I I I II WI I iMMI IMW MIWM in iMIWWMHI t WB B BaWI I WHW M rMWWMtnB W WOtW^ ^ ALEXANDER H.REVELL • mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm WIHMIMWWMIWniMIH i HWlimWI I II I IWMMH Mia Class _^i^ Book__ GoipghtN°._ COPYRrCHT DEPOSIT. PRO AND CON OF GOLF PRO AND CON of GOLF Written and, Conipiled',,^'^ by ALEXANDER H.- REVELL RAND McNALLY & COMPANY CHICAGO <^^^ Copyright, 1913, By Alexander H. Revell Chicago APR 16 1915 'CI,A398352 PREFACE GOLF is the one outdoor game that appeals alike to young and old, to men, women, and children. It is an activity at once healthfiil, genial, and satisfying. Many there are who like to ride a horse, steer a car, row a boat, or tighten their muscles on the mainsheet when the breeze is fresh. Then there are the woods, with gun and ever-faithful dog. All these, and more, are good. There is a place reserved, however, for this splendid game of golf, — combining as it does bodily exertion, men- tal ease and recuperation, real pleasure and exhil- aration — whether played alone or enhanced by agreeable companionship and spirited competition. To-day the world of gentle sport takes great interest in golf. Each little hamlet has a nine- oi an eighteen-hole course, and every large com- munity has from five to fifty courses. May it not be well, therefore, to have some straight drives in the literature of golf, by different drivers; a few brassies in the field of criticism; several approaches to the green of golfing com- ment ; and many straight putts for par in a score in which the writer and compiler has found much pleasure, making a record of the game in many respects different from any other? The thought has been to make a book from the viewpoint of an amateur, to be approached not vi PRO AND CON OF GOLF at all in the spirit of the schoolboy toward his grammar. It is hoped that one may give to its contents ten minutes or an hour with equal interest, returning again and again for another game and a different point of view. For example, in reading, the chapter on "Clubs" one should read only enough to satisfy him — not all view- points, if one does not feel so incUned. Golfers should benefit by the English poet's admonition, "Lest we forget." Words written in other days by those who love the sport can still help us to "the allure of the game," as well as to its science. The best advice of the past need not impair the new teachings ready and at hand. The Pro and Con of Golf may help to impart a higher regard for the game, and urge toward a better standard. It may help make one glad, not sad, when one's handicap is reduced, and foster in the field of sport the spirit of the gentle- man or gentlewoman, for which spirit this game, above all others, is preeminent. AN APPRECIATION TO those whose work and advice the author and compiler has used in this volume he desires to extend sincere thanks. Golf is peculiarly a game in which all who play, or who \\Tite about it, feel an interest in helping others to improve. The entente cordial is nowhere foimd working to better advantage than among the golf enthusiasts of the world. Writers and players partake of the same spirit. Spreading the gospel of good form, correct etiquette, and gentle courtesy, on the links or in the clubhouse, to players, professionals, caddies, and club help, is part of the thoughtful golfer's pleasure. Not being in the "scratch class" myself, but an average player, for such golf knowledge as I have acquired I feel genuine gratitude to certain professionals with whom I have played or from whom I have had lessons, and to many amateiurs who have given advice. Among the professionals I especially recall Messrs. Alexander Smith, Harry Vardon, George Duncan, J. J. McDermott, the two Andersons, David FouUs, William Marshall, Andrew Kirk- caldy, Stewart Gardner, Arthur Fenn, and Alexander and Jim Herd. Among amateurs I make acknowledgments also to Messrs. H. H. Hilton, Norman Himter, Walter J. Travis, Charles Evans, Jr., and Warren Wood. Alexander H. Revell CONTENTS PAGE Preface v An Appreciation vii CHAPTER I. Commencing Right i II. Use of Various Clubs 7 III. To Perfect Your Game 20 IV. Clubs 29 V. Methods of Play 44 VI. Approaching and Putting 68 VII. Independence in Golf 85 VIII. Cleverness on the Links 96 IX. Concentration 103 X. American Contribution to Golf . 115 XI. Oddities of Golf 132 XII. Hazards 158 XIII. Restraint in Golf . 162 XIV. Golf and Health ....... 174 XV. Rockefeller and Golf 183 XVI, What Constitutes a Real Golfer .188 XVII. Rules of Golf 199 XVIII. Handicaps 217 XIX. The Caddie 222 XX. Some Philosophy 236 XXI. Social Position of Golf 239 XXII. Historical 251 XXIII. In the Club Library 263 XXIV. At the Nineteenth Hole 271 PRO AND CON OF GOLF CHAPTER I COMMENCING RIGHT WHO hungers for golfing counsel more than the man who has had a few lessons from his club professional and suddenly finds that he is unable to continue these lessons? An ordinary- established golfer is busy with his own game, and very rarely gives advice to the man who is hardly over the "beginning stage." Desultory advice seldom benefits the new player. Friendly help, after some progress has been achieved, is a big factor in golf. This will not be denied anywhere. When I had passed the "beginning stage," I found in making progress that not a few inaccuracies, personal eccentricities, foibles, or whatever you will, were corrected by the bit of advice courteously given, now and then, by a successful amateur or a friendly professional.. However, one should start right. At the start, one day a week is all that busy men can give the game; seldom more than two days a week. These may be reduced to half days. It is not easy, though it is possible, to get an interesting game started in that time. If the game has been indulged in somewhat, it can be 2 PRO AND CON OF GOLF sustained with a little care, but where it is possible for a beginner to give it considerable time in the first instance, it will save time afterward. A vacation period would be an ideal time to put one's mind on the game to start with. Pick out the course that may furnish the best opportunity that you can pay for, without being burdensome. Then be sure to talk over all your golf plans with the professional of that club. Make a friend of him and he will help you, aside from the value to him of the perquisite he receives. The first question to come up will be that of clubs. A better start will be made with as few clubs as it is reasonably possible to play with. These should be purchased from the professional, or at a first-class shop, and selected, of course, only under the advice of an expert. Until a man brings his handicap down to sixteen, there shotdd be no additions to the number used, unless he decides to add a niblick. He should first become well acquainted with the brassie, cleek, mid-iron, mashie, and putter, and as expert as possible with all the strokes taken with these five clubs. Driving may be well done through the greens with the brassie ; the mid-iron and mashie may be utilized for the bunkers. A new player should engage to take at least eight, or better still, sixteen lessons from the professional, and at least one day should elapse between lessons. A man should not put off start- ing because he cannot see his way clear to take PRO AND CON OF GOLF 3 all these lessons or give the time consecutively, as stated. The average man will not take many- lessons to begin with. Some friend will want him to play. The temptation to do so will be great. However, if the tempter can be put off two or three weeks, or even a month, it will be better for the later work. Lessons average about one hour each. Then, one will get much information and progress from books by expert players, and from magazines on golf. There are many who do not think so, but the more interested you become, the more intensely will yoiir mind fix itself on the game. Much of this comes from absorbing ever5rthing possible about golf. Try to be as exact, determined, and sincere as possible at the start. A fair idea of the principles, even though the mind grasps them in a hazy way, will help one's game. As improvement comes, one finds the haze will clear away. If one makes his first effort at some public or seaside coiu-se, he will, on return home, desire to belong to a golf club as convenient to his residence as possible. This is a matter that ought to receive careful attention. One shotdd join an organization that fits his pocketbook, and where he may find congenial company and personal friends. For many who may desire to enter upon this game, the cost is an important matter of consideration. To tell the truth, golf is not a low-cost game. However, it can be played at both a low and a high cost. ^ 4 PRO AND CON OF GOLF It is the same as with automobiles. Many a man running an automobile finds that it costs between three thousand and four thousand dollars a year, if he has one of the finest makes. However, it is well known that one of the very low-priced cars can be run at a wonderfully low cost by those willing to work, to get along without a chauffeur, and to do their own garaging. As to this matter of costs, it is the same all through life. Thought and care will do wonders. A clerk at a small salary in a sporting-goods establishment was noticed because his trousers were always creased. He looked as well, or better, than a higher salaried employee who paid a tailor for doing the work. Something must be wrong. An investigation developed the fact that the young man carefully folded this article of wearing apparel each night and placed it between two pieces of thick pasteboard beneath the mattress of his bed. He pressed his trousers while he slept. There are some golf organizations where the average costs are small, and one's standing is not affected because this is so. However, there are others where the costs are hardly considered. Books are preferably not kept. It is the same as in running the high-priced automobile, — the enjoyment is "slightly damaged" if one keep close track of each and every expense. For those who cannot afford the so-called "swell clubs," just as good times are found in the low-priced organizations. PRO AND CON OF GOLF 5 In most American cities the golf-club entrance fee nms from twenty-five dollars to two hundred and fifty dollars; the annual subscription is from about twenty-five dollars to one hundred dollars. There are a few clubs in this country where the costs are greater, but they should not be con- sidered in deciding the matter we have in hand. There are also many clubs where arrangements can be made to become members for a few weeks, with all privileges; others, where ftdl privileges may be had on all days except Saturdays and Sundays. Then there are the public courses. The larger and more expensive clubs are more particular, and usually confine their links to the use of members only, or of guests playing with members. I have no doubt that in many country places there is good golf to be had for ten dollars to fifteen dollars a year for club dues, and those who can be encouraged to join such a club would find it one of the best bargains of a lifetime. As a matter of fact, for several years I belonged to Tuscumbia — a nine-hole course — at Green Lake, Wisconsin. The annual dues of this splendid course were fifteen dollars a year. Let me say in passing that it was here that as a boy Warren Wood, the favorably known amateur, as well as I (not a boy) learned to play our first games. And there was a time when I gave Warren a handi- cap! But times have changed. As to the five clubs which I have mentioned, the cost for them will be about ten dollars. An 6 PRO AND CON OF GOLF ordinary golf bag will cost from two dollars and a half up. Lessons will cost from fifty cents to one dollar and fifty cents each, — and golf balls about sixty cents each. However, it should be remembered that bargains are always obtainable; even used clubs and made-over balls may be obtained where the price is an important con- sideration. Most people disgusted with their game seem to get considerable enjoyment in being miserable, and in telling others how it all came about. CHAPTER II USE OF VARIOUS CLUBS NOW for a consideration of the play for all clubs. It has always been my impression that professionals were wrong in method, in so far as the order of teaching various clubs is concerned. I have never known a professional, either in book or on field, who did not start the beginner with the driver. I wonder if this habit or tendency had its origin in the lack of practice- putting greens or from the rules not permitting beginners to practice putting on the regular greens. Even at the present time there are many clubs where such rules exist and where there are no practice greens. It would hardly be right to say that the driver is the most difficult club to use correctly. Some find it easy, while others come to use one of the other clubs with more ease and accuracy. I think, however, it is generally conceded that the easiest clubs to play with are the shorter ones, the putter coming first. This is not saying that it is easier to make a difficult putt than to use an iron or a wooden club on any part of the fair-green. To change the expression, putting is the least active and the easiest part of the game to learn. I thinlc the other clubs require more work and study. Therefore I believe the following to be 8 PRO AND CON OF GOLF the correct order of study for a beginner, Including only the clubs carried in an average bag: putter, mashie, mid-iron, driving iron or cleek, brassie, driver, and niblick. This is assuming you include a driver and niblick. In addition there are the driving iron, driving mashie, mashie niblick, spoon, left-hand approach- ing iron, and others. As a believer in a few rather than in many clubs, I shall discuss only those mentioned in the first list. Let me repeat that we have here the opinion of an average amateur. He offers these opinions with due humility and in the presence of many able books on golf by more expert players. He would not offer them but for the fact that they have already been a help to some who were strug- gling to improve their game. By simplicity in terms and teaching rather than the usual lengthy and more serious efforts of the average golf authority, it is my hope to gain and hold your attention for the short period necessary. My hope is that this book may en- courage you to take up the more technical books for a wider and more serious study. I therefore proceed to place the putter first in advising the beginner, and will ask him to make his starting play with that club. THE PUTTER There are two kinds of putters in general use in this country. One is the ordinary steel-blade PRO AND CON OF GOLF 9 putter, and the other is the wood or the flat metal-head putter. It is my belief that the best putting is accomplished with the metal-trimmed wood, or the metal-head putter. The general model of all, except the steel-blade putter, is something on the lines of the old Schenectady putter. A large number of the metal-head put- ters, shaped something like a driver, are in use. I prefer the latter because they are not in conflict with St. Andrews' rules. Putters made on the lines of the Schenectady have been barred in England by the rules above referred to, and are barred on the continent. The United States Golf Association permits the use of all such putters in this country. It would be better for the game if the United States Golf Association on this particular feature would endorse the judgment of those interested in golf across the water. It would place all players here more on an equality as to the use of certain shapes of club heads in putting. As is well known, many players think they cannot use the flat wood or metal-head putters. Others have had very little success with the blade or cleek putter. Then suppose you take yotir favorite putter and start on the easiest shot possible, namely, with three or four balls, located about a foot from the hole. This may be termed the easiest shot, although many a professional and scratch amateur has been known to miss an important eight-inch putt. An excellent way to stand in putting is to have lo PRO AND CON OF GOLF the heels aknost close together, toes apart, V-shape, standing well over the ball and with the hands about one-third down the grip, the right hand below the left hand, interlocked, using only the wrists. An imaginary line should be established between the ball and the hole. After making up your mind to hit the ball, you should pay no attention to the imaginary Hne or to the hole, but keep your eye and mind riveted on the ball alone. Place club on ground just ahead of ball, swing club once or twice on line of putt but above ball, to get poise and direction, then bring it in position behind ball, ready for stroke. The ball should be struck low and compact, near the center of the blade. The hands should be slightly ahead of a straight line between your eye and the ball, but very slightly: that is, let club blade lie naturally on the ground, shaft extend- ing straight toward the body, — then push hands an inch toward hole, and you are ready for shot, using wrists only.^ Let weight of club come back slowly and close to the ground. Reverse action should be slow, but hit the ball firmly, following with the club toward the hole. Jerking movements should be avoided in all golf plays. They are fatal to accuracy. The weight or force you use in making the stroke shoiild be according to the distance of ball from the hole. 'In this connection "Moonlight Golf," explained farther on in this book (p. 132), is valuable. PRO AND CON OF GOLF ii After practicing the twelve-inch shot as long as you feel interested, try some two-foot putts, then foiu'-foot, eight-foot, twenty-foot, and so continue. If you have a down-hill putt, grip the club loosely. This will have a tendency to hold the ball back somewhat. If, on the contrary, the ball is uphill, the grip should be firmer. At all times the stance should be easy and comfortable. The ball should be hit firmly, almost recklessly, remembering that you are far better off with your ball three feet over the hole than three feet short. Three feet over means that you give the hole a chance with firm confidence. This confidence is liable to continue for the next shot, while confidence is probably lost if the ball is three or four feet short of the hole. MASHIE The writer believes the mashie is the most important club in the bag. Where the ball Hes on the fair-green or on an average distance in the rough this is the club needed for the shot to a fixed place, — a target, — about four inches in diameter. The hope is to place the ball dead to the hole. If you use one of the longer clubs, when there is hope and desire to land on or near the green, it is always the unexpected when the ball lies for one putt. The stance for the mashie shot should be an open one. The left foot should be ahead of and 12 PRO AND CON OF GOLF away from the ball, the right foot nearer the ball than the left, with the body turned slightly toward the hole. This makes it easier for the arms to come through straight to the hole. The club should be held in the two hands about a third or halfway down the grip, according to distance, the club blade laid well back rather than straight. In this shot the wrists should be flexible, the arms somewhat rigid. There is very little use for the shoulders or body. The club should be taken back slowly. The reverse should be slow, but should gather speed on the down stroke, the club head striking the ball clean but taking a little earth after the club hits the ball. The club head should go through straight toward the hole. It would be a profitable thing for a thoughtful student of the game to take a dozen balls and practice this shot from the fair-green and from the rough. Commence with a short approach. Follow the putting program. Try one htmdred to one hundred and fifty shots. If you can secure a professional to coach you, so much the better. Don't stop at one himdred and fifty shots. Take up the play at another time and try it again. It is wonderful how much of interest and pleasant exercise there is in such practice. Keeping the head still and the eye on the ball is even more important in this shot than it is with the putter. With the putter you are going to hit the ball and send it somewhere nearer the hole, even though it may go off the line. Should the eye be taken off the mashie shot, your hands PRO AND CON OF GOLF 13 and wrists are liable to get ahead of the shot (a phrase understood by golfers), the blade of the club will shoot in the ground, and your ball pop up in the air for a few feet; or it may shoot on an angle of forty-five degrees away from the hole. Or you may do just the reverse, top the ball, which sometimes will send it quite a way toward or beyond the hole, with little or no accuracy as to line or distance. One need not be surprised if such a topped ball is sent to a bunker guarding the approach to the green, or to another bunker at the far side of the green. The extreme length of shot for a mashie is fixed by your ability and experience in playing that club. Some never use it for a shot of more than one hundred yards ; others can make one himdred and sixty yards with excellent results. MID-IRON The mid-iron is next in order. The stance is much the same as for a mashie shot, although one should stand a little farther from the ball. The club should be drawn back slowly and easily. For the long shot, at least, following contact with ball, hold the body toward the hole, the right leg turning, and come up on the right toes. Do not come up on side of shoe. This gives a less accurate follow-through. Under average circumstances the distance for the ordinary mid-iron shot is a hundred and forty to a hundred and sixty yards. Many profes- sionals use a mashie for this distance, but this 14 PRO AND CON OF GOLF book is intended for beginners and for average amateurs. The club should be drawn well up, but not exactly aroimd the neck. The long shot with a mid-iron should be between three quarters and a full stroke. - For a shorter distance, the carry-back of the club should be judged accordingly, but no shot should be made with a mid-iron with a carry- back of less than half a stroke. The ball may be hit clear and clean of earth, although it would be better to take a little earth on a direct line with the hole after the club hits the ball. This gives good direction to the ball. Taking this earth makes a good strong follow- through absolutely necessary. DRIVING IRON OR CLEEK This shot is much the same as with the mid- iron. When played well it will give from ten to twenty-five yards greater distance than will the other iron. In addition, the roll of the ball after it strikes the ground will be better. If the shot is one that calls for accuracy in direction, I prefer to use the cleek or driving iron rather than the brassie. Many times it will give as good a distance as the brassie, with more cer- tainty of direction than the latter club. How- ever, this should not tempt one to cut out either of the wooden clubs. "Play the club that fits the shot," is a good slogan. Many play all their long shots with a cleek or driving iron. Their usual explanation is that they PRO AND CON OF GOLF 15 cannot play with a wooden club, or that they are "a bit ofif their game." In a very important match this might be excusable, as in such a match it is hardly prudent for a player to use a club in which he has lost confidence for the time being. But constantly playing a club which, according to good form, does not fit the shot, throws a player out of form. As stated above, a certain club fits a certain shot according to the ability of the player to make the distance. If he is not playing well with the proper club, he should practice by himself, or with a professional, until he plays that club better. The driving iron or cleek is a handy club and is certainly the means of giving a player consider- able satisfaction when he comes to have it right, or nearly so. I always advocate the use of the wrists, and im- press this for all clubs, especially when it is desir- able to get distance with ease. Most players are under the impression that if they do not take the club back from the ball with its face a.t right angles, the shot will go in any direction. But the fact is, that when the club face is turned away from the ball in the back swing the tendency is for the wrists to turn in the downward swing so that the club face will be at right angles to the ball when it is hit. This turning of the wrists gives speed to the swing and is one of the secrets of the splendid distances secured by professionals. i6 PRO AND CON OF GOLF BRASSIE A brassie is a near-driver. The ground is the only "tee." I must begin with the same admo- nition as with all other clubs — take back and reverse slowly. The" stance should be what is termed "an open one"; that is, the left foot should be ahead of the ball and farther from it than the right foot, leaving an opportunity for the body to twm. with the club and the right foot to come up on the toes. The back swing should be only as long as you can make it with comfort; a short swing, rather than one where the left elbow bends around the neck, will seciu-e better control and direction. My swing is a long one, but I often feel I shotild do much better with the short swing back. However, while recommending the short swing for beginners, I Hke the appearance of the long swing better. The right elbow should hug the side fairly close in coming back. After the reverse, the right arm should go through and after the ball, and the head of club toward the hole. The wrists make the turn with the club, and in the finish the arms, especially the right, circle gracefully and easily aroimd the neck, not around the shoulders. I endeavor to use my wrists almost recklessly. Where this is done, a larger percentage of my shots are good shots. Extreme care for the shot, or overlooking the wrists, gives me a larger percentage of poor shots and shorter distances. Such might be termed "smothered shots." PRO AND CON OF GOLF 17 The club's downward journey should gather strength and speed all the way. A snap with the wrist when within eight inches of the ball is a wonderful help, but the beginner would do well not to try this. It will come, however, with practice. Notice your experienced caddie near the first tee, when, to fill up time and be rid of excess energy, he swings at imaginary balls. Practice a little in the same way, without balls. You can do it ; but if you think you cannot, or believe you're too old, the chances are you never will succeed. Let arms, shoulders, and club swing forward and backward easily in this practice, like the pendulum of a clock. SPOON The spoon is like the brassie but is used for a shorter distance, a little higher ball, and less roll. DRIVER The driver is almost on the same line as the brassie. Of course, the drive is what is termed a "tee shot"; that is, one can use a "pinch of sand," as the Scotchman said, to lift his ball from the ground. The lower the tee the better for the shot. A high tee is very likely to send a ball high, thereby losing distance. The club has an easy chance to get under the ball and very often takes the chance. However, the value in height of the tee depends much on the player. i8 PRO AND CON OF GOLF Some players, in driving, do remarkably well by merely placing the ball on a good spot of grass. Others will tee their balls one-half to one inch. Under any circumstances the wisdom of going above one inch is doubted by all. I recall, one player who used to tee his ball about two inches. It looked like a miniature walking stick, the ball being the handle. Strange, but true, he acquired a very fair game, but after a while he gave up golf in disgust. Whatever plan you adopt, do not take a handful of sand and place your ball thereon. It looks badly, and in making contact of club and ball one is likely to frame a cushion of sand. The result is likely to be a ball so short that it will be soon reached. I shall not attempt to describe a hook, a pull, or a sliced shot. These shots are often played for wind or to get around obstacles. But such work is for professionals and crack amateurs. NIBLICK Now for the niblick. In view of the fact that the niblick shot is a very difficult one, it seems to me that the beginner may well let it alone until he has practiced considerably with the clubs intended for the field and green play. The sand in the ordinary bunker to-day is not kept as level as formerly. In season it was usual to have a man go over the pit or bunker very often with a rake or other handy tool for the purpose of leveling bad places. This has been PRO AND CON OF GOLF 19 discontinued to a considerable extent. Players are expected to replace sand in holes, especially in those made by themselves. The bunker shows the effect of use dining the day. It is well for a beginner to practice in a bunker with balls dropped in good and bad lies. In bunker shots, it is best to stand well over but* behind the ball, the right foot especially being well behind. Make your bunker shots stronger than you think necessary. The reason for this is that the ball will seldom fall anywhere near the distance you expect it to. When the ball comes out of a well-copped bunker it has to go high, and will therefore have very little or no roll. The bunker cut is becoming very popular. It comes from laying the niblick head back nearly flat, drawing the club back close to the sand, but not touching it in going back at any point. Hit the ball hard, but take as little sand as possible. This shot should be made with a stance that will give the appearance of playing away to the left of hole, I have known players to get remarkable results from this shot. It should be made circular rather than oblong, as with such a shot the effect is to send the ball high from the start. In all ordinary bunker and pit shots, striking the sand about an inch behind the ball, sand should be taken and the ball hit hard. No player is one hundred per cent perfect. CHAPTER III TO PERFECT YOUR GAME THE following outline is not given with the thought that it contains the "only way." It is the importance of having a plan that I desire to impress upon you, in the hope that you will prepare your own and then carry a copy in your pocket and occasionally look it over. When you come in from a game, feeling rather low-spirited on account of the poor showing made with a certain club, take out your plan. If it does not show you what is amiss, secure the first hour you can get with the professional, then add the result to your plan in one line, and donH forget it. This scheme has helped me wonder- fully. It is not necessary to memorize each sug- gestion, but occasionally study one at a time and gradually eliminate those no longer required. Putter Follow through, — wrist shot best. Keep eye on ball, not on the hole. No jerk; let club do it. Left hand tight. Hit ball firmly near bottom. Send club head toward hole with the ball. Mashie Back easily, fairly high. Lay back, don't keep blade at right angles with ball in going back. Follow through toward hole. Short approach — low hold. Don't jab. If so inclined, take club back slower and higher, and practice. 20 PRO AND CON OF GOLF Cleek and Mid-iron Back easily and slowly, — not a long swing, and not straight back. Lay club blade back. Follow through. Stand feet fairly close. Don't kill the ball. Driver and Brassie Take back and reverse slowly, arms toward body in stance. Use wrists firmly, almost recklessly. Gather strength all the way down. Turn at waist a little toward the hole. Club head should work as though it were going through the ball toward the hole. Try two-thirds swing back. Grass Nib and mashie. Straight back, — high. Follow through toward hole. Hit hard, with club describing a circle. Bunker Close up to cop; pull across ball with left arm. Stand away behind ball and cut out when necessary. If play in sand, hit about one inch behind ball. When ball is on cop, stand on level of bunker, if possible. When foot is on cop, bend head to contour of cop. Sand shots, like all others, shoiild have practice with a professional. General Eye most important. Depend on club rather than on strength. Follow through. Let club do the work. Careful about hands ahead of ball, — a common error. Don't sway body. Head straight on ball. 2 2 PRO AND CON OF GOLF Use arms from hands up, instead of from shoulders down. Don't press on any shot. Let left arm do some work. Right-handed men let that hand and arm do all, with the consequence that left arm has restraining influence. Mistake to use all one's strength. Let club go right "through ball." Do not play any shot until comfortably ready, but great deliberation is an ease-destroyer. Let club lie naturally in stance. Use an imaginery line and hit into it with the club head. Make ascent and descent the same; if variation, hit out past straight line. Keep on going. Do not quit on last half of stroke. Never lunge at ball. Always finish full stroke with right-hand knuckles pointing skyward. THE IMPORTANCE OF FORM To me it has always seemed strange that many who follow and love the game of golf should not secure a certain form which can be approved by professionals. This does not mean a form that may insure expert play. It means that good form should precede all play. What is meant by "good form" is an approved stance, and a use of the clubs with a style ap- proaching, if not strictly following, the best standards. "A freak player is a blot on the landscape." For example, there are players who do not sole their clubs before making the shots aside from those in a bunker. In other words, they make the shot on the fair-green, or in the rough, much as the rules compel a player to treat his shot in PRO AND CON OF GOLF 23 a bunker or a hazard. There is a considerable percentage of penalty against such players in every shot they make. Yet, having learned to knock the ball somewhere in that way, they keep on doing it year after year. Many players pay little attention to advice or lessons. Such men, I have noticed, swing their arms, shoulders, and body all together in their desire to hit the ball and drive it a long distance. The result is that the shoulders drop, the eyes are forced, and the club hits the ground with a dull thud. Dropping the shoiilders makes it almost impossible to keep the eyes on the ball. With all their strength such players advance the balls only from fifty to a hundred yards. A little practice with a professional would show them that in acquiring good form and using only the strength of the arms and wrists, keeping the body almost still, they would attain to a game that would enable them more often to hit the ball clean and get from one hundred sixty to two himdred yards. Such assistance as the body can give may well come with time and acquired form. Again, there are players who give up some clubs too quickly because of lack of success, using a club with which, for the time being, they gain more confidence. It might be all right for once, to lay aside a club in which for the time being you have lost confidence, but in the long nm the method is unwise. Not infrequently one meets a player who feels that for a long shot he can do better with the 24 PRO AND CON OF GOLF iron than with a wooden club, and who therefore plays the iron all the time. Such a player ordinarily has not the patience to employ a professional, or practice alone with his wooden clubs for an hour or two once or twice a week. Although I am a strong believer in practicing alone, I think an hour with a professional is better than three hours alone. Many beginners take a few lessons and do remarkably well. Then they accept a challenge to play a game, and start in to use their wooden clubs. Remembering how well they did prac- ticing viith the driver and the brassie, they expect the first few balls to go right. Usually they are disappointed. Instead of sticking it out with the knowledge they have paid for and acquired, their desire to make a good showing or to defeat their opponent beguiles them into changing to irons at once. This makes for general all-roimd waste. The same recreancy is common in other points of the game. Stating it a little differently, the player takes lessons, and temporarily acquires good form. He goes out to play a game, does poorly for a few holes, and then, consciously or not, drops into the feeling that he could play better with his old form (for that game, at any rate). The change is made, and the time spent in practicing is thus wasted. The chances are that if the player had stuck to his new form for the entire eighteen holes his score would have been equally good. And there would have been this advantage — in holding to the new form, PRO AND CON OF GOLF 25 under the instructions received, his improvement would have been real and along the lines of well- directed play. Such improvement as comes with the old and imgraceful form, even over a period of months or years, is very slight. Practice swinging, without a ball, each of the clubs most commonly used. Think of a clock pendulum, and acqmre rhythm. As stated be- fore, notice an experienced caddie practicing without a ball while waiting for his employer's turn to start. You may not do it well, but you can train yourself to come as nearly as possible, and yotir game will improve. SET VERSUS RELAXED MUSCLES In playing golf I often wonder if the players know the meaning of "Follow through" and "Don't press." Both of these admonitions are often used by players, as well as by writers of golfing articles and books. "Terms" look easy, but many average players do not know just what the terms amoimt to. "Follow through" means to let the club head go out straight to the hole. The take-back must be along lines that will permit it, or it cannot be done. Then, after the ball is hit, the arms, especially the left, should be extended toward the hole just before making the break with the wrists. That permits the club to come grace- fully aroimd the neck. If you will try this slowly, without a ball, you will soon get the idea fixed in yoiir mind. 26 PRO AND CON OF GOLF The other admonition, "Don't press," is directly associated with the above; therefore let me change the expression and say: "Relax." Cut out the tenseness with which many of the average players, especially those more than thirty to thirty-five years of age, approach the tee or their average shot through the field. After having practiced relaxation in the swing- ing of the club before approaching the tee, the average player acts on the tee as though he had "just one blow with which to