A line o' gowf or two

Set up, electrotyped, and printed by the Vail-Ballou Co., Binghamton, N. Y.
Paper furnished by W. F. Etherington & Co., New York.
Bound by H. Wolff Estate, New York.

A man once said to me: “I consider the daily reading of B. L. T.’s column equal to a liberal education in English.” The thought immediately came to me that whatever it was necessary for B. L. T. to do he did well; and as his chief business in life was the writing of English he did that with an accuracy, a beauty and grace of expression at which the rest of us could only marvel. Of course, my attention was first called to him because of his interest in golf, and I began reading his column mainly to see what he might say about the game, but I ended by being interested in everything that he wrote about, and that often seemed to mean the whole universe.

I cannot remember exactly when I first met him, but I think that it was at one of the indoor golf schools where he was practicing, and we began discussing golf in a desultory sort of way. That part of my remembrance is hazy, however, but another meeting stands out with peculiar[x] vividness. We were at the Cliff Dwellers, and deaf and blind to the clamor and brilliancy about us we retired into a corner, and with the aid of a cane or an umbrella we worked out the golf swing segment by segment. It was his idea of the way to learn it. It showed his thoroughness, and it may be said truthfully that by the time the demonstration was over he had mastered the theory of the swing. It was then very apparent that he was fast yielding to the charms of the enchantress.

After that he and I played a good many games of golf together. It was a great pleasure for me and I hoped that he enjoyed it. We presented a marked contrast. He had learned his golf at a comparatively late age; it was a cerebral production, a good one, too, and like all such things it had improved with time. Had he lived longer I am sure that his game would have become a very fine one. Indeed I often thought that it had developed faster, considering the time he had been able to give to it, and certain physical limitations, than any game I had ever watched. His eyes had been long over-worked, and I do not think that during his early life he had given much time to athletics. These two things are a drawback, but in spite of them his game improved with surprising rapidity. On the other hand I had picked up my game when a small boy[xi] and it was largely imitative. I had fine eyesight and I had played every game that the “vacant lot” or the school playground permitted. When I reached years of reason I spent a great deal of time trying to find out why certain shots were played in certain ways. When the reasons were unearthed I frequently discarded the methods, having proved to my own satisfaction that other ways were easier, and based on a sounder theory.

Mr. Taylor may have thought at times that I was helping him with golf. I knew that he was helping me. Through his eyes I was often able to see the theory of the shot, and I confess that many of us imitative golfers work from a false foundation, and do not know why or how we play our shots, and that is the reason why, when the game that we learned without reason deserts us, we are unable to find the way back quickly. Mr. Taylor’s whole attitude towards the game and everything else in life impressed upon me the intrinsic value of sound methods. In a way he is linked in my mind with Edgewater, for he, Mr. MacDonald, and I played many games there, and they are things that we are very glad to remember.

The greatest compliment ever paid my game of golf I received from B. L. T. The text is not now before me, because like many another thing that I prized and preserved most carefully its[xii] exact sanctum is unknown, but he said, in that priceless column that daily intrigued me, and thousands of others, that he had gone out one day to play golf with me and to try to find out the secret of my golf swing. He declared that it was rhythm, and added: “The morning stars have nothing on Mr. Chick.”

I have received much of praise and of blame in my life, and I have tried to bear both philosophically, feeling often that one was just as far wrong as the other, but never before have the morning stars and I occupied a place, to my advantage, in the same sentence. It may have been hard on them, but as for me, I was thrilled to the depths of my being. It made me wonder, too, if B. L. T. (what a world of affection dwells in those initials, whether spoken or written!) was not right in this: That any art, however humble, and often it may be the humblest, must be rhythmic, a part, infinitesimal though it may be, in the great song that the morning stars sing; and whether it be the sweep of the artist’s brush, the measured beat of the poet’s song, the movement of a game, or dance, it answers to the universal swing.

B. L. T. had a mind that continually asked why. Therefore when he discovered at first hand the overwhelming difficulties of the putt, and the overwhelming ignorance of all golfers,[xiii] amateur or professional, concerning it, he put his mind to the task and evolved a new theory, or rather he decided that the billiard-player, not the golfer, was using the right method to get the ball into a sunken receptacle. “Keep your eye on the ball,” is a sacred, ancient golf law. Even the small boy, picking up his game when and where he can, learns it, and no one is more dogmatic than he in its promulgation. B. L. T. attacked us right here. He said, “Keep your eye on the hole and not on the ball.” Various matches were played to try out this theory, chiefly among newspaper men, I fancy, and I think that Mr. Taylor lost most of them, which may or may not have been conclusive, for it would have taken a longer time than had been given to weld a new theory solidly into one’s game. Ordinarily I should say, however, that Mr. Taylor should have beaten the other men.

I could not recommend looking at the hole, but I can say that the best putting I ever did was achieved by keeping my eye, not on the ball, but on a spot two or three inches in advance of it. But whether right or wrong, B. L. T.’s golf theories were always inspiring and they made a game with him a stimulating occasion that we were never willing to miss.

Our days with him upon the links were all too short. Without warning the news of his illness[xiv] crept about. “Threatened with pneumonia,” some one said, and before we realized the threat the end had come. Few men could have been so missed. Thousands had found his column a sort of daily bread, and mind and heart were hungry when he laid aside his pen. His golfing friends missed him with an aching sense of loss; they felt that something irreplaceable had gone from their lives. Now it is a pleasure to them to learn that Mrs. Taylor has prepared a carefully edited collection of all B. L. T.’s sayings and writings about golf. It is just such a record as we have wished vainly to have. In his own inimitable style a student of the game has told us about it, and in this little book, the fine fugitive things, the glancing wit, the keen flashes of human nature that illuminated all that he said or wrote, have been preserved. And we are very grateful.

STARTING KEATS TWO UP.

When Rome started to burn Nero turned to fiddling. Had there been a golf course nearby he likely would have golfed instead.

Lady giving order for a caddie at a Country club: “Please send me two small ones or one large one.”

Golf is a great game because it leads a man to self-restraint and poise. There is the case of the philosophical player at Glenview. After topping three new balls into the river he threw his midiron into the drink, pitched his bag of clubs after it, and then chased the caddie to the clubhouse.

The abolition of the stymie by the Western[2] Golf Association will be applauded by those golfers—or, rather, golf players—who delight in five and ten-cent syndicates. When a man has a jitney or a drive invested in a hole it is “unfair” to have his investment jeopardized by a stymie. Then again, the holes are too small. The W. G. A. might consider enlarging the cup to the diameter of a peck measure.

ON ADDRESSING THE BALL.

Some players accost the ball opprobriously, employing the adjective “pock-marked.” Others regard it dubiously, hopelessly, prayerfully, tremulously, disgustedly, resignedly. Still others eliminate the troublous sphere from their consciousness (it can be done), and swing through the spot where the Ding an sich would be if the consciousness had not refused to entertain the notion of its existence.

The best way to address the ball is neither fiercely nor dreamily, but quizzically; as one should say, “Well, well, little pest! And so you are going on a long journey. Take keer of yourself!” Bang!

THE BALLYROT STYLE.

“Pairsonally,” said Mr. Sandy McTosh, professional at Ballyrot—the word “personally” being a waggle with which every pro preludes a shot at the King’s English—“pairsonally, I punch the ba’, nae sweep it. I dinna use a besom in gowf, though ’tis useful in curling.” Pressed for an analysis of his perfect stroke, “Oh, ay,” said Mr. McTosh, and obligingly took up a driver. “I tak’ the club in ma hands, and raise it so; and then”—his face fairly radiated intelligence—“I gie the ba’ a guid skelpin’. Ay.” Nothing could be more transparent; and by adopting the Ballyrot style we expect to add at least a few more strokes to our score.

We were discussing the golf stream, and Leopat was reminded of a fisherman acquaintance, Bill Rice, who having recently begun golf, fancied that everybody was as interested as he. Seeing Dick Lang, another fisherman, go by, he called out: “I got six in bogey to-day.” “You’re a liar,” replied Dick. “There ain’t no such stream in the hull state.”

A medical adviser suggests chair-swinging for men who cannot golf. It has the disadvantage that it cannot be practised in the open, without attracting the attention of the idle curious. On[4] the other hand, it is not an expensive sport—a kitchen chair will last for years—and it is almost as interesting as indoor golf. Chair-swinging might also be recommended to those whose scores run over 100.

“The Essence of the Matter,” holds up as an exposition of the soundest technique we have encountered. Technique resides chiefly in the fingers, in golf as in piano playing. Its first use, and its last, is to enable the player to produce any desired effect with a minimum of effort. One man, without exertion, will drive a ball fifty yards farther than another man who delivers what seems to be a terrific blow. Mr. Percy Grainger will sail through a Tchaikowsky concerto at the conventional tempo, and yet, so impeccably smooth is his performance, he seems to be playing it much faster than you have ever heard it played before. Speed is necessary in golf; in piano playing an impression of speed suffices.

