G o\f for the B eginner By George Fitch P F Collier fS" Son New York Copyright 1909 By P. F. CoUier & Son ©CI.A256390 PREFACE ILJUTCHINSON, Vardon, ^ Taylor, and Travis have written fine long" books about golf for players. But the question arises. Do these works really tell the utter novice anything about the game? There seems to exist a demand for a book on the subject as simple and ex- plicit as ''This Little Pig Went to Market'' — one that can not be misunderstood and that will not be thrown aside because it is too tech- nical. The writer saw the need before he became a con- firmed "golfist." Briefly, he meets it with this little book. GOLF for the BEGINNER GOLF, to the timid man ^ who has mowed a large field with a dull club for the first time, is an over- grown game of hide-and-seek which is played in a reformed cow pasture with clubs and a vocabulary. A golf course consists of eighteen four-and- a-half- inch holes of the best quality, carefully concealed about a one-hundred-and- eighty-acre field. The object of the game is to put an undersized rubber ball into each of the holes in succession without breaking a blood- vessel. Kicking out the ball or attacking it with a knife is forbidden. One GOLF for the BEGINNER must do the trick solely by striking it with the club, counting each stroke dog- gedly and in a rich, redolent undertone. npHE clubs which are used in herding the ball over the course are many in num- ber. There is the driver, which is used for driving the small rubber tee into the ground; the lofter, which raises small chunks of sod over trees, bunkers, and other obstructions; the cleek, for weed-clipping; the nib- lick, for throwing sand at an adversary; the mashie, for pounding the ball into the GOLF for the BEGINNER ^ -kC^^ Goy , . . is an overgrown game qfhide and seek.** GOLF for the BEGINNER earth, and the midiron for punishing it until its maker wouldn't recognize its bat- tered shell. Other useful clubs are the brassie, the putter, the excavator, the whacker, the digger, the smasher, the chopper, and the caddie driver. The lat- ter is a common club, not turned up at the end, and is used to keep the caddie awake. A caddie is a par- ody on a small boy, who carries the clubs and helps to lose the ball. Expert golfists can drive both a ball and a caddie over the course at the same time without help. GOLF/or the BEGINNER A LL of these clubs are finely made, most of them with iron heads, fitted to lithe hickory handles. They are excellent for beating carpets, doing light garden digging, mowing weed patches, kill- ing chickens, and repelling burglars. It is a point of honor with a golfer, how- ever, to use them only upon the golf course where their limitations are pathetic. A golfer will spend half an hour digging up a small patch of ground with his clubs when he could have done it in two minutes with a spade. GOLF for the BEGINNER QTHER instruments which are very useful in playing the game are a long, slim-waisted bag, with a handle, for carrying clubs, cash registers at each tee for tabulating the strokes, a pair of hip boots for pursuing the quarry into the water, a rake, a scythe, a red flag to stick beside your ball so that it will not crawl away when you take your eye off of it, and a funnel to assist in chas- ing the ball into the hole. Extra balls are most conve- niently carried in asmall push- cart. You can do without some of these articles possi- bly, but not without great GOLF/or the BEGINNER inconvenience. It never pays to skimp while playing golf. T^HE rules of the game are very simple. You must hit the ball with your club. After you have hit it you must find it, of course, before you hit it again. It will take you several weeks to master these two rules. After driving the ball you must hit it wherever it lies. Good lies are as important in golf as in fishing. Losing a ball costs you two strokes and fifty cents. Hitting a caddie with the ball is justi- fiable homicide. GOLF for the BEGINNER _^si!i^^ i«8^4^' After you have hit it you must find it.** GOLF/or the BEGINNER PREPARING a golf course is a difficult and expensive task. In the first place, one must have a field in which the face of nature is considerably wrinkled. The wrinkles help to conceal the holes. In case they are not present, they must be sup- plied by building miniature mountain ridges and scooping out ravines. A little water on the course adds much to the interest of the game. By driving his ball into a pond occasionally, the golfist keeps it clean. Having dis- tributed the eighteen holes judiciously so as to keep them so far apart that the GOLF/or the BEGINNER first stroke leaves the ball three hundred yards short and yet so near that the last stroke puts it fifty yards be- yond the hole, the expert will add a nineteenth hole. This should be large enough to hold several hundred golf- ists and enough high balls to go around several times. nPHE course proper con- sists of two greens — the fair green and the putting green. Most of the playing between holes is supposed to be done on the fair green, which is kept nicely mown and turfed. Muscular nov- ices, playing on the fair GOLF/or the BEGINNER green, have been known to knock sections of the turf one hundred yards at one stroke. A novice, if he chose, could frequently hole a piece of turf in three or four strokes; but, absurdly, the rules oblige him to cling to the ball and take the regula- tion