kill an ox." Every muscle is taut, fixed, rigid, to get the greatest power into said blow. This is all wrong. Rather would it be better to use carelessness, recklessness, lightness, and ease than to approach the shot with this feeling of strain. In other words, "as easy in play as in practice" will show one that he will do just as well if easy as he will with rigid work. All the time his game will be making for improvement instead of standing still or fostering ultimate discourage- ment. There is very small chance of getting a good game or a good "follow-through" with the "set-muscle" form. With a little practice, the easy carry of the arms, the flexible wrist, will give a man wonderful distance. His energy is con- served and he finds himself coming to the seven- teenth and eighteenth holes feeling equal to taking on nine holes more, if he wishes. The man who plays the game with set muscles is all the time stiffening those muscles and wasting energy, and PRO AND CON OF GOLF 27 he is tired out in mind and body on the eighteenth green. This tenseness usually gives him a poor score, especially toward the end, — the last four or five holes, — and, as a general thing, on those holes you will find such a man complaining about the way his game has gone to pieces; his caddie is no good, his clubs are wrong, and altogether he is downhearted. The spirit of the good sport he probably is, has departed. The other method will bring the man around light and easy, even in the presence of adversity on the links. PROCEDURE I am very glad to have an authority on the value of a good eye, wrist, and forearm, like Christy Mathewson, the star pitcher of the New York Giants, endorse the suggestion as to begin- ners starting with the putter and mashie rather than with the driver. This is what he said on this point in a recent article: "The average beginner will strain to become a good driver first. That, to my notion, is the wrong end at which to start, although I went at it myself from that direction. The explanation of this probably is that it feels so good to make a long drive. But a messed-up drive can be recovered and made up for, while a missed putt or a bad approach has lost many a match. There- fore I would recommend to the beginner that he practice the short game as much as possible, the approach and putting. "If a man lives in the country, or even in the 28 PRO AND CON OF GOLF suburbs of a great city, he can often do this at home by sinking a flower pot in his back yard and smoothing out the ground around it, so that he has some of the conditions of the ordinary green. Then he can do his driving when he goes out to the links." Golf is a game in which mighty few of us cash in all our hopes. CHAPTER IV CLUBS A GOLFER often is known by the clubs he carries. The number of clubs in the caddie bag does not necessarily distinguish the good player. Next to good form I consider the subject of clubs most important. I trust the reader will agree, therefore, that not one of the following pages on this subject is wasted, notwithstanding reiteration. It is and has been something of a fad among many young golfers to carry from nine to twelve clubs in a big hooded caddie bag, which still has sufficient room for a sweater, a pair of shoes, perhaps a suit of underwear, and often a change of linen. But the chances are that the man who carries this extraordinary bag does not pose as an extra good golfer. It has been thought all right to affect this style of bag. Did the player have use for all the clubs? In his own words, quite often the answer to that query is: "I have two good drivers, and when I go to another course I like to have them handy in case of accident. Half the clubs I carry I never use. But there's nothing like having an assortment." One critic naively remarks, however, that as a man may be judged by the clothes he wears, so may a golfer be known by the clubs he keeps. He 29 30 PRO AND CON OF GOLF adds that the large variety of wooden and iron- headed weapons are in many instances not war- ranted by the results obtained. How often has the care-free caddie, familiar with the course, been known to reel off a score close to the course record, aided only by three rather decrepit Consider the Willies of the field, they toil not, neither do they spin; but Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these looking if not wholly promiscuous clubs, tucked under his arm in lieu of a caddie-bag receptacle! The carefully groomed fellow draws the club of his choice from a bag bursting with sticks, only to foozle, to the immense delight of the urchin who is carrjdng that formidable looking bag. Sometimes in important matches profes- sionals have been known to show some concern. PRO AND CON OF GOLF 31 and take out an extra driver or two, or a relief brassie. J. H. Taylor carried a left-handed iron when he played at the Chicago Golf Club in the famous world championship more than a decade ago, in which chief honors were captured by his rival from the Isle of Jersey, Harry Vardon. It was said by those who knew Taylor best that he had scorned to have such a club in his bag until his visit to the Chicago Golf Club. He feared there might be a shot which in a close medal-play contest would prove disastrous to his chances of victory unless it were carefully played with a left-handed club. He was right, as far as that goes; the shot came early in the contest, at the third green on the first round. But for that extra iron in his bag he might have lost two strokes at that hole. With the average player, however, the possi- bility of breaking a club is hardly a matter for alarm, and at the worst the brassie can be made an effectual substitute for the driver. It often happens that some well-known player will develop a fondness for a particular club, and as confidence increases he can use that particular club on an astonishingly large number of shots. There is a senseless excuse which not a few amateurs give for the array of wood and steel which their caddie bags present — -that they hope if they are "off" one club they may be "on" another. On occasion this hope may not be without foundation. Take, for instance, when a man suddenly shifts from a light to a short. 32 PRO AND CON OF GOLF heavy driver with beneficial results. He has probably made the change in desperation, and then, as he sees himself getting away a series of long, straight tee shots, concludes that life is worth living after all. This newly acquired accuracy may last only for a roimd or two, or until he becomes accustomed to the "feel" of the new club. Because of its greater weight, pressing becomes a matter of some difl&culty for a time. Good results obtained in this artificial way are neither permanent nor satisfactory. CLUBS IN USE AND DISCARD "To the struggling amateur, who, regarding his game as well-nigh hopeless, has in desperation ransacked the professional's shop in an endeavor to collect a new set of clubs likely to serve him better, some satisfaction may be gleaned from a few words of advice offered by Edward Ray, open champion of Great Britain," says the New York Sun. "Until a perfect set is obtained, the champion says, it must be obvious to all that it will be necessary to buy and test many clubs. As a natural result, a large percentage of the weapons will find a resting place in lockers, though it not infrequently happens that drivers and irons long since thrown aside in disgust are brought forth and produce such results as to make the owner wonder what in the world he has been thinking about all the time. "No type of club is so often tried, discarded. PRO AND CON OF GOLF 33 and tried again as a putter, which one day seems possessed of some magic power and the next worse than useless. "Although a great deal of this shifting about is after all a mere fancy, it is equally true that no man ever plays really well without having first purchased and tried scores of clubs. His path to proficiency is literally strewn with them. There is likewise little doubt that much of this experi- menting is due to ignorance of what is best for one's style of play. "Often a club that at first appeals to the player and then fails to come up to expectations has been discarded all too hastily in favor of a new purchase. Then again, when a favorite is broken it rarely matters how exact the duplicate may be, the new member of the kit rarely performs its work quite as satisfactorily as the old, though if given a little time it is likely to become an equally willing servant. "The golfer when selecting a club should be carefiil to get one that suits his style, for he, best of all persons, is the one to know what amount of 'feel' he requires in the shaft. If his swing be of the slow, deliberate kind, then a stifiE shaft is useless. "It's not sheer weight that produces the long ball, but accurate timing; and to bring that about the golfer shotdd use a club that he can swing without effort. "Every golfer knows, or should know, that the shaft is the most important part of the club; and 34 PRO AND CON OF GOLF therefore when a purchase is being made care should be taken to see that the shaft is right. Good hickory is becoming scarcer every year, and the purchaser must not complain if asked to pay an additional half dollar for a club which has a perfect shaft. No matter how good the head may be, it is useless if the shaft is without life, a shaft which, pressed on the ground, stays where it has been forced. A good stick should always resume the original shape when pressure is put upon it. "In considering scared or socket clubs, Ray prefers the scared, believing that there is less give in the neck; but the professional ranks are pretty evenly divided on the question. Where an amateur often makes a mistake, in Ray's opinion, is in the grip. He comes to the con- clusion that his grip is too thin, and brings it to the professional to have it thickened. But in doing so he is displacing a certain amount of weight. The head of the club now feels lighter, and the balance is partly destroyed. He soon brings it back, not understanding the reason, to have a little weight added. When this is done the club is totally different, and is soon discarded." HOW TO PICK CLUBS "The unusual or freak clubs represent to a certain extent the theoretical side of golf. I have used many of these clubs, and some of them I have liked very much," says Charles (Chick) Evans. PRO AND CON OF GOLF 35 "I never have used a Schenectady putter be- cause, from my point of view, it would be a waste of time to practice to acqmre the skillful use of it as long as it remains unsanctioned by the powers that be. From observation I should say it is a great aid to good putting, and is perhaps the most effective of all the new inventions. But as long as a large portion of the golfing world does not consider it a golf club I shall not use it. "As a very young player, I consider it my part to do nothing to influence golf legislation, and to accept unquestioningly existent golf rules. "The only limit to the average golfer's purchase of new clubs seems to be his purse. Very few players continue to use the same clubs year after year. I am well acquainted with a prominent golfer who has two lockers filled with clubs, and he is now contemplating setting up a third to relieve the congestion in the other two. "My own much-treasured set is the result of experiments with about twenty-five clubs. My bag really contains the selection of an accumula- tion. No golfer can go into a shop and buy a set — driver, brassie, mid-iron, mashie, and putter — and be satisfied with his clubs. I believe in trying out clubs slowly, and when they show satisfactory results they should be kept, only to be changed after great deliberation. This applies most par- ticularly to iron clubs. "Of course one is compelled to put in new shafts from time to time, but the same angle and loft are always there, and I do not believe they are 36 PRO AND CON OF GOLF exactly the same in any two clubs. Many of my clubs I consider old friends, and an accident to one is a tragedy. My mashie is my favorite club, and duplicating its shaft is a trying and difficult task for me. "In the North and South championship at Pinehurst, the shaft of my mashie cracked at the second hole. I sent it to the shop for repair and it was returned to me at the tenth hole. At the nineteenth hole it cracked the length of the shaft, and my shot was ruined. "I returned shaft and head to my bag and when I reached Chicago the shaft was duplicated as nearly as possible. There is everything in the accustomed feel of an old club, and only time can break in a new one. "No club can turn a poor player into a fine one. The man behind the club must always remain the important factor. In golf as in more serious things of life, it is a good plan to prove all things. Hold fast to that which is good." NEW IDEAS IN CLUBS The beginner must expect to see many new and attractive shapes in golf clubs, and no doubt he will buy one or two in the hope of improving his play. There is a serious chance of overdoing this chapter on clubs, principally because of repe- tition, but different viewpoints prove not only interesting but absorbingly instructive. The fol- lowing article gives much good advice to new- comers on the links: PRO AND CON OF GOLF 37 "According to H. H. Hilton, the British golfer, comparatively little credit is given to one's clubs for improvement in play. Nine times out of ten the ball gets all the praise. "Oddly enough, out of the mass of inventions the two ideas which may be said to have a strong bearing upon the make and shape of present- day clubs both emanated from players who fashioned a club with a view to improving their own game. Across ' the water Henry Lamb invented the bulger, while the socketless iron club head was the idea of Frank Fairlie. "Back in about 1889 the buJger form of head first made its appearance, and it is generally conceded this is the parent club of the present- day short, round head. "While it may be true that a large percentage of the tools found in the clubmakers' shops are devoid of any suspicion of bulge in the face, it is likewise noticeable that nearly every club one picks up has the face of the head in front of the shaft. Prior to the appearance of the bulger the face of the club head was always behind the line of the shaft. "In commenting on that Hilton says the intro- duction of the bulger stamp of club is the only material change which has taken place in the ma,ke and shape of wooden clubs in the last thirty years. To carry the analysis further Hilton says : " ' We use socket clubs in place of spliced clubs mainly for the reason that the club maker decided this question for us. He found that by the aid 38 PRO AND CON OF GOLF of machinery it was a much simpler thing for him to bind the shaft and the head together by- means of the socket screw principle, and, having found this out, he was not at all likely to revert to the old and comparatively laborious method of splicing the shaft and the head together. Had it not been for the introduction of the rubber- cx)red ball it is probable the socket club would have had a short reign, as I cannot imagine the present delicate examples of the club makers' art long withstanding the concussion of the old solid ball. There are still a nimiber of players who remain faithful to the old clubs put together on the spliced principle, and, personally, I think they are wise, as it is much the more stable prin- ciple of the two and is much more serviceable for hard work through the green. In the bags of nearly all first-class players is to be found at least one club in which the shaft is spliced to the head. ** 'I never have come across a socket brassie with which I could play with the slightest degree of confidence, as I have found that occasionally one is apt to play appallingly bad shots with them, due to the club head not coming through when attempting to take turf, and in consequence I still remain faithful to the old stamp of club and will use it for heavy work through the course, and both my short brassie and spoon, which have the shaft spliced to the head.' "The foregoing must furnish food for reflection to those who have followed Hilton round the PRO AND CON OF GOLF 39 links. Unquestionably the best shot in his bag is the brassie or spoon to the green. His direc- tion with either of these weapons in his hands is well-nigh mechanical, and he often goes through a day's play without once using a cleek or driv- ing iron." LIBERAL BASIS OF GOLF Mark Allerton has given considerable attention to the golf player's use of balls and clubs. He contends the player has a wide field for selection and is not bound by drastic regulations. "There are a number of eminent golfers who seem to be of the opinion that the game is being played in too free and easy a manner," says Mr. Allerton, "Now and again these critics agitate for a restriction of the golfer's liberty, and if the agitation has a habit of dying down as quickly as it flared into life it leaves behind it the inde- finable suspicion that we are doing too much as we like. For example, not so very long ago the politicians of the game were clamoring for a new ruHng authority. A mild sort of revolution arose, and among the revolutionaries there was no lack of last-ditchers. But time went on, and now the only attacks that are made on St. Andrews may be reckoned of negligible importance. "Then somebody insisted that we ought to have a new code of rules, and since he and his supporters refused to be happy till they got it, a new code of rules was drawn up, and the only remarkable thing about it is that it does n't seem 49 PRO AND CON OF GOLF to have made very much difference. After that the die-hards determined that the rubber-cored ball must really go, and since in their widsom they realized that nothing in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters luider the earth would persuade golfers to return to the guttie ball, they agitated for a standard ball. They insisted that nobody ought to be allowed to enter for a competition who played with a ball that did not float and that did not conform to certain dimensions as regards cover and to certain material as regards core. This agitation is still going on more or less fitfully, and I mention it not to belittle the efforts of its supporters, but to suggest that it is a part of the general tendency to curtail the ancient rights of the golfer to play with any spherical object he chooses provided it be small enough to go into the hole. "The most recent attempt to restrict the golfer's license is in the direction of the number of clubs he shall carry with him, or rather cause to be carried with him. It has been estimated that the number ought to be limited to six, which is perhaps one too few, for most of us would feel unhappy did we not have at hand at least a driver, a brassie, a cleek, an iron, a mashie, a niblick, and a putter. From this list it would be difficult to know which club to discard. Some of us would fasten on the putter, arguing that we could not play less inexpertly if we used a niblick on the green. Now it has been noted that Braid pins his faith to the thirteen clubs — surely a lucky PRO AND CON OF GOLF 41 number — and many players in emulation of Braid fill their bag with a forest of wooden clubs sup- ported by a collection of irons of every conceivable shape and possessing hybrid names. "I do not for a moment suppose that the objection to the multiplicity of clubs is due to the fact that they give their possessor an advantage over his rival; on the contrary, it is usually to be found that the man with a driver, a rusty iron club, and a putter can give strokes to the player who fills his bag with a specimen of every known club. We suspect that the latter, in his frantic desire to get the better of the difficulties of the game, resorts to the purchasing of every con- ceivable weapon of which he has seen other people make good use. At the same time it must be admitted that the temptation to add to one's impedimenta is very great. The majority of golfers have stacked up in an odd comer of their houses a vast number of clubs purchased in weak moments, and the task of selecting a bagful is often very difficult. Each club seems to cry aloud its claim to be included in the list. The insistence of this cleek rivals the claims of that. Accord- ingly, for the sake of peace, we include the greater proportion of the lot. " Once upon a time I was presented with a left- handed mashie of rare beauty. Seldom have I seen a club so luxuriously finished. To gaze upon it filled me with the longing to be a left-handed player. For months I reserved a place in my bag for this left-handed club, not because I hoped 42 PRO AND CON OF GOLF to use it but because I fancied that the sight of my readiness for all emergencies might strike terror and awe into the heart of my opponent. And I never had occasion to use it. Never, that is, until one day before starting off to a course where One .could not always depend upon getting a caddie I reduced my kit to a minimum, and the left-handed club was left at home. During that very match my ball, after an inexcusably bad tee shot, nestled up against a furze bush so that with any right-handed club it was impossible to make a stroke. My left-handed club would have saved the situation — and I had left it at home. Herein lies room for the argument that if you carry a club for seven years you will find a use for it. "On the other hand, this narrative gives away the case of the man who likes a multitude of clubs. When he suspects that he may have to carry them himself he leaves all but the essential implements at home. He has no desire to make himself a beast of burden. He knows by experience that the bagful of clubs that weighs so many pounds on the first tee weighs as many hundredweights on the eighteenth. He discovers that spare drivers and hybrid irons and a change of putters are by no means essential. The strongest point in the case of those who urge the limiting of the number of clubs is that of humanity. The spectacle of a small boy laboring round the links with a caddie bag which contains a large and heterogeneous assortment of clubs is not a pleasant one. Since the possessor of the collection brings PRO AND CON OF GOLF 43 into play but a small proportion, and that proportion uses but inefficiently, the labor appears to be reasonless. The merciful golfer is merciful to his caddie." Many a golfer is chesty from thinking how many golf cups are coming to him. CHAPTER V METHODS OF PLAY THE progress of a golfer is slow. Some consider it tedious; others are interested all along the highway from the lightest ignorance to brilliant accomplishment. A British writer of ability, under the nom de plume of "A Wandering Player," points out the responsibilities of a champion to all other players of his time, especially in methods of playing the game. The English writer says that probably no one has given so much advice about the playing of golf as has J. H. Taylor, five times gold-medal champion of England, and goes on to say: "At Mid-Surrey he is engaged in tuition all the time — ■ except when he is laying out courses in France, Italy, Egypt, or some other foreign parts. He has the merit as a tutor of being just a trifle dogmatic; he is logical and discerning, and he has expounded his views clearly and comprehensively. Let us then briefly consider some of the points of the Taylor way. " It is possible to have a more beautiful style in driving than Taylor has, and he would not put his own driving forward as the kind of thing to give joyous emotion to those who appreciate athletic grace in movement. But athletic style is less prevalent now than it used to be. The 44 PRO AND CON OF GOLF 45 rubber-cored ball does not demand style as the guttie did; and it has been found that the long swings and fine finishes do not get the long holes in fours any better than some othdr ways which are easier, and indeed in a manner more effective. "Taylor's principles, of course, are sound enough. Only one champion of modem times has dared to disregard any of the few essential principles or cardinal tenets of golfing belief. "Taylor's style is effective, and it is effective- ness that he teaches. There was no better or more effective driving done in a recent cham- pionship than his. In its results and in its certainty it was magnificent, and one may be sure that it was on his driving as much as anything that he won this championship — not on the length of it, but on that which is even better than length. "In the old days Taylor won championships on his marvelous mashie play, which gained him a reputation that no other player has ever gained for one particular stroke. I had a strong feeling that he won his fourth championship at Deal a few years ago as much on his half and three- quarter iron shots as an3^hing else. They were marvels of accuracy. And now he wins a cham- pionship on his driving. "Once upon a time Taylor explained in an interesting way how he viewed his own driving and how he gained the power that he has with his comparatively short swing. "He is what we may call an open stancer. 46 PRO AND CON OF GOLF He insists that stance and character of swing must be adapted to each other in a special way; that for the open stance only a round-the-body swing is suitable ; and that when a man plays an upright sort of swing with a square stance his right elbow must inevitably leave his side. That is one of the worst and most frequent faults in driving, though one often little suspected or understood. "If he stood square, says the champion, he feels he would lose direction; if his swing were upright, he thinks he would lose distance; and if his right elbow were allowed to leave his side, then he is sure he would lose power. Direction, dis- tance, and power are the three essentials of good driving. So he is all for the open stance and the flat swing. "One of the chief merits and necessities is that in the back-swing the wrists do not permit the head of the club to move outward and backward in the line of flight behind the ball, as it has been preached they should do, but begin to circle the club round at once. By this means the right elbow is kept to the side. "The importance of this elbow movement is very great. It might be safe to say that more than half the golfers of to-day do it wrongly and suffer accordingly. Taylor urges that an initial turn of the wrists at the very beginning of the swing is extremely important. Then, as to the arm movement, he insists that the right elbow should be kept close to the side and should move PRO AND CON OF GOLF 47 round the side irrespective of any movement of the body. That makes for a smooth, fiat sv^dng. A sense of enormous gain in power is certainly the result. Taylor says that he feels a gain of half as much power again by this movement in comparison with an upright swing. The initial wrist movement induces it. But he warns those who think of trying to flatten their swing, and so gain some of the power which he certainly has, against allowing excessive body movement, to which they will be very liable. "As to pitching with the mashie — Taylor's most celebrated and successful shot, and the shot that probably bothers inexperienced players more than any other — he has given advice which is more pointed than such advice generally is. "He warns you against full swings with the mashie based on the idea that you get more length than with shorter ones — which, in play with iron clubs, is not the case — and urges that when a swing only a little past the vertical, which should be regarded as a full swing with the mashie, is not enough, a club of higher power should be taken. "When pla3^ng a short-pitch shot he would have the body half turned round toward the hole, as if one were playing too much to the left, and the face of the club turned slightly outward, the stance being very open and the weight on the right foot. The left wrist must be turned inward in taking the club back. A special item of instruction, which is not generally known, is that, according to this master, the left wrist should turn the club slightly 48 PRO AND CON OF GOLF in the bend of the forefinger of the other hand. Otherwise the wrist movement could not be completely successful. "At the time of impact the right hand must not be allowed to get into the business, as it so often is, in the mistaken idea on the part of the player that something must be done at this critical moment to lift the ball up. The effect of right- hand work at such a moment is to make the ball run, not to loft it and make it stop nearly dead on pitching, as is desired." Another view of Taylor's play is expressed in the following: " Taylor's cut stroke with his mashie is a picture and has often been declared ideal. He stands with the face of his club turned slightly away from the ball. It seems as if he always aims to the left of the pin and cuts the ball. That being his natural method, his excellence at the cut mashie stroke is understandable. He is never caught trying to coax the rubber core ; he gives it a forceful blow every time." Vardon's famous push shot has been copied the world over, and many an American has tried to master it. Vardon admires the way Braid plays this particular shot. "If you want to see the push shot played to perfection," says the former British champion, "there is nobody better to watch than Braid. Addressing the ball with his hands a little in front of it, he takes the club back in a more upright manner than for the ordinary stroke. Then, PRO AND CON OF GOLF 49 at the moment of impact, his arms lengthen, or at any rate, straighten, and he pushes them through as he gives the object a mighty thump." SUPER-GOLF The men who make and who change golf courses were given consideration some time ago. An editorial in The Nation deserves careful attention. If one starts reading this article, the chances are the interest will continue to the end. The editorial strikes out in the following manner : "The historic and shifting contest between the makers of armor and the makers of guns, to see which can get the better of the other, has its likeness in what has for sometime been going on in the game of golf. Players and the architects of the links are continually pitting their wits against each other. Every improvement in clubs or balls is but a signal for making the courses harder. "The average skill of golfers is all the time increasing; but greens committees display a fiendish ingenuity in seeing to it that the average score does not improve. You will see malignant officials on the watch for a poor shot that luckily escapes a severe penalty, and then darkly mutter- ing to themselves that such a thing shall not happen again. Sure enough, the next time a ball is sliced to the same spot it finds a new-made grave awaiting it — one of the places rightly named 'pits,' full as they are of lost souls and wailing and gnashing of teeth. 50 PRO AND CON OF GOLF "There is growing complaint, in England as well as in this country, that the authorities of the links are in pursuit of a kind of super-golf. No one demands that the courses be made as easy as once was the custom. There is no objec- tion to difficulties and hazards, as such. The protest is against appl3dng higher mathematics to the game. It is becoming the fashion to lay out links on the basis of the most precise multiples of the most precise shots. Opportunity to 're- cover' from an imperfect stroke is scoffed at. The wages of golfing sin — or even peccadillo — is death. Your drive must be exactly 198 yards. 2 feet, and 3 inches; and the ball must come to rest within an area, no bigger than Sir Walter Raleigh's coat. If you hit farther, you are in trouble; if you fall shorter, you cannot possibly carry the bunker guarding the green. Ten feet to the right puts you where you can't see the hole; while a couple of yards to the left will send you down a slope into the rough. "So it goes, hole after hole; every stroke must be perfect on pain of certain punishment. The player has to study the wind as carefully as a marksman at a rifle range; and in the hands of professionals and experts golf is tending toward a combination of ballistics and the integral cal- culus. "It is maintained, to be sure, that these refine- ments and niceties of golf not only test the player's skill but are for his mental discipline and moral good. He is thus compelled to concentrate, PRO AND CON OF GOLF 51 knowing that a single moment of relaxed attention means his undoing. And we suppose that, when he finds himself in a cimningly placed trap, he is expected to meditate piously on the wonderful intellect of the man who spread that snare for his feet. Anyhow, it is said, his coolness and reserves of spiritual strength will be developed under his misfortunes. "But this recalls what the statesman said about the blessings of adversity for his party. 'Yes,' he remarked, ' but adversity must n't last too long.' It must not on the links, lest tempers, instead of being braced by difficult}^, become apparently soured by the sense of diabolically contrived punishments. Every golf club that persists in adding hazard to hazard, and calcu- lating distances with transit and chain, recruits a growing corps of grumbling members. They like to play golf but protest that they do not wish to spend half their time hewing their way out of the sand, or striving to be as accurate on the links as they have to be on the billiard table. "Another offense laid at the doors of the engi- neers of transcendental golf links is that they will not let Nature alone. Natural hazards have the best reason for existence of any. A ravine to pitch over, a fringe of swamp to carry, a bit of wood to skirt, a river or pond to drive across — such hazards no one objects to; they occur in the order of Nature, and excite Uttle of the wrath, malice, and all uncharitableness which the artifi- cial difficulties of man's creating so often provoke. 52 PRO AND CON OF GOLF "About the former, the player's only thought is that they happen to be in his way and must somehow be gotten over or around, but the devo- tees of super-golf have little patience with what Nature has done. It is for them to improve on her. They must sweep everything clear to begin with, so that they may proceed to lay out their links like a chessboard, plotting each hole with the utmost care and the nicest balancing of diffi- culties, and penalizing every stroke that does not drop the ball within a yard of the spot which they indicate. "We woidd not be understood as making a plea for duffers' golf. The rigors of the game are rightly insisted upon. There is no real defense for those courses which 'any gentleman' can negotiate in comparatively low figures, no matter how he plays. But there are growing numbers of golfers, and we confess that we sometimes sym- pathize with them, who take a certain delight, even if it is a trifle shamefaced, in stealing away occasionally from the fearfully and wonderfully concatenated traps and hazards that make up the orthodox links, and spending an afternoon of ' low dissipation ' on a course of another kind. "There, it is refreshing to find that there is more than one way of making a given shot, that there is hope for the vilest sinner while yet the lamp holds out to burn on the putting green, and that brook and terrace and bog have been left as Nature designed them. After a day of such unmanly self-indulgence, one can go back PRO AND CON OP GOLF 53 dutifully to wrestle with the intricacies of super- golf, determined to suffer and be strong." COMPARING GOLF— ENGLAND VERSUS AMERICA Great strides have been made in the United States. To learn what we are as linksmen, com- pared with older foreign golf brothers, it is some- times necessary to "see oursel's as ithers see us." On the other side of the Atlantic, where form is orthodox and courses natural, at least as set forth in the books, it would seem after all that condi- tions are not so completely beyond our reach. This word of encouragement comes from "a wandering Briton," who, after weeks of observa- tion in the States, imhesitatingly declares that the style of American players is far more uniform than at home. It is so uniform, in fact, that it is almost monotonous. He points to the fact that a dozen players will start in a big competition, and show almost an identical style from the tee. It is a good style generally, he says. The address to the. ball is quick and businesslike, and the swing is well formed with a very full follow- through, almost too full in many cases. "There seems to have been a considerable sup- pression of individuality, he comments, and a determination to proceed in the game on orthodox lines as set forth by the leading professionals. For this reason the American game conveys the impression of having been in a large measure standardized. "While it is a way in which many first -class 54 PRO AND CON OF GOLF players may be produced, and that America is producing them fast, it by no means indicates that genius is to be developed along these lines. It is asserted that the best American golfers are not so good as the British, but that they are coming on fast, and that with their thoroughness, keenness, and determination there is no telling what they may do. "So very different are the circimistances under which the golfers of England and America play the game it is doubtful if it will ever be possible to make any fair and exact comparison between the best players of the two coimtries. The per- formances of the leading American amateurs when they have visited Great Britain to take part in the British championships cannot be taken as a criterion of the quality of American golf, because in such circumstances the conditions have been as strange and as difficult to them as they have been for British competitors in the American championships. "The zeal and determination of the American players to improve their game has caused many a British golfer who has visited the United States to return home with quite a different view of the game here; in fact, some have openly expressed their admiration. The weak spot, in the game of the Americans, is the iron play, but the way they manage to pitch the ball and make it stop almost dead on the green when taking little or no turf is really wonderful. The climate and comparative hardness of the PRO AND CON OF GOLF 55 American courses may be somewhat against the players, but under conditions which Englishmen would regard as aggravating in the extreme Americans have cultivated a game which in many respects is really admirable. "Middle-aged golfers seem to have been a source of never-ending wonder to this English authority. The good efforts of zeal are perhaps better exem- plified in the middle-aged golfers who have taken up the game rather late in life. American golf clubs are full of men of fifty years of age or more, and many of them have not been interested in the royal and ancient game for more than five years. In Great Britain this class is also for- midable, but there is a world of difference between the comparatively new golfers of fifty of the two nations. It is figured that the American men of this class are half a dozen strokes better than their British brothers, and, what is more, the Americans are improving all the time and are bent on being as good players as it is possible for them to become at their time of life. The country swarms with players who are more than two thirds through an ordinary lifetime who have been playing only five or six summers and no winters — for in very few places in the northern United States is any play possible between late fall and the spring — and who can play a good six-handicap game in the British reckoning. The system of handicap- ping in America is such that a man at six is about equal to a scratch man in England. "The majority of Britons of middle age seem to S6 PRO AND CON OF GOLF become satisfied if they can make their way around the Hnks merely for the sake of health and exercise and irrespective of the score. It may be wisdom, but more than half of the joys and pleasures of golf are missed by those who never feel the delight at a round under their ordinary figures. There seems to be a complacent satisfaction with one's game, no matter what the score. "In America such a condition is rare. The middle-aged American is continually reading about the methods of the masters, studying them, and taking lessons and practicing continually, doing his utmost to perfect his style. The result is that these men are generally disappointed when they fail to play around a long and difficult course in fewer than ninety strokes, and they play fewer really "foozled" shots than almost any class of amateur players. These, too, are busy men, many of them with vast business interests. In fact, the business man's game is a strong feature in American busi- ness life. These men can tell exactly how Vardon, Braid, and Taylor make many of their principal shots, though they have never seen them. The aim of this class of players is thoroughness and proficiency, and they get twice as much en- joyment out of the game as the corresponding British player with the lackadaisical methods. " "The English authority does not hesitate to express his admiration for American golfers, particularly those of middle age. The young PRO AND CON OF GOLF 57 men are true "chips of the old block," for they are even more zealous and thorough than those of more advanced years. "However, the English writer cites an instance or two to illustrate the interest of the young-old men in golf. One man did not begin the game until he was fifty-three years old, and yet did not disgrace himself by any means when only two or three years later he played in the most important competition of the country. "A man engaged in the iron trade in Pittsburgh said he was sixty years of age, but was ten years younger than when he took up the game four summers before, and mentioned instances when he had done some of the long holes in five and others in foiir." 