Golf tournament

“ Hilton, for instance, has twice won the open championship by strokes, but up to 1900 he has not pulled off the amateur championship, which is played by tournament. He would possibly argue that the best type of golf is to be found when playing for a score, and human nature being what it is, nobody could wonder at this. ”

“ The last day's work was an enormous strain, yet on the following day I played in a tournament at Irvine, won the first prize, and broke the record of the course. It is wonderful what golf can be played when one's mind is given to the task, whatever the adverse factors in the case may be. ”

“ National Open Golf Champion
Victor of 1928 Olympia Fields tournament, notable for the spectacular 36-hole play-off, in which Johnny defeated the great Bobby Jones. Farrell, former caddie on the Westchester links, famous professional and a master tutor of the “ancient and honorable” game tells Evening Journal readers how to improve their golf. New York golfers follow the champion’s expert advice exclusively in the Evening Journal.
[Pg 39]
MAUREEN ORCUTT, Golf Expert
Women’s Metropolitan Golf Champion
Women’s interest in sports is fast approaching that held by men. ”

“ As nearly as I can reckon, I have up to date won the first prize in forty-eight first-class tournaments, and by being four times British Open Champion and once American have still that record to my credit. And I hope to play many of my best games in the future, for it takes longer to kill the golf in a man than it does to breed it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ While pheasant-shooters are enjoying the first day of the season, the votaries of a sport not less noble, though less noisy, are holding the great festival of their year. The autumn meeting of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews is in full swing, and the words will suggest pleasant memories to many a golfer. Golf is not one of the more brilliant and famous pastimes of the day, though it yields to none in antiquity and in unassuming merit. ”

“ You cannot sit still, it is true, in the comfort of the pavilion, nor are aeroplanes as yet fitted with silencers so efficient that a match can be watched from them without discomposure of the golfer's nerves, but in the very fact that you must walk, and even run, if you are to see much of the game [Pg 228] —such a meteor as Duncan is not to be caught without much sprinting—there are compensations. Watching a modern golf match means a good deal of healthful exercise and produces a more hearty appetite than sitting in the pavilion at Lords. ”

“ There are few more picturesque spots in the whole of the countryside than the neighbourhood of the fourteenth tee. It is a sight to charm the nature-lover's heart.
But, if golf has a defect, it is that it prevents a man being a whole-hearted lover of nature. Where the layman sees waving grass and romantic tangles of undergrowth, your golfer beholds nothing but a nasty patch of rough from which he must divert his ball. The cry of the birds, wheeling against the sky, is to the golfer merely something that may put him off his putt. ”

“ In the second place, Adolphus didn't care how he won a cup, and, as Cupid used to say, the best club in his bag was the book of rules.
If you don't know it already, I must tell you that golf is the most strictly governed game in the world, and also the most ceremonious. It is as full of "thou shalt nots" as the commandments. There are rules for everything and everybody on the course, and the breaking of a rule carries a penalty with it—the loss of a stroke or the loss of a hole, as the case may be. Very few golfers play absolutely to the letter of the law ”

“ It may be so, but we shall not on that account seek to increase the risks of golf. It is one of the glories of the game that it is such fine sport and commands the wild enthusiasm of the best sportsmen, though it threatens the life neither of the player nor any of the living creatures made by God that give the fulness to Nature, and add, though it may be unconsciously, to the golfer’s joy as he strides over the links on a fine morning. In other sports, when man goes wandering over the hills, he takes his gun with him that he may kill something. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The true and zealous golfer is not to be deterred from his favorite sport by the ordinary accidents of the weather, and indeed it is one of the great merits of golf that it can be played under almost any atmospheric conditions. Baseball, cricket, tennis, croquet, and archery are poor fun on a very windy day, while a wet one makes play impossible. And then these games have each of them a recognized season, and as winter comes on bat, bow, and ball must be laid aside for good. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Those men who take most strokes to it retire from the competition. The others proceed, and there is the same weeding out process at the second hole, and so on until there are only two players left, and then the first man who wins a hole from the other wins the competition.
A possibility, which is none the less dreadful because there is some good common sense in the idea from which it springs, is that there will be examinations in the rules, which all must pass either before being elected to full membership of a golf club or before being allowed to take part in competitions. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At the finish you might think that, save for the putting greens and bunkers, it was all the simple work of the mother of earth herself in her gentler moods, smooth swards for rocks, and chaste glades where forests were. This transformation and extension of American golf and the way it is being done is most amazing. All the old courses are being lengthened and greatly improved, and new ones of first-class quality are being made in large numbers. When it is desired to make changes and extensions on a British course the work that has to be done is not generally of a very formidable character. ”

“ Is there an end to putters, clubs, and balls?
Not so, methinks: Sir David Baird can play
With any Golfer of the present day;
The Laird of Lingo, Major Bob Anstruther—
Both married, and the one as good's the other.
Dalgleish and Haig, two better men to play
You scarce will meet upon a summer's day;
Alike correct, whatever may befall,
Swipe, iron, putter, quarter-stroke, and all.
Old Robert Lindsay plays a decent game,
Tho' not a Golfer of enormous fame.
Well can he fish with minnow as with fly,
Paint, and play farthing-brag uncommonly ”

“ It smells so nice and is so clean, there is so much gossip going on, and the ways of golfers are so varied, and the agonised endeavours of many to get a club to suit them and make them good players is so profitable to the club-makers, and is moreover an idiosyncrasy so easy to encourage, that, on the whole, these dealers have a very good time.
Cricket and golf are the two games where professionals and amateurs can mix and play with each other with perfect freedom. There are some sports where the thing is impossible. ”

“ Other games are for their own countries, like the country's foods, and they would neither be suitable nor adaptable elsewhere; but [Pg 31] in its nature golf will do for all, and it has the same subtle attraction for everybody, so that what was once thought to be the "golf craze" of the British people only became the craze of the Americans too, then of the French, now of the Germans and others, and of really everybody. Its qualities and conveniences make it the only possible world game. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is certainly to the old holes that the memory returns most fondly. The club-house stands in the bottom of a deep hollow, with hills rising pretty steeply out of it on three sides, and the first tee-shot has to be driven straight up a gully between two of them. Then comes a shot demanding the agility of a chamois and a maximum of local knowledge. With the left foot a good deal higher than the right we play an iron-shot into the distance, and if all goes well, shall find the ball on a green which is walled in by cops and bunkers. ”