thirteen every time. TPHE putting green sur- rounds the hole. It is smooth and covered with velvety grass and is a beau- tiful place on which to lie down and die after you have played * *ring - around- the- hole" with your ball for a few minutes. GOLF/or the BEGINNER TP VEN when a golf course is erected as prescribed above, it is by no means complete. The most costly work is yet to come. It must be seeded down with golf balls. This is a job which can not be done by mere hirelings; neither can it be done in a day. It takes at least a month of hard, de- voted work by the whole membership. As every one knows, it is no trick at all to lose a small rubber ball in a quarter sec- tion — particularly when it has lost the first bloom of youth. A mere child can do it. An amateur can go GOLF for the BEGINNER ^g^-tV The niblick^ for ihrormng sand at an adversary. ' ' GOhF for the BEGINNER out and lose $3.50 worth of balls without even working up a perspiration. In fact, most of the beginner's time is spent in poking around the grass, trying to find the ball which he has just succeeded in hitting with a club. This makes golf discouraging at first and leads sarcastic peo- ple to hint that it is best played by a retriever pup np HE new golf course is es- pecially well equipped for receiving balls and not giving them up. Day after day you will go blithely out, your bag stuffed with small rubber pellets, and return GOLF/or the BEGINNER discouraged, after a weary afternoon of hunting, with no balls at all. However, in a month or so a new condi- tion will arise. You may not find your own ball, but you will find the ball that some other golfist lost yes- terday. In other words, there will be so many lost balls on the course that you will always be finding either the ball you lost to-day or the ball you lost yesterday, or some one else's ball. From this time on all will be lovely. A golf ball circula- tion having been established, it will only be necessary to buy new balls when the old GOLF/or the BEGINNER ones wear out — provided that each player turns his caddie upside down and shakes him before leaving the course. npHERE are more rules to worry the golfist than there are laws to trouble the trust magnate, and the nov- ice will find a book of rules very handy in his play- ing. It can easily be carried about the course by an extra caddie. Here are a few which, memorized, will be helpful to the beginner in his work: 1. It is not necessary to remove the hat while ad- dressing the ball. GOhF for the BEGINNER 2. After driving, be care- ful to remove fragments of the club which might inter- fere with the next man's play. 3. In hunting for a ball lay down a club where you think it should be. When you have found the ball lay it down where you think the club should be. 4. A player lofting a piece of turf more than fifty yards shall have the right to play it for the ball. 5. The use of American expletives on a golf course is not considered good form. Learn the names of ten Scottish champions and pro- GOLF/or the BEGINNER For the beginner the hole should be the size of a cistern with a concave putting green. ' ' GOLF/or the BEGINNER nounce them rapidly when you foozle. QOLF is full of benefits to the player, and he who plays the game faithful- ly is developed in several ways. In driving at the ball the muscles are developed. In missing it the lungs are developed. In hunting for it after you have hit it the eyesight is made wonderfully acute. After a man has played golf for three months he can beat a carpet all morning if allowed to count the strokes; he can find a col- lar button; and, when neces- sary, he can outargue a hack GOLF/or the BEGINNER driver and make him apolo- gize for his poor command of language. That's what golf does for a man! r^OLF has been made the object of earnest study for several centuries, and one might reasonably suppose that it had been made per- fect during this time. This is not so, however. It still has faults. It is too rigid and unelastic in its requirements —particularly with regard to the size of the holes. It is foolish to compel the begin- ner to locate holes of the same size as those the professional uses. It discourages him at GOhF for the BEGINNER the outset and embitters him against the game. A camel could leap jauntily through the eye of a needle much more easily than a rich man can put a small, bouncy ball in a four-and-a-half-inch hole in his first attempt at golf. The present size is all very well for the professional and for the amateur who blames the na- tional constitution when he takes five for a hole and who will not speak to a man who says * 'sticks" instead of * 'clubs." Some concession, however, should be made for novices; they should not be compelled to hunt for both balls and holes. For the av- GOLF for the BEGINNER erage player a hole the size of a washtub would make the game much more excit- ing. For the beginner the hole should be the size of a cistern with a concave put- ting green. For such a play- er as myself the course should be all hole, with eighteen driving grounds sticking out of it like an arch- ipelago. With such a course as this I could easily make the rounds in sixty strokes — my average number of misses for each drive being two and a fraction. A match between Vardon and myself, he on his course and I on mine, would be interesting. FEU 1 19lu One copy del. to Cat. Div. n, H,^.?.^,X Of" CONGRESS 0020237 055 A \