in their yearning for a good round. Have we not known them to give themselves a four or five feet putt when their opponents had already given up the hole, because, though they had the time and opportunity for making the stroke, they were afraid that they might miss it, and so spoil that nice score which they were building up? They say to themselves that if they did putt it they would be certain to succeed, so what matter. And worse still is the case of the man who goes up to his ball in such a circumstance and putts at it, perhaps with one hand, pretending to himself that he is not trying! Yet if the ball goes in he feels a wholesome satisfaction of having done his duty by his card; and if it does not go in he still counts it as having done so, because it would have done if he had tried properly. There is also the case of the other man who, having missed such a putt by half an inch, perhaps unluckily, makes a bargain with himself that if he can do that putt immediately and successfully four times one after the other, he will count it to him after all, having thus proved that it was well within the scope of his ability, and that his first failure was an accident and not likely to occur again. And I have heard of men who, counting their scores, and having obtained a lie of most exceptional badness after a good shot, have declined to include in their mental reckoning the fruitless stroke that followed, on the ground that the chances of their getting such a lie in a medal round were a thousand to one against!

Strangest case of all, I once played with a man who told me at the end of his round what a good score he had done, and proceeded to detail the figures 4553, etc. “But,” I said, “you were in the bunker at the first hole and took 6.” “Yes,” he said, “but in counting my score I always give myself a 4 at the first hole, no matter what I take; because, don’t you see, if I were out to make the best return possible, as if trying to break a record, I could play the first hole two or three times, if necessary, until I got my par 4, and then go on with that round. I would be giving up the round each time when I failed, and starting a fresh round; so, you see, the 4 at the first is always certain, and so I always count it, whatever I do.” I saw,

even to deceive ourselves.

Thus does this score counting and this yearning for one’s record round breed a moral cowardice in such men. There is only one score to count, and that is the one which would be passed according to the rules of stroke play. If golfers must count scores they must be just to themselves, and they must not even temper their justice with any mercy, for the laws of golf are inexorable, and in them there is no mercy.

IX

There are many who hold that the most exasperating opponent of all is he who is afflicted with an amazing indecision when about to make his very shortest putts. For a minute he will stand with his putter to the ball as if in abject fear of his fate, and surely at such a time there are strange fancies flying through his brain. They must be like the fancies of a drowning man. It was agreed among a company of his friends that these must be the jerky thoughts of such a man whom they well know when he was engaged gloomily upon the dreaded task of putting a ball that lay eighteen inches from the hole, the little patch of putting green that intervened being perfectly smooth and level:—

X

Some of those cantankerous people who have no sympathy with games, and but a limited confidence in the wise precept that the healthy mind is most frequently to be found in association with the healthy body—practical people they like to call themselves—will sometimes ask you what is the good of golf. It is generally useless to attempt to humour them by advancing the proposition that it returns a dividend of fifty percent. in mental and physical efficiency, and seventy-five in the general happiness of the subject.

What are really the least convincing examples of the practical value of golf are the most effective in argument against such folks. With them it may count a word in favour of the game that a man once playing it found that his ball from a full drive came to rest on a sixpence which had evidently dropped through a hole in the pocket of a previous player. Here, indeed, was a material practical gain! They will be impressed also with the possibilities of the game when they are told a little story of how a man, who was not in quest of art treasures at the time, discovered an old master accidentally, and entirely through the medium of his golf. It was in this way. A Montreal art dealer was playing the game on a country course one day in 1903, when he sliced a ball so badly that away it went through the window of a cottage hard by. Thereupon there came out from it an old lady, a French Canadian, who was possessed of remarkable power of speech, of which the golfer was given much evidence. Presently, when her attack was somewhat exhausted, the poor golfer offered to recompense her for the damage done to the window; but then it was put to him that the broken glass was not the only casualty. The ball, after passing through the window, had continued its course of destruction by breaking the glass that covered the picture; and without making any examination of the nature of this damage the player agreed that he would give a matter of a pound for the picture besides paying for the broken window. This soothed the feelings of the lady of the cottage, and she pressed upon him the picture, for the damage to which he had paid so handsomely. He took it away with him, and at home in the evening he was led in a spirit of curiosity to make some examination of it, when, to his astonishment, he discovered that it was a Dutch interior by Teniers, which he sold a few days later for £500. To the credit of this golfer be it said, he sent a cheque for half the amount to the cottager. This is an excellent story to tell to the absurd and practical people, and a true one.

It might be of service to add to it an account of a shot that was played on one occasion by a gentleman of no less scientific importance than Professor John Milne, who is known as a great seismologist, the man who is most in evidence when earthquakes are troubling. When the earth is still the Professor will leave his instruments in the Isle of Wight to their own care for a period, and he will wander away to the links for some golf. To what great feat has the golf of this professor led him? Why, he of all men became the first to drive a golf ball across the Victoria Falls on the Zambesi River—a hundred and sixty yards of roaring, foaming water. That was when the British Association went for its annual meeting to South Africa, and Professor Sims Woodhead, the celebrated Cambridge pathologist, was so much impressed by the achievement, that he too attempted to drive the Zambesi, and succeeded. But these are the things that may be done by Professors once, and not always. Two more balls were teed on the bank, and the Professors smote them with their clubs, but those balls were claimed by the Zambesi, and perchance they have been digested by the crocodiles. Now here you have something done by golf which was not golf, but which marked the advance of civilisation into the dark regions of the African continent. Our practical friends must allow this to the credit of the game, not only for the achievement in itself, but for the possibilities that it suggests, for is not a picture at once conjured up of the resourceful golfer driving a ball from the shore to a sinking ship, when all other means of establishing communication therewith had failed? To the ball there will be tied a silken thread, and the thread will help a string across, and the string will drag a rope. Thus must we plead for golf!