1890 AND 1916 ■ An interesting study for reviewers and statisti- cians wotild be the effect of golf on American life. Here are a few suggestions for such a study. Take the district of Chicago as an example. Twenty-five years ago there was little or no country life for the people of this city. A con- sideration of the various forms of recreation and exercise at that time, the year rotmd, would have added interest. However, at the beginning of the year 191 5 there are fifty golf clubs within a radius of thirty-five miles from the city's busi- ness center. I estimate that at least twelve of these clubs have an average amount of three hundred thousand dollars each invested in their S8 PRO AND CON OF GOLF properties. This totals three million six hundred thousand dollars. The other thirty-eight clubs, taken together, have at least as much, making seven million dollars invested in the country life in and around the city of Chicago alone. The investment of the members in golf equipment, clothing, clubs, and other accessories might be conservatively estimated at one million dollars. When the large number of members in these fifty clubs is considered, there will be a comparatively small individual contribution. In the absence of reliable figures an estimate for the entire country may be made with safety, if not with assiu"ance and accuracy. I will name the sum of two hundred million dollars in all golf properties as the total sum invested by the players of the United States. It may be double that amoimt. With the introduction of public links, the values will be tremendously increased during the coming decade. The beneficial effect on the coimtry has been inestimable. Golf means longer life for millions of men and a stronger S5nnpathy for and encour- agement to others for exercise and recreation of all kinds. An army of caddies is employed, perhaps two hundred thousand. This is another rough esti- mate. These boys earn money, while, imder a non-golfing situation, they would no doubt be idle or at play. I think I am not overstating if I also claim that as a rule they become brighter PRO AND CON OP GOLF 59 boys, stronger youths, and better men than they would be otherwise. There is much to write on the line treated in this article, but I will leave some for the reviewers and for you, the reader. Let the subject have your best criticism and figures. THE PUSH SHOT Charles (Chick) Evans is an American author- ity on golf in many departments, but on the push shot he gives some particularly interesting advice as follows: "When I was in England and Scotland a few years ago I heard little about the shot, although I believe one writer said I played it as well as any amateur. Then when George Dun- can was here he told me that I was the only ama- teur on this side of the water who could play the push shot, and that I played it remarkably well. Being deeply flattered by praise from such an expert, I refrained from telling him that I did not know the shot when I saw it. At that time I happened to be getting exceptionally good results with my irons. I remember particularly that there was practically no run at the end of my flight. I may have been playing a push shot at that time without knowing it. "I glean from the British journals that the shot is characterized by a low, long flight on the same plane and dropping dead at the end. Now, I have ideas in the way this sort of a shot should be played, and it seems to me that both the professionals and the critic are right 6o PRO AND CON OF GOLF even when they appear to contradict each other. It must be remembered that all iron clubs, even the straightest-faced long irons, are some- what lofted. To make the shot, one must come down hard and speedily upon the back of the ball and the lowest part of the blade strikes it above the center of the mass, where it remains foi* an infinitesimal portion of time and acquires back spin — then the edge of the club slides under the center of the mass and the lofted edge does the work, and the ball begins to rise. No photograph can register quickly enough the parts of the movement that simply glide into each other. I should judge it necessary to take up turf. In my opinion, the blow should be a sharp, quick snap struck boldly and confidently, and the follow- through is very short because the club head is stubbed when it goes into the ground. "Of course Mr. Vaile, the English critic, is right when he says the ball will not rise unless struck from below the center of the mass, but the professionals are also right in not consciously striving to do this. In nine times out of ten that would result in the old-fashioned lofted shot. The subconscious mind, or the slight loft of the club head itself, does the little lifting necessary to send the ball on its low flight." THE HOLD In all shots special attention must be given to the player's hold on his club. On this subject Mr. Hilton says: PRO AND CON OF GOLF 6i "The iron play of the present generation of players is infinitely more accurate than it was fifteen to twenty years ago, and this added accuracy must be put down to the command which the leading players have of the half and three-quarter iron shots. They are probably not better natural players than the players of the past generation, but their task of being able to control the backward swing with an iron club has been made comparatively simple by the interlocked grip, which serves to make the task of controlling the upward swing of the club much more simple than when the hands are held in the old-fashioned manner, that is, separated from each other." FOR WOMEN BEGINNERS Special advice for women who intend to take up the game of golf is given by Edward Ray in the splendid English publication. Ladies' Golf: "The very best advice that can be given to a lady golfer in her novitiate is not to attempt too much, and to be patient and not upset at the apparent tardiness of success. "The beginner has not long to wait before the difficulties of golf are impressed upon her, but this is the time when she should take a grip of herself, and resolve that, come what may, she will master the game, "I firmly believe that the idea that heavy clubs result in longer drives being obtained, is the reason why so many ladies make little progress. The weight of their clubs should be determined PRO AND CON OF GOLF The Grips of Harry Vardon (overlapping) Miss Cecil Leitch Miss G. Ravenscroft Alec Herd (overlapping) James Braid (overlapping) Miss May Leitch (left hand) Mi'ss May Hezlet {Mrs. Ross) Miss D. Campbell Miss D. Campbell (top of swing) PRO AND CON OF GOLF 63 by their power to swing them; it follows, there- fore, that if the clubs are on the heavy side, the user is at their mercy, for they have no control whatever. "So far as the build of the club is concerned, no lady should play with a club that possesses a stiff shaft, for to use this successfully strength of wrist is essential ; rather should the shaft possess a little suppleness, for this undoubtedly assists the player. "The novice who apparently strikes the ball correctly, but is annoyed because it appears such a poor length of stroke in comparison with the force applied, invariably tries to hit harder; but this again is fatal, for it is of no avail to press for distance. She should first acquire a good swing, and a good swing is a swing well timed, the force being applied at the correct moment. "We must start off with the knowledge that the lady player must rely on accuracy, to a great extent, to make up for her physical shortcomings, and this being obtained it is surprising what a decent length of stroke follows. "The majority of lady golfers find it exceedingly difficult to pick the ball up cleanly through the green; this applies to wooden club play, and the explanation is, perhaps, that the club is not traveling quickly enough. To counteract this, therefore, I think that she should see to it that the brassie has more than the average amotmt of loft. "To obtain length the beginner often uses her body: that is to say, she sways when swinging; 64 PRO AND CON OF GOLF but this is asking for trouble, for the result of swaying is invariably a missed stroke. Swing your arms but not your body, though in the follow- through your weight should go after the club. "When using a mashie and a bunker has to be negotiated, a beginner often drops the right shoulder, thinking that this will assist in raising the ball. To these I would say that the club is made for the purpose of lifting the ball, and the beginner should trust the club a little. Keep the body still, therefore, or the greenkeeper will view your progress with dismay, even when you replace the divot, as, of course, you naturally would. "But do not be afraid to take turf when the lie demands it ; if it is a bad one grip your club tightly and put all your power into the stroke. Desperate lies require desperate remedies, and there is no scope for finessing. "When making a tee bear in mind that, if on an inland course, sand costs money. To go on your way leaving a pyramid behind you is to draw attention to your lack of skill ; there is no necessity to build up a high tee, for you should learn to play the stroke from as small a tee as possible. By doing so, playing through the green will not appear such a hopeless task. "Learn to play all strokes in the correct manner, for there is great satisfaction, even should we foozle, in the knowledge that the attempt was on orthodox lines. The same thing applies to clubs that are supposed to prevent socketing; eradicate the fault that lies with you and do not PRO AND CON OP GOLF 65 seek outside means that, while mitigating the effect, leave you still with the fault; for there is no satisfaction in this." IS MR. "LINE-O'-TYPE OR TWO" RIGHT? Golfers should welcome criticism when it is seriously and sincerely given. In my experience there have been times when the charges which follow were justifiable. However, I doubt if the indictment should be allowed to stand against golfers as a whole. Undoubtedly a spirit of selfishness, or perhaps a better word is thoughtlessness, does dominate many. But read the charge for yourself. Whether the coat fits or not, it sets one thinking, and this occupation is not in vain when it is along lines of self -improvement or even for self -justifi- cation. "B. L. T." says: " Perhaps the greatest illusion about' golf is that it is a sociable game. Ex-President Taft is under this illusion, and frequently speaks of the socia- bility of golf. The fact is that, next to solitaire, golf is the most unsociable game that man has invented. One of many similar stories tells of two Scotchmen, brothers, who played together in perfect silence up to the twelfth hole, when one of them let fall a trifling remark: whereupon the other flew into a passion, declaring that his brother's gabbing had spoiled his day. An exag- geration, but only for artistic purposes. On all golf courses one sees the same twosomes and four- somes going out the season through. Players 66 PRO AND CON OP GOLF avoid other players as they would the plague. If a round, even with old friends, is played sociably, it is at the expense of the game. Silence and obsequial gloom brood over the putting greens. A match for the president's cup is a funeral pro- cession. Golf a sociable game? About as socia- ble as a hand at Canfield in the morgue on a rainy afternoon." A PECULIAR INCIDENT One day at the Chicago Golf Club the ball of Mr. Walter Feron, one of the players in a sixsome, lighted in a pit, to the right of the first hole. The ball was lying in the side of the cop, close in, just where sand and cop touched. As he nibHcked the ball, it went high in the air. Then, the player keeping his position, his eyes almost blinded by sand after his ferocious strike, his right hand holding the club, and his left hand extended, the ball, coming down from its high altitude, landed squarely in his hand. Although he knew the rules, the others who, with their caddies, were standing near, were not sure. The player insisted that he had nothing to do with placing the ball where it landed. "As he was a moving object, he would have to carry it just as it was to the green." He did this, lifted the flag, and dropped the ball toward the hole. The ball struck the tin top of the hole and was knocked about three feet away. The player took three putts and tied the hole, and then declared that it was all for iun. He knew PRO AND CON OF GOLF 67 he had lost the hole when the ball touched him in the bunker, but as the others did not so understand it, he thought he would have some fun. Before his admissson, however, there was a near riot. SOCIAL ENDEARMENT A story is told of two ladies whose homes were in neighboring squares in the same city. One was very prominent socially; the other was quiet, useful, and, as such things go, of comparatively little social importance. They met at a summer resort, played golf together, and were almost constantly in one another's company, seemingly enjoying each other, the best of friends. Finally the sojourn of the social lady came to an end. As they parted at the train, she was heard to say: "Good-by, dear; I will see you here again next year." A girl may curl, A girl may flirt, A girl may have her day; But she can't swing a club Like the average man. Because she's not dressed that way. CHAPTER VI APPROACHING AND PUTTING APPROACHING and putting are the leading factors in playing golf. Variations of style in these two departments of the game make the difference between the novice and the expert. Miss Cecil Leitch, an English player, emphasizes the careful attention which should be given these sides of golf in an article from which we have selected several excellent suggestions: "The part of golf which requires the most varied number of shots is approaching. The approach- ing on different courses varies tremendously. St. Andrews is all run-up from a great distance, Walton Heath is pitch and run, Bushey and Hanger Hill are pitches with cut approaches. The first can be played with a mashie, iron, jigger or putter, whichever the player most fancies. "The pitch-and-run shot is most useful when there is a bunker twenty to thirty yards short of the green and the ground is hard. A mashie is the club to use. Grip it firmly and keep the wrists rigid, and proceed as if playing an ordinary run-up shot, picking up the ball clean. If turf is taken or if the club is held loosely, stop will be put on the ball and all run is lost. "Of all approach shots the prettiest and most useful is the cut shot, whether played with a niblick or a mashie. This shot can be used in so PRO AND CON OF GOLF 69 many places where difficulties of all kinds cross the line to the green and also at short holes. It is im- possible to mention all instances where this shot is useful : let the player master it and she will soon find how invaluable it is. The club is held loosely, the toe of club is turned well out, and the club drawn sharply across the ball from right to left. It is a quick stroke, the club going but a little way back and finishing about a foot from the ground. Played thus, the shot might be used forty or fifty yards from the hole. The same stroke can be played with any iron club, but the more pow- erful the club the more difficult it becomes. "Through necessity we discover a great many things at golf," continues Miss Leitch, "and it was through necessity that I discovered several of my best shots. For example, necessity taught me how to play what are commonly called 'wind- cheaters.' My home course, Silloth, is very windy. Often there is a regular gale, so I had to find some way to hit the ball so that it was as little affected as possible by the wind. This is the shot I found out and still play. It is a fuU wooden shot. "First of all, I shorten my handle and grip the club low down on the leather. I grip very firmly with both hands, stand with my feet firmly planted and knees stiff. Now for the swing. I take the club back very slowly and keep it close to the ground farther back than in the case of the ordinary swing. It is altogether a flat swing and shorter than my usual one. Coming down 70 PRO AND CON OF GOLF I take great care to keep the club under control, a most important thing in a high wind, and finish with a low follow-through, the head of the club finishing just above the height of the shoulder. This will produce a low ball which is, of course, what is required against a wind, and also a straight ball. It is the pulled or sliced ball with which the wind plays havoc. "Putting greens vary on different courses just as much as any other part of the course. Take, for instance, Hanger Hill, which has about the most difficult greens, while the easiest are those at Le Touquet. The former are keen and slop- ing, the latter very slow. "For keen greens the ball must be hit very- true and with a decided follow-through to get it to run, but on a slow green the ball can be hit right up to the hole with a stab shot. When the player has a downhill putt on a keen green it is a good plan to hit it off the toe of the club, as this puts a decided drag on the ball. For an uphill putt, hit it off the heel ; this has the opposite effect. ' ' FOURSOMES ON THE GREEN Bernard Darwin has given some practical con- sideration to thoughtless play on the putting green. "When suffering acutely in a four-ball match from a combination of my own incompetence, a bitter wintry wind, and the spectacle of other players waiting very impatiently behind, I have thought that a short sermon might usefully be preached about the system of putting in vogue in PRO AND CON OF GOLF 71 these contests. Everybody knows the kind of thing that happens. Two partners are on the green in the same number of strokes: A says, 'I'll get my four first (or five or six or seven, as the case may be), and then you can go for your putt.' A does play first and perhaps succeeds in getting down in two putts ; then B hits at his ball as if his object were to drive it not into the hole, but over the green. Naturally at that pace he hits it fairly straight, but it finishes as a rule some five yards beyond the mark ; he hardly ever holes it. If either party holes a long putt it is generally he whose professed object was merely to lie dead. "Circumstances, of course, alter cases, and when A's ball is quite a long way from the hole, whereas B's is within two or three yards of it, it probably is good policy for A to make things safe first by means of his two putts. A putt of only eight or ten feet, when there ought to be a reasonably good chance of holing outright, is much easier for most people by the removal of any fear as to running out of holing distance. More especially is this the case when B's com- paratively short putt is over rough or slippery or sloping ground, when the best chance lies in a policy of 'bolting.' When, however, both balls are at such a distance from the hole that the chance of holing is comparatively small, I believe that it is better tactics for each partner to set about his approach putt independently, and leave the holing out to be done in its natural sequence. Not only are more long putts holed 72 PRO AND CON OF GOLF out in this way, but each partner feels that he is having his fair share of work and fun. "There is a much more aggravated case than the one I have taken as my instance. A is on the edge of the green in three, while B lies quite close to the hole in two, with a certainty of a four and a great likelihood of a three. The enemies, X and Y, on the other hand, have been plowing the sands of adversity, and are exceed- ingly unlikely to do better than fives. One would imagine that A might hold his hand for a while, save time, and let B have the satisfaction of winning the hole. Not at all, however; he must spend an appreciable time in tackling his long putt, the result of which can hardly affect the hole. Probably he misses it, but he may by a miracle hole it. In either case the hole is not affected, but B is considerably irritated. In the one case he thinks, 'Why the devil will the fellow waste so much time, just because he wants to keep his beastly score?* In the other, still more bitterly, 'Now I suppose he'll say that he won that hole, and that I never came in at all, though he knows quite well he could not have done it if it had mattered.' Golfers, of coiu'se, are human, and this last point of view was quite lately put to me — I was not his partner — by a good Scottish golfer, who excels in foursome play, and whom nobody could call a selfish player. When partners begin to think these hard things of one another it is not good for the partnership, and personally I believe that these infuriating PRO AND CON OF GOLF 73 tactics on the green supply one of the most cogent reasons for loathing four-ball matches. A FALLACY " 'The plan of playing for the back of the hole,' says N. J. L. Low, 'is all right in certain shots . . . but, as a rule of putting, I believe it to be a half-crown-destro3dng fallacy.' He goes on to instance Andrew Kirkaldy when at his very best with his wooden putter. 'From the edge of the green,' he says, 'the ball generally lay six inches from the hole, if it did not actually get into it. Seldom did he overrun the goal by more than two feet, and he holed a great ntunber of long shots. The impression conveyed by his play was that he was striving principally to gauge the exact distance, never driving at the back of the hole.' "This instance I can supplement from recol- lections of the best putting I ever saw, that of W. J. Travis in his memorable championship of 1904. His ball always looked as if it was going in outright from the approach putt, and when it did not it stayed so very close to the hole that he had practically no holing out to do." PECKING THE BALL Tom Ball, too, an eminent putter, has a few hints for amateur golf players: "I seize every opportunity of practicing putting. If I have nothing to do in the shop for ten minutes, I go on to the last green and keep myself in touch with the art of holing-out. And in this connection I may remark that I do hole 74 PRO AND CON OF GOLF out everything; if it be only a putt of three inches, I play it. Such training is useful for stroke competitions and also for matches if you happen to oppose a man who agrees with the recommendation in the rules that players should not concede putts to their rivals. Winter and summer I follow the advice which I am here giv- ing; and, in the spring, when the championship and other big tournaments are in view, I spend from three to five hours a day putting; in fact, I devote every spare minute to the purpose. I am thankful to be able to say that never in my life have I been off my putting. "My own opinion is that the scheme of keeping the body stock still during the stroke is calculated to produce a general feeling of tautness which, I venture to declare, is one of the worst things imaginable for putting. It tightens all the muscles, with the result that the player is likely to snatch or stab at the ball — usually a fatal method. After devoting hundreds of hours to the study and practice of putting, I have arrived at the conclusion that the best way is to let the body go slightly forward with the club as the ball is struck. In that way a smooth and rhythmic follow-through is encouraged. And a putt struck with the club performing that gently-flowing movement is much more likely to be successful than one which is executed by means of a peck or a snatch at the ball, a method which is seen so often in the case of the man who keeps his body absolutely rigid during the stroke." PRO AND CON OP GOLF 75 RATIONAL GOLF In an interesting article in The Monitor, Mr. Steven Armstrong had an article under the title of ' ' Rational Golf. ' ' I had been watching for just such a comparison, and gladly give it a place in Pro and Con. He says: "In an interesting article in the Westminster Gazette, H. H. Hilton deals with the question of distance that could be accomplished with the old gutta-percha balls, and compares it with what is now covered by the latest long-driving balls. He says that those who hold that the new balls can be driven eighty to one hundred yards farther than the old guttie balls are allowing their imaginations to run away with them in their zeal for standardization. " 'Except in the driest of weather,' he goes on, 'when the courses are like macadam roads, I do not think that one first-class player using a rubber-cored ball would succeed in keeping, on the average, ninety yards ahead of another first- class player using a gutta-percha ball; and, to my mind, the advantage the former would gain, in all conditions of weather and all conditions of ground, would be about sixty or sixty-five yards — quite far enough in all conscience, but the extra thirty yards they claim is inclined to make all the difference in the argiiment.'" Garden Smith says in the London Globe: "This is the most important pronouncement at the present juncture. There is no one in the golfing world whose opinion on this subject would 76 PRO AND CON OF GOLF carry greater weight than Mr. Hilton's. One might safely say that there is no one who is so well qualified as the present amateur champion. Throughout his career he has made a special study of the technicalities of the game, and he has besides a surprisingly good memory for what has happened in the past, and is the last man to allow his judgment to be obscured by any partisan feeling or other extraneous consideration. Yet here we have Mr. Hilton stating his opinion that the present rubber-cored balls can be driven, on the average, by first-class players, sixty to sixty- five yards farther than the old gutties. "This, of course applies only to full shots, and takes no account of the fact, which everybody admits, that the distance covered with the rubber- cored balls, when hit with iron clubs, is relatively much greater than when wood is employed. "This last consideration is important, because a hole that was a full two-shot hole with a wooden club in the gutta-percha days, is at best now reduced to a full shot and an approach, and the distance of that approach, which in the guttie days required, say, a full shot with the iron, can now be compassed with a half or quarter stroke. "But taking Mr. Hilton's estimate as it stands, it means that in a modem two-shot hole the rubber-cored player would gain an advantage, at Mr. Hilton's lowest estimate, of one hundred and twenty yards over a player who used a gutta- percha ball. In other words, at a two-shot hole designed, qua length, for the rubber-cored ball, PRO AND CON OF GOLF 77 the player using a rubber-cored ball would be on the green, or hole high, with two full shots, while the player using the gutta-percha ball would be one hundred and twenty yards short. It follows, if the balance of the game and its character has been preserved, that the modem two-shot hole should be one hundred and twenty yards longer than the old. Those who say, therefore, that the present long-driving balls are not ruining the game have to show that holes and courses have been lengthened to the distances required by the additional length obtained by the new balls. "Now let us take the length of the champion- ship courses at the time the rubber-cored balls came in, and compare them with their length to-day, and see if this additional length has been given them. "The rubber-cored balls came in in 1901, and in 1898, the latest date on which we can find the official figures, and just before the rubber-cored balls came in, the lengths of the championship cotirses were as follows: yards St. Andrews 6,323 Sandwich 6,012 Holylake 5,955 Muirfield 5,890 Prestwick 5,732 The official length of these courses, according to the latest returns, are as follows: „,„^^ ' YARDS St. Andrews 6,487 Holylake 6,455 Sandwich 6,143 Muirfield 5.952 Prestwick 5,9i8 78 PRO AND CON OF GOLF "Lately, Prestwick, Sandwich, and Muirfield have been slightly lengthened, but making ample allowance for this, these figures show that the total length of the championship courses has only been increased by about one thousand five himdred yards, or, on the average, three hundred yards each. Allowing for the fact that there are, say, two short holes on each course which remain practically at their old lengths, this gives an average increase, on the length of each of the remaining sixteen holes on each course, of about nineteen yards! How this compares with the one hundred and twenty yards which Mr, Hilton gives as his estimate of the difference, at a single two-shot hole, between two first-class players, one using the rubber-cored ball and the other a guttie, we leave to the rubber-cored apologists to compute. "It is, at any rate, sufficiently clear that they have some pretty mathematics to get through before they can make good their assertion that the advocates of standardization have no grounds for sa^dng that the rubber-cored balls have altered the balance of the game and destroyed its character." HEADWORK There appeared a splendid article by Hugh Leslie Dobree in The American Golfer urging players to be careful in use of their clubs for special shots. The article in part says: "We constantly read in golfing and lay papers PRO AND CON OF GOLF 79 articles telling us exactly what we should do in order to become scratch players. The idea strikes me — opportunely perhaps — that some- thing might be written about the things that a golfer should not do. "It is a simple matter to give advice. The trouble is to get it accepted. During the winter months readers generally spend most of their long evenings thinking out for themselves the more advanced strokes of the game. I think that is the plan generally adopted when it is cold outside and there happens to be a clear space, and a poker handy to use as a substitute for a driver, or best of all a mashie. "What club would you all invariably take if your ball lay cuddled up in a sand-pot bimker adjoining the green ? I have often sat down on a hump near a one-shot hole, and watched players try to extricate themselves from such a hazard. The majority who found themselves in such a position called for the niblick without hesitation. Others followed Mr. Ball's theory, and used a mashie for such a stroke. "Both these clubs are excellent in their way; and past-masters in the art of niblick play can make that weapon work wonders; but have you ever tried a putter when there is only a twelve- yard shot left to do — from the bunker to the green ? "It is truly marvelous what results the novice can attain with this club, if he will only grip it tight with both hands and look intently at the 8o PRO AND CON OF GOLF sand, say half an inch behind the ball. I give this advice exactly as it was given to me. I am sure that the player will be agreeably surprised when he discovers with what ease he can place the ball near the pin from what would appear to be an impossible - position . "Have you ever watched your crack golfer play a full two-shot hole on your course, either in a friendly match or in a competition? If you will take the first opportunity of following him across the 'pretty' of such a hole, you will find out what you should do if you wish to obtain a bogey. "Let us suppose that the length of the hole is four hundred yards. There is, of course, most terrible trouble if you slice or pull, but we will take it for granted that your tee shot has flown some two hundred yards directly down the course. Possibly your opponent is a few yards to the good, but lying quite close. It is for you to play the odd. "In a friendly match you have become so inspired with the success of your healthy tee shot that you take out your brassie. You foresee great possibilities with this club. Perhaps you will even place the ball near the pin. So out you go for ever3d;hing, only to realize — too late, of course — that your first effort with a brassie through the green is invariably pulled. You depart toward the whins and hack the ball back on to the fairway again. Luckily this only happens to be a friendly encounter, and does not matter a great deal. PRO AND CON OF GOLF 8i "When you find yourself in a similar position in a competition, there is absolutely no need to take a brassie for your second shot. In the first place it inspires confidence in your opponent. The odds are a million to one that you fliiff your shot and leave yourself a terribly powerful effort with your cleek to put you anywhere near the green in three. "You will notice that your adversary is content to play shy with iron, and leave himself with a tolerably simple mashie shot to make certain of a five. You -^dll generally find that a similar figure wins a hole of this description in a match-play competition. "It is the little things like this that count. Tearing tee shots that outdrive your opponent thirty yards don't win matches. Golf wotdd soon be at an end if they did. "Let us get a little closer to the green and see what is going to happen to us then. A little 'chip' is what you most desire at the moment, and it is all Lombard Street to an orange that you are short with the approach. "Remember, it is impossible to get any work on the ball if it is not hit firmly. It is no use swinging gracefully if you do not give the ball a good pinch at the moment of impact. That is l:he secret. Bang the ball up to the hole con- fidently, and it will not improbably stay there, but do not leave everything to luck, as one is inclined to do. We always overrun the green on those occasions. 82 PRO AND CON OP GOLF "Notice that your opponent takes great care to be past the pin. Old information truly, but how invaluable ! "Last of all, let us have a look at the green from a putting point of view. It is here that most of us throw our chances away. Don't try the full- drive 'act' as you putt. It is the wrong scheme altogether. When you have a second to spare just go out to the nearest green and try putting without any body movement at all. "I once saw a man win the premier prize at a very important open meeting, and his putting alone did it. He was holing out from all sorts of impossible places. This is how he did it: he would go up to the ball, take a steady glance at the direction, and never look up again until he had hit the ball by effort from the wrists alone. The body played no part in the game at all. It was motionless until the ball went in." THE FOURTH HOLE Bert Leston Taylor, a Chicago golf player and himiorist, uses his "B. L. T." column to give the beginner a few tips in golf playing, under the heading: "The Compleat Golfer, or the Idle Man's Recreation: The Fourth Hole": Golfator: You are to know, my honest Scholar, that the follow-through, concerning which an infinite deal of nothing is said and written, is like to the snark, and he that setteth out to compass its taking will have his trouble for his pains. For the follow-through is the result PRO AND CON OF GOLF 83 of a proper stroke, and not the cause of it; it hath not a separate existence, as a something to be sought after; therefore, I would have you take no thought of it. Scholar: Yet, Master, have I seen players practicing this thing with exceeding industry. Golfator: Marry, sir. Simple Simon were as well employed. But 't is the way of man to seek after the ends and take no thought of the means, and to look upon success as a something bestowed by heaven upon one mortal and denied to another. This is but vanity and vexation of spirit, as the Preacher saith. My good Scholar, this golf teacheth a man more things than one, and if you have any philosophy in you it shall nurture it and bring it to a full flower; but if you are wanting in philosophy you shall have as much profit in the beating of a carpet, for the which a multitude of golfers are by nature fitted. Scholar : Sir, your words are as apples of gold in pictures of silver. Golfator: Fairly spoken, Scholar; yet I mark you are impatient to be forward with your game, such as it is. Take, then, your iron, and I will counsel you in the using of it. Scholar: I have heard it said. Master, that 't is easier to play with the iron than with a club of wood. Golfator: As to that there be two opin- ions, as usual, and you will be wise to follow either, for I am satisfied that they are of equal value. 