YOU NEVER CAN TELL.

It was Saturday afternoon, and a cup match was under way. We were standing near the first tee, smoking a cigar and watching one manifestation of the inefficiency of the human race. The weather was dry, and the course was noticeably in need of rain.

A friend ambled out, garbed for battle, but unaccompanied by implements or bag-bearer. “Aren’t you playing?” we queried. “I’m waiting for my opponent,” he replied. “He is taking a lesson from the professional.”

“Congratulations!” we exclaimed. “The match is as good as won. No man was ever able to hit a ball for a week after taking a lesson.”

Our friend smiled complacently, and we left him to his waiting triumph. A few hours later, when we encountered him again, the smile was on the other side of his countenance. “Jones trimmed me,” said he; “never knew him to play so well.”

“When a player puts four balls into a pond,” queries a reader, “would you call it playing golf or pool?”

WITHOUT WHICH NOT.

Of the instructing of dubs there is no end. Yet how little emphasis is placed on the sine qua non, the multum in parvo, the e pluribus unum! As Edmond Dantes observed, when he finished three up on his enemies, all human wisdom is contained in the five words, “Get back of the ball!”

HEWING TO THE LINE.

“THE ESSENCE OF THE MATTER.”

Mr. Hammond’s article in the world’s greatest golf magazine for September was interesting in more ways than two. The photograph of Ernest Jones shooting a 72 with only one leg to his name, and that a left, was an arc-light of illumination. One-legged golf is what we have all been hoping for. It does away with the problem of the shifting of weight from one pin to another; it eliminates the perplexities of stance; it prevents heaves and swayback; it precludes pivoting on the left great-toe (unless the player is a Mordkin); it reduces the game to its simplest terms, and leaves the pundits not a leg to stand on. Surgeon, get the saw! On to the operating room!

Mr. Hammond mentions Jones’ conviction that “the fingers are the essence of the matter.” They must be, since the cracks all have the game at their fingers’ ends.

THE QUINTESSENCE OF THE MATTER.

The Essence of the Matter having been definitely[7] exposed, suppose we consider the quintessence, “the perfect flower and efflorescence,” the Pythagorean ether, and this quintessence we esteem to be a “fine careless rapture.”

While we are praising golf, we will say still another thing for it. Its first rule contains the sum of human wisdom: “Keep your eye on the ball.”

Why, if putting is as simple a matter as it is cracked up to be—and it is even simpler—why practise it, as the doctors enjoin? Why not merely do it? Whatever genius may be in the fine arts, genius in the gentle art of putting is not infinite capacity for taking pains; it is possible to putt well and take no pains whatever. If a man must practise, let him practise the fine careless rapture of the singing thrush, for this includes confidence, relaxation and everything else that the doctors say should enter into the least complex of strokes. If anyone should not comprehend what is meant by this fine careless rapture, we might reply with Burke—or somebody—that we are not obliged to find him a comprehension.

Perhaps the next simplest thing to putting is rolling off a log. Prithee consider what would happen if a man practised that for an hour each[8] day, paying excessive care to the position of his hands and feet, the relaxing of his muscles, the eye fixed on the ground, and so forth! Eventually he would execute the roll-off in a self-conscious, constrained manner, and, if it were possible, he would miss the ground once out of five times. If he also practised following through he would stand an excellent chance of breaking his neck.

MAKING IT EASY FOR DEMOCRACY.

“I want,” writes Mr. Francine in the Golfer’s Magazine, in his prolegomena to a disquisition on form, “I want to take good golf out of the class of accomplishments that belong to gifted characters only, and pass it on to the common people.” Quelque want, nace-paw? Why pause here? Why not take poetry out of the class of accomplishments that belong to the gifted, and sometimes dissolute, characters only, and pass that on to the undeniably common people? It is a simple matter to tell a mute inglorious Milton what constitutes good poetry; all he needs then is pen and ink. The golf swing is simple, and so is the line—

Why should only a few gifted characters write stuff like that, and only a few other gifted ones[9] whale a golf ball a mile without slicing it to Helngon?

Medal play is certain to retain its popularity in a country the motto of which is “Safety First.”

Suggestion for the opening of an essay on putting by any celebrated professional: “At the outset I may commence by beginning to say that putting cannot be taught.”

AN ALL-AROUND LINKS.

You can sail, bathe, motor, play tennis or play golf on the finest nine-hole golf course in the South.

Speaking of democratizing the U. S. G. A. and making the game safe for democracy, an old lady accosted a man who was poking a ball along the edge of a public course. “What do you call that game?” she asked. “Dunno,” said the man. “This is the first time I ever played it.”

On the same course, a child was heard to announce: “I’m going to play golf, too, when I’m six years old.” “Here!” called a waiting and weary democrat, “take my clubs. You’ll be six years old when my number is called.”

RULES FOR PORCH GOLF.

Our interest is solicited by W. J. T. in behalf of the Porch Golfer, who burns up perfectos and works his elbow in a praiseworthy endeavor to reduce the floating debt of his club. Should he not be subject to rules, as is the regular golfer? As a starter, the following is suggested:

Rule I. “Keep your eye on the high-ball and swallow through.”

II.—Foursomes shall have precedence over twosomes. It costs no more to make four high-balls than to make two, and the club gets twice the revenue.

III.—When a player is carried out of bounds he shall not be permitted to put another ball into play.

IV.—A golfer soleing his face on the table shall be disqualified.

V.—A player holing his opponent’s ball shall be penalized one round.

VI.—Should a player, when addressing his ball, roll off the porch he may be replaced; penalty, one round.

VII.—In case of rain, snow, or darkness the player shall take the same.

OFFICE IN SUMMER.

WHOLE DUTY OF GOLFERS.

RAIN.

TRAVEL.

THE PRO.

PRAYERS.

HAPPY THOUGHT.

HOW TO TOP A MASHIE.

One of the prettiest shots in golf is the topped mashie. The ball flies low, like swallow on the river’s brim, and, crossing the green, comes to rest in the clean white sand of a deepish depression, vulgarly termed a trap. The majority of golfers execute this shot naturally, but not inevitably; now and then they get under the ball, which of course prevents a top, the result being an ordinary pitch. To make certain of a top, it is only necessary to have the left hand, at the moment of impact, a few inches in advance of where it was when the ball was addressed. This means that the pivot on which the club swings (the left wrist in a short shot, the left elbow in a long) is transferred to a point nearer the flag, and the lower edge of the clubhead, instead of connecting with the ball at 90 degrees south latitude, meets it anywhere from 35 to 45 degrees south. In the works of the golf masters, old and young, we have seen no reference to this advancing of the pivotal point in the swing, from which[14] omission we conjecture that the idea has not yet occurred to them.

Another pretty mashie shot is that which sends the ball well to the right of the green, where commonly there is some sort of hazard. The simplest way to bring this off is to pronate the left forearm. This facilitates cramping the down-swing and pushing the ball off to starboard.

There is no accounting for tastes, in love or golf. Many expert players use a mashie with a narrow face, whereas we prefer one with a square chin.

PEMMICANIZED GOLF.

In selecting a driver, choose a club that is neither too long nor too short. If too long, you must stand away from the ball; if too short, you must stand in to it.

Choose a shaft that has just the right amount of whip; a whippy shaft is not desirable, neither is one that is rigid.

The lie is important. Expert opinion is against a too flat lie, and the best authorities disapprove of the ultra-upright.

Be particular about the weight. A heavy driver is likely to be unwieldy, while one too light would not be wieldy enough.

The best plan is to have your professional measure you for a club. The ready-made ones soon bag at the knees.

THE METAPHYSICIANS.

Far—far as Arcturus—be it from us to dissipate the mist of theory that envelops the so-called royal and undeniably ancient game, or to diminish by one the methods of its madness. The more the merrier, as Noah remarked when he led the way to the Ark. The fairway is wide, and we had as soon knock a ball through it in one style as another; variety spices the journey, and wards off monotony. It is only when, approaching the green, we require accuracy in direction, that we dismiss theory and resort to the primitive expedient of striking the ball with the club-face at right angles to the line o’ flight—in other words, returning the club-face to the position it was in when the ball was addressed. The trick is so simple, when the mind is disburdened of all other consideration, that we are a little ashamed of the inevitable result; it is so much more interesting to try to reach the pin by the most complicated method, involving a nice consideration of stance and grip, division of labor between the hands, pronation, concentration, pausation, and what not. If every stroke in golf were reduced[16] to its lowest terms, what would the pundits do for an audience?

WHY.

“A DEEP STUDENT OF THE GAME.”

We have found on the links at Manchester, Vt., opportunity for uncommonly deep study. It took us three (ladder-steps) to get out of one pit. The caddie retrieved the ball.

“Romberg’s Sign,” says a medical writer, indicates locomotor ataxia; if, when the eyes are closed, the body sways several inches, we have a positive Romberg. On the other hand, if the eyes are open when the body sways, we have the average golfer. In either case, when the condition is advanced, “the body is likely to topple over.”

