Golf match

“ Golf is an uncertain game, especially when there's a match on among the old boys like Horace Carwell and the crowd of past-performers and cup-winners he trails along with. He's just as likely to pull or slice as the veriest novice, and once he starts to slide he's a goner. ”

“ All know that the Royal and Ancient Club will have nothing whatever to do with the idea of bogey competitions, and though they are common enough in these days, you generally find the best class of golfers of the old school fighting shy of the idea, and to the best clubs, quite apart from the R. and A., the idea is still taboo. The standpoint which these clubs and these men take is that ordinary match-play is the true golf, and when it comes to needing a variation from it for special purposes, there is the score game in reserve. ”

“ The multiplication of golf clubs and golf prizes has caused a large increase in the number of rounds that are played for score as opposed to hole play. It is impossible for thirty or more players to meet for one day to compete for a prize in any way except by score. The ball has to be hit into nine or eighteen different holes in the fewest possible number of strokes—that is the object of every one of the competitors. Every golfer, good, bad, and indifferent, knows the difference of match play and medal play. ”

“ If, however, there are one or two dullish holes on the way out, the course begins splendidly with as good a two-shot hole as can well be; too good a hole almost to play so early before the match has had time to develop. A ridge running diagonally and away towards the left calls for a fine tee-shot if it is to be cleared in the straight line, while a sandy hill covers half the green on the right-hand side, and repays the man who has hit a good tee-shot by punishing his opponent who has not. ”

“ In some places, as already hinted, they have been trying a strange kind of game called “a four-ball foursome against bogey,” being a blend of many things most objectionable to the old spirit. This is the kind of golf that would be exceedingly popular if people generally went mad with the revolutionary idea and held executions in Trafalgar Square. In the meantime it does not “take on.” And a new kind of multi-match lately came over from America. They play, say, six a side, but only one ball to each side, the whole dozen players starting off together. ”

“ Upon all this, it is enacted that when playing with three or more balls we must allow those who are only playing two, as in an ordinary single match, to pass us on being requested to do so, that we must let a match through if we do not play the whole round but cut in somewhere, that we must not pierce the ground with any golf club support nor with the flags from the holes, nor must we drive towards any person without calling out "Fore!" ”

“ The full course is eighteen holes, but very good golf may be played on a course of twelve, nine, six, or even five holes. The game is won by the player who wins the greater number of holes, and this is the original game, now called match-play. Nowadays medal-play is more common, the only practical difference being in the scoring. In medal-play the total score for all the holes made by each player is added up, and the lowest number wins. For instance, if A goes around a six-hole course in 40, and B in 39, B is the winner. ”

“ On the green her actions are as characteristic as ever. In running the ball up to the hole she either hits the ground behind it and sends it six inches, or plays a shot which necessitates the departure of her long-suffering partner, niblick in hand and scarlet in the face, to an adjacent bunker. Short putts she invariably holes out by an ingenious and unblushing push-stroke, which no one has the heart to question or the courage to criticise. So the game proceeds. It is not golf, but then you never expected it to be. ”

“ Motor cars swept incessantly back and forth on the smooth roadway; a few riders, their horses wheeling and dancing, went down the bridle path, and there was a sprinkling of young men and women and some shouting and clapping on the tennis-courts. But golf was the order of the day. At the first tee at least two scores of impatient players waited their turn to drive off, and at the last green a group of twenty or thirty men and women, mostly women, were interestedly watching the putting. ”

“ It seems to me that the compensation an older player gets from his younger rival is in the fact that the older man plays with greater steadiness on the putting-green, and this superiority takes away all the advantage that is gained by greater length in the drives. The golfer who, when on the green, is always down in two strokes except when he is down in one, is the player who wins matches.
The game of golf should be played in a sportsmanlike and in a gentlemanly manner. ”

“ Nobody of proper feeling will claim a hole because his opponent's caddie has sheltered the ball from the wind with his body, or because the ball has been moved by the wind after the player has put himself in a certain attitude, though he has no more touched it than he has the moon. Golf, indeed, has come to be so much hedged round by rules that these defeat their own object, and by respectable people are ignored. It always appears to me that rules of any game should be such that it is to the advantage of the game that they should be enforced always and by everybody. ”