84 PRO AND CON OF GOLF ONLY THE NAME Lady: Why are you sobbing, my dear man ? Tramp : Ah, Lady, all my life I ' ve had de name widout de game. Me name's Goff. The only shots you can he dead sure of are those you 've had already. CHAPTER VII INDEPENDENCE IN GOLF IT has been my good fortune to play golf on the famous courses of two hemispheres, where from time to time I have been privileged to analyze the best form of both amateurs and professionals. It has come home to me that there is much in the wisdom of some of the best-known critics. However, it is not always best to become too firmly tied do\vn to the precedents and traditions of any golfing expert. For the sake of greater accomplishments, according to the individual's eccentricities, it were better not to accept as obligatory the hard and fast rule of stance, addressing the ball, or folio w- through . I think it was David R. Forgan, one of the first amateur champions of the Western Golf Associ- ation, who said: "Golf is a science." This has prompted that interminable query: "Has golf a soul?" My reply would be that perhaps golf is a science, in so far as it covers a range so wide that it could not be exhausted in a very prolix work, and that undoubtedly golf has a soul. It has been left to P. A. Vaile in his work. The Soul of Golf, to analyze admirably that soul of the game. 85 86 PRO AND CON OF GOLF Mr. Vaile is regarded, wherever the literature of golf has obtained a vogue, as a critic of keen discernment. Always good natured, he elects occasionally to ignore the primary traditions of golf, such as "Keep your eye on the ball," "Let your left arm control the swing," and so on. A well-known British reviewer who made a close study of Mr. Vaile's book says that the writer calmly strolls through the temple full of fetishes and idols erected by centuries of golfers, swinging his ax as he goes. The article go on to say: "His tone is the tone of Whistler at his best — 'I'm not arguing with you; I'm telling you.' Hear him : " 'As a matter of fact, about seven tenths of the bad golf which is played is due to too much thinking about the stroke while the stroke is being played. The golf stroke in itself may be quite easily learned; I mean the true golf stroke and not the imaginary golf stroke which has been built up for the unfortunate golfer by those who write of the mystery of golf; but it is an absolute certainty that the time for thinking about the goh stroke and how it shall be played is not when one is playing the stroke.' "The italics are Mr. Vaile's — likewise the enunciation of a great truth. The armchair is the place for study, he declares, not the Hnks. 'If there may be said to be any mystery whatever about golf,' he says, 'it is that in such an ancient and simple game there has grown up around PRO AND CON OF GOLF 87 it such a confused mass of false teaching, of con- fused thought, and of fantastic notions. No game suffers from this false doctrine and imagi- native nonsense to the same extent as does golf. It is magnificently played. We have here in England the finest exponents of the game, both amateur and professional, in the world. If those men played golf as they tell others by their printed works to play it, I should have another story to tell about their prowess on the links.' "It would be unfair to the author to try to display on this page the wisdom he affords in the three hundred and fifty-six pages of his new book. There is room here for but one more quotation : " 'There is in England a curious idea that directly one acquires a scientific knowledge of a game one must cease to have an interest in it as full as he who merely plays it by guesswork. There can be no greater mistake than this. If a game is worth playing well it is worth knowing well, and knowing it well cannot mean loving it less. It is this peculiar idea which has put Eng- land so much in the background of the world's athletic field of late years. We have here much of the best brawn and bone in the world, but we must give the brain its place. Then will England come to her own again.' " IT IS ORTHODOX; IT IS NOT ORTHODOX! All the world loves a good winner! While abroad the truth of this struck home to me with 88 PRO AND CON OF GOLF considerable force when at every club in London or other British city I visited the subject of golf invariably brought out some new phase of gossip about Edward Ray, one of the recent open cham- pions of Great Britain. A champion Ray cer- tainly was and is, and the people of the old country realized they had a player differing from Braid, Vardon, Taylor, and Ball. Judge of my surprise to learn that the then new champion was considered "very unorthodox," and that he was a magnificent despiser of con- ventions. Henry Leach, in writing of Champion Ray, said that he thought half the golf world had a secret affection for the great player who did things in "the wrong way" and often did them marvelously well. Mr. Leach is well qualified to speak on phases of unorthodox golf, having so often seen it played, demonstrated, or exploited, as the term may be, from the insular links to the courses in the Chicago district where he has been a welcome visitor in tournament times. I find much of interest in his further remarks: "The average golfer spends most of his days in trying to play in the right way and succeeding only to a moderate extent. It cheers him to find those rules of system that are pressed upon him as being imperative broken and defied all the time by a man who gains the highest honors of the game. "We never have had such a heterodox man for open champion as Ray, and the more we know of him the more shall we marvel at his ways. PRO AND CON OF GOLF 89 "The other day I came to realize that all his originality was not on the surface. I took an opportunity of examining his bag of clubs, and asking questions upon the different articles that it embraced. Never have I found an investiga- tion more interesting or surprising. "One would have guessed beforehand that this man who hits the ball with such tremendous force every time would require his driver to be renewed frequently, and all the more so because he plays with the same club through the green, never making use of a brassie. "But it is the amazing fact that he has played with the same wooden club from the tee and through the green for the last nine and a half years, and imless some untoward accident befall it that club will remain in Ray's bag until long after it attains its majority. "It is a good model, forty-two and one-half inches from heel to end of the shaft, scared and not socketed, and, according to the idea in which Ray very much believes, it has a thick steel face bolted into the head, and screwed up from behind just underneath the lead. "He has a spare driver with him as a rule, but it is very rarely wanted, and a peculiar wooden club with an absolutely square nose, this having once been a pear-shaped driver from the head of which the champion sawed away, the nose, so as to make it a useful club for playing from moderately bad lies through the green. That is its fimction in these days. 90 PRO AND CON OF GOLF "His cleek, mashie, and niblick are old favorites, the mashie having been in his bag for nine years and the niblick for six. The last-named, with which Ray does most of his short and medium approaches, is more of a mashie niblick than the pure niblick, and it is a model that I have lately heard is much admired by the makers of iron clubs, who are eager to copy it. "Those are his chief tools, and now Ray is setting forth to tell us how he uses them. "To the pages of Golfing he is contributing a series of articles on his methods, giving advice to all those who would learn from him, that make very interesting chapters. In the opening install- ment he discusses driving and the best ways to do it. "He could not avoid mention of the strong peculiarity of his own system by which he does a big sway when making his swing in defiance of the teaching of everybody. What he tells us in defense and explanation is that, having swayed his body backward in the upward swing, he takes particular care to get back again and through in the downward swing. "Clearly this involves increased complication and difficulty in the timing of the stroke, and Ray's regulation of it must be marvelous in its accuracy. "He does not venture to recommend his own way. "For golfers in general, he says, this sway of the body is apt to upset the whole balance of the PRO AND CON OF GOLF 91 swing, for the difficulty lies in getting back in time ; 'therefore,' says he, 'the steadier that the body is kept, and the more that the arms are used, the better should be the result. I know that my own method is strictly unorthodox, but having driven in this manner ever since I commenced to play I have naturally come to look upon it as the most suitable for m^^self, for we are guided in our judgment by results.' " One of the interesting points in Ray's teaching is his strong advocacy of the open stance in driving. James Braid is the champion who is most in favor of the square stance, in which the toes are almost in line with each other, and he has done more than any other player to make it popular. When Braid is champion his influence is such that you will often find players in general giving such a close and S3anpathetic attention to this matter as they do at no other time. " 'What I consider to be the chief danger of the open stance,' says Braid, 'is the tendency which undoubtedly exists to put the body into the stroke too soon. The body seems to want to get in almost as soon as the club begins the down swing, and when the player is a little off his game the body is constantly getting there before the club. " 'Therefore, unless the player is a strong man physically, and has a very safe and sure style of play, I think he will find that timing is a more difficult matter with the open stance than with the square, and also that the tendency to slice is 92 PRO AND CON OF GOLF increased. I have heard some people, but not many, say that timing is easier with the open stance, and I do not think there can be much doubt that the square stance is the better one for a player who is not very strong physically.' "It seeins to most observers, however, that the open stance has been fast increasing in favor in recept years. Harrj^ Vardon himself is its foremost supporter, and now we have Edward Ray in alliance with that party, and strongly advocating the open way. "'In connection with the correct stance,' he says, 'here I think there can be no two opinions, for the open stance has more to recommend it than any other. In the first place the position is one that enables the arms to be carried through after the ball is struck, this being essential; the body is more easily turned from the hips, and you never lose sight of the ball, as one comes peri- lously near doing if the left foot is in advance of the right. " 'Better direction is also obtained by standing open, and this because the player is half facing the hole when addressing the ball, and not, as with the left foot advanced, looking at the hole over the left shoulder.' "But, one should say, when Braid and others talk of the square stance they do not mean such an exaggerated advance of the left foot as to put it in front of the right, but one in which at most it is level with it and generally an inch or so behind." PRO AND CON OF GOLF 93 TRIBUTE ON LEAVING PALM BEACH I wish we could stay longer in this beautiful place. When one stops to think of it, how grateful one should be to have the good fortune to be here. And then to add to it — to play golf! When one looks at the white sands about Palm Beach, as yet untouched, it seems incredible that anything can grow here, yet such is the potency and vitality of mother earth, that with the kiss of the life-giving sun the sand clothes itself in a glory of bloom and verdure. Ivy and flowers climb over stumps and dead pines; and roses beautify old fences, as well as trail their beauty up to and around the homes of wealth. The air is filled with the fragrance of land and sea, and one feels that the Scripture has been fulfilled, that "the desert shall blossom as the rose, and the barren plains bear fruit." Another kick on early morning racket 94 PRO AND CON OF GOLF INDIVroUALITY "That was a pretty good score you made to-day." ' ' Yes, it was n't bad. Curiously enough, there 's a reason for it. Yesterday I followed that match in which Brady and McDonald and — er what's his name — Maiden, were playing. Terrific balls they all hit. But here's what impressed me. They all did it in different ways ! Which set me thinking. Brady did not attempt to copy McDonald's style, as most of us amateurs are prone to do when the other fellow gets off a screamer; nor were McDonald or Maiden con- cerned about the methods of the other man. "Now, ordinarily, I can hit off a fairly decent tee shot in my own way, but the temptation to imitate the first man I meet who can outdrive me is usually irresistible. To-day I didn't do it!" ENGLISH DEFINITION OF AN AMATEUR GOLFER An amateur is one who, after attaining the age of sixteen years, has (a) Never carried clubs for hire. (6) Never received any consideration, directly or indirectly, for playing or for teaching the game. (c) Never played for a money prize in any competition. No amateur may, without forfeiting his status, receive directly or indirectly from the promoter of any match or tournament any consideration for playing in such match or tournament. PRO AND CON OF GOLF 95 PECULIAR GOLFERS "Great golfers are not afraid of being thought 'pectiliar.' The secret of their success, as regards sudden choice of clubs, lies in their habit of doing the right thing at the right moment. Their decision is prompt and absolute. Golf is a game of thought, determination, and will power, as well as a trial of strength skillfully applied, and only he who can think rightly and act bravely can obtain the full enjo5rment which the infinite variety of the game affords." BRAINS Brains are the chief asset in any game, or, for that matter, in all of life's activities. Golf links, clubs, balls, are things. Arms, wrists, eyes, body, strength, contain no ideas. They are accessories, which one can depend on to help toward successful performance, only, however, by using just one absolute essential — brains. The "thought factory" is the foundation of all achievement. It is the best club in the bag. It is more than the whole set of clubs, — balls and caddie thrown in. The first requisite in any game, therefore, is brains. When a golfer has tact, no one notices it; when he lacks tact, every one notices it. CHAPTER VIII CLEVERNESS ON THE LINKS HOW often has the visitor at a club during a particularly important tournament heard the expression, "It pays to be clever in a golf match ' ' ? Immediately the query suggests itself to the student of golf: "How smart should one be?" Is there a clearly defined boundary between the legal advantage to be gained by a quick-working brain and the unsportsmanlike work that might be termed "sharp practice"? There are many who would claim every penalty provided for in the rules, and think it nothing strange if they were severely criticized. Others — and their number has been legion in innumerable tourna- ments — would risk disqualification under the St. Andrews or the United States Golf Association rules by waiving a penalty rather than owe their victories to the "tough luck" of their opponents. Sentiment sometimes has been the biggest hazard that a young golfer has had to overcome in administering a defeat to an opponent who, perhaps, might be three bisques behind him as a golfer. It reminds me of the story told of a critical stage in a keen team match foursome when a caddie picked up the ball on the green under the impression that a half had been con- ceded. One of the opponents promptly cried, "Our hole!" PRO AND CON OF GOLF 97 "A half," his partner quietly announced; "we are not playing for gold cups." Much must depend, of course, on the nature of the game. A sporting spirit may still be displayed in a friendly match, while it might be out of place in a medal round, where all are affected, or in professional play, where a man's livelihood is at stake. At a critical moment of a big match years ago one of the players teed up his opponent's ball, which had found an impossible lie off a penalty drop. That was a noble deed. Too often, however, it is the aggrieved party who appeals for mercy by some such plaint as "What can I do here?" when the ball is in a difficult position. Others search hastily through local rules in the hope of escaping a penalty. There is some very hard luck to be experienced in golf, but the man with the true temperament will set himself to overcome it without complaint. The grumbler is not the only man whose ball settles down in a heel mark, or moves as he is addressing it, or rebounds from a bank on to his foot, or rolls off the tee as he plays. It is braver to suffer in silence than loudly to solicit sympathy from those who have enough troubles of their own. Gerald Batchelor in Golf Illustrated advises players not to be hypercritical of their opponents. "Some will maintain that 'a rule's a rule' and stubbornly stick out for their rights," he says, and continues: "It is obvious that there are certain penalties which need not be rigidly enforced in ordinary 98 PRO AND CON OP GOLF match play, just as there are certain things which are plainly unlawful, although not mentioned in the rules. No penalty is prescribed for the man who suddenly jumps forward while his opponent is at the top of his swing and shouts 'Boo!' at him, for no one would seriously think of doing such a thing. But there are other methods more subtle, though almost as effective, of putting a man off his game. One may persist in little acts that plainly irritate him. One may drop the bag, quite accidentally of course, as he is putting, or tell him that he 'can't possibly miss that short putt for the match,' or walk or talk him off his game. "Then there is the still more shady trick of trjdng on the game of bluff. A was practically dead on the last green and B had a long put to halve the match. He just failed to go down, but laid a dead stimy, whereupon A calmly knocked B's ball away, holed his own, and claimed a halved match. This verges on actual cheating. "Finally we come to the cases in which clever- ness may be legitimately employed in a man's favor. It is granted that one should by no means hinder the actions of an opponent, but one need not, on the other hand, do anything to assist him. Suppose we come to a hole where the distance or wind influence is doubtful and the opponent has the honor. The careful player who has made up his mind will not take the chosen club from the bag luitil the other has played. Golfers' abilities and caprices vary so much that PRO AND CON OF GOLF 99 it is risky to base one's decisions on another's choice of club. If the enemy sees us reach the green with a spared spoon we are not responsible for his being far over with a full brassie. There are many means apart from skill with his clubs by which a player may improve his chances and reduce his handicap. He should be alert to calculate distances, wind force, the pace of the greens, the consistency of bunker sand, and so on. It certainly pays to be clever in the obser- vation of details. "One of the most insufferable nuisances of the links is the opponent who is always fidgeting about the score, yours and his own. The most trying specimen of this type is the man who, just as you are taking your stance for a tricky approach or putt, shouts out, 'How many have you played?' And on being told, replies, 'You play the odd now.' It is all very well now and again, but when it happens at every hole murder- ous thoughts enter your mind. Yet the rules of goH committee of St. Andrews proposes that to Rule 4 should be added these words: " 'A player is entitled at any time during the play of a hole to ascertain from his opponent the number of strokes that the latter has played; if the opponent gives wrong information as to the number of strokes he has played he shall lose the hole, luiless he corrects his mistake before the player has played another stroke.' Such an ad- dition is entirely unnecessary and may be very mischievous. Good players very rarely find it loo PRO AND CON OF GOLF necessary to say anything at all to each other about the score, and when it is needful a quiet question is sufficient. In its present form this addition to the rules seems to be quite out of harmony with the spirit of the game." HONESTY VERSUS THE SCORE Referring to the gentleman who turned in a card of 317 at the Biarritz, golf competition, we have only this to say: "While feeling that we maintain at least an average standard of honesty, there are times when one's pride and self-respect must be main- tained at all costs. "Hence, when we go beyond 312 for eighteen holes, we follow an iron rule which requests the caddie to tiun his head until certain corrections can be made upon the card. "As between being dishonest and being branded as a 317 stroke golfer, we shamelessly confess to one sudden, volcanic, and irremediable choice. It may not be the 'best policy,' but what is more to the point, it is the only tenable one for a golfer . who desires further privileges of the course." NOT EVEN HIS SECOND "A club professional had just left his shop and, approaching the first tee, he saw a player taking stance three feet in front of the plate, and about to make a stroke. "The professional said: 'Excuse me, sir, I hope you won't be offended — but you know the rules PRO AND CON OF GOLF loi say that the first stroke must be taken from behind the plates.' " 'Never mind, say nothing about it; this is my third stroke.' " LINKS WITH GOOD ACOUSTICS Four men were playing golf on a course where the hazard on the ninth hole was a deep ravine. They drove off. Three went into the ravine and one managed to get his ball over. The three who had dropped into the ravine walked up to have a look. Two of them decided not to try to play their balls out and gave up the hole. The third said he would go down and play out his ball. He disappeared into the deep crevasse. Presently his ball came bobbing out, and after a time he climbed up. "How many strokes?" asked one of his oppo- nents. "Three." "But I heard six." "Three of them were echoes!" SHOULD HE DIE OR BE INCARCERATED? The man that asks his opponent, just as the latter is about to approach or putt: "How many have you had, Jim?" The man that yells across the course, regard- less of the play or location of the other seven golfers in both groups: "How is your game going, Ed?" 102 PRO AND CON OF GOLF The man that seizes your club, after you have dubbed, and says: "Let me show you how that shot should be made, Harry." The man that habitually keeps you waiting at the first tee .fifteen minutes after all others are ready to play. The man that takes two minutes to study, practice, and secure his stance before making his shot. If the shot is dubbed, give him full penalty on the spot. The man that, on beginning the game, asks you to give him one up because he was one down in the last game. Ditto, same habit on com- mencing second nine. No player is so good that trouble won't sooner or later overtake him. CHAPTER IX CONCENTRATION CONCENTRATION of the mind on the ball or on the play is a recognized truism of all golf. Diverting incidents during tournaments have lost many a match for superior players. The following article by Laurance Woodhouse throws a light on the quality of concentration of one of the best players of our times : "Nothing has caused greater pleasure to the golf-loving public than the wonderful success of J. H. Taylor, the ex-open champion, at the German open championship at Baden Baden. Taylor tied with Edward Ray, the open cham- pion, for first place, and when the tie was played off over the old nine-hole course Taylor accomplished the extraordinary feat of holing out the nine holes in twenty-eight strokes, giving him an average of one over three's. "Ray might reasonably have expected to win, seeing that he did the round in thirty-three — an average of three under four's — but Taylor's amazing effort quite took the wind out of his sails and he had to be content with second place. Taylor's card read: 23233453 3—28. "The famous Mid-Surrey professional attributes this wonderful round to 'sustained concentra- tion.' He says that from his first tee shot to 8 103 104 PRO AND CON OF GOLF his final putt he saw almost to an inch where he wanted to place the ball and felt confident that he would do so. His confidence was justified all through the round. Curiously enough, just before setting out for Baden Baden he did the first nine holes on the Mid-Surrey ladies' course in twenty-eight and the eighteen holes (s,ooo yards) in sixty. His best round, however, he considers to be his sixty-eight at Sandwich in 1904, when Jack White, of Sunningdale, won the championship from him by one stroke. In a championship meeting at Muirfield, too, he did the last nine holes in thirty-one when Braid won the championship there. "Concentration is Taylor's motto. He argues that if you let your attention relax even for a second during a round you cannot come back on to your game again. He has a horror of being spoken to during an important match. In fact, he says he does not hear what people say, so intent is he on the game and the stroke about to be made. In 1909, when he won the championship at Deal, Taylor's brother walked round with him during the last round and prevented any one speaking to him and the photographers from clicking their cameras at him while he made his strokes. "His attention was first called to the necessity for absolute concentration by an article written by Mr. C. B. Fry many years ago. In this article Mr. Fry related how he lost a hundred yards' sprint on one occasion by letting his thoughts PRO AND CON OF GOLF 105 wander from the tape to which he was running. Just for a second he wondered what his opponents were doing. This lapse cost him the race, for, as his thoughts wandered, he insensibly slackened speed and was passed and lost the race. Taylor was so impressed by this article that he has studied concentration ever since. "Taylor argues, too, that when you are playing at your very best you are in almost a mesmerized state. He thinks that the club is no longer an implement for hitting the ball but becomes al- most part of you, and that from your brain to the club head you are all one, the club, the brain, and every nerve and muscle being in absolute S5mipathy. " 'Concentration is the great secret of how to win championships and to do record rounds,' he concluded." HOW TO KEEP THE EYE ON THE BALL Mr. Taylor's leading axiom has been made plainer and easier for beginners to follow by Arnold Houltain's article on "The Secret of Golf." Although the article in question had many readers when in magazine form, I deem it too good to •entirely overlook in a work of this kind. I only regret that I may not give my readers the entire article. I recommend a careful reading of all articles by this excellent writer, who handles his subjects in a masterly way. io6 PRO AND CON OF GOLF Mr. Houltain quotes the following from Mr. Taylor's big book on golf : " To succeed in keeping the eye unswervingly on the ball is the one and only secret in golf," and then continues: ''How can we keep our eye on the ball? And why must we keep our eye on the ball? Whence arises the necessity? Wherein consists the pecu- liar efficacy of fixing the gaze on that humble little sphere at our feet — or at its top — or at its back — or at the turf behind, as the case may be? What happens if we do look? What happens if we do not look? These be important problems. "I attempt here a brief analysis (i) of the 'How\ and (2) of the 'Why.' "This little puzzle, how to keep one's eye on the ball, may be said to possess a little psychology all its own. We 'perceive' an object, say the psychologists, when not only 'our attention is drawn' to that object, but when 'all the other impressions that are exciting sensations at the same moment fall into the field of inattention' ; in plain words, when we are oblivious of everything but the thing perceived. It is this inattention or oblivion that the golfer has most carefully to practice. If, during that infinitesimal period of time wliich elapses between the beginning of the upward swing of the club and its impact with the ball, the golfer allows any one single sensation, or idea, to divert his attention — consciously or unconsciously — from the little roimd image on his retina, he does not properly 'perceive' that PRO AND CON OF GOLF 107 ball; and of coiirse, by consequence, does not properly hit it. "There is one simple anatomical reason for this inability to see your ball when you are think- ing of something else instead of looking. Every- body has heard the phrase 'a vacant stare.' When one's thoughts are absorbed in something other than the object looked at, the eyes lose their convergence; that is to say, instead of the two eyeballs being turned inward and focused on the thing, they look straight outward into space; with the result, of course, that the thing looked at is seen indistinctly, 'We must will to see,' says the great psychologist Hoffding, without the remotest cognizance of the extreme applicability of this maxim to the game of golf, — and without apparently, we may add, the remotest cognizance of the extreme corroboration which the game of golf gives to this maxim, 'We must will to see, in order to see aright.' As a matter of fact, golf is the most rigid tester of will power in the world. It is this that makes it so interesting. It is this that makes it so important. It is this that makes it so educative, so edifying. For it does edify: that is, build up; it builds up character, because it strengthens will power; for will power is the foundation of character. "The whole thing seems so childishly simple; yet the achievement of that whole thing is so abominably difficult. No wonder we make io8 PRO AND CON OF GOLF mistakes in golf. We make mistakes in every department of life : we bet on the wrong horse, or the wrong cards; we buy the wrong stock; we back the wrong friend; we marry the wrong wife. Is it any wonder we make the wrong stroke? And golf is more exacting than racing, cards, speculation, or matrimony. Golf gives no mar- gin: either you win or you fail. You cannot hedge; you cannot bluff; you cannot give a stop- order; you cannot jilt. One chance is given you, and you hit or miss. There is nothing more rigid in life. And it is just this ultra and extreme rigidity that makes golf so intensely interesting. "What, then, is this thing called 'attention,'. a thing to which whole big books have been devoted? It is very difficult to find anjnvhere a clear, precise, coherent, and adequate definition. 'Attention,' says Mr. Pillsbury, 'means largely that some one element of consciousness is picked out from the others, and given an advantage over them.' How many elements are there? Who or what picks one out ? And what sort of advan- tage is bestowed upon this one? In its way, we might say that attention was the concentration of the whole mind upon the particular thing that one wishes to do. But here again, what is the 'whole mind'? and if there are several partic- ular things that one wishes to do, all at one and the same time, how and on which is that whole mind to be concentrated? Who or what is it that 'wishes' to do this, that, or the other; and PRO AND CON OF GOLF 109 how does this 'who' or 'what' differ from the 'whole mind'? Is not my 'whole mind' just mef Why cannot I do what I wish to do? How is it that I cannot compel myself to keep my head steady, to keep my eye on my ball, to follow through? "But if only one thing can be 'attended' to at a time, what precisely ought we to attend to at the moment of impact of club with ball? Well, if you ask me, I say, ike image of the hall. I firmly believe that what is necessary is the external, not the internal, the sensorial, not the ideational, form of attention. I firmly believe that if you can keep your eye on the ball — keep it there, mind you — and 'attend' to that one thing alone at the moment that you hit, the hit will 'coom aff,' as a Scotchman said to me once. Indeed, a noted psychologist bears me out in this: ' "Keep your eye on the ball" in golf,' says Mr. Pillsbtuy, 'is a familiar statement of the fact that the move- ment of the arms is controlled immediately by attention to some object in the field of vision. There is little or no thought of the movements to be made, or of anything else except the place upon which the blow is to be delivered.' All of which merely means that the attention to ' the movements to be made' must be finished and done with before the attention is fixed upon ' the place upon which the blow is to be delivered.' "And now to sum up on this problem of atten- tion. I suspect that to concentrate the attention no PRO AND CON OF GOLF is a natural gift. Some men can do it; some men cannot. If you cannot be utterly absorbed in -what you are doing, be it only looking at your ball — well, I can only recommend you to go out day after day — day after day — and attend to nothing else whatsoever but the look at yotir ball. When you have persuaded some cerebral center to do that automatically," you can begin to train other centers to do other things. "But apart from all these anatomical, physio- logical, and psychological theories, I have some- times thought that there are two simple and especial reasons for this difficulty of keeping one's eye on the ball; first, because there is nothing to stimulate the attention; secondly, because one has to attend so long. In cricket, tennis, racquets, the stimulus is extreme: by consequence your eye follows the ball like a hawk. In billiards there is no stimulus, but you never or rarely take your eye off your ball in billiards. Why? I think because (i) the ball is much nearer to your eye, and therefore the image is clearer and the stimulus stronger; and (2) because the period of time reqtdsite for the stroke is so short. In golf the stimulus is weaker and the period longer. In all probability the intensity of the attention very soon tires the delicate cerebral ceUs so attending. I imagine these cells to be in a state of tremendous tension, and that this tremendous tension can be kept up for only a very short period of time. No doubt the tension depends upon the blood supply. Well, there are about PRO AND CON OF GOLF m seventy-two ptilsebeats in the minute. One fraction of a second, therefore, may alter the character and the intensity of the tension. "And this leads to yet another point. My friend Mr. Kenyon-Stow, in an interesting con- versation I had with him, averred (and I partly agree with him) that the whole and sole virtue of the foUow-through depends upon the fact that that follow-through is the result of keeping your eye on the ball. If you donH keep yoiir eye on the ball, your stroke is cut short the moment you take your eye off, and you do not follow-through; if you do keep your eye on the ball, your stroke is not cut short and you do follow-through. I think that this is incontestable, though I very much doubt whether that immortal genius who crystal- lized this diamantine axiom into a sexiverbal maxim qmte understood what portentous though elemental truths he was consolidating into a single sentence. "Mr. Kenyon-Stow's theory seems to throw a light and to be an advance upon the theory of Braid. Braid thinks the optic nerve works faster than the arms, and that therefore the eyes look up before the arms have finished their business. The fact probably is that if the mind is really attending to the retinal image of the ball, the orders issued to the motor centers of the arms will continue just so long as the image of the ball upon the retina continues; and as the retinal image remains for about one fortieth of a second 112 PRO AND CON OF GOLF after the object has departed, the stroke is contin- ued for that one fortieth of a second, and the follow-through is established. This, at all events, is indisputable: any photograph showing a good follow-through shows the player looking at the spot where the ball was, long after the ball has left it. "It was left to Mr. Walter J. Travis to hit the nail of the 'Why' on the head. 