Pourquoi, indeed? He goeth forth at noon-time, chattering, laughing, overflowing with goodnature. He cometh in at eventide, sore, sullen, and silent, except for an occasional curse. Man that is born of woman is full of foolishness.

CONCERNING SPIN.

“There is no ball that will run more straightly to the hole than an ordinary putt,” deposes one pundit, meaning a ball to which no spin has been imparted. On the o. h., a physicist tells us that the cut ball will hold the tenor of its way more evenly than the uncut ball. The reason, we conjecture, is that the deflecting material on a green exhausts itself in opposing the spin on the ball, and so has little chance to interfere with its forward motion. One may ascertain in practice what line a ball will take, curved or straight, with any given spin, and he may then hew to that line[18] in full confidence that the spin will keep it in its course, whether the shot be a pitch or a putt.

“THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GOLF.”

We were smoking a pipe in the laboratory of Dr. Sike, the eminent student of the soul and less eminent golfer. All about us were queer looking instruments for measuring the mental processes of the so-called human race. We indicated one contraption and asked its use.

“You are nearer the mark than you think,” said the Doctor; and taking up a pencil he drew two perpendicular lines (as represented in Fig. 1). Then he added the oblique line, and pushed[19] the paper across the table. “Continue that line across the ditch,” he instructed.

We did so, and the result is indicated by the dark line in Fig. 2; the real line is the dotted one. The illusion is corrected by looking down the oblique line.

“Suppose that a fairway,” said he. “If a ditch or road cuts the line of play at that slant, the player should aim a bit to the left.”

“Unless the ditch runs northeast-southwest. Then he should hold to the right.”

We poked the ashes in our pipe with a deep contemplative forefinger, and remarked that the illusion would not seriously affect the play of the average golfer, but that it might mean the loss of a match to an accurate approacher like Mr. Chick Evans or ourself.

“But hold on,” we second-thoughted. “The player is not, as in this test, looking down the ditch, but down the line that crosses it. Wouldn’t that correct the illusion?”

“A slight illusion would remain, if the player established his line of play by looking along the ground, and if the ditch were wide enough to disclose two lines.”

“Otherwise the Poggendorff person contributed[20] nothing of permanent value to the psychology of golf.”

“Exactly so,” said Dr. Sike, and plunged into a revery. Presently he emerged. “Still,” said he, “the majority of shots would fly to the right.”

“How is it,” we asked Dr. Sike, as we passed the matches, “that after one has taken the line of his putt and transferred his attention to the ball, he still can view the line with ‘that inward eye which is the bliss of solitude’?”

“What an alibi!” we whatted. “A gentleman who blows a five-foot putt has only to remark to his partner: ‘Sorry. My eye-pull isn’t on straight to-day.’”

“Exactly so,” said Dr. Sike. “To some persons, like myself, the line of the putt is clearly defined, as a darker green in the grass; to others the line is not present, but these locate the target just as accurately. All this is quite apart from the visual imagery referred to in the Wordsworth poem. The eye——”

What followed was highly technical, and we regret that our memory failed to imprison the Doctor’s exact words; but we gathered that the eye is a mawxstrawnry organ, which can do everything[21] except talk. The technical explanation would, of course, be a-b-c to a reader like Max Behr, who looked in “A Critique of Pure Reason” for a definition of amateurism, and is now working on the Hegelian Hypothesis of Professionalism; but we fear the average reader would be puzzled by such phrases as “accommodation pull,” “convergence pull,” and “binocular disparity.” Therefore, to put it as simply as possible, we will say that when a man takes the line of his putt the muscles of his eyes set themselves, his head and neck muscles co-ordinate, and there is probably co-ordination in the semi-circular canals. The eye-pull once established, it remains after attention is transferred to the ball—how long we cannot say, but long enough to serve the purpose of all except those extremely deliberate persons who fall asleep over their putts. We should advise, therefore, putting as rapidly as is consistent with an unhurried stroke.

“Strange to say,” mused Dr. Sike, “although innumerable experiments in eye-pull have been made and recorded in laboratories, there has been no attempt to relate them to golf, which is the proper study of mankind.”

“But science is coming round,” said we. “The last two or three years have brought a great deal of speculation and research.”

“Yes, yes,” yessed the Doctor. “Even the[22] watchers of the skies are beginning to admit that Canopus, Aldebaran, and the Pleiad Seven are only exaggerations of a golf ball, which is the symbol of the universe.”

“Now, if we imagine amateurism as a great sea, and in the midst of it a little island....”—Mr. Behr, at the annual meeting.

Why, then, on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, at any country club, we can define an island. An island is a professional entirely surrounded by dubs.

“Did you ever take up the game?” we asked Arthur Whiting, the musician. “I took it up and put it down,” said he, and mentioned two shots that were memorable. The first was made with a driver, the pet club of the lady who was showing him how to wield it. The head broke off and wound itself around the lady’s neck. “And your second shot?” we inquired. “Ah,” said he, “the second shot—” An interruption at this point put the game out of his mind. It was undoubtedly a remarkable second shot.

SUNDAY SCHOOL FOR GOLFERS.

Sir: One member remarked that his wife had agreed to play with him in the afternoon if he would go to church in the morning. I’ve agreed[23] to play with my wife in the afternoon if she doesn’t make me go to church in the morning. Which bargain is best?

INTRODUCTORY.

Golfator. A fine morning, sir, as fresh as when this world was young. I mark you have a sack of golfing tools upon your back. Are you for the links thus early?

Scholar. Ay, sir, for I am resolved to learn this game, of which you spake so bravely yester-night, and rose betimes to buy these tools; and I do entreat you to instruct me in the art of striking the ball, that I may be well launched upon my adventure.

Golf. Well, sir, as for that I am at your pleasure, yet I am loath to launch any man upon so great a sea of troubles, but would persuade him rather to forego the hazard.

Schol. Nay, I am not to be persuaded, but am impatient to be at the business, and to strike a ball that it may fly to a great distance.

Golf. Marry, sir, consider well, there is yet time to withdraw. Have you a wife?

Golf. I am rejoiced, for what is your loss is some maid’s gain. A woman that has a golfer for husband might as profitably be wed to a sailor, or to an adventurer in polar lands. Haply you have a business that will suffer.

Schol. Not I, again. My worldly goods are all in stocks and bonds, and I have nought on my mind of greater import than the learning of this ingenious game. Let us then to the links, and be at it.

Golf. In good season, Scholar. I pledge you I am in no haste to watch your antics, and since you are but of a middle age there is great store of time before you. Come, let us sit beneath this tree, in the branches of which a robin is chirping, and we will speak further of the adventure to which you are committed.

First, you are to know that the chief end of golf, as I view it, is not to strike the ball with greater skill than your adversary, but to give strength to your character, and, if it be needed, to reform it. Patience and a good temper, courtesy and a pleasant speech, these be marks of the true golfer, yet are they virtues that one may[26] put on as a mask, whereas I would have you wear them honestly.

Golf. Clap then a hand to one of them, that my counsel may not escape you. You are to reflect, Scholar, that in tennis, or in a passage at foils, or in any other game of great movement, there is not the space of a moment in which to desire ill luck to your adversary, but this golf is a game of so great deliberation, that whilst you address the ball I may pray fervently that you top or founder it, or that you miss it entirely, and this I hold to be no true spirit.

Schol. Would you beseech heaven that your adversary strike the ball with greater cunning than yourself?

Golf. Marry, sir, I would hope that he struck it fairly, and that I struck it fairly in my turn, and that good fortune might attend us both.

Schol. Sir, I will endeavor to give such current to my thought. Shall we not seek the links now? I am impatient to have knowledge of this great game.

Golf. The which you will presently be as impatient to be rid of, and seeking to dispose of this sack of tools for a tenth of their cost. Marry, sir, when I reflect on the tribulations in store for you I could weep, as a mother regards[27] her female babe, and laments the ills that it is heir to. Here is as fine a morning as ever broke upon this world, with a sweet wind from the south, and birds calling from the greening boughs; yet must you mar your day and mine. But since there is no help for it, let us to your undoing.

THE FIRST HOLE.

Golf. As you will. For this first stroke I would have you assail the ball in any fashion that may please you; for it will be a great time hence when you please yourself again, before which day you shall be slave to this dogma and that, and a great grief to your friends.

Golf. Nay, bestride not the ball like the colossus which was at Rhodes, for in such stiff and ungraceful posture you cannot put hip and shoulder into the blow. There be many strange golfers that spread themselves in this fashion, and play with elbows, to the great detriment of the landscape, so that when I walk over the links I could wish for blinders, that horses wear. Let your feet be more neighborly, so, and have at it.

Golf. Well hit, Scholar; as true a ball as ever left wood, and as far as the most.

Schol. Why, sir, it was nought. I did but swing the club, and felt not the blow.

