Golf links

“ Now we come to the links of the Royal Blackheath Golf Club, which is very justly proud of the fact that it was instituted in 1608. That is indeed a great record, and, as we hack our ball along with a driving mashie out of a hard and flinty lie, narrowly avoiding the slaughter of a passing pedestrian, we feel that we are on hallowed ground. Moreover, though we may speak flippantly of the bad lies and the numerous live hazards on the course, the golf is good golf—far better and more searching than is to be found on many smoothly shaven lawns covered with artificial ramparts. ”

“ There is hardly any one spot in England where a game of golf cannot be played somehow. The links may be laid out on heavy, wet, clayey fields in Warwickshire, or among the fortifications at Chatham, on the cliffs at Brighton, on the Downs of Guildford, or among the coal-pits of Dudley and West Bromwich; but holes are cut, and more or less of a golf links made, and each links has its club; whilst each club has its prizes, medals, and spring and autumn meetings. ”

“ I could see the National Golf Links a little way ahead all the time. There was a big water cistern standing out against the sky-line, and there were some smoothly laid out holes, but grapes were never more tantalising to any fox than those holes are to the wanderer who tries to get there from Shinnecock along a route over which a crow might fly, and who determines that he will discover the elusive secrets of the National Links, however dearly the expedition may cost him. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Its golf links are on the very margin of the sea, contiguous to those black, sharp rocks—so near, indeed, that a really badly-hit ball may sometimes be sent dancing at all kinds of fantastic angles from one to another, until it comes to rest in an inaccessible place whence it will never be disturbed. Sometimes in the severer seasons, the sea, with the full, unbroken force of the Atlantic behind it, will be sent smashing along over the rocks, and even over the golf links too, until some of the bunkers are laden with salt water. ”

“ I leave it to any casual reader to fix in his own mind how many golf links there are in England and Wales now, and merely quote the single figure 1, as representing the exact number of links outside Scotland in 1868. What this means and how this affects the whole game of golf it is impossible to say, but affect it enormously it must. Thirty years ago there were hundreds of undeveloped golfers who never had an opportunity of grasping a club. Outside Scotland, except a few Englishmen who lived wholly or partly in Scotland, there were probably not many more than a hundred golfers. ”

“ The unobservant player never seems to realise that one of the chief charms of the best seaside links is the undulating fairways, such as those near the club-house at Deal, part of Sandwich, and most of the old course at St. Andrews, where the ground is a continual roll from the first tee to the last green, and where one never has the same shot to play twice; on these fairways one hardly ever has a level stance or a level lie. It is this that makes the variety of a seaside course, and variety is everything in golf. ”

“ 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. ”

“ THE LINKS Many of the best links are laid out where the soil is sandy and the grass sparse and stiff. Such links dry quickly after a rain, and the ball is easily played and seen. The course in this country for the regulation game is sometimes three miles long; shorter courses can be laid out for informal work and practice. The links do not extend in a straight line. It is much better to have them wind about and end near the start. By carefully planning the curves, a golf course may be made to occupy limited grounds. ”

“ Golf on a first-rate course can never become monotonous, and the better the course the less likely it is to do so. Golf on a good links is, in all probability, the best game in the world, but on the late-Victorian type of inland course, where there is a complete lack of variety, flat fairways, flat unguarded greens, long grass, necessitating frequent searching for lost balls, and mathematically placed hazards consisting of the cop or pimple variety, it not only offends all the finest instincts of the artist and the sportsman, but is the most boring game in existence. ”

“ Where land is very scarce, and there is no possibility [Pg 208] of obtaining more of it, I earnestly advise private owners and committees to content themselves with a nine-hole course which will have plenty of length and good sporting quality about it, rather than sacrifice the good golf that is thus within their reach in a desire to possess a regulation eighteen-hole links that could only give complete satisfaction to ladies and children. Too many courses, with scarcely a brassy shot upon them, have been ruined by this greed for holes. ”

“ Golf taught the American people to play games. It took them out from their great office-buildings and from their five-o'clock cocktails at the club, into the open air; and they found that the open air was good. So around nearly every golf club other sports grew up. Polo grounds were laid out by the side of the links, croquet lawns appeared on one side of the club-house and lawn-tennis nets arose on the other, while traps for the clay-pigeon shooters were placed safely off in a corner. ”

“ Many as are the golf courses with which the coast, the country, and the suburbs of the towns and cities of Great Britain are studded, they will no doubt be still more numerous as time goes on, and it is earnestly to be desired that in the laying out of links in the future, more thought and ingenuity may be exercised than has been the case in far too many instances during the past few years, when clubs have been formed and links have been made in a hurry. ”

“ But our game far exceeds this old rival in interest; and if it were not for the popularity of curling in its season, no rival pastime could pretend to vie with golf in Scotland.
The mode of playing golf is so well known in these days that it may suffice to explain that it is a game played over extensive commons, or 'links' as they are termed; that the implements used are peculiarly constructed clubs, so weighted at the crook or 'head' of the shaft, as to give great impetus to the small hard gutta-percha ball to be driven along the grass ”