'The time- honored injunction laid down by all writers and teachers to 'keep your eye on the ball' — which eye, by the way? — would be more aptly expressed by insisting upon the head being kept absolutely still and in the same position as in the address until the ball is struck — or even a moment after .... ' If the head is kept in the same position through- out the swing, the player may even go so far as to absolutely shut his eyes and be reasonably certain of getting the baU well away, provided no jerk is introduced.' So says Mr. Travis. Mrs. Gordon Robertson, golf professional at Princes' Ladies' Golf Club, Mitcham, England, goes, indeed, further still : ' Before a beginner attempts to handle her clubs there is one thing which she is always told, and that is, " Keep yoiu" eye on the ball." In the course of my teaching I have noticed something which, in my opinion, is even still more important. ... It is this: "Keep your head still." By doing this it is impossible to take your eye off the ball.' (But Mrs. Gordon Robertson will permit me to point out that one PRO AND CON OF GOLF 113 could, by rolling the. eyeballs, keep the eyes on the ball, yet move the head.) "Almost every movement of otir bodies proves that the muscles are obedient to the eyes, cannot act properly imless guided by the eyes. Why, at this very moment I may be said to have taken my stance and be 'addressing' my ink pot. (I address it for hours every day.) I know exactly where it is, and I am keeping my head steady. Yet every time I want ink I have to look at that ink pot. Could one even light a pipe blindfolded? "It is a pity that so many literary elucidators and explicators of the game of golf devote so many pages to the subsidiary circumstances connected with the game. They descant, most learnedly and delightftdly I admit, on how you should stand and how you should strike, on the kind of club you should use and on the kind you should not. I wonder if they would pardon me if I said that, as a matter of simple fact, if one attended to the game (with all that that means) , one could stand and strike as one chose, and almost with any kind of club. If one never, never transgressed any of the primary rules of golf, almost one could play with a pole ax! "What a piece of work is man! And how golf intensifies our amazement at that piece of work! Extraordinary, indeed, it is to think that a 114 PRO AND CON OF GOLF nattiral gift, an intellectual trait, a moral attri- bute, a mental habit, an inherited temperament will determine the nature of the game you play. In a sense, of coiu-se, a man's character will always determine the manner in which he will play any game; or, to put it conversely, the way a man plays any game will always be an index to his character. Well, is there any game so indicative of character as is golf? At bottom, perhaps, the secret of golf lies somewhere imbedded in character." When a golfer makes a fool of himself by breaking or throwing down a club, he is terribly surprised. He can't understand why the rest of the world isn't. CHAPTER X AMERICAN CONTRIBUTION TO GOLF RECOGNITION of the law of concentration in the playing of golf seems to be distinctly an American contribution to the game. Players abroad have taken much interest in Americans' play on that account. "A Wandering Player" thus discusses the peculiar features of play by Americans visiting at St. Andrews and elsewhere in the British Isles, taking occasion at the same time to criticize in an adverse way some other phases of American style: "A problem of deep importance to the future of this game has arisen, and the yoimg American school has forced it to the front. It is a question of practice swings, of waiting for inspiration, and of concentration. These three points are special- ties with several of the leading young players of the United States, and in the course of the visit with which they have favored us we have had an ample opportunity of studying their methods and the effects thereof. We are at the same time impressed and afraid. "I was- probably the first to draw attention to the manner in which Heinrich Schmidt was win- ning his matches in the amateur championship at St. Andrews, and at that time I saw no danger in the example but only good in it, and urged that there was a moral plain for British golfers to "5 ii6 PRO AND CON OF GOLF abandon the slapdash, thoughtless methods of which they are so often guilty, to be more careful, and to concentrate thoroughly. " It is the plain fact that the majority could do far better with their game if they did not waste so much of it by carelessness, thoughtlessness, and a sort of distraction which allows their thoughts to wander to other things than the stroke in hand, and sometimes by their conversation, too. When a man has played a stroke he has quite sufficient to occupy his mind for the next minute or two in considering how he shall play the next one and the many features of the case that will be presented to him. "Any serious interruption in this continuous thought breaks the spell that is upon the player and handicaps him seriously. The other day I was discussing the matter with Mr, E. A. Lassen, who had been a severe sufferer from the excessively slow methods of one of the Americans, and he stated the case exactly when he said that with so much hesitation and waiting * it was like beginning a new match at every shot,' and it is just the same way with the people who do not think contin- uously and concentrate ; they are beginning a new game at every shot, and it ends with that shot and is a poor game altogether. It is not golf. Harry Vardon has said that 'the best golf is played in silence,' and he is right. Taylor, the champion again, is all for concentration. Nobody con- centrates more than he does. All the rest of the world is dead when he is at the game, and he PRO AND CON OP GOLF 117 attributes the best of his success to this habit of intense concentration. "To this extent the methods of the young Americans are cleariy justified, and we have something to learn from them in the care they take over their game and the very Httle of their quaHty that they waste. One might very well put it that of the game possessed by the Americans of the Schmidt and Steams pattern about ninety-five per cent becomes effective, and that of the game possessed by the average amateur in this country (England) not more than sixty-five per cent be- comes effective, which means that when players of the two kinds of approximate equality as regards skill at strokes meet each other the American will win easily. He is not the better golfer, but he makes the most of his game. "Another question, however, arises, and that is whether the Americans are not overdoing it. At La Boulie, when the French amateur cham- pionship was being played for, three hours and ten minutes were taken over a match that had a clear green in front of it all the way, through the slowness of the American player. "At La Boulie Mr. Hilton was waiting until he was weary at every stroke played by his opponent, and undoubtedly he was 'put off' and could not play his proper game. Others siiffered in the same way. These slow players use up the time in three ways: first by deep thought, secondly by an exhaustive course of prospecting of the land in front when the short game is being played. ii8 PRO AND CON OF GOLF and thirdly by a series of practice swings done most meditatively. They leave nothing whatever to chance. "Now I believe in the practice swing — just one or at most two. A man may be an experienced golfer, and he may have played a certain stroke nearly a million times before, but golf is essentially a game of fears and doubts, and apart from just setting the right muscles in a state of complete preparation for the task in hand a practice swing gives one a little confidence. But the Americans go further than this, and it is questionable whether they are wise. For one thing, those delicate muscles and the nervous system that are con- cerned with the stroke in hand are easily tired, and if the shot is a long one needing power the odds are against its being done so well after four practice swings as after one. Show me the man who can drive his best and straightest after four practice swings on the tee. "Then there is the hesitation and doubt that are induced. I believe that in most cases these players are really waiting for an inspiration. But it does not always seem to be responsive, and they wait too long. A moment must come when they are as ready for the shot as ever they will be in their lives; if they let it pass nothing but doubts and hesitations can follow, and that is the danger to the player of excessive slowness. He begins to fear his fate too much. And also one round of golf played like this makes a fearful mental strain. We have noticed this season PRO AND CON OF GOLF 119 that the men who win their morning matches by such methods look very tired and lose easily in the afternoon. "Then, if three hours or more were taken over every game, golf as we have it now would become impossible. Only one round a day would be practicable, it would be a wearying thing, and the game would not be the same. There is no question of imposing time limits; it could not be done. Players must simply be given to under- stand that too much slowness is very bad form. "But this is not to say that these Americans with their practice swings and their thought and concentration are by any means wholly wrong. They have simply gone to an extreme which I think is bad for them as well as for other people. A middle course between their methods and ours is a sure way for the improvement of the game of many average British golfers." WHAT KIND OF A GAME DO YOU PLAY? Golf players may read with interest the fol- lowing editorial from a Chicago newspaper. It shows a universal need of concentration. Al- though the game referred to is the game of life, the editorial has direct reference to all life that one may touch. If one plays goh, that is a part of one's life. All men are better for some pleasur- able recreation and exercise. The editorial might be headed "Keep your mind on the one important thing." " You don't need the editorial and ought not to I20 PRO AND CON OF GOLF waste time reading it if you are qtiite sure that the best that is in you is being used every hour, and used to give you the best chance possible. "Among a million men there may be one or two who really play the game of life as a good player plays the game of chess. The one or two men in a million do not need to talk or think about the importance of concentration — but all the rest of us do need to realize what intense con- centration might mean for us. "There isn't a man who doesn't want some- thing that he does n't possess. There is n't one who is n't planning in a more or less aimless way to do something, to get something, to be something. And there really is not one who could not succeed fairly well, at least, if he could only keep his mind on real things and off of other things. "Have you ever seen two men play chess, a good player and a bad player? The bad player begins apologizing for himself before the thing starts, apologizes all the way through, and loses at the end, even though the queen or other pieces be given to him in advance. "The good player sits down, looks good-natur- edly at his opponent, watches his first move, plans the thing out, wins smilingly and easily, but his mind has been on the game. "Life is a game. Every one of us must play it whether he wants to or not. And every one plays the game with the same old partner — Time. "At life's table, opposite you, sits Time with PRO AND CON OF GOLF 121 his scythe, and at his elbow the stakes — Success. "Anything that takes your mind off the game gives Time the advantage. That is to say, anything that does not at the same time add to your power of work and thought. "Time plays against us all, and he nearly always wins. MilHons of men and women in the world are saying every day, ' If I were younger I would do this,' or 'I would do that.' Every man thinks of what he would do if he had to live over again the hours during which he let Time win while he lost. "There is no use going back over the moves that have been made foolishly. The game is still on, and it is never too late to win it if you will make up your mind, concentrate your mind, and brush aside interruptions. "Time is a good-nattired old man; he plays fairly and leniently. But he is relentless in his steady onward pace; he never gives you back the day that you have given him for nothing. That is one day off the board. But you can win and beat him in the days that remain, if you will. "Lectures on concentration are needed by young men especially. For their temptations are the most numerous. Much intelligence is used up trjdng to get their minds away from the real work. "Foolish fashion makes them waste time on their clothes, their hats, their looks, when those looks amount to nothing. The man of brains should simply make up his mind to look clean, to show self-respect; nothing else matters. 122 PRO AND CON OF GOLF "The hard thing for young men and others to remember is that their work is their real occupa- tion. Take the average young man playing a game of cards, of baseball, of golf, or any other mere amusement. If you should try at that time to interest -him in some outside thing, some new kind of a hat band, some new color for the cra- vat, he would say to you. 'Don't bother me; I am busy now. You will make me lose the game.' ' ' How many know enough to say the same thing when they are playing life's real game, which is the game of work? "Many young men act like a man who has forgotten the road, or like a drunken man stagger- ing to the right and to the left, falling down, getting up, and finally landing in jail instead of landing at home. "The road before every man is perfectly clear, and there is only one way of getting over that road, which is to walk straight ahead to the efid of it. "Suppose a man were locked up in jail and had to make his way out. What would you think of him if one day he started to bore a hole in one spot and the next day started a hole in another spot, and kept on all his life starting little holes in different spots and never going on with any one of them? You would think him a lunatic. Yet that is exactly what ninety-nine men out of a himdred do in this life. We are all of us locked up here, all of us imprisoned by conditions through which we must bore a hole if we want to get out and amount to an3d:hing. We try this PRO AND CON OF GOLF 123 way and try that way and try the other, and do nothing, whereas by trying one way and keeping at that way we could get out in the end. "We have talked on this subject of concentra- tion to young men before. We shall talk about it again. You cannot succeed in the big thing if you let the little things take up your mind and your time. "If your best thought goes to the selection of a straw hat, and your second best thought to the selection of your clothes, and your third best thought to some profound speculation on the races or the result of the baseball competition, what kind of thought is left for the real work? "And what in the world can help you or give you any kind of success, except steady grinding at the real work? "When you wake up in the morning say to yoiirself, 'I am going to keep at my work and think of nothing else to-day.' Don't think with how little work you can get through to-day, but, on the contrary, how much work you can get into it. Whatever you have undertaken to do, do it better than the next man, and not only better than the next man, but as well as it is possible for you to do it. "We do not share the comfortable theory that any man can achieve anything that he desires if he will work hard enough. That is not true. Edison could not possibly have painted as well as Sargent, and Sargent could not possibly have developed Edison's inventive genius. 124 PRO AND CON OF GOLF "But neither Edison nor Sargent, nor any other man that you hear about, would have been a success if he had n't kept one thing in his mind all the time. "Your mind is the tool that you have to work with. Hands and feet are the small tools, the servants of the working brain, the real tool. Keep the brain clear, clean, and concentrated. Don't load it up with unnecessary burdens, unnec- essary interests. Toward life's frivolities and useless discussions — excepting those that really improve the mind — let your mental attitude be, 'I don't know and I don't care. I am playing a game against time and against life. I have got to win it, and I can't let other things interfere with it.' " THE TALKING GOLFER Four gentlemen were in the game. One, known to all except himself as "the talking golfer," annoyed the others by chattering most of the time. The next time they met on the links the talking delegate was avoided. He came to the others, however, and requested to be allowed to follow the game and keep score. One player said it would be all right if he did not talk. He said, "Agreed." In five holes' play he maintained absolute silence, the silence so completely taking the place of incessant talking that it got on the nerves of one of the players. Consequently his game was very poor. PRO AND CON OF GOLF 125 The otherwise harmless but silent man was standing at a respectful distance behind the player, who was about to make a hard four-foot putt. Before playing, however, he showed un- usual nervousness and suddenly turned on the silent scorer, and prayerfully said : ' ' For heaven's sake, stop thinking!" MATCH MAKING . In making a match one must use good judg- ment — a poorly made match may lose the game before the start. Harry Vardon ought to be a good "mentor" on this point. He says: "One of the most difficult problems of golf is the fixing up of matches on equitable handicap terms. Players everywhere are visiting links that are strange and meeting fellow enthusiasts of whose form they know nothing save for the information which is conveyed by a club handi- cap, and although close and enjoyable rounds often result from contests that are arranged when each side is more or less in the dark as to the measure of the other's ability, the standard of scratch varies so appreciably in different clubs that many bad bargains are bound to be struck through unavoidable and mutual ignorance. "Where it is possible to deduce from the names of the plus and scratch men at any two clubs that the standard of start-allotting at those institutions is practically uniform, I think that the members may safely adopt the general custom of conced- ing and receiving in their matches three fourths 126 PRO AND CON OF GOLF of the difference between the handicaps. It is sometimes said that this practice is illogical and unfair, and that the better players ought to give the full difference, but the system has stood the test of time very well, and it seems to me to work out excellently in the end. A profes- sional hears accounts of many of the matches contested by the members of the club to which he is attached and, incidentally, of a thousand and one other games. So far as I have been able to judge, there is nothing the matter with the prin- ciple of the golfer with the shorter allowance giving three fourths of the difference between the handicaps. After all, it is founded on a sound premise, namely, that the inferior player is calcu- lated to need a longer start in a medal round for the reason that he is more likely than his superior to suffer a bad hole. When he loses a hole in the match game it does not matter how many strokes he takes to it; there is no greater penalty for expending three shots in a bimker than for missing a yard putt for a half. In medal play the three bunker strokes are each a black mark. "Occasionally it happens that almost exas- perating situations are presented to the receivers of strokes, and I am reminded of a curious hard- ship that befell a member of the South Herts Club some time ago. The occasion was a bogey competition, but the position might have been just the same if the player in question had been opposing a scratch man. Receiving eleven strokes, he finished two holes up. That was PRO AND CON OF GOLF 127 fairly satisfactory, but he felt very reasonably aggrieved when he discovered that, if he had received only nine strokes he would have been six up! We went through the card, and there could be no mistaking the matter; his only trouble was that the handicapping committee had given him two strokes too many to allow him to reap the full reward of his play. This paradoxical situation arose, of course, through the strokes having to be used at prescribed holes. The places at which nine strokes had to be taken would have suited his figures far better than the list of eleven holes which he was obliged to honor. Still, it is not often that anything quite so trying as that occurs in golf. "Where two players do not know one another's form and want to be sure of a good game without taking what they might regard as imdue risks, there are several well-conceived plans for achieving the end. I was introduced to an example a short time ago. The idea was that the side which won a hole had to give a stroke at the next. So long as the contestants are not too violently disparate in the matter of ability, it is wonderful how exciting a game this kind of match generally produces. When you have gained a lead of one the great thing is to struggle to win the next hole, so as to become two up; if you can do that, you ought to be safe. With most tantalizing regu- larity, however, are you prevented from achieving this purpose; somehow the necessity of giving a stroke immediately after winning a hole seems to 128 PRO AND CON OF GOLF hold you in constant bondage. I know that when I engaged in such a match neither of us was ever more than one up. It may be an artificial way of securing an interesting finish, but it is good fim all the -time. " There is much to be said for bisques as a form ,of handicapping. Some players do not like to have to take their strokes at prearranged holes, possibly because they like those holes so much as to feel that they can obtain them in the proper figures without the aid of an allowance, and in such cases the shorter-handicap man is not necessarily giving anything away if he agrees to the introduction of the bisque system. Person- ally, I have rather a warm comer in my heart for it, because it calls for the exercise of some judg- ment on the part of the receiver of strokes, and the more that is dependent on the faculty for doing the right thing at the right time, the greater is the interest in the match." HYPNOTISM IN GOLF Are we going to use hypnotism to get back on our game of golf ? Is there an efficacy in psycho- therapeutics and golf? Will the latter combina- tion become the vogue? These and a myriad other similar queries were asked recently by golf students as the result of a story that came from London. It seemed a far cry from the imdulating acres of the country club to the temples of psychology, but the critics were taught to see the connection — taught to say. PRO AND CON OF GOLF 129 perhaps in a facetious manner, that the season's style in golf would be to have a Svengali for every Trilby of the links. The story as it came to American golfers from London was that an insular golfer who had "gone In -diicl- En practice. ^ Oh! What a difference off his game" placed himself at Guy's hospital in the hypnotic department. By suggestion a mental specialist impressed upon his patient the fact that he was still as good a golfer as ever. After the treatment he went out to the links and played the best golf of his career. The "pay lead" was so rich that for a time there was no golf club in the United States that escaped having its symposium on this rather remarkable London story. Opinions were divided, many admitting there was a distinct connection between nerves and golf, and psychotherapeutics could perform what amounted almost to golfing miracles. However, all were united on the criticism that I30 PRO AND CON OF GOLF there must be complete coordination of mind and muscle before a golfer could hope to "put a crimp in Colonel Bogey." "The Londoner is perfectly right," said a well- known Chicago golfer, a picturesque character on many of ' the courses in the Chicago district. "I worked that out long ago, and it has helped my game not a little. "My theory is deducted from the scientific brain-cell theory. When one is learning golf he learns many bad habits of the game along with the good ones. Every item of his golf experience is registered in the brain cells — the good habits and the bad. As the game improves the bad cells wilt a trifle and the cells representing the good habits flourish. "But after a golfer has played too long — after he has gone stale, as the saying goes — the bad cells begin to reassert themselves. He 'goes off his game.' Then, instead of continmng play, he must rest. Or, as the London specialist advises, he must have his brain cells attended to. The bad cells must be reduced and the good ones encouraged. It is all as clear as day to me. I have played golf nearly every day since 1900, and I think my theory is worth something, if experience coimts." "You want every golfer to be a Trilby," said the editor of a golf magazine. "Well, out in Jackson Park every morning in the summer you can see them pla3dng in their bare feet, and I should consider that an excellent opening for an PRO AND CON OF GOLF 131 ambitious Svengali. What a golfer needs now and then is something to soothe his nerves. Whether it shall be a highball or 'Ben Bolt' is for him to decide. My experience has been that they usually prefer the former." "Do you think the idea a good one?" he was asked. "Anything is good in the winter," he replied cynically. One of the recent woman champions said she had never consulted a mental specialist before going into important matches. "It is a fact, though, that I become terribly nervous, and as a result of it play a much better game. I can make strokes in a match that I would never dream of in practice. Do you think it is because my friends all sit about and want me to win, and in this way practically hypnotize me into victories?" she asked. "If so I thank them most heartily for it. I hope they will continue vibrating for me for a long time to come." // angry — some would say "mad" — say nothing, but saw wood. CHAPTER XI ODDITIES OF GOLF MOONLIGHT GOLF ONE of the most remarkable exhibitions of golfing under difficulties was reported a few years ago, when A. J. Watson of Dunwoodie Country Club in New York negotiated an eighteen-hole roimd by moonlight in eighty-four strokes. "Mr. Watson started from the first tee at 8 135 P.M. and finished the entire round in two hours and ten minutes. About twenty-five club mem- bers followed the play, some of them helping the four professional caddies who had been engaged to 'keep an eye on the ball.' "No one who has not tried to play golf by the light of the moon can realize its difficulties. Even in the brightest moonlight it is impossible to see the ball in flight. The only method of tracing it is by sound. The caddies and gallery scatter out in front of the player and listen for the ball to drop after they hear it click from the impact of the club. "Mr. Watson was particularly fortunate in not losing his ball once, his greatest luck in this way being on the drive from the thirteenth tee. The ball crashed into a tree on the edge of the woods and rebounded to the edge of the fair-green on the opposite side of the coiu-se. 132 PRO AND CON OF GOLF 133 "The Dunwoodie course is unusually hilly and difficult, the bogey is eighty, and the wonderful score of eighty-four will be appreciated by golfers all over the country. Few players ever get below eighty on the course by daylight — Mr. Watson's best day round being seventy-eight. About a year before, Mr. Watson made a similar moonlight attempt, making a ninety-two, which was regarded as phenomenal. ' ' The start was particularly auspicious . Playing from the first tee with a mid-iron, Mr. Watson laid the ball on the green about ten feet from the cup. He holed out in his second, making the hole in two strokes under bogey. The second was a hole par four. On the third a short second shot and three putts on the green resulted in a seven. "On the fifth and sixth holes Mr. Watson's drives were close to two hundred yards. Aside from the third hole, the ninth was the only one on which there was much overscoring. Here the play is all up hill. Mr. Watson should have had a five, but an overapproach put him in the rough just beyond the green, from which place he took three putts. He was out in forty-one. "Coming in, Mr. Watson played a more ac- curate game than most of the members can play by daylight. He had five fives, a six, a four, and a three. His five on the last hole (six himdred yards) was one below par. The drive was fully two hundred yards, but the ball rested in a hanging lie. In attempting to get it out with distance Mr. Watson almost 134 PRO AND CON OF GOLF missed his second shot, getting not more than fifty yards. His third, however, was a magnifi- cent recovery, and his fourth landed on the edge of the green. By this time several members had come out from the clubhouse to see the finish, and with the green surrounded, Watson holed out the fifty-foot putt." EYE MUST BE ON THE BALL While on the subject of moonlight golf, I should like to further emphasize the value of "keeping the eye on the ball." All players have had the admonition, "Keep your eye on the ball," more often than any other word of caution. One moonlight night at Wheaton, several club members went out to putt on the splendid eighteenth green at the Chicago Golf Course. It was about ten o'clock. A single dimly lighted candle was held by one of the attendants standing at the hole. The average distance of first putt was about fifteen yards, really from extreme comers of the green. It was useless to look at the hole while putting, as nothing could be seen but the dim candle light which flickered in the light breeze and certainly did not help the light of the moon at that distance. In making the stroke each player was forced to fasten his eye on the ball; the light of the moon compelled this. Stating it in another way, the absence of daylight made it necessary to see the ball intensely. The ball was therefore hit in every case before the eye could be taken off. PRO AND CON OF GOLF 135 Dependence was placed entirely on direction for six inches in front and behind the ball and on force necessary to go the distance. The surprising thing was the number of twos that were obtained. The threes were few compared with the twos. Three- and four-foot putts seemed to be as easy by moonlight as a two- foot in the daylight. We concluded the differ- ence was, in the short putts especially, that in daylight putting, at a distance of two to five feet the hole and the ball may be seen at the same time. Therefore the eye is likely to turn slightly, which gives a tendency to pull or slice. If the reader will try the experiment on some pleasant moonlight night, he will have a new emphasis and value placed on the admonition, "Keep your eye on the ball." SNOW GOLF A writer imknown to me has prepared such an excellent article on "snow golf" that I cannot refrain from utilizing it. My regret, however, is that I have been unable to ascertain the author's name so as to give him credit. Or perhaps it was a feminine hand that guided the pen. "It is a fine morning. Is it a fine morning? Yes, for the sim is flooding the gray concrete streets and the coppery green roofs with the palest amber light, very pale indeed, the meager sunshine of winter. No, for now huge, hungry clouds swing their leaden curtains before the amber sim and hide him from the world, while 10 136 PRO AND CON OF GOLF down the northerly gale come a hundred million little flakes of white, speeding, driving, writhing, whirling, dancing as they die. The golfers leave the breakfast table to stare out apprehensively at the weather. Shall they go? A question! Don't you see that the green coppery roofs and the creamy walls and the gray concrete streets are eating up all the flakes as fast as they fall ? On with the game! Besides, the weather prediction is for snow to-night or to-morrow — not to-day. This is only a flurry. "The golfers take trolley, take boat, take the long road across the hills and meadows to the club. And lo! within one short hour and a half all the world of green velvet turf has turned white, is blanketed and tucked away under an inch of snow. The trees are dressed in furry white for Christmas. The rugged young maples have the slim white birches for partners, and they dance a gay tarantella to the piping of the gale, waving fluffy white scarfs on their drooping arms as they turn. Father Winter is here. The familiar landscape magically changed is a joy. Who can keep his eye on the ball with all the world danc- ing madly about him, with all the world a mass of blinding white, a kaleidoscope with two hun- dred shades of white incessantly appearing and vanishing? "What, blot this new white world with the brown blur of a tee of sand from the sand box? Never. The golfers, one by one, make tees of snow, stamp hard on the soft white blanket so PRO AND CON OF GOLF 137 that their hob-nails will bite into the turf hidden below, and send their drives spatting northward against the myriads of flakes — the devouring teeth of the keen gale. There's play for you, Mr. Softsides, reading your morning paper by the fireplace! Stand with your cheek to the knife of the wind while the Snow Devil sprays his chilling bullets down yoiir hot neck and hisses in your eyes. Steady now. Your arms feel thick as legs in the heavy woolen swathings, but shoot the hands clean away at the finish just as if it were mid-Jime. Well driven, sir! A clean carry of one hundred and seventy against the gale and only a little, very little slice. Next up. Another good drive. "The players left the tee with free, careless strides. Of course they were going to step right up to the balls. One hundred and fifty — sixty — seventy yards, and not a ball in sight. Forward, then! Still no ball! Five minutes pass. Eter- nity is here. They have been lost for ages in the frozen north. The gale is their dirge. "'Let's build an igloo and camp here till spring,' says Dick, who has a great fondness for arctic exploring. " ' Here it is ! ' shouts Midge. The other caddy and the two players foregather. Where is the ball? Here it is. Where? Here — right here. All they can see is a fluffy snow wheel standing on its edge and looking like the fuzzy collar of a toy Boston bull. Careful inspection reveals at the center of the snow wheel the little white golf ball, like the head of the toy Boston bull. Pick up the 138 PRO AND CON OF GOLF ball, knock the snow off it against the blade of the cleek, tee it up on a solitary spire of green that still defies overwhelming death, and slam 'er out for a good hundred and sixty. Fine! Got the range? Right on that tallest cedar and forty yards this side of the bunk. Now Buxton is tee- ing up. No, Biixton is not teeing up. And for exceeding good reason — he can't find his ball. " ' Put down another and play three,' says Dick. 'You really shouldn't be penalized for lost ball on the fair-green.' " 'Good Lord ! do I look as soft as that?' Buxton asks. 'Come on: yoiu- hole if you find yours.' "They go on. They find it. Why is it the eternal, inevitable, inescapable rule in golf that if A loses his ball on a hole B cannot to save his soul lose his ball on the same hole? 'Tis a weary warld, as Tammas Weary-warld truly said, and few there be that bide in it ! Dick is on the green in three, then draws his trusty putter and takes six more strokes before he can force the depraved, doddering wretch of a ball to hole out. Hole out? Hech! Not he! The soggy, stupid ball gathered arotind itself an enormous fluffy snow collar, rolled in it as far as the hole, then fell across the hole, the snow collar too big to drop in and holding up the ball to stare heaven in the face. "'There's no rule against this,' says Dick, and gets down on all foiurs and breathes on the ball till it melts through the snow collar and plops down into the cup. Resourcefulness, what? " Dick is short in the swamp from the second tee PRO AND CON OF GOLF 139 and Biixton puts out a screamer. Faces are red from the peppering of coimtless crystal flakes, and hands are red from stripping snow collars off the balls. Dick is home in four, but Buxton lands his second shot on the green and then, with intelligence rare in one so young, putts with his mid-iron and lays the ball dead within three inches of the cup. A four on the second, eh. f* Does Mr. Good-player laugh at a four on the second against a howling white norther? Very well. Two to one he can't do it in four on the Fourth of July. (That will hold him for a while.) "Putting with the mid-iron will save a multitude of strokes on every green. That is the first great rule of snow golf. The other was discovered on the third hole and followed faithfully thereafter — simply get the range by landmarks on the spot where the ball drops. Walk to the spot. There will appear a bare bit of green, showing where the ball lit. Go forward then twenty feet or so and find a string of neat little prints like the trail of a rabbit. At the end of the trail lies your ball, coyly hid in his snow collar. "Does snow golf pay? Ask Dick and Buxton. They didn't lose another ball. They never saw so wonderfiil and charming a land as the new white snow coimtry they played in. They finished all even, and they went home with appetites so keen and ferocious that they re- sembled the ogre in the song who "Ate the church and ate the steeple, Opened the door and ate all the people." I40 PRO AND CON OF GOLF UNUSUAL INCIDENTS ON THE LINKS The many unusual incidents which contin- ually happen to make each game different from the rest are a part of golf. Some of the most peculiar incidents of this kind have recently been compiled by Edward W. Townsend, author of Chimmie Fadden and Major Max, as follows: "With former President William Howard Taft on one side of the ocean and ex-Premier Balfour on the other, praising and delighting in the physical benefits of golf, that aspect of the game threatens to divert public attention from its other attractive qualities. It is a game of mys- teries and surprises. "When Mr. Balfour spoke of it recently as a silent game, there was on this side of the Atlantic amazed dissent. The weather itself, said our golfers, is no greater incentive to speech. Even when Mr. Balfour's interpreters explained that he spoke of the time consiimed in making the rounds of the links as proper seasons of silence, not of the greater time thereafter consumed in discussing the rounds, Americans still failed to understand. That is because we play the game on this side in a different spirit from that in which it is played on the other side, and especially in Mr. Balfour's ain coimtree. "A story will illustrate the point. Two devotees of the game were making the round, and fourteen holes had been played without the exchange of a single word. At the fifteenth hole PRO AND CON OF GOLF 141 McPhearson ran down a thirty-foot putt, and, as it halved the match, it was so doubly dear to him that it loosened his tongue. " " T was a fair putt — eh, Douglas ?' he remarked to his opponent. "There was no response to this unseemly garrulity. "McPhearson won the next hole and halved the last, which gave him the game, one up. Again self-satisfaction moved him to speech. "'A fine day for the game,' he remarked. "'Aye,' Douglas admitted cautiously. 