Club (sport)

“ The mere form of having one or two members vouch for a candidate's integrity and good behavior is sufficient.
Golf clubs, hunting clubs, political or sports clubs have special membership qualifications; all good golf players are as a rule welcomed at all golf clubs; all huntsmen at hunting clubs, and yet the Myopia would not think of admitting the best rider ever known if he was not unquestionably a gentleman. But this is unusual. As a rule, the great player is welcomed in any club specially devoted to the sport in which he excels. ”

“ Nowadays, of course, things are not quite so rough and ready, and most of the clubs are affiliated, and run under Hurlingham or the Jockey Club rules, so that good sport and good feeling prevail. In fact the camp man looks forward to these occasions as the best bits of sport and amusement that he will get during the year. ”

“ Chowdler and the original [128] families took up the white man’s burden, formed themselves into a permanent committee, and set themselves to organise life on the principles which have made sport the thing it is. They created a skating club, a tobogganing club, a ski-ing club, and a curling club, each with rules and tests and an etiquette of its own ”

“ The Golf Club gives many interesting tournaments and is one of the social centers in summer for the elite, as is the race track where one may meet the world and its wife. The track is good and the horses as fine as one can see anywhere, all of which helps to render this sport most fascinating. ”

“ No fewer than seventeen nationalities have their own Consular representatives at the port, but the British section of the community has always maintained a long lead in both social and mercantile circles, the next in importance being the German section. It is, no doubt, due to this predominance of the British that sport occupies so prominent a place in local life. Hunting, horse-racing, polo, baseball, cricket, hockey, tennis, shooting, rowing, and sailing have each a representative club, which, with the solitary exception of baseball, was originally instituted by the British. ”

“ Any one of us would enjoy it, if he weren't so self-conscious. And it's more picturesque than golf and takes more skill. And what courtesy! These men form what is really a club—a club in its primitive and true sense. ”

“ I myself chose a club from those in the bag.
"That's a niblick. You can hardly drive with a niblick."
"Why not? Is it an essential condition of the game that you should play a certain stroke with a particular club?"
"Not that I'm aware of. Still, I cannot but think that you will hardly do yourself justice if you drive with a niblick. If you are in search of a little variety why not drive with a putter? These are the clubs with which one generally drives." ”

“ They are almost invariably made upon one or other of two models, examples of which are seen in the illustration. The primitive idea of a club is evidently derived from a stick with a knob at the end, and that is the form which is most in vogue. In the common kind of club the whole of the weapon is quite plain, but in many specimens the native has imbedded a piece of bone or spike of iron in the ball or bulb at the end of the club, and has decorated the handle with feathers, bits of cloth, scalps, and similar ornaments. ”

“ Very different is the bran-new modern club whose interior my faithful artist has depicted, and whose appearance at five o’clock in the afternoon I am now called upon to describe. Gentlemen members of clubs, these gorgeous palaces are but the growth of one generation. Your fathers had, it is true, their Wattier’s, the Cocoa-Tree, White’s, and Boodle’s, but those were considerably more like gambling-houses than clubs. To obtain admission was exceedingly difficult, and to remain a member was, save to men of immense fortune, absolutely ruinous. ”

“ Such are the many purely athletic, sports and pastimes clubs, the Jockey Club, the Alpine, chess, yacht and motor clubs. Then there are literary clubs, musical and art clubs, publishing clubs; and the name of “club” has been annexed by a large group of associations which fall between the club proper and mere friendly societies, of a purely periodic and temporary nature, such as slate, goose and Christmas clubs, which are not required to be registered under the Friendly Societies Act. ”

“ The golfer hurries through a bath, puts his clothes about him, and with the whole world of golf save this one unit still asleep, even unto the most watchful greenkeeper, he hurries down to the course with a few balls and just this one club, this one fine club. ”

“ Many golfers carry in their minds a fairly clear picture of a club that they regard as their ideal. They have some notion as to its looks, the shape of the head, and the length and the thickness of the shaft. Particularly do they know what that club feels like in their hands as they grip it to make the shot for which it, and it alone, is perfectly adapted. They have never seen such a club, and they fear sometimes that they never will. ”

“ Offences and late time are entered in a record book, and an opportunity is given to wipe off all past records by two years' good service. The Athletic Club, with over 500 voluntary subscribers, runs three cricket, four football, and two hockey teams, besides bowling, tennis, swimming, and other sports. ”

“ The Club House overhung the rolling green of the golf links; from a place of vantage he saw that Eliza was not on the veranda; at one end a group of young men were drinking—teal Beyond his father and three companions, followed by caddies, rose above a hill. His father grasped a club and bent over the turf; the club described a short arc, the ball flashed whitely through the air, and the group trotted eagerly forward, mingling explanation, chagrin and prediction with heated and simple sums in arithmetic. ”

“ The history of
“The dear old street of clubs and cribs,
As north and south it stretches,”
is one which, if its record were fully written, would be found to have no little connection with the annals of the country. Its position, its proximity to the Palace, its past inhabitants, its famous club houses (where so much of the history of the country was, and is, evolved,) all make for its claim in this respect.
WHITE’S CLUB.
On our left is the famous bow window of “White’s,” where the dandies used to assemble to quiz the ladies on their way to the drawing-rooms. What a history has that club! ”

“ The eighteenth, too, is full of charm, and when we have successfully carried the spur of a big hill and played our second over some more bold and broken ground, we can hole out in a deep hollow, with the eyes of the whole club watching us from above as they sit in front of the club-house. ”