Golf. A brave shot, Scholar, which you shall have sweet remembrance of these many months to come. Marry, sir, if you take my advice you will rest content, and sell these tools of wood and iron, to your great peace of mind and the continued esteem of such friends as now you have.

Schol. Sir, I take not your meaning. Let us to the ball, that I may strike it again, for my impatience is not to be described.

Golf. Come, then; for compared with the task of staying you, it were a profitable employ to discourse to the deaf, or to show pictures to the blind. A sparrow, new come from the southland, sings for a mate in yonder maple tree, yet I warrant you hear him not. There are patches of springing green in the brown carpet of the links, yet this pleasing tapestry serves but as background for your ball. Here it lies, well up. Take now this other club of wood, the which is shod with brass, and whilst you fall upon the ball I do desire to look another way.

Golf. Nay, I did avert mine eyes the while you smote it; but this scarred turf will bear witness to the stroke. You are to observe that the[29] ball was pulled and foundered, and will be close at hand, methinks in yonder copse. Let us to it.

Golf. Cast it upon the turf and make further trial. And do you clap an eye on the ball the while you strike it, or fix your gaze on yonder flag; either, as it please you, so long as your head be at rest. Sir, I shall ever marvel why a golfer must cock his head up at every stroke, like a robin questing worms, for since the greater number of players top the ball, or fling it in any direction save the right one, you would conceive they would avoid to look up as long as might be, that they be spared sight of their woeful want of skill. Marry, sir, if I played as the majority I would close mine eyes with each stroke, and ask to be led as a blind man to the ball.

Schol. Sir, I will endeavor to abide by your counsel, and I pray you attend me. Now, sir!... Maledictions! Another ill stroke, yet I looked upon the ball.

Golf. Nay, my good Scholar, your head did come up with the jerk of the hanged ere the ball was struck. So little of concentration hath the average man that he cannot bring his mind to a focus for a few seconds; wherefore he avoids to read a serious book, or to attend a serious play, or to give ear to music which is other than a tinkle. I shall give you counsel in plenty, and[30] to some small part of it you will give attention, and thus you may curtail your apprenticeship a year; but the larger part of what I shall tell you will be wasted on these sparrows that flit about us, and for a great while you will go from bad to worse, as the saying is, pursuing this notion and another, and reading many books upon the matter, the which are writ by players that preach the one thing and practise the other, until there remain no fresh folly that you may commit. Truly, I would not pass through the travail which is before you for a great sum of money.

Schol. Sir, it is but a dismal prospect that you offer, yet am I resolved at all pains to learn this noble game; therefore I beg you to unlock the storehouse of your knowledge and set me in the right path.

Golf. That I will do, and gladly. But do you step aside a moment, for hither come two golfers that would play this hole.... Good morning, sirs. A fine, sweet day, is it not?

First Player. Sir, I should have made that last hole in five, but that a worm-cast marred my putt.

First Player. With pleasure, sir. Yesterday I did make this hole in four, and Saturday a week I was so fortunate as to get a three.

Golf. Say, rather, so skillful; and, sir, I am enraptured to learn of your cunning and would desire a much longer tale of it. Good morning, gentlemen.... And there, my honest Scholar, you may perceive yourself in the sorrowful days that are to come, a burden and a grief to your friends, to whom you must relate the ill luck that robbed you of a four at this hole, and the conspiracies of nature that prevented a five at that; for it is ever want of luck and not want of skill that addeth strokes to a score, and many a summer’s day that promised fair has been marred by a cuppy lie or ruined utterly by a worm-cast. Marry, sir, I had as lief listen to a play actor recounting his greatness as to a man besotted by this game of golf.

Golf. Nay, sir, you have done enough mischief with that tool. Put it in the sack and let us to a putting-green; for whoso would walk must begin by creeping, and much may be made of a golfer that is caught young.

THE SECOND HOLE.

Scholar. Well, Good Master, I have belabored the ball to no purpose and I entreat you, sir, to counsel me in the way of striking it, else I shall come to no understanding of the art.

Golfator. You are to know, Scholar, that concerning the Drive there is nought that is Rosicrucian, nor is it a thing to be approached with incantations, though there be many that give it an air of mystery and make of it a business of much weight and complication. Nor do we find among the wiseacres of the game more agreement than was brought to the building of the great tower in Babel, as is shown in the vast number of theories, the one contradicting the others, and all of them as owlish as you please.

Schol. I am rejoiced, Master, to learn this thing, for I had esteemed the proper striking of a ball to be a most difficult art.

Golf. The difficulty resides in yourself, sir, and not in the mechanics of the stroke, which are most plain and simple; therefore I have deemed it wise to prepare you against the thousand follies that you shall commit, so that when you have made the round of them you shall not sink into discouragement, but take up the matter afresh with a mind purged of vanities and errors.

Schol. But, Master, might not one begin at this point, without entering upon the follies of which you speak?

Golf. Yes, if one and twenty had the wisdom of two score years, but nature hath decreed it otherwise, and there be many things of great simplicity that are to be come by only through experience.[33] Let us take the matter of looking at the ball. I was reading of late a writing that contained much sound sense, and it was declared that this golf is the only game played with a ball in which the player looks upon the ball instead of the direction he would have it fly. Now, sir, this is but half a truth. It is true that the skillful player sees the ball, as a tennis player sees it, yet his mind is upon the line of its flight, which the club’s head must travel; whereas the unskillful player has his mind upon the ball, which charms him as a serpent is fabled to charm a bird; so that to tell a novice to keep his eye upon the ball is but mischievous counsel, and I pray you avoid this thing.

Schol. Yet, Master, you did advise me, but a little time ago, to clap an eye upon it.

Golf. Marry, sir, that was to divert you from cocking up your head like a little bird, before ever the ball was struck. Take now your driver, and we will consider the matter of swinging it.

THE THIRD HOLE.

Scholar. Well, Master, I have pursued this ball unto the second green, smiting it some dozen times, and not once fairly; yet you would have me believe that it is but a simple matter.

Golfator. Ay, sir, as simple as the boiling[34] of an egg; yet is there no trick so simple but care must be brought to the turning of it; and you are to know that the stroke in golf and the boiling of an egg are the same in this, that to time it rightly is nine-tenths of the matter.

Schol. It may be, sir, that I am ill fitted to this game, and shall never come to skill in it, for it seemeth of great difficulty, despite your fair words.

Golf. Well, Scholar, to speak truth, your antics have been most fantastical, and what skill you may come to no man can say; therefore if you are for withdrawing I do again heartily counsel you so to do, and to give your leisure to a more profitable employ, as the study of mares’ nests or the collecting of phœnix eggs; but if you are resolved to have knowledge of this ingenious game I am still at your service.

Schol. Then, sir, I entreat you to teach me this stroke, that you say is so simple.

Golf. Why, sir, you have but to do certain things and to avoid doing certain other things and the trick is learned. The things you are to do are to stand easily, neither stiffly nor limply; to sole the club at a right angle to the line of the ball’s flight; to take the club back smoothly, seeing to it that the wrists start the motion and the arms follow, and that the wrists turn inward during or at the height of the swing; and to strike[35] downward with decision, timing the blow to the thousandth of a second, and letting the arms draw the body around in a natural fashion. And the things you are not to do are these: you must not let the club’s head flop at the height of the swing, nor stiffen the muscles at any time, nor move your head, nor heave your shoulders like a ship in a sea, nor hop upon your left great toe as a ballet dancer, nor fall upon the ball, nor fall backward, nor pound the ball as if it were a peg for a tent, nor cock up your head as a tomtit, nor fall into other errors of which I shall speak later. These divers matters kept in mind, the ball will fly straight, and to a great distance.

Schol. On my word, Master, it were a rare feat to hold so many things in mind at the one moment.

Golf. My good Scholar, it is not to be compassed, yet do we see scores of hapless creatures endeavoring the impossible; for it is the way of many teachers of this game to bedevil the novice with a multitude of instructions, so that the poor wretch is at his wits’ end. Therefore I commend to you the learning of one thing before another, and the thing you are first to come by is a free wrist; for in tennis, or in handball, or in bowls, as in this golf, it is a supple wrist that puts pace on the ball and gives it direction. And you are to observe this principle again in the fine art[36] of casting a fly for trouts, and in the play of foils, so that a man that has reached to three score and ten, though the vigor of his prime is past, is yet able to take trouts or to wield a rapier with the youngest.

Schol. Sir, I am heartened by the thought that there is a likeness between the casting of a fly and the swinging of a club, for I have some skill with the rod.

Golf. Then, Scholar, you must know that the rod itself does the work, guided by the wrist, so that a man may throw a fly for hours without fatigue; therefore you have but to conceive yourself as casting with the left wrist, and you have the secret of every stroke in golf; for it is all of the putt and the beginning of the drive.