'But that's no reason you should be clacking Uke an auld wife every minute of the time,' "Americans are perhaps too much addicted to the pleasures of speech to be silent even at golf, in spite of impressive traditions. It is not such a serious matter with us as with Britons. We take it more as a sport, less as war, and persist, most of us, in adding to the joy of outdoor rambling the pleasure of desultory conversation. "No game offers more mysteries, more marvels to incite to talk. Take that effective irritant to loquacity, 'holing out in one.' As there are hun- dreds of holes easily within the range of single strokes, and as somewhere on the earth there are daily thousands of enthusiasts at play, the wonder would seem to be that the feat is not so common as no longer to excite our special wonder; yet the accepted records, made in competitions, fill but a few paragraphs in the books. On the other hand, there is the astonishing record of a Scottish 142 PRO AND CON OF GOLF golfer, L. Stuart Anderson, who has holed seven holes in one each, and not the same hole twice. "Hiindreds of important tournaments are played without a hole being made from the tee; but, on the other hand, at Englewood, New Jersey, in the professional tournament recently, Gordon, of Onondaga, and Ross, of Brae Bum, both holed the fifteenth in one. This record was surpassed, however, by Mr. J. Ireland, playing at Worlington, in Suffolk, in 1907, when in a single round he holed the fifth and eighteenth each in a single stroke. "But the most wonderful of all wonders in this respect happened in 1870, at old Musselburgh, the famous resort of Edinburgh golfers. A foursome had been started late in the afternoon, and when the balls were driven from the eight- eenth tee it was so nearly dark that there was a hurrying of caddies and players to find them. Robert Clark, who had driven for his side, had sent off what seemed, so far as it could be followed in the dim light, a good ball, but it could not be located. His and his partner's caddies and both players searched without success until they had to admit their opponents' claim of 'lost ball,' involv- ing, of course, under the rule, the loss of the hole. "This was the more regretfully conceded by the losing side because the loss of the hole, as it happened, also meant the loss of the match. And then — you have already guessed the conclusion — the lost ball was found in the cup. The hole was made in one, yet lost! PRO AND CON OF GOLF 143 "The amazing things a golf ball will do besides going into the hole with promptness and dispatch supply material for many a true tale. A Morbury player one day in 1900 concluded that his ball was trying to pay for itself when, upon coming up to it after a drive, he found it in a good He and with a sixpence nicely balanced upon it. "Indeed, bright objects seem to have an irresistible attraction for golf balls. Another English player, at Huddlesford, drove a ball which hooked off toward a workman wielding a shining scythe. At the cry of 'Fore!' the man turned, the ball struck the edge of the keen blade, and was sliced as fairly in two as you could slice an orange with a knife. "At St. Andrews, in 1907, a member of the Royal and Ancient Club drove a ball which struck the point of a hatpin far projecting beyond the side structure of a hat worn by a woman crossing the course, and it struck hard enough to fasten itself like a second head to the same pin. Fashion saved her. The lady's head was so well bimkered with hair, or whatever, that she was not hurt. "The ladies — bless them! — have contributed liberally of objects of art and necessity for the fatal attraction of golf balls. At Troon, in 1907, a Mr. Andrew foimd his ball empaled on a hairpin. He finally worried it, thus adorned, into the hole, but it took the distracted player ten strokes to do it. In the same year a professional at Brad- ford Moor, on coming up to his ball, playing to 144 PRO AND CON OF GOLF the second hole, found it trussed by a hairpin, and it cost him five putts to induce the foolish object to drop into the cup. "By the way, players who hereafter come up to a ball under such painful circumstances may remove the misplaced ornament without penalty. Since balls got the hairpin habit, the governing powers have attended to the matter, and so ruled. "But many a ball has sought other than a shining mark on its wayward coiirse to the hole. Driving off from the first tee on a misty day, a player at the West Herts Club, Cassiobury Park, felt that he had foozled; but none other than his sense of touch gave him a hint of what had happened, for no caddie or spectator had seen the ball after the club came down. After a fruitless search another ball was driven. When the first green was reached, one of the spectators became aware that something was interfering with the correct set of his trousers, and an examination disclosed, in the turn-up at the bottom of one leg, a golf ball — the missing ball! "Many records of 'kills,' as they say at the traps, have been made by driven balls, but usually the victims have been small birds. Captain Ferguson, however, playing at Kilspindie, in 1904, drove a long ball into the rough, and, coming to it, found that he had made a record for golf balls as deadly weapons — his had killed a hare. "Another Scot, coming in late, putted on the eighteenth green, and saw his ball, which was seemingly headed straight for the hole, deflected PRO AND CON OP GOLP i45 by what he supposed in the half Hght to be a stiff leaf. The ' leaf ' proved to be a field mouse, which, half stunned, was carried to the clubhouse as 'Exhibit A' in another story of the strange happenings which cause players to lose holes. "An extraordinary story of a golf-ball kill is vouched for by so respectable an authority as The Golfers^ Handbook, from which, without omission or addition, I quote this brief chronicle. Far be it from me to polish so precious a gem : " 'A golfer at Newark, in May, 1907, drove the ball into the river. The ball struck a trout, two poiinds in weight, and killed it.' "Animal life on the golf links is not always opposed to the players. At the 'nineteenth hole,' as golfers call the club cafe, stories have been told of crows which have pounced upon golf balls and carried them off, perhaps to satisfy their curiosity as to the nature of the little globes with which man so much concerns himself. But I have never until recently come upon a respect- able confirmation of such a story. "A Glasgow newspaper — and it is impossible to suspect a Scottish journal trifling with such a subject — states as a fact that recently a Mr. W. M. Greig, while playing to the twelfth hole at St. Andrews, saw his tee shot povinced upon by a large crov/, which Hfted it in his beak, and pro- ceeded to make a Wright Brothers exhibition. It flew straight toward the hole for some distance, and then, finding the weight too much for its motor power, dropped it in a good lie; whereby 146 PRO AND CON OF GOLF the delighted Mr. Greig was enabled to win the hole. His opponent unsuccessfully tried to con- found him with Rule 22, which reads, in part: " 'If a ball lodge in anything moving, a ball shall be dropped as near as possible to the place where the object was when the ball lodged in it, without penalty.' "Many American players have wondered what was the sense of that rule, not knowing that on many British links only the putting greens are mowed, the grass on the fair-greens being kept short by grazing sheep. Many a ball has lodged on the woolly backs of sheep, which have scam- pered off with them. "That reference to rules recalls a favorite story of Scottish professionals. Sandy and Donald were playing a close match — serious and silent, of course. To the right of the line of play from one tee, yet within bounds, stood the ancient cottage of the green-keeper, but so far to the right that a ball must have had what Jerome Travers calls 'the father of all slices' to reach it. Well, Sandy drove a ball with just that kind of a slice; it ciirved and curved until it finally flew into an open window of the cottage. "Players and caddies followed, and found the ball floating in a pan of bluing-water. Sandy declared that he would lift and drop the ball. Donald agreed, but remarked that it would be at the penalty of a stroke — Rule 14, first para- graph. Sandy demiirred; this was casual water not in a hazard — Rule 14, second paragraph. PRO AND CON OF GOLF 147 "To settle the fine point involved, the wife of the green-keeper, known to be a close student of the rules, was called in from the drying-grounds, where she was hanging out her good man's ' body- linen.' "'Did that water,' she was asked, 'constitute a hazard, or was it casual?' "She gave thought to the momentous question, and decided in Sandy's favor. Never before could she remember to have done so unhouse- wifely a thing as to leave a basin of bluing-water on the floor; it was unusual — casual. "Sandy Hfted and dropped his ball, and, taking good care with his mashie, shot the ball through an open door and well on its way to the hole. "Freak golf is thought by many to be a develop- ment of the more whimsically minded American players, and surely we have had some amazing examples of freak-playing conditions; yet a carefiil search of the literature on that point shows that our sober-sided cousins in the old coimtry have developed some very fair lines of freak streaks. There was, for example, that Sandwich golfer who wagered a fellow club member that he could beat him at a certain ntimber of holes, using a champagne bottle only as a club for all his strokes, his opponent to have the use of all the clubs in his bag. The record is gravely printed that the wielder of the bottle won the match. "The comment is sometimes added that the 148 PRO AND CON OF GOLF opponent must have been the king of all duffers. My own opinion is that normally he may have been a fair player, but that the man who proposed the bet arranged before the start that while he should carry the bottle, his opponent should carry its contents. "There are reliable data concerning two famous freak plays credited to Americans. In 1899 a bet of four thousand dollars was made in the Allegheny Club, Pittsburgh, that a ball could be played through four miles of the city's streets in one hundred and fifty strokes or less. The start was made soon after daylight, William Patten, one of the club's low-handicap players, being selected to attempt the task. The play was accomplished in one hundred and nineteen strokes, and at a fair profit, even after the win- ners had paid five hundred dollars for broken window glass. "The famous Hackensack game of the fol- lowing year was more sportsmanlike. Tliree members of the Hackensack Club imdertook to play a course from their links to the North Jersey Links, a distance of six miles. This was a cross- country course over meadows and cornfields, across streams and bayous, over paved roads and railroads. Followed as closely as roads permitted by enthusiastic fellow members in automobiles carrying first aid to the weary, hungry, and thirsty, three members made the course — J. W. Haulenbeek and Eugene Crassons, each in three himdred and five strokes, and Dr. Pfarre, in PRO AND CON OF GOLF 149 three hundred and twenty-seven. British author- ities have given much attention to this contest, for it is thought by experts to be a remarkable thing, conditions considered, that two of the players should have finished with identical scores. "Astonishing feats with golf clubs are told by the score. It was as long ago as 1858, at North Inch, Perth, that the club's professional drove a ball — and with a full swing, too — off the face of a watch without injuring the glass. At Westbrook, in this country, in 1901, E. T. Knapp slightly dented one end of an egg to afford a lie for a golf ball, teed up on the egg, and drove the baU, leaving the egg iminjured. "Professionals have pitched balls with mashies out of deep quarries and over chiirch spires, but that sort of magic seems futile compared to mashie work the present writer saw 'Young' Tom Anderson do on the eighteenth green of the links at Montclair, New Jersey. Taking six balls, Anderson placed one eight inches from the hole, and arranged the other five, at intervals of eight inches, in an exact line with the first ball and the hole. That is, he laid five stimies. With his mashie he began with the ball farthest from the hole, and pitched it cleanly into the cup. He pro- ceeded to do the same with all five stimied balls, then pitched the sixth in on top of the others. "There was a feat which to the wondering and longing mind of the amateur has more in it to stir the soul than has the marvelously preserved integrity of an eggshell or the crystal of a watch." ISO PRO AND CON OF GOLF Photograph by Sport and General The scene of Mr. Simpson's drive 5"«2«MOI TEE Courtesy of the "Daily Mail" Diagram showing how Mr. Simpson did the fifth hole PRO AND CON OF GOLF 151 n n 4 n ^'-i 1 H- - MBSS^M^^S 1 1 Photograph by Sport and General Where the ball dropped into the hole A DREAM THAT CAME TRUE A remarkable "hole-in-one" story is told by the London Daily Mail. The Mail says: "It has fallen to the lot of Rochford Hundred Golf Club, near Southend-on-Sea, to regale the golfing world with the most wonderful 'hole-in- one' story ever told, A golfer's dream was ful- filled next day while an Easter competition was in progress. One of the members, Mr. E. Simp- son, amused a room full of golfers, waiting in the clubhouse till the rain should cease, by relating how on the previous evening he dreamed that he 'holed out the fifth in one.' ' ' The fifth hole is a ' bogey three' of one hundred and fifty yards. The tee is placed on a slight eminence with a hedge in front. A muddy pond m^ust be diagonally carried on the way to the green, which is guarded on the right by a high boundary fence, and on the left by a range of grass bunkers. The bed of the pond, when periodically dredged, yields a heavy harvest of lost balls. 11 152 PRO AND CON OF GOLF "Among those present when Mr. Simpson related his dream (before going out to play) were F. R. Tutton, E. R. P. Homphray, Forsyth John- stone, and R. A. Foster. The latter couple pre- ceded Mr. Simpson and his partner (a visitor) when the- weather permitted. "On reaching the fifth green and holing out, Messrs. Johnstone and Foster stood to watch Mr. Simpson's iron shot from the fifth tee. The ball dropped some twenty feet from the flag, trickled gently onward, and, to the amazement of the watching players and their caddies, dropped into the hole with, as a caddie remarked, 'the last breath in its body.' " A LIE ON A STUMP Charles (Chick) Evans tells of a famous freak shot in such an interesting manner that I cannot refrain from giving it here. He says: "A few years ago a number of trees on the south nine at Beverly had been cut to about three feet of the ground. O. J. Frances, George O'Neil, Nelson Buck, and P. J. Roy were playing to the eighth green. Mr. Frances played his second shot and walked over the slight incline guarding the green. To his astonishment, the ball coiild not be seen an3rwhere. Finally George O'Neil discovered it on the perfectly flat surface of a stump to the left of the green. The stump was about three feet high and as smooth as glass. Landing on that stump seemed strange, but staying there afterward was simply miraculous. Mr. Frances PRO AND CON OF GOLF 153 attempted to play it standing on George O'Neil's back, but O'Neil moved suddenly and the player of the strange lie took a 'header.' The ball was not played, therefore, and the mystery of the lie remained, "Last year the same group was playing again at Beverly, and at the tenth tee a gentleman asked if he could walk with them. They gladly assented, and at the seventeenth green he said: 'A most peculiar thing happened here several years ago. I was putting on the then eighth green, when a ball driven by players following ran through. For fun I placed it on the stump.' He then remarked to Mr. Frances : * I often wonder who the players were, and if I won or lost a match for them.' " FUZZY WORM WINS A HOLE The most minute things often have a great influence on a game of golf. A writer recently explained as follows how insects sometimes decide golf games: "It woiild seem almost impossible that such tiny matters as caterpillars and grasshoppers would figure in golf, yet instances have been recorded where a sizable dispute has arisen over just such matters. "A well-known golfer tells the story of a four- ball match which has finished at the eighteenth hole with the match even. They agreed to play an extra hole to decide the matter. The green was a trifle sloping and on this particular day 154 PRO AND CON OF GOLF it was rather keen. One ball, after the approach putt, came to rest a few inches above the hole. The player whose turn was next was a methodical and deliberate person, and as the match depended on his next shot he took an imusual length of time in his calculation, "One of those big, fuzzy caterpillars at this particular time happened to crawl upon the ball and the weight was just sufficient to distiurb the equilibrium of the sphere, causing it to move, and by a curious chance it happened to roll straight into the hole, carrying the fuzzy mischief-maker with it. The owner of the ball immediately claimed that it should count as having been holed on the previous stroke. Of course the other side vigorously protested and the match remained in dispute for several days. "The ultimate ruling, the matter having been referred to an authority to decide, was that the ball should have been replaced without penalty, on the ground that if the half had missed the cup and rolled ten feet below, the owner would un- doubtedly have wished to replace it. "On another occasion a grasshopper figured in a match during a tournament. The ground was hard and very fast. The ball of the opponent continued to roll straight for a standpit after it was played and it seemed as if it would be strong enough to trickle in, but it finally came to a stop on the very edge of the pit. As the player approached his ball a big grasshopper, which had been beside it, started off and disturbed the ball PRO AND CON OF GOLF 155 so that it toppled into the pit. The insect had actually kicked the ball into the hazard. The naiTator held that his opponent should replace the ball without penalty, and this was finally done." FOWL PLAY There was a very interesting play at the Chicago Golf Club a few years ago. A prominent lawyer, Judge , was playing with a fellow member of the club. At the seventh hole which is a bogey four, the judge drove his second shot, — a brassie, — for the green. It was perhaps twenty feet off a straight line. Some chickens had wandered on the green. The ball struck one. The shot was unfortimate for the chicken, but excellent for the player. The ball caromed off the chicken's "downy shield" and finally rested two inches from the hole. The judge had a three. The story would be improved if the ball had caught the hole for a two, but "truth is mighty and will prevail." The judge's opponent remarked, "It's o. Jowl play." STANDARD WORK An interesting incident occurred at the third hole of the Chicago Golf Club, which is a bogey four. The second shot was a mid-iron, and high. The ground being dry, the ball bounded into the air. The drop landed fairly on the very top iS6 PRO AND CON OF GOLF of the flag standard marking the hole. There it stuck. Although the members of the foursome were well informed as to the rules, none claimed accu- racy in "what to do." Finally it was decided "the ball must be played where it lies." The player therefore knocked the ball from the standard with his putter. He holed the next and made his four. It was remarked by one of the players that "the 'standard' of that play could not have been improved." STRANGER THINGS HAVE HAPPENED One pleasant day at the Exmoor Club a foursome was played. Near the old second tee, to the right, was a huge tree at an angle of about forty-five degrees. One of the players drove a ball that landed in the crotch of two branches and stuck there. There was a good-natured laugh at this as the others realized that not only the ball but the hole was lost by their opponent. One of the players on the tee was still laughing, thinking of the ball in the tree, when he drove. The ball went directly toward the same place, struck the other ball, knocked it out, and his ball remained in the crotch. The laugh was now on the second player, but he, noticing a man repairing telegraph wires near by, called him over and succeeded in borrowing his climbing spikes. He then climbed up into the tree, and with one stroke knocked the ball PRO AND CON OF GOLF 157 out and toward the hole; his next ball was on the green, and he made his putt, winning the hole in four from all three. The story-teller spoiled his anecdote somewhat by concluding: "This is absolutely true, so help me—" You cannot get best results by treat' ing caddies as machines, or other players as belonging to you. CHAPTER XII HAZARDS HAZARDS, of course, are the particular incubus of all new players of golf. They make the uncertainties of the best games. A writer has given beginners some idea of hazards on prominent courses of the world in the following : "The introduction of hazards of various sorts has added zest to the game of golf. The hazards on the older links are mostly natural, but the great extension of the game has made the available land scarce, and artificial hazards are created with much ingenuity. The classic hazards are the Alps at Prestwick, Pandy at Musselbiurgh, the Redan at North Berwick, and Hell at St. Andrews. These are all bunkers or sand pits, and we do not know what hand constructed them. A hazard that brings the mental strain is a bunker just short of the length of an average drive. At the foiuth hole at Del Monte there is such a bunker one hundred and forty-five yards from the tee. On the seventh hole on the same links there is a water hazard one hundred and ninety yards from the tee. A ball too strongly driven by an average player will carry into the water, while the expert may hope to drive over the brook. "Fences and railroad tracks are common hazards in America. There is a railroad track and embankment on the Shinnecock Hills links, 158 PRO AND CON OF GOLF 159 on Long Island, and a like barrier at Woodland, near Boston. Some fine judgment and skillful playing is required at Coronado, California, where the links cross the track of an old race course. There are fences and outbuildings to dodge, mental as well as physical hazards. "A common form of mental hazard is a thick growth of trees, lining the course closely. On the Del Monte links, mentioned above, there is such a growth, and many golfers who would make a straight shot in an open field, drive into the woods here. Such a course gives players a thorough try-out." The ability of the leading golf players to con- quer hazards varies. Another writer says: "If there is one particular spot in which Braid shines brightly it is when he has met with trouble. In fact, so many pictures have been taken and so much written about Braid's brilliancy in recover- ing from a trap on the rough that those who have never seen him play are inclined to the idea that only his ability to recover has made him a great player. In fact, Braid rarely gets into difficulties, but when he does one of the finest pieces of golf imaginable immediately follows. "There is only one condition that makes Braid fearful of trouble, and that is where it happens that he has no room to swing his club. Given that room, he will recover from almost anything. It is thrilling. The trouble may be rank grass or rocks or a railway track, and as he takes the club up the spectators realize that something has i6o PRO AND CON OF GOLF to go, and that the ball will go with it. He brings his niblick down with terrific power, and while in ^ifmw Magnetized water a bunker, his shot is as perfect as human agency- can get it. Braid's ability to steer clear of trouble has robbed golf of many a shot that might be classed as magnificent." As preliminary hints to the beginner in his first rounds of a "hazardous" course, the follow- ing items of advice are given: "The great thing is to make sure of getting clear. You will have a very small chance of making a good recovery if you are trying at the same time to leave yourself lying dead. " It is one of the most remarkable paradoxes in golf that we are always glad to see our ball lying dead and yet we are imspeakably annoyed to find it lying buried. "The secret of playing out of long grass is that the club should be brought up properly. Niblicks PRO AND CON OF GOLF i6i are like children; if they are properly brought up they won't go wrong afterwards. "A pot-hunter is a contemptible person, but more to be pitied than blamed is the player whose himting of pots always results in the finding of pot bunkers. "Never laugh when yowc opponent is playing out of a whin bush. Remember the saying of Lord Bacon: In calamitoso, risus etiam injuria — In misfortune, even to smile is to offend. "The best way to get out of a hazard is not to get into it. The game may be lost and won on the green, but if you are in too many bunkers on the way, you will never get to the green." Golf and life are alike; we spend half our time playing into traps and the other half in playing out to where we should have played in the first place — instead of the fourth. CHAPTER XIII RESTRAINT IN GOLF GOLF is a game which gives infinite patience and steadiness to those who really try to play it well. Beginners are apt to disregard these qualities, however, in a mistaken striving for record drives or in an effort to lower a score. There has been considerable warning of late against strenuousness in golf, and "Archibald Cleek" comments on the following newspaper clipping : What is believed to be a world's record drive was recorded by Herbert Strong, of the Inwood Club, in the open event of the thirteenth annual United North and South Golf championship at Pinehurst, North Carolina. With the wind back of him Strong made the first green on the No. 2 course, a distance of 408 yards. "Another instance of the imminent, increasing menace of ever-lengthening distance in our golf! Where is the thing to stop ? Since the noble and uplifting game began to be played in this country, less than a score of years ago, what a tremendous expansion has it undergone! In those primitive days the man who could actually drive a ball two hundred yards was looked up to as a demigod of the links. We copied not only his style and his clubs, but his very walk; tried even to think like him, if so by any happy chance we too might be able some day to drive two hundred yards — 162 ' PRO AND CON OF GOLF ^ 163 or at least a fine, splendid, accurately measured hundred and eighty. "Golf to-day is as different from that primitive pastime as a smart, six-cylinder touring car is different from the ancient, creeping pony phaeton reported by truthful travelers to exist still in the purlieus of Darkest England, where nothing ever changes. The old, clumsy, snake-headed drivers with necks crudely spliced and still more crudely wrapped have given place to the smart, whippy, well-balanced wooden clubs of to-day; the ancient shapeless irons — the cliimsy clubs of still more clumsy men — have been succeeded by graceful implements of shining steel as acctuate and efficient as surgeons' lancets and as beautiful as the swords of the daimios. Instead of the old solid gutta-percha ball (hard as the head of an i8-handicap man) we have a dainty, intricate, marvelously balanced concoction of finest Para core, wound with silky rubber threads, loaded with qmcksilver to make it run true in putting, and cased in a vulcanite shell whose uniform thickness does not vary by the shadow of a millimeter! "As a result we find the game growing steadily longer and longer. The ordinary duffer of to-day tops his ball from the tee and walks out grumbling and cursing to its lie, a mere two hundred yards away — for, thanks to the abolition of cross- bunkers in favor of side-traps, there is nothing to head off such a slovenly shot. If he swings clean and true with his wooden clubs he gets from two hundred and twenty-five to two hundred 1 64 PRO AND CON OF GOLF and sixty yards every time. If he is a good man, like Herbert Strong in the news dispatch quoted above — not a champion, or even a runner-up, but a good man — he may lay his drive on the green foiir himdred and eight yards away. ■ "To what good? Is it all of golf to swipe a ball brobdingnagian distances? What of style? What of accuracy? Above all, where in this land of rapidly growing and congesting popiilation are we to find the room for this sort of golf? The price of beef to-day has soared so high that a good cut of prime roast is worth the ransom of a minor king. Why? Because the old open ranges whereon cattle by the myriads might roam as they willed and fatten on the sweet grasses free of cost have all been taken over, homesteaded, settled by farmers, and inclosed with impregnable wire fences. The free open range has followed the buffalo into the dim and shadowy past. The wide prairie has passed into history. Land is constantly growing in scarcity and in value. If we are going to drive golf balls four hundred and eight yards, then a hole one quarter of a mile long (four hundred and forty yards) will have to be reckoned a mere drive and a putt. A "long" hole will have to measure at least half a mile from tee to cup. The golf course of the near future must include twelve thousand yards of playing length instead of the six thousand of to-day. Where is the thing to end? "Moreover, are we to eliminate arm exercise from golf? Or, rather, do we wish to change the PRO AND CON OF GOLF 165 game from a full, hard swing once in every one hundred and eighty yards or less to a swing only once in four hundred yards or more ? In the good old days of the hard guttie ball the man who had worked his way around eighteen holes had taken a full morning's exercise. To-day that distance has become a mere stroll, punctuated at very rare intervals with a mild swing of the mighty club against the flighty ball. And consider the spirit of the game! When Strong drove that four-himdred-and-eight-yard green his troubles for that hole were over. How much more real golf he would have played if his splendid drive (as full of force and skill as the one we chronicle) had yielded him a mere two hundred yards, his brassie shot one hundred and eighty more, and he had still a pitch or run of twenty-eight yards to reach the hole! "We may safely take it as an axiom that the greater number of strokes absolutely needed in the game the greater the niimber of opporttmities are afforded for skill — or skill's sad opposite. And is it not worth while to have more shots on every hole? Are not the more frequent chances for physical exercise and the display of proficiency grateful to the golfer? Does he derive his chief joy in golf from studying problems, calculating chances, and executing shots — or from mere walking?" DON'T PRESS One of golf's lessons, says S. P. Jermain, is "Don't press." He goes on to say: 1 66 PRO AND CON OF GOLF "How often in golf we realize that we should heed this warning but do not — and lose the game. "Golf, like business, is a competition in which one needs to be alert, energetic, ambitious, and forceful, but not to do with feverish haste — not to press. . "All golfers know what it is to be three down with six to play. The next hole must be won — a half will not do — par four is imperative — bogey- five any one can do, and so the losing golfer presses his drive and tops it. Fear-driven, he attempts a miracle for his second, and lands in a bunker and finally takes seven for the hole, losing to a six. A fairly cool head and a five would have won and found him but two down with five to play and filled with hope instead of four down with practically certain defeat weighting heavily upon his sovil. He loses, whereas he could have won had he played his regular steady game, and returns to the clubhouse depressed by the sense of needless failure. "A business man said the other day: 'I must go a mile a minute this year. I must surpass myself, and show a big gain in increased business.' The reply was: 'Don't.' He had been going 'a mile a minute' for the year just closed and was 'all in.' A brainy, high-class man in his line, but perilously near the 'broken man' who is useless alike to the captain of industry and to himself. "Nature had nmg its bell upon the demon of overdoing which dominated his spirit. He had PRO AND CON OF GOLF 167 heard but was not heeding. He was pressing every shot, for he was three down with six to play, but can yet win, and grandly, if he plays within his powers — this game of business — normally and rationally. "Don't fear — don't press." OVERPLAYED Some time ago, while in England, it was brought to my attention that a prominent medical journal had suggested that on account of the nerve strain it causes, golf is not an ideal game for everybody, especially for people with few days or hours for recreation. The golfers immediately began to ridicule the medical journal, saying they would take more golf and less medicine. I do not care to go on record as advocating the playing of less golf. The participation of busi- ness men in golf is largely a matter for each individual to figure out. If a man is quite certain that he gets the maximum of recreation out of the game it would be difficult to figure how he can play too much. If, however, he makes golf hard work, he must endeavor to throw aside worry and care and try to take the game less seriously. Somewhere in my travels abroad I found an article by a critic which in apropos to this subject, He says: "But it is the excess of golf that is played on holidays that spoils everything in the case of the 12 i68 PRO AND CON OF GOLF man of a somewhat nervous temperament and who may not be as strong and beefy as the John Bull of the pictures. Too many of these people seem to think that as they have gone away for golf they should have as much of it as they can get, and accordingly play to excess. Three rounds! Three rounds! One of the reasons why some men play so much — as they put it to them- selves — is that they wish to improve their game, and they conceive that the holiday time is the best of all to accomplish that end. But experi- ence shows that very seldom indeed is a man's game improved at such a time; very frequently is it injured, and that through the excess. When so much of it is played weariness, though half- unconsciously, is induced, proper pains are not taken at every stroke, carelessness becomes con- stant; then, with deterioration, too many ex- periments are tried, and worst of all, that terrible and for the time being incurable disease of staleness sets in, and there is then an end to all happiness and enjoyment. There is no cure for staleness except complete abstention for a time. "It needs some strength of mind to carry out such a resolve, but he who severely limits his golf at holiday times enjoys it the more, and he and his health and his game are the better for it. A holiday system based on wise restrictions is a splendid thing. Men of long experience have tried many of them, and the best of all is this: Play two rounds on the first day of the week, one on the second, two again on the third, one on the PRO AND CON OF GOLF 169 fourth, two on the fifth, one on the sixth, and take a whole hoUday from the game on the seventh day. That is not too much nor too Httle. An- other point for remembrance is that on the days that are warm and long the old convention of one round before Ixmch and another afterward is not a good one for the best and most enjoyable employment of the day. Much better is it to play in the morning, rest pleasantly — sleep, per- chance — in the afternoon, and play again in the cool of the evening, when golf is the best of all — always provided your course is not laid out in a straight line from east to west, for playing full against a setting sun is a most tantalizing business. "The little truth that there was in the indict- ment against the game by the doctors' paper is that it is possible for some men, many of them, to have too much of it, when it becomes bad for the men and bad for their game, and holidays are rendered failures. There was a time when really good golf could be got only at the seaside or very far away from the great centers of work and business. That is no longer the case, and the situation is that the golf we are having all the time at home is hard and strenuous, demanding great ability and thought. The golfing holiday, then, might very well be made an easy one on a links where the holes are simple, and — remember- ing another scare that was made by a doctors' organ last year — I believe that there is as happy golf to be had up on the hills and in the lonely country places as on the margin of any sunny sea." lyo PRO AND CON OF GOLF PERCENTAGE IN GOLF George Stallings, the leader of the Boston Braves, who made such a marvelous record with a team that looked hopeless, says, "Get the per- centage," and he goes on to explain briefly how his team won success. " 'Get the Percentage' is our club slogan. I urge the men that no matter what the play is they should see that our club gets the best per- centage. For instance, if there is a runner on first base the batter should try to hit to right field, because there is less chance of doubling the man at second, and his prospects of getting two bases on the blow if the baU should happen to fall safe are greatly improved. "Another play we made very often last ^season, and which led several managers to allege that I was crazy, was to sacrifice, with a runner on first base and one out. This meant that it put a runner on second with two out, and nothing except a base hit would score him. But the move won four or five ball games for us last season, and four or five count for a lot if you are coming down the stretch in a tight race." Following the "Stalling idea," therefore, I ad- vise "Get the percentage in golf." For example, if the ball lies for a chance to get over or into a bunker on a long iron or wooden club shot, the player, knowing that with corresponding lies he has, four out of five times, landed in that blinker, or made a poor shot by reason of the mental hazard, the percentage play is to go short of the PRO AND CON OF GOLF 171 trouble, then take a longer approach, with still a chance at one putt or a sure two. Again, if the ball is in the rough, Ijang fairly- well, the desire is to take a wooden club for dis- tance. Unless one is an expert he knows that by far the larger number of these shots go wrong, and that one of the iron clubs is safer. But "I'll take a chance this time" is the subconscious thought. So the percentage is sacrificed. There is no real team work between the head and the play. Stallings is right. "Get the percentage" aroimd the entire course, and your whole game will improve. Golf calls for brains as well as for clubs. THE SECOND SHOT Harry Vardon had just made a splendid drive, his ball stopping about two hundred and seventy- five yards from the tee and about fifteen feet from the right-hand rough. His opponent, not so expert a player, went straight down the course for two hundred yards. Mr. Blank, after saying that his thought was to go straight down the center as far as possible, asked Vardon, as they started after their balls, what thought was uppermost in his mind when he made that shot. Vardon responded: "My only thought was my second shot for the green. I happened to get it right that time." How many of us play for the second, or next shot, intelligently? 