“ There are also all over England clubs specially devoted to particular objects, golf clubs, yacht clubs and so forth. In these the members are drawn together by their interest in a common pursuit, and are forced into some sort of acquaintanceship. But these are very different in spirit and intention from the American Country Club. It exists as a kind of center of the social life of the neighborhood. There may be and often are golf links connected with it. There are tennis courts, sometimes swimming baths. There is always a ball-room. ”

“ If the individual members of a large athletic club in the City of New York should assemble in its club house to determine whether they, as individual human beings, should join with the human members of a number of other athletic clubs and create a large golf club, with a large human membership, and become members of that large golf club, would any of them entertain the absurd thought that he was becoming a member of the golf club in his capacity as a member of his existing and smaller athletic club? ”

“ The golf club, although naturally to a less extent, embodies this fundamental error in mechanics, for instead of hitting the ball dead in a line with the shaft, it gets it in the middle of the face which projects from one side of the shaft. ”

“ His head was hanging low on his breast, his shoulders were sagging, his feet were shuffling along the ground, and he trailed a golf club behind him. When a man trails a club to the eighteenth putting green it is a sure sign that all is over but the shouting; and the wise observer will do his shouting in a whisper. Waddles sat down suddenly. ”

“ It is a maxim with the average clubwoman that the “talent” must be on hand in very good season. Some clubs who are very secret about their affairs put you in a remote waiting-room which may or may not be warm. Others, remembering that you also are a clubwoman and likely to sympathize in their doings, give you a comfortable chair on the platform. As I am thoroughly in sympathy with the club idea and spirit, I like to hear the reports, provided they are not too long. At one enthusiastic club I sat during an hour or more while they thoroughly and conscientiously amended their constitution. ”

“ A glance at Fig. 4 will show the exercise; the dotted lines and arrows indicate the direction in which each club travels. In this exercise (and in many others to follow) the clubs cross twice in each circle; care must therefore be taken not to allow them to come into collision (which catastrophe can be easily avoided by following the directions just given—viz., to keep the base of each club in a straight line with each shoulder) . ”

“ The Tory patrician belonged to White’s; the Whig politician of old family was a member of Brooks’s; the country gentleman put his name down at Boodle’s or Arthur’s; the distinguished lawyer, divine, or man of letters, became a member of the Athenæum; and the soldier, who was a field officer, of the United Service. The membership of such clubs constituted an exclusive circle.
A club was a place in which men wrote letters and met their friends. ”

“ A tee where no tannin can lurk;
The soldier may come, and we'll promise to show
Some hazards a soldier may shirk;
The statesman may joke, as he tops every stroke,
That at last he is high in his aims;
And the clubman will stand with a club in his hand
That is worth every club in St. James'.
The palm and the leather come rarely together,
Gripping the driver's haft,
And it's good to feel the jar of the steel
And the spring of the hickory shaft.
Why trouble or seek for the praise of a clique?
A cleek here is common to all ”

“ As far back as my earliest acquaintance with the royal and ancient game, the Old Guard was an institution of the Yavapai Golf and Country Club—a foursome cemented by years and usage, an association recognised as permanent, a club within the club—four eighteen-handicap men, bound by the ties of habit and hopeless mediocrity. The young golfer improves his game and changes his company, graduating from Class B into Class A; the middle-aged golfer is past improvement, so he learns his limitations, hunts his level and stays there. ”

“ It seems, however, that they start when the club head is a matter of some eighteen inches from the ball, and that for a distance of a yard in the arc that it is describing they have it almost to themselves and impart a whip-like snap to the movement, not only giving a great extra force to the stroke, but, by keeping the club head for a moment in the straight line of the intended flight of the ball, doing much towards the ensuring of the proper direction. ”

“ But at gayer times, when there are gala receptions at the club, its steps are all buried under expensive carpet, soft as moss and covered over with a long pavilion of red and white awning to catch the snowflakes; and beautiful ladies are poured into the club by the motorful. ”

“ Your clubs certainly nourish sociality greatly; those little tables, with one sulky man before one sulky chop—those hurried nods between acquaintances—that, monopoly of newspapers and easy chairs—all exhibit to perfection the cementing faculties of a club. ”

“ Very many players who waggle, produce most remarkable flourishes with their club. The club is made to describe curves in the air which it could not possibly do in any other operation at golf than the waggle. The whole object of the waggle seems to be to allow the player to get his eye [348] in, as it is commonly called, at the ball, to loosen his joints, and, which is a point that I have not seen previously made, in a measure to produce in anticipation the motions of his wrists and club immediately before, at, and after impact with the ball. ”

“ Indian Clubs.—Club swinging, if carried out in the correct style, brings almost every muscle into play, develops the chest and arms, imparts an easy carriage to the figure, and, if persevered in, under proper conditions to be hereafter mentioned, will ultimately enable the most round-shouldered individual to assume that lissom and perpendicular attitude which is the characteristic of the finished athlete. ”

“ The Sportsmen's Clubs that have been organized throughout the country should be supported by every true sportsman; and if you lay a thick stick vigorously across the back of the first fool you see about to kill Cock Robin, you will have established a very efficacious Sportsman's Club of your own, and will have earned the best regards of Mr. PUNCHINELLO to boot—by which he means, if you choose, that you have his leave and license to boot the fellow into the bargain. ”

“ While I am on this question of the construction of clubs, I may as well state that under the recent ruling of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club there is not a legal golf club in use in England to-day, for one of the essentials of a legal club now is that the head must be all on one side of the shaft of the club. ”

“ In the first place, avoid the tendency—which is to some extent natural—to let the arms go out or away from the body as soon as the downward movement begins. When they are permitted to do so the club head escapes from its proper line, and a fault is committed which cannot be remedied before the ball is struck. Knowing by instinct that you are outside the proper course, you make a great effort at correction, the face of the club is drawn across the ball, and there is one more slice. ”