Golf. Marry, sir, that had been a sorry performance on a trout river, for you were forward with your cast before ever your line had straightened behind you. Whip back your clubhead, as a brown hackle on a leader, pause until all is straight behind and free of kinks, then forward with the wrists, and the arms will follow.

Golf. Practice then this back cast diligently, let the ball fly where it will. And I would I were[37] at this moment in a little river, knee-deep in sweet running waters, and casting here and there for trouts; for that, Scholar, is a game worth two of this.

THE FOURTH HOLE.

Golfator. Come, my good Scholar, let us tarry a space beneath this maple, that we waste not the morning utterly, but give ear to the meadowlarks, and take in the sweet scents which the sun distilleth from the new leaves and grasses. And if your mind still be on this golf you may view, to your profit, the players that pass by us; for it is as needful to know what to avoid doing as what to do.

Scholar. Here comes one that has played these many years, yet methinks he performs but indifferent well.

Golf. Ay, sir, and should he attain to the years of Noah he would come to no greater skill. This is one that, scorning instruction, hath worked out his own game—a poor thing but his own. There be many such, and when they play one against the other, commonly for stakes, ’tis a great battle of blunders. Mark you that drive! The green is but an iron shot away, but the ball has fallen a score of yards on this side.

Golf. A lusty stroke, that might have served[38] in the driving of a fence post, but one that is as ill suited to the propelling of a golf ball as the stroke of a pile driver, the which it counterfeits. The marvel is, not that the ball fell short, but that it flew so far.

Schol. Ay, marry, he swung like a knight of Camelot upon an adversary’s shield.

Golf. Not so, else there had been room for praise. Think you the heroes of Camelot buffetted the enemy so ineptly, fighting their own selves at the top of the swing, as most golfers do? Nay, I promise you. Sir Launcelot timed his mighty blows; nor did he strike stiffly, in a piece, but drove sharply with his wrists, on which his sword turned as upon a hinge, his great arms following, and there was naught to resist his cleavage. Wherefore the fame of his follow-through spread through all the land. And this matter of the follow-through you are now to consider.

Golf. 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 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.

Schol. Yet, Master, have I seen players practising this thing with exceeding industry.

Golf. Marry, sir, Simple Simon was as well employed. But ’tis 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 you 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.

Golf. 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.

Schol. I have heard, Master, that ’tis easier to play with the iron than with a club of wood.

Golf. As to that there be two opinions, as usual, and you will be wise to follow either, for I am satisfied that they are of equal value.

THE FIFTH HOLE.

Golfator. You are to observe, my honest[40] Scholar, that although your iron is a shorter tool than your wooden, you may do quite as much mischief with it; nay, sir, more, I warrant, for the head of the club being of metal, you may hack a ball to pieces with it in a few wild strokes. Wherefore it is that the experienced golfer plays his iron shots with less frenzy than he brings to his drive, striving to hit the ball cleanly and with exactness.

Scholar. Sir, I shall endeavor the cultivating of this virtue, in accordance with your wise counsel.

Golf. You are to observe again, that in the free stroke of the drive ’tis all one whether the ball fly ten yards to this side or that of the true line of its flight, but as you draw near to the flag this true line becomes a matter of first importance. Marry, sir, if your desire for knowledge of this game were deeper than yonder ditch, I would have you to begin at the edge of the putting green, and to withdraw by degrees to greater distances, until you reached a point where the wrists no longer sufficed to propel the ball, by the which time they might be trained to some purpose.

Schol. Nay, Master, my desire for knowledge of this ingenious game is as deep as any well.

Golf. Then, sir, I have read you wrongly,[41] for I mark that you clutch your iron with impatience, and gaze into the distance, and then upon this ball at your feet, and you do have the seeming of one that would smite the ball most lustily. Smite it, then, good Scholar, and have done with it. Ah! A most marvelous slice! The ball hath flown far into the wood, as a startled quail. Come, let us follow it, and though we find it not we may happen upon matter of more importance.

Schol. The ball cannot be far in the wood, Master. I marked it by this dead tree, yet we find it not.

Golf. ’Tis most cunningly hidden. Do you sit down, honest Scholar, and rest your eyes, for much searching for a lost ball doth weary them. See, here is a brave array of trilliums, nodding welcome to us, as jocund a company as the poet’s daffodils. Here, too, is columbine, that begins to show itself, and Bethlehem’s Star, and many other wilding flowers.

Schol. Sir, I thought to walk directly to the ball, since I saw it drop among these trees.

Golf. Marry, sir, believe your ears sooner than your eyes, and your nose before either; but not one of the senses is to be trusted. Yet if mine eyes serve me now, here is yellow lady’s-slipper, that I have not seen before in this countryside,[42] and it were well worth losing a ball to come upon this solitary plant, for I see no others of the family. I have found them in great number farther north, where, too, I chanced one rememberable day on the orchid Arethusa, that grows in bogs, and is the loveliest of plants. Mark you the gold in the sunlight, shewing that the summer draws on; and hearken to that thrasher overhead, who would have you to believe that singing is the chief business of life.

Schol. Think you that the ball struck upon a tree and was flung deeper into the wood?

Golf. ’Tis conceivable, for I never saw ball that had less notion of whither it was flying. Let us press farther into the thicket, for ’tis a rare place to loiter in. This, you are to observe, is the compensation for a foolish stroke at golf, for he that plays straight before him sees nought but a strip of turf, and ever his thought is of his next stroke, whether he shall take wood or iron to it.

Schol. Good fortune, Master! Here is the ball, among these trilliums, the which it is very like in color.

Golf. And fairer to your eye than any flower. I observe, sir, that you have the makings of a golfer, and are not to be diverted by the babbling of brookwater, and the twittering of birds, and other natural distractions. Let us[43] return, then, to the fairgreen, where you may make further trial of your iron.

THE SIXTH HOLE.

Scholar. Sir, hither comes a pair of golfers that would play this hole. Shall we stand aside until they pass?

Golfer. Aye, sir, and I particularly charge you to remain stock still the while, and to breathe as lightly as a summer night; for one of these golfers, he that strutteth before the other, would have Nature to make a pause whilst he swing his club, and is fretful as a porcupine if a caddy do but shift an arm or leg, or a sparrow twitter in a nearby tree.

Schol. Sir, I shall take the pattern of the rabbit, that freezeth, as the saying is, when the predacious owl booms through the darkened wood.

First Player. Indifferent well, sir; for what with the gabbling of these caddies and their clicking of clubs together, and the great number of noises round about, one might suppose himself to be on the links of Bedlam.

Golf. There goeth one that is a great affliction[44] to his fellows, and is to be found this world over. Now, ’tis but common courtesy to refrain from talking whilst a player drives his ball, but he that is disturbed by such a trifle lacketh control of his mind, and were he a surgeon I should not summon him to so small an operation as the lancing of a boil. Why, sir, if there be any virtue in this game it is that it teacheth one control, and he that cannot dispatch a ball save in a church-yard hush hath somewhat the matter with his wits, or hath no salt of humor in him. To play a round with such a golfer is a great waste of time, save it be done in the way of penance, for which purpose a hair shirt were not more serviceable.

Golf. Willingly, honest Scholar, and for beginning do not hold the club loosely in the palms of your hands, but grip it firmly with your ten fingers. This is the first principle of iron play.

THE SEVENTH HOLE.

Golfator. Well met, honest Scholar. The birds have mated and reared their young since last I saw you, and the summer is over and gone. How fares it with you? Indifferent well, methinks, for I observed you to strike a ball a few minutes since.

Scholar. Truly, Master, this golf is a thing that is not come by quickly, and I well nigh despair of mastering it.

Golf. Then let me advise you to abandon it in season, that you may be spared much vexation, and your friends many afflicting tales.

Schol. Nay, sir, I am resolved at any cost to lay hold of the secret, to which end I have vowed the rest of my days.

Golf. Truly, a worthy ambition. Now there be men that have vowed their days to so futile a thing as the mapping of the farthest stars, which is of small purpose compared with the mastering of this incomparable game. Good luck to you then, honest Scholar.

Schol. Sir, what luck I have now and again is the fruit of such counsel as you have given me, and I entreat you further to instruct me in the art of striking the ball, that it may fly straight, and not match the crescent of the young moon.

Golf. Marry, sir, you will never bring off a skillful shot, save by accident, until you put rhythm into your stroke; nor is aught else of value achieved in this life save by rhythm. A sage once said that if he but had his way he would write the word “Whim” above every man’s door-way. Now, sir, in the place of this “Whim” I would write the word “Rhythm.”

Schol. I take not your meaning, Master.[46] What, in so many words, is this priceless Rhythm?

Golf. Marry, sir, he that could answer you in so many words would have the tongue of all philosophy.

THE EIGHTH HOLE.