“ It is not easy in these days to abolish score play altogether when there are such crowds of golfers, but it may be possible to keep the scoring to a certain point, and have the crucial, final, and penultimate finals played by holes. If this could be worked it would have a great effect in promoting the finer, less selfish, and higher game of golf, namely, the golf played by holes and not by strokes. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Golf is in its essence a simple game. You laugh in a sharp, bitter, barking manner when I say this, but nevertheless it is true. Where the average man goes wrong is in making the game difficult for himself. Observe the non-player, the man who walks round with you for the sake of the fresh air. He will hole out with a single care-free flick of his umbrella the twenty-foot putt over which you would ponder and hesitate for a full minute before sending it right off the line. Put a driver in his hands and he pastes the ball into the next county without a thought. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The fact that the links marshal had placed all the professional players present in one row of fauteuils, opposite the long carry to the 18th green, hardly seemed to further the interests of perfect golf. The warmest acknowledgments are therefore due to a number of ex-open champions, who kindly turned their backs on what proved one of the most distressing episodes in the day's play. ”

“ It seems that golfing has some strange charm from which there is no escaping once one has experienced it. To play golf and to learn its fascination, is to love it always and be unable to forsake it. James I and Prince Henry his son, were ardent golfers. Charles I was also a lover of golf, and it is related that the news of the Irish Rebellion in 1642 was brought to him while he was playing at the Links at Leith. Sir John Foulis, Earl John of Montrose, Duncan Forbes and the Duke of Hamilton are other notables of history, known to have been addicted to the game. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And who then shall say that, if "only a game," golf has no possibilities and powers in such high crafts as diplomacy? The twelfth is an excellent hole, and so are they all. The sixteenth takes us winding round a big bend between a hill and a stream and then faces us full to the putting green, which has the Claudian ruins for a background. The play concludes with a seventeenth which has a putting green very shrewdly placed, and an eighteenth where the second shot is played through a little valley, these ending holes abounding in golfing beauty and character. ”

“ Usually matches are decided by the winning of holes, although many competitions are decided on medal score or the total strokes for 18 holes. There are several kinds of tournaments possible in golf—two-ball or four-ball matches, or best ball matches. The last is where four players go around the course, two playing against the other two and counting only the best ball on each hole. Possibly the most satisfactory form for a tournament to take is the round robin tournament, where the number of entries is not too great, as each player meets everyone entered. ”

“ All golf is divided into three parts—driving, approaching, and holing out—and of these three, driving, or free hitting, either with wood or iron, is by far the most pleasing. It is a delightful sensation to feel the ball slip away almost by itself as the club head swings through, and then to watch it describing its graceful curve of, say, one hundred and fifty yards through the air, or skimming like a swallow, straight and low over that dreaded bunker. Without driving, indeed, there would be very little golf, and happy is the man who may always count upon being both far and sure. ”

“ As for the rival merits of the games, I need not raise so vexatious a question now at the very finish of the long round which the reader may have been patient enough to endure with me. Let it suffice to say that, whatever other games may be, golf is good enough. If golf, taken sanely and considered in all its various aspects, fails to satisfy us, we must be hard to please; and I will ask you to note, as one of the aspects worth considering, the very striking growth of the game in favour during the half-century over which this record runs. ”

“ I never make a large score there, as it is near the club house and the caddies are afraid of the Board of Governors.
When golf is taken rightly it arouses the instincts of the chase in a man, and I now feel the same joy in running down a caddy and bargaining for found balls that others feel in hunting wild animals. Golf, taken thus, is a splendid game.
And I have found that if I use my putter only, and knock the ball but a few yards each stroke, there is no need of losing a ball from one end of the year to the other. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We must therefore admit that golf may have its "close" season, at least for places that lie north of Mason and Dixon's famous line, but no golfer worthy of the name is content to entirely abandon all attempts at practice. If he can do nothing better, he will at least try "putting" into tumblers laid on their sides on the dining-room floor, or he will find some pretext to steal away to the attic for a few trial swings at a mythical ball. ”