Professional golfer

“ 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 golf a man is treated with tragic solemnity while he is making his stroke. A caddie may not sigh, and if a cricket chirped he would be considered a bounder. How would our golfer feel if he had to play his drive with another fellow waving his club at him twenty or thirty feet away, and standing ready to spoil his shot?—yet that is what the lawn-tennis player has to put up with. ”

“ Golf
Golf, like tennis, is a favorite outdoor game. It is essentially an open weather game, but it may be played all the year around. It is deservedly popular because it combines cross-country walking, with all of its many benefits, and a peculiar skill with a variety of implements or clubs.
Anybody—woman, girl or child in her teens—who has perseverance can make a golfer. No great strength is necessary. The only requisites are a good eye, persistence, a good teacher and the facilities of a course. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Here is one of the reasons why golf has been taken to in England with a vigour and force that certainly is the most astonishing feature in the history of games that I have any experience of at all.
I have said that nobody can become a really first-rate golfer who has not begun the game early in life. I believe this to be absolutely true; but it is equally true that a very respectable skill can be acquired by men whose eye and muscles are attuned to games, if they have never handled a club till thirty years old. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Much is given to golfers,—perhaps more than to the participators in any other sport,—but they are rarely satisfied. The wonderful fascination of golf is indicated in this eternal longing for more. Sometimes when I glance over the records of the history of the game, I feel a twinge of regret that it was not possible for me to play with, or even to see, such giants of the past as Allan Robertson, David Strath, the Dunns, Willie Campbell, Willie Park, senior, or the famous young Tom Morris. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Antony, with a solemn air, repeated:
“Don’t forget what is best.”
“What is best,” replied the wheelwright of Coq, nobly, “is to be the first golfer in the world. Every time I find my master at golf it turns my blood as black as the inside of the chimney. So I want a club that will carry the ball as high as the belfry of Condé, and will infallibly win me my match.” ”

“ Your true golfer is a man who, knowing that life is short and perfection hard to attain, neglects no opportunity of practising his chosen sport, allowing neither wind nor weather nor any external influence to keep him from it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Do not attempt to play two kinds of golf at the same time; that is to say, if you are playing for a medal, do not keep up a hole-to-hole match with your partner. You will become confused, with no clear idea of what you are trying to do, and you will probably win neither the medal nor the match. If you feel that you must match yourself in some manner with the man who is going round with you, back your net return against his.
Because you do a hole in bogey, or even sometimes in one stroke less, do not always take it for granted that you have therefore played perfect golf. ”

“ But many of the difficulties will disappear with practice, and when at last some kind of proficiency has been obtained, it will be found that the ball answers in the most obedient manner to the call that is made upon it. It will come down so dead upon the green that it may be pitched up into the air until it is almost directly over the spot at which it is desired to place it. In playing this stroke a great deal depends on the mastery which the golfer obtains over his forearms and wrists. ”

“ Against this it has to be considered that one of the charms of society golf, as it is conducted in the south at the present time, is the opportunities that are given to members of visiting and playing over courses which are unfamiliar to them and which are not generally accessible, and of organising expeditions of members to these courses in the way of having a good day out together. All those who have experienced this pleasure know that it makes one of the most delightful variations from the ordinary routine of a golfer’s life. ”

“ He who is the most composed when in difficulties and when the game is going against him, and who treats each fresh trouble as it comes along as a part of the ordinary day's work to be surmounted in the best manner possible, is the player who will most frequently come out the conqueror. In many cases the tendency to fall into a highly nervous state at the smallest provocation will disappear with time and lengthening experience. Each year of golf should bring increasing steadiness, and the steadier a golfer becomes the more frequently will he do his best scores when they are most wanted. ”

“ When one writes of the soul of golf it sounds almost as though one were guilty of a little sentimentality. As a matter of fact, it is the most thorough practice which leads one to the soul of golf. Many a good professional can produce beautiful shots, such as the wind-cheater and the pull at will, but he cannot explain them to you ”

