Henry Leach

“ Asquith, has been stopped under this rule. The pipes that one hears seem to be skirling a song of the greatness of the game and the glory of the men who used to play it here in the olden days. Above all, one comes instantly by a deep sense as of walking on hallowed ground, of being one of the heirs to a [121] great heritage in golf, and to a great responsibility. Life and the game are stronger things than they used to be. That same subtle oppression of soul is felt as when one has a first glance at the Pyramids or at the tomb of the great Napoleon in the Invalides. ”

“ One of the foremost of these schools of golf architecture is the Heroic. The name has only to be given, and every golfer of experience knows at once what links he would select as belonging to it—links with a fine length and needing a strong arm and a brave heart for successful play upon them, links which are broad and bold in their characteristics, never easy, and terribly difficult when Nature is in a tantrum mood. There are not so many drive and pitch holes on such courses, and when one is encountered the pitch calls for the most thoughtful golf. ”

“ And this drama of the emotions of the individual is played always in the most perfect setting for such a simple human play—the sea and green fields and plain earth, and the simplest tools to move a little white ball, not along marked lines or within narrow limits or in protected arenas, but anywhere along that green grass, over the hills and through the valleys and across the streams and rushing rivers, while the wind blows now this way and then that, and the rain pours. All the time the golfer pursues the little ball, alone with plain nature and his human adversary. ”

“ Then what is deeper than the soul’s content of the golfer when he finishes the afternoon round just as the red sun is dipping away to other lands, and by the time he and his clubs are cleaned, the twilight is already changing into the evening gloom, and the thing that it seems best to do is that which is one of the happiest in the golfer’s day, which is to sit by a bright fire and talk with one’s enemy of the links of all the good and the bad golf that has been played since the morning. ”

“ The man who can play the real game in a high wind, and use it to his advantage at every opportunity, knows golf as others do not. He is a finished player, and he rather likes the days of March for the rich sport that they afford—the real big game of the links. The other man, when he hears the wind playing like a German band round the side of the house as he tries to get himself off to sleep at night, thinks to himself that he will have to give up the idea of golf in the morning. ”

“ That is a fair creed concerning the command of golf, and we may reject the theory that indomitable, persevering mankind finds the fascination of the game merely in the failures and irritations that it brings and in the desire to overcome them. The activity of that instinct of hope is the mystic charm, and surely it is to the credit of a game that it should teach the man to look forward with courage and cheerfulness, and to be always something of an optimist, and the more of it the better for his game. These things lead to the making of a good man as well as a good golfer. ”

“ Just as there are no friends like the old friends, and no wine like the old wine, so one is sometimes disposed to fancy that there is no golf like the old golf that is now indeed but a memory, and one often much too dim at that. The match-book will refresh the mind to the recollection of dear friends with whom one is no longer associated, and of fine sport that one had with them on days when the thrills of life seemed to be a little quicker than they are now. ”

“ Allan was a great golfer, and a fine exemplar in every respect, for he was a great-hearted player who never knew when he was beaten, was always cheery and with a smile, and he possessed the very perfection of a golfing temperament, as most, though not all, great players do. That was why everybody found it such a delight to play with him, and why he and old Tom, who had also a fine temperament, were as a foursome pair just as strong and invincible as men could be imagined to be. ”

“ A fragrant smell of moist earth rises up, and it is as if that very scent is a rare stimulant to the golfer after the heat of summer. There is a fine spring in the turf as we tread upon it, and, quite revelling in it, we find that we must needs go tripping light-heartedly along the links until the problems of the play at a couple of holes have sobered us down. We like even to see the dewdrops lingering on until starting time, taking advantage of the laggard autumnal sun. The film of mist that is hanging a few holes out, and the suspicion of a nip in the air, are fine. ”