Golfator. Well met, Scholar. Much water has passed the miller’s wheel since last we were in company; and, marry, much has fallen on these fair acres, which too oft at this season are sere and brown; and thus we have compensation for the cool winds and drenching rains of this so backward summer. Saw you ever so green a sward, and grasses so void of dust? Yet mark you the chatter of yon robin, that never gets his fill of rain, so that methinks some far ancestor of his was a water fowl, or perchance a flower that grew in water, since to my fancy birds are but flowers that have taken wings. But peradventure you had rather I question you concerning your towardness in the game of golf, as I mark you have your tools by you, and I may hazard that you have prospered exceedingly.

Scholar. Why, good Master, to speak truth, this ingenious game has so bedeviled me that I mark not if the grass be brown or green, or if robin or blackbird chatter by my path. As for my towardness, I have practised with great diligence, and have been directed by this teacher and[47] that, and all excellently well, yet do I find myself at a stand, and unable to advance beyond a moderate skill.

Golf. I pray you, Scholar, make trial with your club of wood, that I may observe in what fashion you handle it.

Golf. Marry, an excellent swing, save that it lacks freedom and rhythm, and has no power in it, otherwise a most worthy swing, that might be of great service in knocking apples from a tree. One may observe with half an eye, Scholar, that you have been well instructed in every detail save one, the which concerns the striking of the ball.

THE NINTH HOLE.

Golfator. You are now to know, worthy Scholar, that whatsoever skill you may come to in the wielding of your tools, naught of great consequence is to be achieved at this ingenious game save by the cultivating of the highest powers of concentration, as has well been said by Mr. Travers, and other notable performers; and to the acquiring of this faculty you are to sacrifice all else in life; for what is of greater moment in this world than the proper striking of a ball?

Scholar. Alas, good Master, it is this great faculty that I so sadly lack; for from the moment[48] that I raise my wood or iron until I bring it back, my mind is, as you might observe, a blank.

Golf. A perfect blank, truly; ’tis as if no mind existed. But thus it is with the majority, therefore be not cast down.

Schol. This concentration, sir, is it aught save the fixing of the eye upon the ball?

Golf. Ay, marry, much more. There is an attention of the eye, and an attention of the mind, and there is also an attention of the soul, and all three of these you shall require. There are lower forms of concentration, and much has been achieved through them. Thus one man sets his mind to the building of a system of philosophy; another man puts himself to the discovering of a satellite of our sun beyond the farthest that is known, or to the devising of an hypothesis that may explain the beginnings of matter, and the movements of the stars; a third man gives his life to the writing of plays, as Shakespeare or Euripides. All these are excellent pastimes, that require concentration; but they are of little import compared with the striking of a ball so it fly straight and to a great distance.

Golf. Marry, sir, by the endless iteration of the magical words, Keep the eye upon the ball! Give your days to this, good Scholar. ’Tis not[49] necessary to say the words loudly, but so much power is there in the spoken word that one must do more than think the conjuration; a low murmur, or a mumble, will serve. There be those that, observing a man going about muttering to himself, will be moved to scoff, but these, being ignorant of the great matter going forward, need not be considered. Persist, worthy Scholar, and ere the snow lies in winrows on these links, your heart’s desire will be well toward fulfilment.

ALICE IN BUNKERLAND.

“The golfer is about the only mortal proud of being in a hole.”—Philadelphia Ledger.

No department of the game discloses more variation than iron work. For example, some players take turf; others take to the woods.

“The really interesting question is, why will not men listen to women?” says Alice Duer Miller. It’s this way, lady. After a hard day on the golf links a man gives reluctant ear to discussions of the music of Ravel and DeBussy, the Epicureanism of Marius, the influence of democracy on Greek culture, and other subjects which[51] the ladies persist in introducing. Collectively, women are rather strenuous. Individually they are easy to listen to, especially if they are easy to look at. And if they punctuate their discourse with taps of a fan and what are known as speaking glances, they may disquisish on any topic, from figs to futurism.

The farmers around Brook, Ind., have voted to keep their clocks at the old time. Comrade Ade will likely use both times—the old for his farm, and the new for his golf course.

ANOTHER NOTED MEMBER OF THE FAMILY WAS A COLONEL.

For Sale—Bookcase and doctor’s library, including skull of Lucretia Bogie, a noted murderess. W. H. Garnette, East Monroe, O.

“Golf,” again we read, “is a game that demands courtesy and politeness.” Makes us think of coal at the present writing. The demand exceeds the supply.

SHAKESPEARE ON THE AMATEUR QUESTION.

There are two theories to explain the steadiness of champions in gruelling (to coin a word) tournament play. One is “heart of oak,” and the other is head of the same material.

THE TURF-TEARERS.

Demos has taken to golf in America. In Lincoln Park, Chicago, Demos wears suspenders and a derby, and Mrs. Demos has been seen pushing a perambulator from hole to hole. For the delectation of Demos, golf links and books are multiplying, and eventually every town will have at least two libraries—the Carnegie and the Golf.

HELPFUL HINT NO. 640.

To Inquiring Golfer: Qualifications for membership in the Lincoln Park Golf Club are a derby[53] hat and a coupla clubs. No one is allowed to tee off unless he is thus equipped.

Golf magazines are showing spring fashions for players; effete east stuff, chiefly. A natty make-up which will be seen at the Lincoln Park Country Club is exhibited in the accompanying illustration.

We were sitting on the porch of the clubhouse at Brae Burn, listening to a discussion of the prohibition of Sunday golf at other courses. A gentleman who looked like a substantial pillar of the church offered his views. “Cut all your church subscriptions,” said he. “That will put a stop to this nonsense.”

Mr. Ouimet qualified with a score of 79 and a temperature of 103. That established the temperature record for the course, which is uncommonly difficult.

When, one day, we engaged a caddy to walk around with us, although we carried only a midiron, we fancied we had reached the Height of Affluence; but we know a man who drives a Ford and carries a chauffeur on the rear seat.

DEGENERATE DAYS.

Golfers, the days are growing shorter. Get out after dinner and save some daylight for the farmers.

“Golf has its jokes, undoubtedly,” says Dr. Francis Hackett, “but it has no joke such a joke as golf itself.” If Francis were thirty or forty years younger he would yell “Fore!” whenever he saw a man going along with a bag of clubs.

We have frequently wondered why we play[55] such a messy game on a golf course new to us. Mr. Vardon explains. “The perspective of the course” at Inverness bothered him.

When Harry Vardon relates that he putted from the edge of the green, and “thanks to the fates of golf” the ball fell into the cup, he means that he made a damned good putt and is wholly aware of the fact.

Mr. Harding, we read, shoots Chevy Chase in 95, “but is known to be ambitious to reach par,” which is 71. Any golfer should be able to get a laugh out of that.

WONDER WHAT THIS OISEAU DID?

To the Editor: Kindly allow me to make a public apology in your paper concerning my conduct in a game of ball between Emerson and Morris. I feel very sorry and ashamed of myself for losing my hasty temper. I could not have been in my right mind to do just as I did, to allow such a provocation to make me do as I did. It seems like a bad dream to me and never will forget it. In my 24 years of playing I never lost control of myself before. I forgive the player who was the cause of my weakness, and hold no ill-will to any one. It will be better for me to say no more.

The gentleman could not be more regretful if he had tanked up and punched somebody at the Lambs’ Club.

ON THE OTHER HAND—

It is a tribute both to the game of golf and to those who play—the fact that you never read of two players getting into a brawl over the golf table and hitting each other on the head with a golf cue.

Those persons who feel sorry for Chick Evans because he can’t putt may like to know that Vardon and Ray, interviewed when they returned to England, agreed that “Evans with his new club is the best putter in the United States.”

Paying club dues for the three months beginning January first used to be our notion of zero in entertainment. We are obliged to lower the temperature twenty degrees since the war tax was added to the dues.

One of the things in golf most difficult to explain is “the feel of the clubhead.” We have tried to convey an idea of the sensation to persons who have solicited an opinion, but without success. Perhaps this will explain it: Take a[57] full swing with the mashie for a chip shot of ten or twenty yards. Practise that for a while, and you will begin to discover that there is something at the end of the shaft.

The young woman with the golf club who appears on magazine covers or in railway folders is shown, as often as not, holding the implement in an exceedingly awkward manner. Artists of yesteryear were better observers. A reproduction of a painting, “The Golf Players,” by Pieter de Hooch (1630-1677), represents, for one item, a child holding a club as a Vardon of that period might have grasped it.

Mr. Topping is a well known American golfer, and the mention of his name has evoked many smiles and decrepit jests. It is not generally known, however, that he is related on the paternal side to the Hookers and on the other wing to the Slicers, two other celebrated clans whose lineage details occupy many pages in the Almanac de Golfa.

After prayerful consideration the Western Golf Association has ruled that as long as a golfer depends on the literary merits of his articles to sell them, he will retain his amateur standing. One could almost whittle a wheeze out of that.

THE DUB.

