Golf bag

“ Golf clubs of good quality will cost from two to three dollars apiece and a set for most purposes will consist of four to six clubs. The caddy bag to carry the clubs is made of canvas or leather and will cost from two dollars up. ”

“ So, with so many of the clubs made of wood, and not always like the butter used by the Mad Hatter for watch greasing, the best wood, and the balls so hard and stony of impact, it is no wonder that golf was rather an expensive game for a boy whose shillings were not many. Though the ball only cost a shilling, while the modern ball costs half a crown, the club-smashing abilities of the shilling's worth made it a much dearer ball, to say nothing of the longer life of the half-crowner. ”

“ Before driving he is privileged to place the ball on a tiny mound of earth or sand which is called a “tee.” The players drive in order and then continue making shots toward the hole until finally they have all “holed out” by “putting” their balls into the hole, and the lowest score wins the hole.
Golf is a game in which form is more essential than physical strength and which is adapted for elderly people as well as the young. The wooden clubs are usually made with either dogwood or persimmon heads and with split hickory handles or shafts. The handles are usually wound with a leather grip. ”

“ Standard quality golf balls will cost about nine dollars a dozen. Almost any loose-fitting outdoor costume is suitable for playing golf and the tendency in recent years is to wear long trousers in preference to what are known as “golf trousers.”
A golf course—sometimes called a “links,” from a Scotch word meaning a flat stretch of ground near the seashore—should be kept in good condition in order to enjoy the game properly. The leading golf clubs maintain a large force of men who are constantly cutting the grass, repairing damages to the turf, and rolling the greens. ”

“ By this time we are close to the famous ‘Pebble Ridge,’ and the real golfing country begins with the fourth hole, a fine two-shot hole with a well-guarded green. Next comes the fifth, and in front of the tee there is a bunker so colossal that the carry looks at first sight to be impossible. A good long carry it certainly is, but it is not nearly so appalling as it looks; a well struck ball will career gaily over it, and, if we feel frightened, we can make the carry a little shorter by going to the right. ”

“ Now with regard to putting drag on a long put, it should be obvious to any one that, considering the roughness of the green, the extreme roughness of the ball and its comparatively light weight in proportion to its size, it would be impossible to make that ball retain any considerable measure of back-spin over any appreciable distance of the green. The idea is so repugnant to common sense and practical golf that it has always been a matter of astonishment to me to think that it could have prevailed so much as it has. ”

“ Feeling instinctively that Cousin Egbert would not now be dressing for dinner, I omitted evening clothes from my box, including only a morning-suit and one of form-fitting tweeds which I fancied would do me well enough. But no sooner was my box packed than the Tuttle person informed me that I could take no box whatever. It appeared that all luggage would be strapped to the backs of animals and thus transported. Even so, when I had reduced myself to one park riding-suit and a small bundle of necessary adjuncts, I was told that the golf-sticks must be left behind. ”

“ Speaking roughly, the brassy is first choice, followed by cleek, medium iron, lofter, mashie, and niblick, the last being used only in the most desperate of straits, and where nothing more is expected than to get the ball upon the course again.
The fascination of golf lies in its variety and difficulty. If it were only a question of holing balls, one long hole laid out over a smooth meadow would be all that would be necessary. ”

“ But long before that you would have come to the conclusion that golf, on Paradise green, was not a good game. One device used to be to cut some jagged raw edges to stick out on the ball's surface, before driving off the tee for this hole. Thus jagged, the ball would not fly properly, but it was better to lose a shot, owing to this jaggedness, through the green, than to lose twenty on the putting green. On the rough edges of its scars the ball would come to rest even in Paradise. ”

“ Such a club as he shows might be useful for getting out of a bunker, but it certainly would be of no use whatever in practical golf for driving. As every golfer knows, the face of the driver is, comparatively speaking, very upright, and firing a ball at a wall built at the same angle as the loft of a driver would certainly not produce on that ball much in the way of back-spin. The idea of a modern golf ball which flattens very considerably on the face of the club, rolling up the face of a driver on account of its loft, is too ridiculous to be considered seriously by a practical golfer. ”

“ The question of footwear at golf is one of considerable difficulty, but there is a general feeling in favour of shoes. My friend the Tooting Bec plusser affects a very showy sort of shoe with a wide welt and a sort of fringe of narrow strips of porpoise hide, which fall over the instep in a miniature cataract. ”

“ We do not read anywhere of the mystery of lawn-tennis, the mystery of cricket, the mystery of marbles, squash racquets, or ping-pong. There are no mysteries in these games any more than there are in golf, and the plain fact is that the demand of golf is inexorable. It insists upon the straight line being followed, and the man who forsakes the straight line is immediately detected. In no game, perhaps, is the insistent demand for direction so inexorable as in golf. ”

“ This selection may be varied slightly according to the course on which the match is to be played and the state of the weather, but in general principles the constitution of the bag remains the same, and a player who is equipped with such a set ought to be able to play any hole in any way, and if he cannot do so it is his own skill that is lacking and not an extra club. ”

“ That is a very fair comparison, with the exception that the hard, bare and fast putting-green of a dry summer would present infinitely greater inaccuracies to the already sufficiently inaccurate golf ball than would the billiard table. Let the unthinking golfer ruminate a little on this subject, and the day is not far distant when we shall never see such a thing as an excrescence on a golf ball. ”

“ After this slight alteration the ball flew splendidly, whether off wood or iron clubs, neither too high nor too low, but quite straight, and with the very slight rise towards the end of its carry that is the essence of perfect flight in a golf ball, some of the carries when measured from the tee being well over two hundred yards. ”