172 PRO AND CON OF GOLF A LEGEND "There was a valley, where the people had been for a long time very much depressed. They had poor crops, much illness, and many mis- fortunes which make for worry. This extended for over aperiod of years. Even hope was dead. "Suddenly to the most discouraged there came some fairies who said that on a given afternoon, to those who wished to assemble in a chosen field, a great golden ball, hung by a silver cord, would descend from the heavens. All who touched the golden disk would forever after have good health, happiness, and prosperity. "As may be imagined, all the people, whether well or ill, assembled in the great open place. Sure enough, at the stated time the beautiful golden disk was seen to descend. To those in the outskirts of the great assemblage it finally appeared low enough for any one to touch, but as with many really good things in life, it proved elusive even to those who were close to it. The tallest among the number could not reach it. "They struggled and crowded all afternoon. When it was near to twilight, and many were worn out, an old seer suggested that as none seemed able to touch the ball, why not take a little child out of its father's arms and, by form- ing a human pyramid, force it on their shoul- ders as high as possible? Perhaps the child could touch the disk, and it at least would have this coveted happiness and good cheer as long as it lived. PRO AND CON OF GOLF 173 "No sooner said than done. The child was lifted high into the heavens. All were glad to help, and they joined in the human pyramid. And, as the tiny fingers touched the great disk, lo! a current, as though God-given, passed through the child, through those who held it, and on and out through the great multitude, even unto those who did not understand and were not actually touching. In the imselfish effort to help just one, the promised prosperity and good cheer descended to all. The place was called 'Peaceful Valley' forever after. "^ 1 The above is the one and only article in Pro and Con that does not contain a reference to the game of golf. If_, however, some golfer may read it, and the lesson find a little room in his mind and heart, the space we give will not be wasted. Some golf experts are those who can take an obscure subject and by explana- tion make it still more obscure. CHAPTER XIV GOLF AND HEALTH GOLF is considered synonymous with health. Thousands of persons depend on the game to maintain their physical well being, and golf plays a serious part in the lives of many former invaHds. Dr. Wilbur L. Smith says: "Golf is not a 'fad' but a healthful sport, and will continue to be so indefinitely, because it has a solid, hygienic foimdation, that makes for per- manency; getting out of poorly ventilated offices and off of hard floors to the nice, soft turf — a great reHef to weak and tired foot arches and ankles — into the fresh air and sunshine, exercising all of the muscles and especially those along the spine, all tend to arouse sluggish circulation of the blood and the forces of life, which is so often the cause of retarded activities of the stomach, Hver, and intestinal tract. "The largest percentage of golfers is recruited from the ranks of business and professional men — those who usually lead sedentary lives and suffer most from 'stomach trouble.' How frequently you will hear one of these remarks, upon reaching the golf course, ' What a relief it is to get out here ! ' and the fundamental reason for the truth of that fact is easily derpcnstrated. "Most of the players of the 'royal and ancient' are those who are confined in offices and are more 174 PRO AND CON OF GOLF 175 or less subjected to close ranges of vision. The brain centers that control vision and the func- tional activities of the body are in close proximity, and a succession of strains of vision, automati- cally or reflexly, disturb the centers that control the heart, stomach, liver, and other organs, and a subnormal action is the effect. A noted eye specialist, giving the reason for so much relief secured by 'brain workers' from a sea voyage, or a trip to the mountains, states that it was ' due to the beneficial effects of long ranges of vision' and not entirely to change of diet, water, and fresh air. "With the average golf course all of these conditions that make for good health are com- bined, and in addition a man may become so interested in a close match that the cares of busi- ness can be temporarily laid aside, and what could be more soothing to the tired brain of a banker, jurist, minister, or business man than to be relieved of such burdens, if only for an after- noon? It is by reason of these factors if no other that the writer is convinced that golf is a good, permanent, and healthful sport and should be promoted by municipalities providing public courses, which, no doubt, would be productive of developing the futiu^e generation of business and professional men to a better physical plane, and do for this class of yoimg men what the public playgrounds are doing for children. "Don't overdo golf, and if you cannot stand the direct rays of the sun, be careful. 'Let not 176 PRO AND CON OF GOLF your zeal outride your judgment,' is a good pro- verb to follow — and when you begin to feel tired Nature is telling you to beware, and Nature is a good judge." DR. ELIOT ON ATHLETICS Dr. Eliot told the Harvard freshmen one day that golf was a game of benefit to mankind. "With the object of preserving a sound mind in a sound body, look ahead with regard to athletic sports," said Dr. Eliot. "It may make some difference to you in the next four years, perhaps, if you look ahead with regard to athletic sports. Under modem stresses athletic sports are an indispensable part of yoimg life, and, indeed, of sound national life. One of the most serious aspects of China at the present moment is the absence there of all the sports we call 'athletic' Neither the educated nor the imedu- cated Chinese have athletic sports in the open air. All their sports are of a gambling nature. They are sedentary or quiet games of chance. That is a national misfortime on an immense scale. "By looking ahead in regard to athletic sports I mean give preference to those sports that last, and that you can pursue at thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, and, I am beginning to hope, at eighty years of age. You know what the lasting sports are — walking, golf, rowing, sailing a boat, tennis — any sport which can be pursued by the average individual all through life. PRO AND CON OF GOLF 177 "Lord Bacon says that riding horseback is the best recreation for men who use their brains. The sports that an individual can pursue all through his life are the best ones to learn in youth. The wise choice involves looking ahead." KEEPING YOUNG GoK as a preventive of old age is prescribed by Dr. Aumont, himself an ardent golfer, and at one You can recognize 'em anywhere — even in citizens' clothes 178 PRO AND CON OF GOLF time a champion fencer. In a volume dedicated to Parisian society he asserts that it is quite unnecessary to grow old. Englishmen have solved the problem of keeping young by means of outdoor games, and if the gens du monde in France wish to preserve their youth, they should take to golf. "As a rule, when a Frenchman approaches fifty his doctor warns him to leave off alcohol, wine, and tobacco. He must also avoid fish and eat the smallest quantity of meat, and must banish pastry and coffee. He is also recom- mended to get up at six o'clock, walk at least two and a half miles a day, be douched and mas- saged after, and go to bed at nine. "This cheerless regime is condemned by Dr. Aumont, who in its place advocates as a sovereign remedy for gout, rheumatics, and kindred ail- ments the health-giving pastime of golf. It is good for the young and middle-aged of both sexes, and adapts itself to all constitutions and temperaments. It exercises all the limbs in a moderate manner, and deserves to be given the first place among commonsense and really hygi- enic sports. The doctor's credo may be summed up in these words : ' If you would keep young, do not diet yourself, but eat and drink moderately, sleep seven hours, and play golf.'" BASEBALL AND GOLF Heine Zimmerman, of the Cubs National League baseball team, recently the leading PRO AND CON OF GOLF 179 batter, says practice on the links puts him in good physical trim and helps his batting eye. In a recent article he said: "Give me three weeks' time, any spring, on a golf links, and I '11 be ready for the big bell in April. That line may be misleading to the average fan who thinks a baseball player must jirmp right in after a winter of idleness and start training just as a jockey, boxer, or Marathon runner. Some plaj^ers do require this sort of preliminary conditioning. I don't. "To my way of thinking golf is a great exercise for strengthening the legs and arms and for sharpening the batting eye. Much as I like baseball, I'm always right at home whenever I'm given the freedom of a links, for it was as a caddie at the Westchester Golf Club, ten years ago, that I learned the game. I really believe the experience and training I had from daily practice with the clubs owned by wealthy members played a prominent part in fitting me for big- league hitting. "Travis, Vardon, and Brokaw were frequent visitors to the Hnks when I was employed there, and I carried the clubs on several occasions for Mr. Travis when he was engaged in championship matches. Every day I would study his style of golfing, and at the first opportunity, while waiting for a job, I'd sneak out on the greens and practice driving and approaching iron shots and putts. I remember one tournament in which the caddies of Westchester, of which I later was i8o PRO AND CON OF GOLF given the commanding position, held a special tournament with the boys from the Van Cortlandt links. We gave them an unmerciful trimming. I think I hit about .457 in that tournament. "On my team I had about all the members of our family that could consistently get away from home. There was Will, who played second base this season for Frankfort of the Blue Grass League; Arthur, a semiprofessional about New York, and two other brothers, Gus and George. Take it from me we gave the Van Cortlandt lads a swell lacing. All my brothers, including two more, Paul and Rudolph, are plumbers by trade, and I worked that line for two years. "I noticed one thing in particular, that the more I played golf the stronger my arms and shoulders grew, and I acquired an easy, free swing, something that later helped me a whole lot while batting. Any one who has failed three or four times in his first effort at the tee will tell you that it takes keen eyesight to strike the little white ball properly and with the force necessary to drive it a long distance. That part of the game was my middle name, and I got to be a whale of a hitter once I found the proper gauge. So in this respect the game is beneficial and a lot of assistance in toning up the batting eyes. "The long hikes taken daily by the enthusiastic golfer, who never tires even though he plays three or four matches a day, are bound to strengthen the legs and send the player home with a ravenous appetite. Believe me, golf isn't the old ladies' PRO AND CON OF GOLF iSl game that it is generally considered to be by folks who never indulge in it. "Four trips a day used to be my speed, lugging six or seven golf bags, an approximate weight of fifty-five potmds. For that I usually was paid a dollar and a half, or sometimes two dollars and a half, according to the liberality of my clients. For two years I was an ordinary, able caddie, then I drew a promotion and was made head caddie. The next two years I taught green players and charged one dollar a lesson, oftentimes making as high as forty dollars a week. My side line consisted of superintending a boathouse, where I rented rowboats to folks who wanted exercise on the Bronx creek. "The caddies had several bloody ball games, the kind of games in which we would choose sides, and I soon drifted to the Bronx Athletics, one of the strong semiprofessional clubs of New York. Later I joined the Riverlawn Baseball Club and also picked up a lot of easy money playing the infield for the Cedars. One summer when the Fordham College team went to Red Hook, New York, for a series of games I decided to accompany them, and it was while a member of that club that I was sighted by Jim Robinson and sent to the Wilkesbarre Club of the New York State League. "Only two and one-half years before I was doing a trick as caddie at the Westchester club. My first season with Wilkesbarre was a howling success. At least I thought so, for I batted .340, i82 PRO AND CON OF GOLF and after one year in the minors was recoih- mended by Johnny Evers and sold to the Chicago Cubs. "Now I would n't have the nerve to come out flatfooted and say that any ball player who can hit ought to make a good golfer, or that a cracker- jack golfer, such as 'Chick' Evans, Harold Hilton, Jerome Travers, Walter Travis, or Paul Himter would be equally at home swinging at the pitching of Nap Rucker, Christy Mathewson, Ed Walsh, or Walter Johnson." A girl can't throw a golf ball straight, but that is no reason why she should n't have an aim in life. CHAPTER XV ROCKEFELLER AND GOLF Who says I'm old? I'm twenty to-day. WHO shall say that this may not have been the Httle refrain that ran through the head of John D. Rockefeller when on a recent birthday the Standard Oil magnate played the best game of golf of his career on the links at Pocantico Hills, traversing the nine-hole links in forty-three? The performance was considered of such impor- tance — because the keen devotee of the game had taken care to tell his interviewers that he had accomplished a better round than he had ever made, either in summer or winter — that it was sent broadcast through the medium of the press reports not only in the United States but abroad. With his face aglow with good spirits — he constantly taps the fountain of bonhomie when permitted to play a game of golf — the septua- genarian came in from his round on his own Hnks, accepting, like a child who had succeeded in flying a kite, the congratulations of those who were enjoying the hospitality of the links. Then he declared that it seemed to him he was growing younger rather than older. "You know, I have been a keen devotee of this game for several years," Mr. Rockefeller 183 13 1 84 PRO AND CON OF GOLF said to a friend, "and I think that golf and outdoor life in the automobile have made me many years younger than I otherwise might have been." Many will recall the thrills that were expe- rienced several years ago when, upon the occasion of Mr. John D. Rockefeller's birthday anni- versary, he trudged around behind D. E. Sawyer of the Wheaton Golf Club, one of the best expo- nents of the game I have ever seen, and Walter J. Travis, the "Grand Old Man of Golf" (and not so old at that) , in their respective matches at the Euclid Club's links, near Cleveland. During the first match round of the National Golf Association amateur championship the oil mag- nate descanted upon the game of golf and what it had done for his health. As I recall it, Mr. Rockefeller expressed a desire to become acquainted with Mr. Sawyer. "His eye is bright and he looks hke a mighty clever golfer," said Mr. Rockefeller. Then, upon being introduced, Mr. Rockefeller felt of Mr. Sawyer's sinewy arm and laughingly remarked, "I think that arm might help to outdrive me." Still, Mr. Rockefeller at that time weighed close to one himdred and eighty pounds and confessed that he had been able to average more than one hundred and seventy yards on his drives. "Play plenty of golf — be out in the open every hour you can spare on the links," was one of the oil king's remarks that day. His epigrams and PRO AND CON OF GOLF 185 maxims were taken down by a score or more of eager newspaper men anxious to punctuate their stories of the Rockefeller birthday with matters of interest. Despite the heat and the dust that day, Mr. Rockefeller insisted upon trudging after certain matches. He had to divest himself of his coat, and he carried it as handily over his arm as the reporters who accompanied him carried theirs. Did some of the newspaper men long for the shade of the grill room at the club, with a tall glass of some ice-cold drink on the table before them ? I think they did. But they did not dare lose track of Mr. Rockefeller for an instant. He was good "copy" that day. They grinned, bore up with the heat and dust, and were ashamed to let it be known that a man sixty-eight years young could climb the slippery, sim-baked grades and traverse the scorched fair-greens — ttimed brown, most of them — without wilting his collar or losing his equanimity. Mr. Rockefeller took good care of his trousers — had them rolled up by a Chicago newspaper man who was cour- teous enough to keep him from bending over — and good naturedly remarked that if the dust spoiled his stockings he could get a new pair when he got home. There was considerable improvement work being done in the neighborhood of the Euclid links at the time, and a railroad grade was being run right through a portion of the course. It formed an interesting hazard, for it was liberally 1 86 PRO AND CON OF GOLF supplied with crushed limestone and broken stone not unlike that used extensively as a roadbed dressing for the great trunk lines. Mr, Travis sent his ball right into a network of steel rails and ties, and while he was studying how to play out without breaking his dub, Mr. Rocke- feller from his place of vantage on the side of the right of way cautioned his friends to remain silent. "I like to see a great wizard of the game of golf like Mr. Travis study out a shot that would be too much of a puzzle for me," he said. After the Garden City veteran had played out without breaking his mashie, Mr. Rockefeller led the applause, clapping his hands for two minutes. Let those who wish, criticize Mr. Rockefeller; others may praise him. His love for the good old game of golf and the spirit of enthusiasm he has shown when climbing over the hills, watching a good or a bad shot, indicate a kindred spirit cer- tainly with all golfers, and also with all human kind. And may it not be possible that the kindly thought for many in the splendid gifts to uni- versities, hospitals, and other charities found their birth in his great brain out on the golf links, under the clear sky in Nature's own hall of the universe, perhaps while the little white ball, humming through space from his brassie, had gone so far and so wild that it was impossible to find it the same day? PRO AND CON OF GOLF 187 A GREAT PAIR Mr. Rockefeller has told a story of an experience he had with a caddie, and although the joke was on him, he laughed heartily in telling it. One morning Mr. Rockefeller's regular caddie was ill and he sent a substitute. Just to have fim with the boy, Mr. Rockefeller asked him how to make a stroke, in what direction to drive, and similar questions. The boy was eager to instruct, and Mr. Rockefeller made a fine drive. Again the boy pointed the way, and Mr. Rocke- feller made a clean drive to the green. As the caddie saw the ball roll on the green, he turned to Mr. Rockefeller and said: "Say, Mister, if you had my brains and I had your strength, what a great pair we would make." Some money is accumulated at too great a loss, by those who do not play golf. CHAPTER XVI WHAT CONSTITUTES A REAL GOLFER A GOLFER'S conduct on the field has much to do with his own success as well as the well-being of his club. It takes many to make a good club, and the real golfer is one who respects that rule. The following paragraphs are from a small pamphlet of advice on "What Constitutes a Real Golfer": "A real golfer is a gentleman, and only a gen- tleman can become a real golfer. "The real golfer replaces all divots. He has the interest of the entire membership at heart. He is the first one to invoke the rules against himself. He gives rather than takes. He never forces his opponent to the embarrassment of calling his attention to a violation of the rules. "When he loses a ball he immediately signals the match following to pass through — and really allows them to pass through and out of range before he resimies play. "The golf player who is not a real golfer is the one who never signals the players behind to pass through, or who finds his ball after the match following has started to go through, and then resumes play, much to the congestion of the course, and the discomfiture of the players pass- ing through. "The real golfer never figures up his score on PRO AND CON OF GOLF 189 the putting-green. He moves off immediately after holing out. He never takes practice shots when players following are waiting. He always gives way to the match behind when it is apparent that the match following is being held back. "He never stands close to or directly behind the ball, nor moves nor talks when a player is making a stroke. On the putting-green he does not stand beyond the hole in the line of a player's stroke. "The real golfer, likewise, allows the player, who has the honor, to play before teeing his own ball. He does not play from the tee until the party in front have played their second strokes and are out of range, nor does he play up to the putting-green imtil the party in front have holed out and moved away. "He replaces and presses down the turf he may have cut or displaced; he carefully fills up all holes made by himself in a bunker, and he sees to it that his caddie does not injure the holes by standing close to them when the ground is soft. "When he incurs a penalty stroke he intimates the fact to his opponent as soon as possible. "The real golfer will do anything to help relieve •the congestion of the course. He will keep up with the match ahead or give way to the match behind. If the match ahead is not keeping its place, and is holding him back and causing him to hold back others, he will politely call the attention of the match ahead to this fact and request permission to go through. I go PRO AND CON OF GOLF "The real golfer never resents having his atten- tion called to the fact that he is not holding his place on the course. Neither does he resent being requested to allow a match to go through either for this reason, or because of a lost ball. He will anticipate the request and insist that the match pass through. "After all, the real golfer is just a gentleman who has the greatest consideration for his fellow- players." THE EDUCATION OF A GOLFER Education will play a big part in perfecting the beginner in the game of golf. On this subject Eleanor E. Helme, recent English internation- alist, has to say: "Education sounds a dry word by which to describe the himdred and one happenings more or less pleasurable whose combined influence turn out the finished golfer, but at least it is a wide term in these days, and so well applicable to a process which should be never-ending in a golfing career. For at golf, as at things more vital, textbooks, teachers, and an early start upon the right road are all very desirable and necessary, but the real learning begins when such foundations have been laid and done with. "Having learned to go 'slow back and keep the eye on the ball ' ; to hit that same refractory rub- ber-core with something approaching regularity not far from the center of the club; to get over any reasonable carry not exceeding one hundred PRO AND CON OF GOLF 191 and forty yards; to hole at least ninety per cent of the yard putts; to keep a serene face under victory or defeat — the golfer who has accom- plished this has gone a certain distance in the right direction. Incidentally she will probably have reduced her handicap well down into single figures, and acquired a very fair working knowl- edge of the game, but these rudiments are merely the reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic of golf, and the tug-of-war comes when something further must be added to put life into the technique and stamina into that life. "Probably the first branch of the higher educa- tion to be attacked shotild be the problem pre- sented by a small portion of cardboard and pencil slipped into the pocket for the express purpose of recording every shot, good, bad, or indifferent, perpetrated by the player. Not that medal win- ning need be the ultimate goal; many an erratic scorer finds consolation in the reflection that, after all, the internationals and championship are match play affairs. But because nothing except the unrelenting record in black and white brings home to the player how many mistakes she has made, even though a few clean drives and crisp iron shots have given a general impression of good play. To realize shortcomings is the first step toward working their remedy, and a card and pencil once or twice a week act as a wondrous tonic to the golfing system, particularly by reason of their insistence on the value of averaging two putts or less on each green. 192 PRO AND CON OF GOLF "Then comes a period when team or foursome play is the best education, giving pause to the A study in youthful strength and form most thoughtless of slashers, teaching her to play steady, thoughtful golf, and to grow used to a sense of responsibility. It does not greatly matter what the event may be, once the element of playing for a side is present, the sobering in- fluence begins to work its beneficial way. With PRO AND CON OF GOLF 193 team matches come visits to other courses, and a resultant abiHty to judge strange distances and to acquire fresh shots; then, too, perhaps there are encounters with or against the best players for the first time, and the stimulus consequent on a wish to imitate their game. "Next comes the inclusion in the coimty team, and then at last the first championship, with all its hopes, disappointments, enthusiasm, and excitement. Perhaps a veil will need to be drawn over personal performances therein; it is a nervous occasion, and the debutante probably fails to do herself justice, but she learns many things — that the best even of the first-class players are ex- tremely human, and can make the most cardinal of errors, but that they have a power of recovery and of producing their supreme effort at the critical moment quite outside the calculations of the humble handicap player. The novice realizes, possibly for the first time, what wonders may be worked by a placid temperament and a deter- mination which refuses to acknowledge defeat, and how large a part of golf is mental rather than actual. Lastly, she inevitably learns that an accurate short game is worth all the hard hitting in the world. "Our learner goes home sadder and wiser, but she is a championship competitor now, the spell is upon her; by hook or by crook she will get her name on to that magic gray time sheet each suc- ceeding year, and as time goes by she may creep farther along it into the select band of 'last 194 PRO AND CON OF GOLF sixteen,' 'last eight' or even 'medallist.' There will be some relapses, a few falls, but she is on the high road, and the golfer of the right tem- perament learns by her mistakes. Opinions differ as to the most educational occurrence in golf. Perhaps the view is near the truth which asserts that there is nothing so bracing in effect as a sound and convincing defeat from an opponent of whom the player has taken little account. Certainly, it is a humiliating experience which pushes the struggler forcibly from the rung of the golfing ladder where she has temporarily come to rest. If she be young and optimistic the apt pupil sees to it that her next resting place is the rung above that which she has just vacated, no matter though the higher she goes the wider apart are the rungs set, for it is so much harder for the scratch player to improve than the player whose handicap runs to double figures. " However, when a player has attained a certain pitch, her golfing perceptions are quicker, and she gains inspiration from all manner of tri- fling occurrences. Textbooks and teachers have played their part ; now her best mentor is a faith- ful golfing diary compiled under the light of rigid self-examination when the round is over. A little knowledge is only dangerous if it sees no need of becoming more, and the golfer who is always on the lookout for crumbs of information and help will never lack for hints or interest from the most himible source. Even a twenty-four handicap may have some useful scrap of golfing philosophy PRO AND CON OF GOLF 195 to offer to her happier sister of the low handicap or scratch standard." "THE START AND THE FINISH" "There are several things to be considered in match play which influence us in regard to whether we are to adopt the course of a 'win- ning,' a ding-dong, or an up-hill game," says Stephen Armstrong in the Christian Science Monitor. "If your opponent in the first is one v/ho has the reputation of getting discouraged you naturally decide to get ahead as much as possible and make it a runaway match. If on the con- trary he is likely to make a brilliant finish you must play the steady game, watching for his special effort toward the end. " It is not often we get the same advice for two opposite courses, but in all golf games play as hard as you can from the start to the finish. This applies in a medal round, and doubly so in all kinds of match play where it is not so apparent to most people. Because So-and-So lost after being five up, nine times out of ten is not due to the fact that he wore himself out, but because he felt the game was won and slackened with the corresponding encouragement to his opponent to make a spurt and pull down the lead. This in turn alarmed So-and-So as it slipped away that he lost his head and threw away the match. What he should have done when five up was to make it six up as soon as possible. "To lose a match after having a big lead, or to 196 ' PRO AND CON OF GOLF come near losing it, as Hilton did, is a very trying experience, and if the latter happens in the mid- dle of a tournament one is very likely to lose in the next round to an inferior player. Remember, then, never slacken, especially when you have a big lead. ' "Two instances in championships proved this. On one occasion A was two up and had a four- inch putt for the match at the sixteenth. Care- lessness resulted in the ball not going down, and annoyance at such stupidity made A play wildly at the next, so that B was only one down going to the home hole. It needed a great deal of head work for A to get control to play the last hole well enough to get a half. It is a lesson not soon forgotten. "In another case one player was six up and eight to go and lost on the last green, through a brilliant streak of approaching and putting on the opponent's part, which made the player feel all was useless near the greens, unless the other was playing two more. This was the opposite fault to slackening and one qmte as fatal: pressing. You don't need to press when you play hard. Keep within your game but play as well as you can, and if you show no signs of slackening the chances are the expected spurt will never be made." THE RIGHT SPIRIT J. L. Low in The Golfers' Year Book says: "And after all, it is in the nature of a great game that a sharp crisis should occur and a thing PRO AND CON OP GOLF 197 be done once for all, either for good or evil. In life we may try to fix the penalties to suit the crimes, but in a game we must try to make our crimes evade the already fixed penalties. It is not for nothing that the pool balls have different values according to their color; nor does it escape the notice of the onlooker that the better players more frequently succeed when the greater risks are at stake. At cricket we sometimes see a master hand playing straight balls across the wicket ; he is taking big risks in order to reap rich gain. But this idea of doing away with the greatest risks seems to me to take much of the sport and bigness out of golf; in the old days what a hero the man was who went for 'the station master's garden'; to-day I try it myself unless the match is very nearly contested. Nerve and judgment should be good qualities in the golfer. How can they be better demonstrated than by asking him either to risk or avoid the greatest danger?" "I SHOULD WORRY" "Never give up a hole. Neither hole nor game is lost until it 's won, and there is much philosophy in the advice of the old Scots caddie: 'Gi'e up the hole, is it? Na! na! Wha' kens but yon man '11 drap doon deid before ye get to the hole ? ' "Never concede short putts. Remember that he gives twice who gives quickly, and that, con- ceding a half, you may be throwing away the (w)hole. igS PRO AND CON OP GOLF "Never be ashamed to return your card. A player once won a bogey competition with eighteen down. Everybody else had torn up his card." A GOLF LESSON Do not sulk, growl, or be envious when you see the old man go out to play golf. He has earned the right, if his professional or business organization is good. He is giving some one — perhaps you — an excel- lent opportunity to develop ability. Your cue, and that of others down the line, is to show him the organization can get along with- out him. Admit, if it cannot do so, the old man had better get another organization, or give up golf. If the former, there should be no bouquets pinned on any one, old man not excepted. A spray of spinach should take the place of roses. He knows the least who "knows it all.