While in these serious aspects of the battle of life the game is thus to come to our aid, it shall be of similar service also in the gentler paths. Once upon a time a maker of golf balls told me how he had suspected a rival of putting cores from old balls made by him A into all so-called new ones made by the rivalB. Therefore A for a little while wound a tiny piece of tissue paper with the rubber of his cores, and on the paper there was written A’s name and address. Some time later the tissues came home again through the medium of the balls that bore the name of B. There was this damning evidence of the pilfering of the cores. This story is not told as a hint to the trade, but surely it will convey one to ingenious persons who wish for a mode of secret communication with others which will be sure and safe. May it not be that some Romeo of to-day has already come by the device of lofting a ball or two on to the balcony of the fair Juliet, who in the seclusion of her chamber may be discovered in operation upon the cover with hair-pins and fire-irons, and presently in raptures upon the endearments expressed in the billet doux of her Romeo?

Perhaps it will not avail us as golfers to tell our practical friends that the principles of the application of physical force which have been taught us in the game, as of the steady body, the fixed centre of movement, and of the hand being under the constant leadership of the eye, have benefited us not merely in the playing of other games, such as billiards and tennis, but in the attainment of greater proficiency in some of the most practical and useful of domestic occupations, so that the man of all others who may be depended upon to hang up the pictures in a new house as pictures should be hanged, is the golfer who has got his handicap down to 6. We will tell also to the critic of our game that it affords a scope for a kind of humour that is of occasional service to some wits and others. It helps them to raise a laugh over the tea-cups when they say that they will take the odd or two more in sugar. We do not like this jugglery with the terms, and it is only to be excused in such exceptional cases as when the doctor tells the new golfer that his temperature is 99° and the patient inquires anxiously as to what the bogey is; or when, in discussing the frowning fortunes of some unfortunate acquaintance who has had a hard time in life, and is called upon for severe labour in his last days, it is said of this poor chap that he is playing the nineteenth hole and has made an indifferent drive. But, in seriousness, we like our golf to be kept sacred to itself, and unassociated with the generally duller pursuits of this workaday world.

XI

Is there not a considerable superstition of the links? Even great players have old clubs that they carry about with them, not so much for their practical value as for the luck of the thing, as they fancy it; and a man once said at Prestwick that he always carried in his bag a queer-shaped iron, though he never used it in these days. This was because on one famous occasion many years before, when he was seven down with eight to play, and won the match by a brilliancy that did not belong to him, he could only account for it by the circumstance that this club had somehow found its way into his bag by accident. As a small acknowledgment to the gods, and a hint that such favours would be welcome in the future, he vowed that he would carry that club with him on the links for evermore, but that never would he play with it. And he keeps his vow most steadfastly, to the irritation of the burdened caddie.

Some sentiment clings to that cleek belonging to Mr.Edward Blackwell, which, it has been said, is “shaped like an old boot,” but which, as we all know, has done work upon which any cleek might be congratulated. And is it not declared that before Mr.Travis set out to play in the championship at Sandwich, Ben Sayers lent to him for mascot his favourite spoon?

Other golfers have other fancies. Some have it that it is unlucky to go out to play without a supply of money, for then surely shall the half-crown be lost; and others fear that it might go hardly with them if they had not the company of their favourite pipe. On severely important occasions, Andrew Kirkaldy will hie himself beforehand to his tobacconists in St.Andrews and buy himself a new pipe for luck. Does not special fortune attach to special golfing clothes, and is not the light grey jacket that which brings most luck? Think of all the fine players who jacket themselves in this way with darker wear below, which is out of the usual order. Mr.Hilton has a jacket which goes always with him as the lamb went with Mary, and has thus played its part in championships innumerable. This is a jacket that has won its place in golfing history.

The superstitions about the winning of certain holes are stupid and general. Why is it such an unfortunate thing with some people to win the first hole? And yet do they always try to win, and do not bemoan their fate if they lose. A trifle more reason, perhaps, is there in the old couplet:

But of course matches have been won when the winner was two up with five to go, hundreds and thousands of them. There is one man of high championship rank who has a list of exceptions to this rule, which he applies for his own consolation when the fates decree that he shall be two holes to the good as he stands upon the fourteenth tee. If it suits him, he will put it that the spell will not work if it happened that he fluked the thirteenth with a long putt; and he holds upon suitable occasion that it has nothing to do with a foursome. One may suppose that the essence of the idea is that the man who is two up at this state of the game is just short of being in nearly the strongest position possible, and is sometimes a little inclined to be slack in consequence; and then, if he loses the next hole, and is only one up with four to go, a sudden fear seizes him: he feels that he must fight for his life, becomes flurried, presses—and then the rest of the tale is soon told. But the best and the worst of the proverb lies in its recitation by the man who is down when his opponent, bold in confidence, is taking the honour at the fourteenth.

It must be held as an unfortunate thing to play a ball into a graveyard, and it is better, perhaps, that one’s attention should not be called to the memorial stone hard by the eleventh tee at Deal, which tells of a foul murder committed upon some fair maiden at this spot in the long ago when Deal was unacquainted with the game that has given her fame.

We hear that the most famous lady players carry charms when engaged in their most important games. She who won fame as Miss Rhona Adair is said to have invariably worn a particular ribbon with a gruesome device of skull and crossbones upon it whenever she very much wanted to win her match. White heather is supposed to be a most potent charm, and it has been told as a secret that some ladies decline to wash their hands between rounds, though luncheon comes in the interval, lest evil should befall them afterwards.