“ Probably no man has been able completely to [120] define the charm of the place. Its charm is of its golf, for though it has some natural beauty, and is greatly historic and of celebrity for its ruins, it casts no enduring spell over the man who does not know the use of a driver. The constant talk of it and its tradition has something to do with the charm, no doubt. The stranger, who has never struck a ball there, feels something of nervous ecstasy as he hears the brakes go on the train that slows down on its approach to the station. ”

“ The heart of every golfer is touched by all these changes, for whatever may have been his previous disposition and his tastes in life, each one becomes in time something of a Nature lover, and acquires a knowledge and interest in some of the simpler features of her work. For, of all games, golf is the game which is most closely allied with simple Nature. A little ball, a stick, a small hole, and the open country at her wildest and roughest, and there you have your golf. ”

“ SPRING I To discover the secret of its wonderful charm is not the least of the problems of golf. It is a game that encourages the reflective and philosophical mind to close investigation, and so it is not enough for the worthy player that he should take the things that he sees and feels for granted, with no questions concerning the mystic influences that seem constantly to brood over the links, and the people who are of them. ”

“ No class of man looks forward to the spring with keener anticipation than the golfer. Overburdened with his winter’s discontent, he fancies it as a time of sunshine, of dry courses, of sprouting young grass that holds up the ball on the suburban links and gives us the first good brassey lies that we have had for some months, of the frequent retirement of the energetic worm, of the quickening of the greens, of the leafing of the trees and the hedgerows, and the brightening of the face of Nature. ”

“ Some old golfers have said, and wisely, that it is a good thing to go away on a golfing holiday with a man and never to golf with him—to get the game with others, and to talk of it with the companion of the trip at breakfast in the morning and at dinner when the play for the day is over; and there can be little doubt that in this maxim there is much wisdom, though it is not necessary to carry the recommendation to the extreme. Too much familiarity with the game of one man breeds some contempt for it, even though it be a game that is more remunerative in holes than that possessed by the other ”

“ Thus the missing of the short putt represents the greatest triumph of matter over mind that is to be found in the whole range of sport, or, so far as I know, in any other pursuit in life. But why should a man be given to these morbid thoughts of the ways of missing, and why should he not be of hopeful, courageous disposition, and attack the hole boldly and with confidence, instead of remembering these dozen ways of missing? ”

“ It is this hope that leads the golfer on through all his troubles and disappointments, and it still urges him forward when he has already ascended to a great delight. It is a hope that will never permit complete satisfaction. This simple formula that the mystic charm of golf is hope, will explain all the emotions that rise up in the golfer in the course of a year of play. Take him from the first tee to the end of his game. ”

“ It is a glorious thing to play a game that one need never give up, however long one may live. And what is more, the game can be played well by the veteran, and he enjoys it almost as much as ever, and does not merely take part in it for the sake of the fresh air and the exercise. Possibly if he had not been a golfer in his middle age, and perhaps in his youth as well, he would not be able to play any game, even a fireside game, by the time he was due to become an octogenarian. ”

“ It is one of the good things of golf that it has come into our civilisation to use up all utterly barren and waste tracts of coastwise land, and that generally the more barren and waste the better they are for golf. Are not some of the best links there are in Britain situated on coasts that are to the non-golfing mind, uneducated to the beauty and charm of testing, full-blooded and yet scrupulously fair holes, quite naked of all attraction? ”

“ A good drive at golf is quite as fine a thing to look at as a snick to the boundary on the cricket field. Where the difference comes in from the public point of view at present is in the fact that in the case of an important cricket match the public are brought to understand that an enhanced value is attached to each stroke, and therefore there is the more interest in watching it played. Would there not be at least as much public interest in watching a great player attempt to hole a curly two-yard putt if a championship or a side wager of a couple of hundred pounds were depending on it? ”

“ For, of all the classic writers whose work we read, there is none who gives such evidence in almost every line of it that he was possessed of a perfectly ideal golfing temperament, of a philosophy that seems constantly to have a subtle and most perfect application to the life of the links. Through and through it is the real golfer’s philosophy, that which is the best suited to the intensity of the game, to its deep humanity, and that which serves for the complete appreciation and full joy of the game. ”