^' CHAPTER XVII RULES OF GOLF THE rules of golf are so numerous and varied that infringements even by the most expert players are common. Bernard Thomas con- tributes a series of articles to Ladies' Golf dealing with the common blunders in observance of the rules. He says: " It is safe to assert that not one golfer in ten could answer correctly a paper containing half a dozen elementary questions on the rules of golf. If a little qualifying examina- tion of this sort could be imposed on the com- petitors for monthly medals and sweeps before the spoils were handed over, then indeed would the poor secretary come into his own, for he would often be the sole surviA^or of the ordeal. The secretary is, of course, the only person who is expected to know the law; for is it not one of his duties to answer offhand all questions on the rules and thus save his members the trouble of reading them? "It is given to few of us to be scratch players, but there is no reason why we should not all acquire a sound knowledge of the rules and of the best traditions of the game. It is a mistake to suppose that great golfing ability necessarily implies a sound knowledge of the rules. The thoroughly incompetent player enjoys exceptional facilities for the study of the rules, and greater 199 14 200 PRO AND CON OF GOLF wisdom in the law is often found among long handicap players than among the elect, who by the dull monotony of their own good play miss that practical training in the law afforded to the weaker players by the vicissitudes they experience during an ordinary round of the course. The bad player learns the law in the stem school of experience; his daily roimd yields the nucleus of a splendid practice in golfing law. I speak of course not of the novice but of the seasoned long handicap player — the backbone of every club — the player who, month after month, swells the pool of the winners of competitions. As the late H. S. C. Everard wrote many years ago, 'It is a singular thing that there is no game known into which the tyro will more confidently plunge without the most elementary acquaintance with its laws than this very game of golf.' Un- doubtedly the laws are of some complexity and not to be taken in hand lightly or learned by a single reading, and it seems to me fitting and proper that a great game, played imder such an infinite variety of circimistances, should have laws that call for some serious study on the part of those who aspire to know that game. "One thing has always astonished me, and that is the simple, childlike faith with which so many players accept as authoritative whatever their club professional tells them with regard to the rules. It is hardly to be expected that the professional (much less the better informed caddie), when appealed to on some more or less PRO AND CON OF GOLF 201 abstruse point, is going to say that he doesn't know. Ever obliging, he answers by the 'pure light of reason,' and is generally hopelessly wrong. It does not seem to occur to a certain class of players to consult the rules of golf in their original language. The average professional, good fellow though he is, is by no means an authority on the rules of golf; indeed, he would be the last to make such a claim. Many professionals have not yet grasped the essential differences between the present code and that which was in force when some of them were small caddies. But it should be said for the professional that he but seldom has occasion to apply the rules that our legislators have foimd it necessary to make for dealing with the strange situations that arise during a round by the ordinary, foozling club player; he could n't play badly enough! " One of the pleasantest features of professional play is the complete absence of grumbles about 'hard times' and appeals of the 'what-can-I-do- here?' type. In fact, questions as to the rules simply don't arise in their sort of golf. If a professional is in a doubtful place he merely plays out of it as quickly as possible. He does not waste time arguing whether he can lift. Generally speaking, the professional plays the game in a better spirit than does the amateur, and so far as the professional is concerned the rules might well be condensed to that one beautiful underlying principle — the baU must be played wherever it lies." 202 PRO AND CON OF GOLF WINTER RULES In view of the fact that winter play in the north- em and eastern portions of the United States is becoming more and more a feature, would it not be wise to have local rules relating thereto in every club ? Where there are threesomes, foursomes, five- somes, and sixsomes that start out, a certain value would come in having the ordinary state- ment, "Let us play winter rules," somewhat defined. It is discovered during the match, or after the play is over, that some of the players were not playing according to the same rules. In other words, the rules were merely verbal, with no general understanding. For example, if it were understood in any given club that between the first of December and the first of April Balls lying in fair-green may be placed. Balls in the rough may not be placed, or, on the other hand, if desired, the rule might allow placing. BaUs in a bunker may be moved out of heel prints and depressions, but only quite near to the place where the ball stopped, and must not be teed unless the sand is frozen. A ball in water, snow, or ice in a bunker could be replaced to a dry spot in the bunker, on the same line of distance from the hole, or if there be no dry spot on that line, then to the nearest dry spot that would give a fair or flat lie and a stance. If the entire bunker be water, or wet and mushy sand, then, at the option of the player, the ball could be lifted back on fair-green for the loss of a stroke. PRO AND CON OF GOLF J03 A ball in a bad place at the angle of the sand and cop in a bunker, could only be moved to a better part of the same angle. The stance must not be improved, excepting the ball lying in water. Ball may be cleared of mud at any part of field or green, etc., etc. There is enough here to make the average player see the advantage of rules which may be applied during the winter. A slight deviation from rules tmder which all are playing for the first three or foiu* holes, until the matter were discovered and corrected, might make a considerable difference in the game. Sometimes one will go through an entire game without discovering that he has been at a disadvantage, or perhaps had the advantage in the play. No expense need be made in printing or mailing such niles unless it is profitable to do so. They might be typewritten and placed on the wall or board in some portion of the club most popular during the time selected as the "winter- rule period" on any given course. GOOD FORM Walter J. Travis has written an excellent article on "Departmental Ethics": "There are certain men whom it is hard to play against, not so much on account of their personality, although that at all times is indeed a big factor, but more largely by reason of their 204 PRO AND CON OF GOLF offending against the canons of, let us say, good form," Mr. Travis says. "Now we cannot but believe that most of these sins of commission, or omission, are committed unwittingly. "Some men are so constituted that it is difficult for them to enter into the feelings of their more finely-strung opponents, which usually means the latter's undoing, or at aU events, failture to do justice to their game. "There are, however, certain elementary rules of conduct which should always be observed, and any failure to live up to them ought to be visited with a penalty of loss of the hole, or certainly of a stroke. "Let us endeavor to put down a few of the more salient: "(i) The first and most important duty of a player toward his opponent is to obliterate himseh when the latter is preparing to, or making a stroke. By which we mean to say that the player should efface himself — put himself quite out of range of vision. This should be done, anticipatively. Don't wait to be asked. "(2) When your opponent is in possession of the teeing-ground, no matter whether you have driven or not, don't indulge in either preliminary or subsequent swings. "(3) When yotu" opponent is on the put- ting-green and it is his play, keep absolutely quiet. Don't walk up and down your line of putt, removing this or that impediment. Wait, considerately; your turn will come. PRO AND CON OP GOLF 205 "(4) If your opponent has a short putt, no matter whether it be for a win or a half, do or say nothing to indicate that you had intended con- ceding it but had changed your mind, suggesting the possibiUty of a miss. Either allow it or keep quiet. Never, in any circumstances, say, 'I'll have to ask you to putt that,' or ' I don't suppose you can miss it,' or, 'I 've seen shorter putts than that missed.' "(s) Refrain from remarks concerning your opponent's game generally, or of isolated shots, unless the latter be of exceptional merit, or very harshly treated. Keep all this, generally speak- ing, until the match is over. "(6) Never walk along or across your oppo- nent's line of putt, and try also to educate your caddie accordingly. "(7) If your opponent loses his ball, assist, with yotu" caddie, in its search; and if there be a 'gallery,' enlist their aid as well. " (8) Endeavor to make your shot without any unnecessary delay or fussiness. The really good players play quickly, and you are only handicap- ping yourself in burning up time. " (9) Never say anything to distract the mind of your opponent, as, for instance, when he has the honor on say a pond hole, ' It woiild be a crime to disttirb the placidity of that water's surface,' or remarks of kindred ilk. " (10) Don't walk ahead of your opponent before he has made his shot, nor allow your caddie to do so. 2o6 PRO AND CON OF GOLF "(ii) Try to be a good winner, or, more important still, a good loser. "Now all this concerns your relations toward yotir opponent. But never forget that ' there are others.' And you owe a duty, duties we shotild say, to them. To wit: "(a) Do not shout or give expression to any undue hilarity, as a result of any stroke. Remem- ber that this may disturb other players. "(b) If your match should lose a baU, signal the following match to go through. And when this is done do not play a single stroke tuitil they have holed out or are out of range, even if the ball be found immediately after signaling. " (c) While, imder the rules, a single has the right to go through a three- or four-ball match, it is not always considerate to exercise the privilege, especially on a crowded course and when the match ahead, a three- or four-baller, is keeping its place on the green. " (d) If you are engaged in any kind of match, and are hopelessly out of it, pick up your ball. " (e) If your opponent gives up the hole do not waste time in holing out. " (/) Do not try and combine both match and medal play. "(g) In no circumstances, on a crowded course, should individual matches be played in a three- or four-baller. "(h) Individual medal play should be abso- lutely tabooed in three or four-ball matches. PRO AND CON OF GOLF 207 "(i) Never fail to fill up heelmarks or holes made by yourself in a bunker. " (;') Don't clamber out of a bimker up the face. It is imdignified; besides, it hurts the bunker. "Now, while we have not dwelt upon the recognized ' Etiquette of Golf ' which is printed in all books covering the rules, yet it must not be understood that we are not heartily in favor of their strict observance. We have rather en- deavored to touch upon those things which are not embraced in the regular code, which, nevertheless, are of vital importance. "As to your caddie, if he is a good one, encour- age him by a few words of commendation at the end of the round. If he is a poor one, don't 'bull3a"ag' him, but try to educate him to be a better one. Finally, never forget it is a gentle- man's game." INDOOR GOLF Indoor golf is rapidly becoming a most popular indoor sport. Not only is it a means of keeping members and guests, most of whom are golf players and golf lovers, interested, inasmuch as the game is played as near Hke the outdoor game as possible, but it enables players to practice and to keep their game up during the days when golf is impracticable on the Unks. It keeps players in good physical condition, as the exercise is rational. Good form also is held only by practice. Tourna- ments can be held and arrangements easily made with instructors for lessons. 2o8 PRO AND CON OF GOLF The complete outfit consists of a back canvas, which is divided into nine pockets, side and ceiling nets, a putting-green carpet, a driving board and standing mat, blackboard and eraser, and the necessary rule cards. The pockets are marked with different figures showing the length a ball is driven according to club used and the direction and strength of the shot played. The pockets in the center are marked a longer distance than the pockets to the right and left. It can be readily understood that a ball poorly hit with a tendency to either slice or pull will go to a side pocket and not as far as a straight, well-hit ball that will reach the center pockets. A space slightly larger than the size of the canvas is necessary within which to play the game. These canvases and nets are very easily installed. The game is played as follows: Suppose the first hole of your golf course is two hundred and eighty-five yards. The first player drives, and if he reaches the center pocket he has made a two-hundred-yard drive and has eighty-five yards to go. The bottom pocket to the left shows an eighty-five-yard mashie shot. If the player pitches into this pocket on his next shot, he is considered on the green and is entitled to a fifteen-foot putt for a three ; if, however, he plays into a pocket other than the one he is playing for, he would be over or short according to the distance marked on that pocket. He then pitches to any pocket, and whichever one he PRO AND CON OF GOLF 209 reaches is entitled to the putt marked. He is then putting for a four. If he holes out he is credited with a four, but if he misses and goes down on his next putt he gets a five. - You will understand that the shots are played almost as out of doors and with the same strength. The next player then proceeds to play the hole, and the scores are marked on the blackboard just as a score card is used in the outdoor game. Any golf course desired may be played. While the game may be arranged for private use, still there is an establishment in Chicago with five nets in operation. They are in constant use throughout the day and evening, to ac- commodate those who know the value. These are made up largely of business and professional men and also of many ladies of Chicago and vicinity. The managers give lessons each day to experi- enced players and also to novices. Also, there is a very interesting article known as golfers' putting disks. Many of these disks are in use all over the country. One or more may be placed on strips of carpet at irregular distances and a small putting course arranged in a very small space. COMMON COURTESY The following from the club book issued by the Lakewood Coimtry Club of Denver, Colorado, is valuable: "Conversation is the most useless feature of a game. The story of what you did and did not do 210 PRO AND CON OP GOLF has little or no interest for your competitor. Such relief as you may derive from it between shots may be tolerated, but it can be dispensed with, and if it proceeds so far as to take his atten- tion from his own game, it is odious and strains the limits- of friendship. Talking while another player is studying his shot is criminal, and any noise or movement on your part while he is in the act of putting deserves instant death. "As a matter of good sportsmanship, play yoitr ball as it lies unless you know there is a rule saying you can move in. "As a matter of justice to other members, please do not overpay your caddie. Every player knows the inevitable result of such a practice. Every good boy is satisfied with what he earns legitimately, and if you will give him praise when he deserves it you will do him more good than by overpa3ang him. A kind word hurts nobody. "Be fair with your caddie in the matter of criticizing his shortcomings. Caddies are chil- dren, as a rule, and should be treated as such. If you scold him, do so with a view to improving his work, not to relieve your own feelings. You can't expect him to keep his eye on the ball con- stantly in its flight into the unbeaten rough, when you can't keep your own eye on it while it stands still before you. "A round of golf is a test of character. You know a man pretty well after eighteen holes. " If you must tell your partner why you slipped PRO AND CON OF GOLF 211 up on a certain shot, hold it until you get to the nineteenth. What does he care? He has trou- bles of his own, and is trying manfully to contain them. "The most important period in golf is the first dozen rounds. Habits acquired then will stick to you as long as you play the game. Therefore, take lessons from the professional until you can copy his swing — get 'form.' After that it is all a matter of practice and the use of your intelligence. "A player who sees another violating the rules of play should remind him of it, and the player so reminded should accept the warning in a spirit of loyalty to fair sport, which demands that the rules be strictly enforced." SHARP PRACTICE ' ' The nursing of handicaps, the subtle improving of hes, the thousand and one little things that may be done out of an opponent's sight, are all in- cluded in the category of sharp practices. But there are other faults nearly as bad, such as feeling depressed on playing badly, complaints about one's opponent's luck and one's own ill luck, and too much 'swelled head' when some- thing good has been done, 'Swelled head' is, iinfortimately, rather a failing among young golfers, but it dies with more experience." GOLF DONT'S FOR THE DUFFER The following golf dont's are by "Niblicking," whose putts along the Hne of advice are straight for the hole. 212 PRO AND CON OF GOLF "Don't read the rules; they interfere with your judgment. "Don't improve your lie while your opponent is looking. "Don't ask a two-handicap man to play with you, and expect him to be pleased with yotir game. "Don't coiint a 'swing over'; it is not fair to your score. " Don't play a bad lie ; it might injure your club. "Don't talk for more than five minutes on the putting-green after you have holed out; it delays your game. "Don't fail to blame the Green Committee for all your bad shots, "Don't neglect to hustle those ahead; any delay is an injustice to those following you. "Don't call your golf sticks such an ordinary name as clubs; 'bats' is a much snappier one." IF YOU WIN Don't brag about it. Let yowc opponent down easy. Let him praise the splendid game you imdoubt- edly put up. If he doesn't do it, don't lose your interest in life. When You Lose Don't come in saying it was "the rottenest game" you ever played. It may be, but don't say it. If you must, say it inwardly, or retire to the seclusion of the near-by woods. Remember PRO AND CON OF GOLF 213 that if you say it was the "rottenest game you ever played," yoiu" statement is a reflection on your opponent's achievements if he won, and a double reflection if he lost. HANDICAPS In making up your game, be fair in the matter of handicaps. You will get along better and do better work. It will help your gam.e if you take a percentage the worst of it. At the same time, your splendid reputation as a generous good fellow will not suffer. Many games are won at the first tee, because there are those who do not wish to enter into a long argument regarding the handicap difference. Others, without serious thought, but in well intended spirit, realize the value of a winning finish, by fine negotiations on the train, or at the first tee. Ultimately this will be discounted because the game one puts up will be known. It is far better, therefore, to be generous, and not allow the desire, or habit, to grow of wanting to win every game. MATCHING CARDS Matching cards, although not playing together, is not to be commended, although it gives con- siderable pleasvue to many players. In matching cards the man whose conscience cuts perhaps too fine will insist on holeing out 214 PRO AND CON OF GOLF every putt, even though it be not more than six inches from the hole. Another man, equally upright and sincere, does not regard short putts a foot or eighteen inches as important, and may not hole his, or one of his opponents may knock the ball away, and say : ' ' We will give it to you. ' ' One can readily see, therefore, how imequal the contest is. The extra conscientious man is all very well in his way, but he soon becomes a bore to the other one, two, or three men he is playing with, for they have no such card matches and they desire to get on. Many times on a crowded golf course a four- some may be playing behind one just ahead. The players are detained imnecessarily. By observa- tion they find one of the preceding four is putting out every ball. The others are conceding strokes, lifting their balls, and starting off the green. The plan of matching cards therefore affects all the players following on a busy course. There are differences or agreements in the game, which, when opponents are together, can be determined, as to how they shall be construed. When not playing together, each construes for himself. It does not make for good golf. While there are special occasions when it is an unusual pleasure to match cards with some friend, whom you cannot play with, the habit should not be encouraged. PRO AND CON OF GOLF 215 Then, one ought to remember, there are many men with good clubable spirit who will not turn down a proffer of this kind at the first tee, but who wotild much prefer not to do it. HOW VIEWPOINTS DIFFER One beautiful afternoon at Palm Beach, about six o'clock in the evening, two sets of players were crossing each other near the sixteenth or seventeenth greens of the golf course. One said very enthusiastically, "Hello, Jim." "Hello, Harry," the other responded quietly. "Say, Jim, I suppose you have noticed what a beautifiil evening this is. Was there ever any- thing like it? Look at the western sky, and see the sun setting in that riot of color! Then note how it reflects its glory over the dark blue ocean on the eastern sky! Now look above, and note the very imusual gray-blue extending over the entire dome ! Again I ask you to view the beau- tiful oleander and hibiscus bushes, the flowers and palm trees in the distance, and also to re- gard the soft velvety tread given by Nature's own green tapestry you are walking on, and I ask you again, 3'ou, who have traveled so much, do you remember ever such another departing day, in any part of the world, like this? " Jim waited a moment; then he looked at the speaker and said, "How does your game stand?" ' ' I am three up and two to go. " With rather a sad expression, the response was : "Well, I thought you could see a blame sight 15 2i6 PRO AND CON OF GOLF more than I. I have had a tough game; I am two down and one to go." MAGNIFICENT DIRECTION The late King Edward of England was starting out to play a game. An old Scotch caddie or professional standing near was known to have some pleasant complimentary remark regarding every shot he saw. A bystander was sure he would have to say something about the Prince's first shot, regardless of how good the shot was. The Prince topped the ball slightly and it rolled four or five feet from the tee, straight toward the hole. "My! my!" said the old Scotchman, "that was magnificent direction." Confer, hut avoid rankling disputes. Remember that you may have your best friend among those who disagree with you. Men can disagree with their heads and agree in their hearts. CHAPTER XVIII HANDICAPS We are indebted to Mr. H. C. Fownes for the following information regarding the methods in vogue at Oakmont for determining handicaps for foursomes and four-ball matches. Mr. Fownes writes : "Our scale is designed entirely for foursomes. We found both in mixed foursomes and in men's foursomes that a scratch player when coupled with ^ handicap partner and given one half of the combined handicap of the two, almost invariably came in a winner. This you can readily under- stand. The scratch player got the benefit of his partner's handicap and did about three quarters of the playing. The scale for foursomes is based on a penalty graded in accordance with the difference in the handicap of the two partners. Where this difference is six to ten, five per cent is deducted from the total handicap and then the remainder is divided by two to establish the handicap for the pair; eleven to fifteen, the dis- count is ten per cent; sixteen to twenty, fifteen per cent; twenty-one to twenty-five, twenty per cent; twenty-six to thirty, twenty-five per cent; thirty-one to thirty-five, thirty-five per cent. These high figures, of course, apply only to the mixed foursomes and it does the work very accurately; for example, a scratch player coupled 217 2i8 PRO AND CON OF GOLF with a twenty-handicap partner woiild work out in this way: "The difference in handicap is 20 and the sum of the handicaps is 20 ; fifteen per cent from 20 leaves the total handicap of 17, and divided by 2 makes this pair 8>^, which is equal to 9. "I do not know of any way to handicap four- ball matches better than to allot each player his proper handicap and apply on all the holes wherever they come and figure the net scores. We have found in our observation that the old rule of three-quarters handicap for match play is not sufficient. We have demonstrated this beyond all question at Oakmont. We now allow seven eighths of the medal score handicap for match play and are not certain that this is sufficient. My private opinion is that a man entitled to say ten strokes over a scratch player will not win more than half his matches in playing against a scratch man if he is allowed his fiill ten strokes applied on the holes according to the club card scale." "BIRDS AND EAGLES" An interesting event in playing a foursome- ball match is to play for a small added prize. One of these is called "Birds and Eagles." If a player makes a hole in one imder bogey, he will have a credit from each of the other players. If he makes the hole in two under bogey, he will have a double credit from each of the other players. PRO AND CON OP GOLF 219 AMUSING GOLF CONTESTS A goat contest is a very popular golf event. Usually playing members or an invited few buy goat medals. The club itself awards a large bronze or gold goat medal. The ordinary medals usually have a goat on one side and the player's name on the other. They are not of gold unless the winner is the champion of the goat herd. Any player can challenge another for his goat, and the player who owns the great- est number of goat medals at the end of the season is the winner of the contest. Getting a man's goat is a very great event. Some- times a real goat is presented to the season's winner. Cross-country golf is playing from the tee of one hole to the green of another, taking the holes of the course in the best possible way. That is, suppose you play from the tee of number one to the green of number eight, and so on. Usually a course is laid out judiciously, mixing the tees and greens of different holes, and the result is an amusing contest. In a flag contest each player is given a small American flag. His handicap is arranged to bring him as near as possible to the eighteenth cup. If Mr. A has a handicap of twelve it is figured that with ninety-six strokes he ought to be able to complete the round. Then wherever his ninety-sixth stroke finishes he plants his flag, and the player wins whose flag is nearest the eighteenth cup. 220 PRO AND CON OF GOLF "Play out" SPORT FOR SPORT'S SAKE Brown (playing the last hole in the club tournament) : I ' ve a notion this confounded PRO AND CON OF GOLF 221 branch is rotten. But blamed if I 'm going to lose a stroke at this stage of the game. ALL NOT BROKEN A player was having a hard time one day, having broken two clubs, and at the moment found himself in a bad place in the fifteenth bunker. Turning to his caddie, who was an old man and knew very little about the game, he said: "I think I will quit the game entirely and go back to the clubhouse." The old caddie responded: "I wouldn't do that, sir, because you have five clubs here that have not been broken." WHAT IS YOUR HANDICAP? Two ladies are approaching the first tee. One was not a good player, nor was she acquainted with the terms of golf. The better player said : "By the way, what is your handicap?" The other, looking around cautiously, said : "Not so loud, please; here he comes!" Brag about the last three holes you played. You will then find that pride goeth before a fall, and the bumps are hard and rough. CHAPTER XIX THE CADDIE IN noting the impression players are likely to make on caddies, the following may be interesting : In the semi-finals in a tournament on the Chicago north shore a few years ago a friend of mine was playing with a well-known north-shore doctor. At the second tee my friend sliced his ball into the rough, the ball going nearly one himdred and seventy-five yards. When he reached the ball he found it beautifully teed for as nice a driver shot as he ever had. He looked at the ball with a suspicion that all was not as it should be, and remarked to the caddie, "You should not have placed the ball quite so high." The reply was, "That was the best place I could find." On further questioning, the caddie said the original lie was bad. My friend soon foimd that the caddie was comparatively new at the work. He drove the ball as it was, using the driver, and got a beautiful second. On coming up to the doctor he immediately explained the situation, telling him he was out of the tournament. In a cordial way, but without time for careful consideration, the doctor said to pay no attention to it. The friend insisted, and desired to retiun to the clubhouse. His opponent asked him not to do this, as he was anxious to 222 PRO AND CON OF GOLF 223 play a game any way, so they made the round and had a pleasant afternoon, but of course he did not feel the desire to win, nor did he wish to further embarrass his opponent by winning if he could. They did not report the boy to the club, agree- ing to say that the player had been disqualified and that he had at once reported the disqualifica- tion to his opponent, thereby giving him the game. The players did not desire to make it hard for the thoughtless caddie, but both gave him a lecture, which probably resulted in helping the boy all through his future service on the links. I sometimes think players should consider the impression yoting boys are likely to receive by the method of play, the conversation, and the attitude in trying ordeals of club members and friends. It is far more important to make an impression on the caddie for general all-round squareness and generosity in play, than to behave or talk unseemly, or to win a game through some trick, which might impress the boy one of two ways. The first might be to have him note how really small a big man — perhaps a man of good reputation — can be; or a second impression might be, "He won that game by a pretty good trick. I will try it myself when I get an opportimity." IMPROVEMENT OF CADDIES The members of a golf club in Chicago desire to find, as well as to show they appreciate, the 224 PRO AND CON OF GOLF good qualities of their caddies. They have under consideration for adoption a system of awards to consist of cash prizes to be distributed at or about Christmas time, according to the merit of each caddie. The system if adopted will comprise three classes. Classes one and two will be listed as good to fair caddies, according to attendance, courtesy, good behavior, personal appearance, and ability. They will receive marks for good, and marks for behavior not good, — smoking, drinking, discour- tesy, slovenly appearance, swearing, and poor caddie work. Caddies will be reduced or advanced according to marking. Class three will be termed "re- cruits." The prizes will go only to Classes one and two, so that any Class one or two caddie, falling into Class three, will forfeit his claim to a prize. This does not mean that a Class three boy is a poor caddie. It may mean he is new, without experience, or has temporarily drifted from the higher classification. All boys in Class three will receive merit marks when entitled to them. On a certain number of good marks they will be promoted to Class two. Boys in Class two will be promoted to Class one on their merits, in the same manner. A caddie who is in the first class, bringing in a given number of reports indicating fair or poor, shall, after adequate investigation to justify correctness, be lowered to the second or third PRO AND CON OF GOLF 225 class, according to the seriousness of the complaint. All caddies will receive a badge upon a deposit of twenty-five cents, which amoiint will be returned to them upon return of the badge. This charge is made merely to insure a proper care of the club's property, be the value a large or a small sum. Each badge shall be distinct, so the player will recognize the fact that he has a Class one, two, or three caddie. The chances are the members will help caddies of any class rather than feel injured by drawing a new caddie. The rate of pay will be different for each class — Class one naturally being the highest. WHY JOE TALBERT LOVES BOYS Joseph Talbert's consideration for caddies was often noted at the Chicago Golf Club. Perhaps we can find a reason for his kindness and under- standing of boys in a letter written to me by his cousin, Walter Talbert, telling of their child- hood days on the old cotton plantation in Mississippi, where, as barefoot boys, they spent so many happy days together. Many fine-grained men locate their later sympathy and solicitude for boys by memories of their own boyhood, memories only changed by condition and environment. "Joe and I would thtimp the big watermelons nearly ripe, in the patch by the side of a fine veg- etable garden. Near by t'here were chickens and the ducks, peafowls and the guineas, not to speak 226 PRO AND CON OP GOLF of the mocking birds, bluebirds, orioles, and we were always on the lookout for meddlesome hawks. "Our stubbed toes and sunburned backs re- ceived a real treat when we jumped into the cool swimming hole in the creek. Undressed, we used to climb to the big trees by the side of the cold flowing spring. The tree was entwined in the clutches of a grapevine that almost covered it, giving forth in season the most deHcious wild grapes ever grown. "An old gourd dipper hung on the inside of the springhouse, but we did not use it, because we would rather lie down flat and drink. That was our way. "We used to gather the fruits of a splendid old orchard; and often when there was no work or mischief to do we would climb up in the stable loft and take a nap in loose com fodder, sometimes to the 'pitter-patter' of the rain. "Worn out by romping and play, on bright simshiny days of summer we strolled over to the pasture, and in the shade of an old oak tree lay flat on our backs and looked at the clear blue skies, wondering what it could all mean, and chatter of what amazing things we'd do when we 'grew up.' " How we longed for the evenings to come when we were to ride old 'Jeff' and 'Becky' down to the pasture, to drive up the cows at milking time. "At 'cotton-picking time' we loved to gather the fleecy locks; then to the cotton ginnery where PRO AND CON OF GOLF 227 we would stand for hours and watch the singing darkies drive two double teams of mules around and around. The mules were hitched to great hickory beams, making the power to gin the cotton for baling. And the rare fun we had, playing in the piles of cotton seed, as the seashore children have in building sand houses. "I tell you, these memories are very dear to me, and I know they are to Joe."^ DOES IT PAY? Text of a report submitted to a recent meeting of the officers of a Chicago Golf Club, by the Chairman of the House Committee, who hap- pened to be the writer: "I desire to report on the caddie dinner given at the club house on Thanksgiving Eve. "In this connection permit me, however, to make the record of these dinners more complete by stating that the first dinner of this kind was given at the clubhouse by the writer on Thanks- giving Eve, a year ago. "There were one hundred and fifty boys present at the first dinner. Mr. Charles L. Allen and the writer represented the officers of the club. Among others than the caddies who were invited 1 Joseph T. Talbert is an ex-president of the Chicago Golf Club. A few years ago he was first vice-president of the Continental and Commercial National Bank of Chicago, and is now vice-president of the National City Bank, New York. At the time the letter was written, Mr. Talbert was very ill. Before his illness he was fond of entertaining many of his western golfing friends at clubs around New York, especially Garden City, Sleepy Hollow, and Wkyagyl. We are glad to say to his thousands of friends that at the time this book goes to press Mr. Talbert is steadily improving. 2 28 PRO AND CON OF GOLF and were present were Charles Evans, Jr., David Foulis and his father, Spencer Meister, Willie his then assistant, and William Griffin, editor of the Young American Golfer magazine. I think all agreed that the affair was a success. Encouraging results were noted during the past summer. "This year the club entertained one himdred and sixty-eight caddies. All but eight had cad- died not less than five times on our links during the summer. That was the rule in order to limit the invitations and make it differ from an open affair. The eight above referred to were caddies who had not caddied at all on our links, or if so, had caddied less than five times. However, some of the boys brought them along through a misunderstanding, and we let them in. "The dinner this time was given by the club and was well served by the manager and assist- ants. There was amusement in the nature of a ventriloquist and also a magician. The music was furnished in the main by our own victrola. We also arranged some songs. All joined in singing. Two of the yoimg fellows were able to lead. One little caddie, WilHe Frazer, about ten or eleven years of age, gave us a clog dance on the center dining table after the table coverings had been removed. It was so successful that arnid tremendous applause he had to give an encore. "At this dinner the officers of the club were PRO AND CON OF GOLF 229 represented by the president of the club, Mr. Gilbert E. Porter, and myself. We made short addresses, as did also Spencer Meister and David Foulis. The trend of the remarks sum- marized was along this line: " ' The members of the club had just one reason for giving this dinner for you boys. We wish you to know that attention to your work, poUteness, and good manners will always bring reward. Whether you continue in the employment of others or have others in your employ as you grow into manhood you will find this principle holds true. It is the boy who is attentive to his work and courteous to his superiors who is promoted to the important positions.' "Aside from the caddies, the same guests were invited this year and all were present with the exception of Charles Evans, Jr., who was out of town. On a motion of one of the lads, a rousing vote of thanks was extended to the club and all connected with the affair. "Complimentary telegrams from Judge E. H. Gary of the United States Steel Corporation, Charles Evans, Jr., and Jeff Adams were read. Judge Gary was a Wheaton boy. Jeff Adams was formerly one of our caddies, and is now an assistant professional at the links in French Lick, ' Indiana. "I desire to make this report for the records, as I can think of nothing that our club could do at so small a cost that would be more valuable. Of course I do not think that it makes new boys 230 PRO AND CON OF GOLF out of old, or that it is going to radically change every boy. Like other parts of life, advancement has its percentage features. There is such a large number of these bo3^s who understand and appreciate this attention that it must reflect itself in future attitude and action. "I also think that the little publicity given to the matter makes an influence for good throughout the entire community of Wheaton, Glen Ellyn, and the other surrounding towns, from which the boys come. "I am informed that the parents of the boys appreciate the attention that the club members thus give to their children. The reflective benefit from this is important. I cannot too highly commend the plan as a permanent feature of our club life. "To make the record more complete, permit me also to add that during the year we had some gymnasium apparatus installed on an unused portion of the club's property, to the east of the clubhouse. These are made of heavy iron pipe, in the shape of swings, ladders, and horizontal bars. "We had the old caddie house removed to this place, a covered platform attached, also lock- ers, so that the boys could keep their lunches there. The ground was cleared so that indoor- outdoor baseball could be played. The boys have arranged a few holes for putting. The improvement cost was small compared with results obtained. There will be little, if any, PRO AND CON OF GOLF 231 expense connected therewith in the future."^ ARE ALL GOLFERS AS MODEST? A shy young member of one of the principal golf clubs had been calling on "the sweetest girl in the world" for many moons. He had many opportimities, as her father's home was near the links, but being very bashful, his suit progressed slowly. Finally she decided it was up to her to start something, so the next time he called, she said: "I'll give you a kiss for that rose." He blushed, and the exchange was made. Then, taking his hat, he started to leave. "Where are you going?" she asked. "To the florist for more roses," he replied. THE UNCOMPLIMENTARY CADDIE Walter J. Travis, the expert amateur golf player, told this story to ex-President Taft as the best anecdote about golf he had ever heard: Old Mr. Brown had played the game for years with great assiduity and without any noticeable improvement in his performance. Employing the same caddie every afternoon, he fought the greens and hazards unrelentingly. The caddie, however, being discreet and always desirous of tips, never voiced his real opinion of Mr. Brown's game. One day a stranger came to the links and arranged to play a roimd with Mr. Brown. Mr. 1 This caddie report is given here for the chance encouragement there may be for other clubs to do likewise. 16 232 PRO AND CON OF GOLF Brown came over to his caddie and asked con- fidentially : "Bobbie, have you ever seen this gentleman play?" "Yes, sir," replied Bobbie. "How is his game?" "Rotten, sir; very rotten." "How much handicap can I give him?" asked Mr. Brown, as if seeking reliable information. "Sir," replied the caddie, "not a stroke; not a stroke." ^^^^ ^^^^ I>AT FELLER C!VRI\1EG:1E ^^^^ COULD Do WORSE 'N 6L1P ms BU& A IMEDftL!J -^feW M