“ That the reader may see the amount of walking exercise taken in a round of St Andrews Links, it may be interesting to note that the exact distance, as the crow flies, is three miles eleven hundred and fifty-four yards; so that the golfer who takes his daily three rounds walks at least eleven miles. It is no wonder, then, that in addition to its own attractions, golf is esteemed as a capital preparation for the moors or the stubbles, hardening as it does the muscles both of arms and legs. ”

“ So far I have said nothing about inland links, because the golfer who is going away from his own for a brief period for pleasure and improvement usually elects to play at the seaside, and wisely so, for, apart from the superior hygienic properties of atmosphere, there is no getting rid of the fact, however much we may be attached to some inland courses, that seaside golf, when it is the real thing, is entirely different from any other. ”

“ They [Pg 228] are a novelty, and all things that come from Nature must be admitted without question into the game of golf. On the south coast there are several fine links. Newquay is excellent for a holiday, and the course of the Cinque Ports Club at Deal, now that it is eighteen holes, is very fine. I have not enjoyed recent acquaintance with it, but the short fourth hole which they call the Sandy Parlour struck me when I was last down there as being a very sporting little piece of golf. ”

“ Consequently the links which are open to the Buckwheats are apt to become so congested that if one doesn’t stick rigidly in his place in the golf procession, he is more than apt to get a couple of golf balls in the side of the head and then have to stand aside for two hours while a long parade of golfers and near-golfers hacks its way past him. So the smart golfers go to the Country Club. It is there that one finds the Old Guard of Palm Beach. ”

“ The result is that we have fairways and putting greens on some of our best inland courses near London which are rarely excelled at the seaside, although nothing can ever give to inland turf that firm springiness—a term slightly paradoxical but one easily appreciated—which is the characteristic of good seaside links. No longer is good inland golf to be despised. ”

“ Golf is great in our modern scheme of things, and some have said, without irreverence, that they see the shaping hand of Providence in short holes of such sporting quality as the Maiden and the Sandy Parlour, in those glorious last four holes at Deal, and in all that bumpy ground to be covered in approach play which calls for such an abundant exercise of the wits of the thoughtful golfer, and inevitably recalls to him some of the best characteristics of St. ”

“ There is always something stirring in a roll of illustrious names, and for the mere sensual pleasure of writing them I set them down in order at the beginning of the chapter—Sandwich, Deal, Prince’s, Littlestone, and Rye, in the counties of Kent and Sussex. Each of the five has devoted adherents who will maintain its merits against the world in heated argument, but there can be little doubt which has the right to come first. It would be showing a sad disrespect to golfing history, very recent history though it be, to begin otherwise than with the links of the Royal St. ”

“ Given straight hitting from the tee, we should return something better than a respectable score, but the demand for straightness is great, and, indeed, the constant avenues of rough remind one rather of the best of modern inland courses. It is genuine seaside golf, however, with good turf and plenty of sand, and the sea itself, although we do not often see it. Neither do we see—and this is an unmixed blessing—the teeming swarms of trippers that come to Skegness to be braced. ”

“ Trouble lurks at the sides as well as in the centre of the fairway, and for all the boldness and bigness of the hazards it is really a straight rather than a long driver’s course. The greens are good, and sometimes inclined to be slow; they lie, moreover, in a good many instances, in those pleasing little hollows which are the most adroit flatterers in the whole world of golf. The turf on the outward journey is of the ideal sea-side kind, but on the way home we fancy that we detect something more of an inland character about it. ”

“ It is one of those courses that runs, roughly speaking, straight out and home, and the nine holes that we play with the wind in our face we think really beautiful, while with the wind behind us we are just a little bit disappointed. This is, of course, only the impression of a casual visitor; and, moreover, it must often happen that wind is neither for us nor against us, but blows straight across the course. Then the golf must be really difficult, for the fairway is uniformly narrow and the rough wonderfully tenacious ”

“ 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 ”

“ Now as I understand it there are four kinds of golf. First, the ordinary golf, as played by all people who are not quite right in their heads; second, the ideal golf, to be played by me (but not till I get to heaven) on a bowling-green with a croquet-mallet, the holes being sixty-six feet apart and both cutting-in and going-through strictly prohibited; third, the absurd golf, as played by James in pre-war days on his private nine-hole course; and fourth, it seemed, the new golf, such as James would be liable to create during a recovery from shell-shock. ”

“ These park holes are certainly one of the drawbacks to the course. For six holes we are playing excellent golf in the right golfing country, with heather, and sand, and everything as it should be. Then we go through a wicket gate, the whole scene instantly changes, and, behold! we are playing a hole of the typical inland kind. There is no heather and no sand, save such as has been transplanted to fill up a number of conscientious little bunkers, and it is no great injustice to liken the turf to that of a good smooth field. ”