“ Porthcawl is fine, and it is a fine change, and there are holes on the course that have a boldness and a vigour that stir the pulse of the golfing man. We play over the wall and up the hill to the turn, and there is South Wales and its ocean frame spread out at our feet, making us linger upon a glorious scene and sigh a little as we drive down the hillside to the first hole in. ”

“ The man who has the courage to enter upon a medal round or a match with a keen opponent and play with a cheap, or cheaper, ball, is a rarity, and an admirable one. Faith goes for a long way in these matters. Give a man the most expensive ball on the market to play with, and he feels that he has got something which will do justice to his capabilities, and occasionally let him off with light penalties for some of his errors. Let him have a cheap ball and he is uneasy, with the idea that nothing is likely to go right for him. ”

“ And the golfer has seen more of the year, of the real year of Nature so complex and so complete in its variety and balance, than the other men who live in towns. He braved it in the open lands through the bitter weeks of January and February, and he was cheerful through the winds and rains that followed, for as the rainbows spread across the sky he knew that the glorious spring had come, most heartening time of all the golfing year. ”

“ The man who has not heard Starter Greig fire his blast of warning through the hole in his box down the fairway—with a clap, and a bang against the horizon, for all the world like a discharge from a small brass gun—is still ignorant of one of the minor wonders of the golf world, and has a very inadequate perception of the possibilities of calling “Fore!” Likewise, one would say that of all roads—as superior to mere paths—that which skirts the seventeenth green on the same old course is the most remembered by the majority of good golfers—remembered sadly. ”

“ The freedom that it has always enjoyed, and in which it is superior to any other game that has a right to be compared to it for quality, interest, and popularity, has become irksome. It is felt that there can be disadvantages in too much freedom, and so these people sigh to be placed under a yoke—a yoke of their own choosing, but none the less stern and powerful and, above all, active. These agitations, if they are to be dignified with such a name, commonly begin in the dullest days of winter, when both links and livers are abnormally heavy, and they flicker out again in the spring. ”

“ So we like this late Prime Minister not because of his political rank, but because he loves his game and does his best by it, and is at all times an example to the acolytes who come forward in nervous ignorance of the great meaning of golf.
Then it is less interesting to consider what style of player Mr. Balfour is, than what kind of man he shows himself to be amid the trials and the triumphs of the links, where, it is indisputably held, a man’s entire human nature, despite all efforts at repression, is forced up to the surface for all to see. ”

“ One may disagree with the idea that the Club entertains of the duty and responsibility towards the great world of golf which time and circumstances have cast upon it; but no golfer of understanding would speak disrespectfully of this Club, which in many respects is the finest institution of its kind in existence, and is entitled to the very utmost veneration. Chiefly by its efforts there has been given a dignity to the game of golf which has had much to do with its established greatness. Every golfer everywhere owes a debt to the Royal and Ancient Club. ”

“ It is a good club, and it has done a fine service on the links, and as for its imperfections, are they not what its maker gave to it, trifling imperfections, too, which we are generously disposed to overlook when considering that fine record of service. But it is not the ideal club; it does not feel like that club that we sometimes handle in our imagination, and then enjoy a glorious sense of power as with no other. ”

“ So it is hope and hope all the way through the golfer’s life, and it is the most joyous, the most uplifting of all the instincts, and the most intensely human, and that which is given to man alone. It is because golf strikes always this chord in his nature that it makes the strong appeal to him. There is no other game or sport that permits him to hope [5] through failure in the same way, that leads him on, coaxes him, cajoles him, even fools him. ”

“ When one day’s golf is over, the thought is of the next that will succeed it, and the hope already goes forward to anticipation of the superior delights that may be in store. And it makes the same appeal to all persons of all classes who once attach themselves to it, and it has been found that the golf impulses are as strong in the men of other races and of other colours as they are in the British who have cultivated the game. ”