When the Preacher observed that there was no new thing under the sun, he articulated a mouthful, as a contemporary slangily remarked of Demosthenes. A Denver man relates in the Golfer’s Magazine that he keeps his eye off the ball, instead of on it, from the drive to the putt. Unlike the feat which we recently noticed on an oratorio programme, “Rest in the Ford,” this can be done. Several years ago we demonstrated to[59] our own content that it was possible to use a mashie accurately while scrutinizing the flag, and during one season we putted while glaring at the hole; but in the longer shots we preferred more freedom of the neck—ours not being of the giraffe type—and so maintained an “eyes front” attitude. About that time Mr. Charles Clarke, professional to the Rothersham Club at York, published his “Common Sense Golf,” which contained this admonition:

“And most important of all, for putts of six feet and under, look at the hole and not at the ball. I know it is a very unorthodox thing to say, and it will require no little courage at first to get used to the method. But the difficulty exists only in the imagination; the lie of your ball is as nearly as possible perfect, and all the preliminary adjustments have been made. A back-swing of a few inches, and a short, firm tap is all that is required. Personally I have improved my holing out enormously since adopting this method, and there are days when I can scarcely miss a two-yard putt.”

Our hypothesis, which we arrived at independently of the Rothersham pro (as Adams located the planet Neptune “unbeknownst” to Leverrier) was challenged by Grantland Rice and Jerome Travers; and so we arranged a test with Mr. Rice. But a heavy shower interposed, and we agreed to try the thing on a new dog—Mr. Ring[60] Lardner, who up to that time had not trifled with a golfing implement. He was required to putt eighteen holes while looking at the hole, and to repeat while looking at the ball. The result was slightly in favor of the latter method, but this was fairly attributable to increased familiarity with the putter. Personally (sic), we can putt as well one way as the other, and all that we ever maintained for the eye-on-hole style was that it would improve the work of one who putted badly. If a man putts well by any method, let him keep the even tenor of his way, nor heed the rumble of a distant drum.

Golf is advised for training camps by the War department, to counteract the tension of intensive training. The beneficial effect lies in the mental rest during the swing; from the moment the ball is addressed until it is struck the mind is an absolute blank. The poorer the player, the more strokes he takes, and the greater the mental rest.

WE’VE TRIED IT ON A GOLF BALL, BUT IT DOESN’T WORK.

Sir: In the Rotarian for this month: “Like a rubber ball, the Spirit of Rotary will not be cowed by any one.” Did you ever try to cow a rubber ball?

The Empory Gazette admits that something is to be said for golf; that “a man can play the game without being hooted and abused as though he was a wife beater.” But the same can be said for every other game except baseball.

Isn’t the weather provokingly delightful? Here we have a compilation of verse, a novel, and a few smaller matters planned out, and the golfing weather persists out of reason.

HAVING THEIR SLICE OUT, MEBBE.

H. S. Wortham underwent a minor operation at Rockford hospital yesterday morning.

Economically war is much more wasteful than golf. In war a waster bullet is a total loss, but when you lose a golf ball somebody else finds it, and eventually your initials are worn off it. By the way, has the question been discussed, and settled, whether it is good sportsmanship to stamp your initials on a ball? We never stamped more[62] than a dozen, and none of these, when lost, was ever returned to the shop.

FRENZIED JOHN.

Mr. Pradt of Wausau, Wis., writes to us: “One day last summer I found my ball, after a fine approach, lying in a hole on the back of a toad. Would you hold that the ball was teed up?” We should hold, off hand, that it was toad up.

STYMIED.

“In New York a club has been started exclusively for golfers. The others insisted on it.”

The headline, “Finds a Husband on Golf Links,” reminds us of the lady who observed sagely: “There is one good thing about golf. You always know where your husband is.”

Young Mr. Ouimet’s feat of holing out in one iron shot contains a helpful hint for the novice. When the hole is only 243 yards away take a midiron. A driver might put you over the green.

OVERHEARD AT A SMALL-TOWN BALL GAME.

Umpire: “Boy, that’s certainly some tear you gave your pants when you slid.”

Casey (colored): “Shuah is. Mighty near havin’ to call this game off on ’counta darkness.”

THE GOLFER.

“The only man who can play a good game of golf is he who has no brains.”—Andrew Lang.

According to Mr. Jim Barnes, whose new and really valuable book of golf-swing photographs has just left the press, one can get more fun out of golf by knowing what he is about when wielding the various clubs. But according to Capper & Capper, “How to Get More Fun Out of Golf” depends on wearing athletic union suits with swiss-ribbed bottoms.

Observe how easily the Western Golf Association, confronted, like the peace conference, with the problem of the stymie, reverses its perplexity! The player of the ball nearer the hole may play it or lift it, at his option.

DOES TOBACCO AFFECT YOUR GAME?

We are not sure whether smoking has an adverse influence on our game, such as it is; but we felt a bit concerned the other day when we missed a thirty-foot putt. For—

AN EXTREMELY INTELLIGENT DOG.

Sir: I have a remarkable dog, a Scotch terrier, bought of a caddy at St. Andrews. This[68] dog has seen some pretty good golf, and is a bit of a critic. I took him to the links to watch my game. My approach to the second flag was within five yards, and the dog disconcerted me by sitting by the hole and alternately watching it and me. My putt went wide and seven or eight feet past. The dog arose and began digging frantically at the hole to make it larger. Intelligent?

PROBLEM OF CONDUCT.

A drives. Before A reaches his ball B drives, and his ball strikes A in the back. A waits for an apology. B comes up and says: “Why didn’t you duck, you rummy? That’d been a peach of a drive.”

WHY GOLF DIVOTEES GO INSANE.

DO YOU KNOW THIS ONE?

Somebody, probably our favorite story-teller among golfers, narrated to us the tale of a man whom the same John D. invited to play on the Rockefeller private course at Cleveland. The guest had neglected to provide himself with balls. “Lend Mr. Blank a couple of old balls, George,” said the host to his caddie. “There’s no old balls in the bag, Mr. Rockefeller,” replied the caddie. “No?” exclaimed the host, and after a pause, “well, I guess you’ll have to lend him a new one, then.”

We have wondered ever and anon—and sometimes as frequently as now and then—where the illustrators get their golf models for the decorating of magazine covers. Perhaps on public links,[70] where there is no grip or stance so absurd that it may not be observed.

WHY GOLF DIVOTEES GO INSANE.

GUFFLE FOR GOLFERS

For the benefit of golfers who depend on this[71] department exclusively for their tips on the game, we have engaged Mr. Donald MacBawbee, the famous professional at Prairie Dog, as first aid to the helpless, and we feel safe in promising that he will add delightfully to the complications of the sport.

Mr. MacBawbee is 5 feet 11⅜, and carries the conventional clubs, with the addition of two implements which he calls a soakum and a pushum. The first is a bludgeon of wood, and is employed for dispatching the ball from the tee; the second is an iron for push shots. The grip of this iron is tapered to a point at the end, so that when the hands are pushed forward, which Mr. MacBawbee claims is the proper way to make the shot, the chance of the hands slipping is reduced to an irreducible minimum.

The Prairie Dog pro is committed to heavy clubs, and consequently he prefers lignum vitae to the conventional hickory. Concerning the length of the implements he has very decided opinions. No golfer, he says, should attempt to wield a club taller than himself or shorter than his golf bag. A happy medium, he suggests, will prove most satisfactory.

Mr. MacBawbee lays much emphasis on the matter of stance. Two ways of confronting the ball, he says, are the ramrod stance and the[72] cab-horse stance. The first is to be avoided, as several cases are recorded of players who have broken a leg in swinging. The cab-horse stance is easy, graceful, and relaxing. As an arch is stronger than a straight line, the firmest of all stances, says Mr. MacBawbee, is the hoop stance, but this is possible only for very bowlegged golfers. For this stance he advises that the feet be placed rather near each other.

Says Mr. Jock Hutchinson, who is illuminating the arcanum of golf for the benefit of the Dub Family Robinson, “I am 5 feet 10¼ inches in height, weigh 137 pounds, and carry twelve clubs.” That bag would bar him from the Lincoln Park Country Club.

Hon. Jock’s arsenal of irons includes one which he calls a “stopum.” Percy Hammond’s bag includes a peculiar instrument which might be called a “topum.”

Besides a “stopum” every bag of golf clubs should contain a startum, a topum, a sliceum, a hookum, a sclaffum, a killum, and, for general utility, a dubum.

Doc Hammond’s golf bag has two new clubs in it besides his topum—a lose-um and a wet-um.

Home-bound from the links, we were thinking, for the somethingth time, that golf was a great waste of time and money, when we observed a citizen starting out to break a few hundred clay pigeons. Everything is relative, as Box remarked to Cox.

FAMOUS LAST LINES.

Fragments from the Diary of Maecenas.
Latin Verses by P. Sebleius Ferus
(Payson S. Wild).

I—AUGUSTUS FIT CUPIDUS SCIENDI (C II K)

II—AUGUSTUS UTITUR LINGUA VULGARI SED LUDUM DISCIT.