“ Therefore, while I say that he is a happy and lucky man who is able constantly to save his game on the putting greens, happier by far is he who is not called upon to do so. In this way the skilled golfer generally finds the mashie the most fascinating club to play with, and there are few pleasures in the game which can equal that of laying the ball well up to the pin from a distance of many yards. One expects to get much nearer to it with this last of the irons than with the cleek or the simple iron, and the more nearly the flag is approached the greater the skill and experience of the player. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The first hole won, the contestants start from a teeing-ground close by it, and fight for the second hole, and so on around the course,—the one who has won the most holes being the winner.
"A fine day, a good match, and a clear green" is the paradise of the golfer, but it still can be played all the year and even, by the use of a red ball, when snow is on the ground. In Scotland and athletic England it is a game for players of all ages, though in nearly all clubs children are not allowed. It can be played by both sexes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Some of the gems of North Britain are hidden away in inaccessible corners, and the golfers who would reach them must make tedious journeys by land and sea. But he who is worthy of the game is in my opinion amply rewarded for these travelling labours, by the quality of the golf that is vouchsafed to him at his journey's end, and he is spared the annoyance of being obliged to book his starting time overnight and of having a couple of hours to wait upon the tee if he is a minute late in the morning. ”

“ Good golf comes from educating the muscles to the correct feel of the balance of the body and club while in motion. This is essentially physical because it is developed while the muscles are in free and spontaneous action. The average amateur spends most of his time educating himself to a stance with the muscles in repose and the mind in action. His swing is then made without his getting the preliminary feel cultivated by the professional. ”

“ The gem of the collection of eighteen is the seventh, which has been called, and with some fitness, the King of American Holes. A great, fine, lusty piece of golf it is, 537 yards from the tee to the green, and every shot has to be a thoughtful, strong, and well-directed shot, with no girl's golf in it anywhere. It is a down drive from the high-placed tee, and the land below heaves over in a curious twisted way that demands very exact placing [Pg 191] of the ball. Then there is a strong and straight second to be played over a high ridge in front into which big bunkers have been cut. ”

“ CHAPTER I THE SEVEN WONDERS OF GOLF, AND THE ABIDING MYSTERY OF THE GAME, WITH A THOUGHT UPON TRADITIONS AND THEIR VALUE.
The first of the seven wonders of golf is a mysterious fascination that it sets towards mankind, from which, overwhelming and enduring, no people are immune. The game seizes men of all ages, of every nationality, all occupations, dispositions, temperaments—all of them. The charm acts upon men and women alike. Sometimes we have suspected that males are more whole-hearted golfers ”

“ The principle of the golfer should be, and I trust is, that he always wants to reach the hole in the simplest and easiest way, with a minimum of doubt and anxiety about any shot which he is called upon to play, and one usually finds that without these fancy shots one comes to the flag as easily as is possible in all the circumstances. Of course I am writing more particularly with the wind in mind, and am not recommending the ordinary shot when there is a tree or a spinny for a stymie, in contradiction to what I have said earlier in this chapter. ”

“ Lord Charles Hope, though not physically strong, has acquired a fine game, and in the first period of this thirty-six holes match we witnessed him playing some quite beautiful golf and exercising the most complete self-possession and steadiness, gradually piling up a big lead of holes upon his more experienced opponent, who has been once Amateur Champion of Britain and a finalist another time, and seeming to make himself a certain winner. ”

“ 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. ”

“ While I am not prepared to endorse the opinion that is commonly expressed, that a golfer is born and not made, I am convinced that no amount of teaching will make a golfer hole out long putts with any frequency, nor will it even make him at all certain of getting the short ones down. But it will certainly put him in the right way of hitting the ball, which after all will be a considerable gain. Experience counts for very much, and it will convert a man who was originally a bad putter into one who will generally hold his own on the greens, or even be superior to the majority of his fellows. ”