“ Shallow faces and broad soles in putters have nothing whatever to recommend them, and there is very little doubt that golfers will, in due course, find this out, and will use a putter so made that it will carry the weight where it is most wanted, and that certainly is not at the base of the ball, for, unnecessary as it may seem to mention the fact, the put is the one stroke in golf which we always desire to keep as close to the green as possible. ”

“ It is abundantly plain that the rubber-cored ball stays on the face of the club much longer than the old gutta-percha ball did. Provided that there were such things in the world as incompressible balls, the impact in the drive would be of the least possible duration with them, but the more compressible the ball becomes the longer it will dwell on the face of the golf club. ”

“ That is what the golfer has to contend with when he tries to put with a bramble ball on a golf green, but, of course, as he does not know it, he blames himself for an off day, or the green for being "beastly," but he never by any chance whatever gives a thought to his horribly defective golf ball. ”

“ We were the first to put a golf ball over Rainbow Bridge, not a great contribution to history or science, but giving us a certain hilarious satisfaction. It is not so easy to be [Pg 290] first at anything in these days, when everything has been tried already. Toby who once stigmatized the ambition as “cheap,” crossed her fingers as the Golfer launched his last ball, and photographed him in the act for the benefit of posterity. Our Old-Timer, another scoffer, later spent an hour hunting the triumphal ball, and on retrieving it from the river bank, begged it for a souvenir. ”

“ It is a terrible place this double green of Point Garry, worn, bare, and sloping down to the rocks and the beach, and we come to it, besides, at two of the most agitating moments of the round; at the first hole, when we have not had quite enough golf, and at the seventeenth, when, if the match has been a fierce one, we have perhaps had too much. Our terror is perhaps less acute at the first hole, because we are then playing on the part of the green that is furthest from the sea ”

“ Obviously the club must be held with an absolutely firm grip, and for the proper execution of a shot like this the shaft should be exceptionally strong and stiff. If there is the least suggestion of whip in it the ball is not extricated in the same way, and moreover there is sometimes a danger of breaking a slender stick. However, if the golfer only carries one brassy in his bag—and the average player will seldom carry two—this stroke might as well be risked, when the necessity for it arises, with the brassy that is carried for all-round work. ”

“ It is, therefore, no longer necessary to say that golf is not a highly developed and scientific sort of hockey, or bandy-ball. Still, there be some to whom the processes of the sport are a mystery, and who would be at a loss to discriminate a niblick from a bunker-iron. The thoroughly equipped golf-player needs an immense variety of weapons, or implements, which are carried for him by his caddie—a youth or old man, who is, as it were, his esquire, who sympathizes with him in defeat, rejoices in his success, and aids him with such advice as his superior knowledge of the ground suggests. ”

“ For there, on the left hand side of the bench which ran round the porch, lay a bag—a queer-looking, travel-worn bag, old-fashioned in make, the leather sorely rubbed, the metal clasps battered and rusted; altogether, a bag that had seen much service. It was the sort of bag that you could carry easily in your hand, and it was roughly tied about with a bit of common cord, in a fashion which suggested that the bag itself contained nothing that was valuable, and that anything was good enough as a fastening. ”

“ It is easy to take light balloons and give them back-spin and show that it influences their trajectories to such an extent that they will go behind the point where they were struck, but a golf ball is a very small, hard, and heavy thing, and by the time that its back-spin begins to exert its influence in a marked manner on its flight it has travelled a considerable distance and the rate of spin will have materially diminished, so that no golfer need ever be afraid of applying too much back-spin to his drive. ”

“ The idea that cut mashie shots and cut puts are played in this manner has arisen from the fact that very frequently the golfer addresses the ball with the toe of his club laid back a little, but by the time he has come on to the ball again he has corrected this. In many cases, if it were not for laying the toe of the club back a little in this manner, golfers would be inclined, although as a matter of strict and accurate golf they should not be, to drag the ball across towards the left of the hole. ”

“ We see here again strong evidence of the fact that Braid is under the same impression as Professor Tait, and that is that the back-spin of golf is obtained from the loft of the club, whereas the loft of the club has one function, and that is to raise the ball from the earth, and there will be no particular necessity to alter our courses, for in ordinary every-day golf, back-spin is practically not used, except when it is intentionally applied by the golfer by means of the stroke suitable for its production. ”

“ Most men in the country wear knickerbockers with golf stockings, with a sack or a belted or a semi-belted coat, and in any variety of homespuns or tweeds or rough worsted materials. Or they wear long trousered flannels. Coats are of the polo or ulster variety. For golf or tennis many men wear sweater coats. Shirts are of cheviot or silk or flannel, all with soft collars attached and to match.
The main thing is to dress appropriately. If you are going to play golf, wear golf clothes; if tennis, wear flannels. Do not wear a yachting cap ashore unless you are living on board a yacht. ”

“ However, there can be no doubt that putting under this utterly wrong impression has done a very great amount of harm to the game of players who might otherwise have been many strokes better. Let our golfer understand that there is one way, and one way only, in practical golf to put the ball, and that is to roll it up to the hole. ”

“ Even on the stillest of still days the shot is one which can scarce be approached without a tremor. The distance can be compassed with a firm pitch with an iron club of moderate loft, and the green is undeniably of adequate size, but it is ringed round, save immediately in front, with a series of bunkers very deep and horrible, and, to increase our terror, the ground ‘draws’ unmistakably towards them. Often as we stand on the tee in a frenzied attitude, trying to steer the ball to safety with vain gesticulations of the club, we see it light upon the turf, and breathe a sigh of relief. ”