I—AUGUSTUS BECOMES C2K.

II—AUGUSTUS INDULGES IN STRONG LANGUAGE, BUT DECIDES TO LEARN THE GAME.

HAD HERRICK GOLFED.

Why do British golfers, in their photographs, always look as if they were four down at the turn, and American golfers as if they were six up?

THAT WE SHAN’T MAKE A 73.

Sir: I absolutely refuse to putt for a hole if a ball which has already been holed is not removed. What is your pet golfing superstition?

Pursuing a red ball over the wintry lea is a pastime that leaves us cold. But, for compensation, one does not hear, in the locker room, that the shower is “the best part of the game.”

“Golf,” writes Professor William Lyon Phelps in “The New Republic,” “has done more[83] for swearing than any other modern employment; it has made taciturn gentlemen as efficient as teamsters. The disappointments of golf are so immediate, so unexpected, so overwhelming. Nearly all men, and women, too, must swear naturally in their thoughts; else how explain such easily acquired efficiency!”

Professor Phelps’ observations coincide with ours. Once, having addressed the recreant ball in terms more pointed than polite, we remarked to the caddy: “The ladies never talk that way, do they?” “Oh,” said he, “they say worse things than that.” Which moved us to inquire: Should a youth of tender years caddy for a lady?

“Golf is the peculiar pastime of a peculiar people”; and particularly peculiar are the persons into whose soul the iron has entered and displaced the wood. A friend of ours, Colonel Talmadge, of Glen View, is one of these eccentrics. He was starting out for a round one day, toting a ton of iron, when his partner inquired: “Where are you going with all those dental instruments?”

The news that a golf pro in Louisiana was buried with his favorite clubs set us wondering what might be the width of the River Styx. While waiting for the ferry the shade might tee[84] up a few balls and see whether he could carry the hazard.

“Golfing Wonder—One-Legged Man’s Win in Open Tournament.”—London Mail.

The grounds and greens committee of the Evanston Golf Club concludes: “Transgressions of the rules embodied in paragraphs 1 to 14 shall be reported at once to the rules and etiquette committee.” But why, a member wants to know, send the fourteen points abroad again?

FOR GOLF BUGS ONLY.

In 1909, P. A. Vaile, the w. k. golf nut, discoursed in “Modern Golf” on the superior merits of the open stance. The model he selected for his illustrations, George Duncan, was shown hewing to that stance, let the chip shots fall where they might. However, a little study convinced us, then learning the game, that, while the open stance might be all right for Duncan, it was all wrong for us; whereupon we adopted the square stance, and, like the person in the soap ad, we have “used no other since.”

Now hearken to George Duncan, writing in 1920: “Generally speaking,” says he, “I should say that the best stance is the square one. I[85] found it to be the best, but, before I made the discovery, I went through a trying time in which I had many aggravating cutting of tee shots.... To many (I know it did to me) the open stance would appear to be the natural method of standing up to a golf ball. I can only repeat that if your trouble is slicing, you will continue to have plenty of it to face if you do not get to the square stance.”

A good argument against the theory that man is descended from the monkey is the average golfer. Now, the monkey is nothing if not imitative, but a golfer can watch a professional swing all day without being able to imitate his motions. No swing could be more obvious than that of our canny friend, Joe MacMorran; he merely hauls off and hits the ball, which is all that is necessary. Josephus weighs, when he is eating well, 104 pounds, yet he knocks the ball half a mile, or thereabouts.

FOR GOLF NUTS ONLY.

Dear Beechnut: Why do I call you a beechnut? Because it’s the only nut older than a chestnut. What do you mean in 1920 by trying to hold me answerable for what George Duncan and I thought in 1909? On golf we[86] are like Art J. Balfour in politics—of whom you may have heard, although you would not approve of his follow through. We have no settled convictions. We must expand with the exigencies of modern golfomania.

You know yourself, from personal experience, that the stance for the pull at the 19th hole has been recently changed to the open square, and even at that it requires a fine push to get a shot of any length or depth. When such a radical change as this takes place overnight you must not mind George Duncan changing his mind once in ten years—and I am not sure that I don’t agree with him.

THE NINETEENTH HOLE.

Mr. and Mrs. Harry Hole will entertain the Nonpareil Club Friday evening at their home, 1502 Twenty-fourth street.

Once in an aeon or two somebody says something about putting that is as a light in a dark place, as a staff to a blind man, as a voice crying in the wilderness. Thus spake George Zarathustra O’Neil:

“It will be objected that no putting green is as smooth as a billiard table, but such objectors will hardly maintain that the majority of putts[87] that miss do so because they are thrown off the line by inequalities in the surface of the green. The fact is that most putts that miss were not played properly—and that is the whole truth.”

WHOLE DUTY OF CADDIES.

That, with acknowledgment to Stevenson’s heirs and assigns, covers the case to our notion. It may be desirable to give a caddie a polite education, including French and dancing, but the duty of a caddie is simple. So long as he is reticent and watches the ball, we don’t mind if he stands an inch too near us while we shoot, or whether he bats an eye while holding the flag for a putt.

Miami, with its 19-hole golf course, has a rival in Pensacola, which calls itself “The Oasis of West Florida.” One who was there tells us that it is well camouflaged.

We have read half a ton of golf books, and in none of them is it advised to start the hands back before the club head. Yet, as C. B. Lloyd’s moving pictures show, many if not most[88] of the crack players employ that method. Don’t they know what they do?

“Lord Northcliffe is shown contemplating a long drive on the celebrated golf course at Biarritz, where he is much at home.”—The incomparable Examiner.

As the gentleman has a mashie in his hands, he is evidently a considerable contemplater.

“Warren K. Wood and Will Diddel, paired against Chick Evans and Kenneth Edwards.”

“With the upright swing,” writes Hon. Jock Hutchison, “you must of necessity take some turf. Any novice knows when he has taken too much.” True; the limit is a pound. But what the novice needs to know is that it is more important to put back turf than to take it.

Speaking of the Lincoln Park Country Club, F. D. P. reports that the golfer in the skin-tight, bowery blue sweater failed to make a clean drive although he spat on both hands.

A carping correspondent asks why cartoonists, column conductors, and so forth, drop into golf when they can’t think of anything else to draw or write about. We can reply only for this department. We touch the subject of golf infrequently, and then chiefly for the benefit of readers in remote corners of the land, who write to us to ask about such elementary things as the difference between square and open stance. These novices are almost sure to get off on the wrong foot if they read almost any of the books about golf. Herr Einstein’s explanation of his theory is translucent compared with the average golf writer’s exposition of his stroke.

The results are sometimes deplorable. There is Ed Freschl, who wrote the other day that golf does not reduce his circumference. Very likely not—with his swing. He probably entertains that curious notion of the “follow-through” which the writers emphasize—the notion of “letting the arms go forward freely,” as if that would get you anything. Ed will never take up any belt-holes by extending his arms in prayer.

Brother Whigham takes a lusty crack at some of the “enormities” of golf, No. 2 being “the horrible habit of counting scores and competing for silver pots on Saturday afternoons.” Medal scores produce the “strong east winds in[90] the locker room” which George Ade once referred to, and are a nuisance in more ways than one. Some pencil players remain on the putting green, lost in computation, and it is necessary to drive into them to wake ’em up.

The links of the Gary Country Club are laid out on the Atlas plan, reports the Gary Tribune. “That is, squares each 100 feet in size, measure numerically one way and alphabetically the other. This greatly facilitates the locating of any particular section of the grounds when necessary.” The idea being, we take it, that when a player slices into the ball he has only to consult his atlas to locate the ball.

Much personal property was destroyed in the fire at the Glen View Country Club; but they saved the trophies! What’s the use of having a fire if you don’t get rid of the trophies?

“THE ART OF GOLF.”

Readers and writers of the game are discovering Sir Walter Simpson, whose “Art of Golf” is a classic not so much because of the instruction it contains as because of the graceful style in which the instruction is conveyed. In this respect it resembles “The Compleat Angler.” Old Izaak’s instruction to fishermen was sound[91] enough, but we cherish his pages for something more than that. Sir Walter wrote the book himself, we conjecture—another peculiarity distinguishing it from most of the dull-thud volumes on the Five-Foot Shelf of Golf Books. Copies of it appear to be scarce; a gentleman writes to “The American Golfer” that he has a Simpson in his library, which “makes at least two copies in America.” We’ll make it three; there is a copy in the Chicago Public Library. And we shall be much surprised if Mr. Dana, the golfing librarian of Newark, N. J., hasn’t Simpson in his temple of erudition.

SUPREME IGNORANCE.

Sir: The scene is a picnic in the middle of the fairway of Hole 1. Question, by a judge of the Supreme Court: “What do they use this part of the golf grounds for?”

A player on a public course in Chicago broke a leg during his upswing at Tee No. 1. Very likely he is, or was, a disciple of that school of thought which insists on having the right leg as rigid as the well known ramrod. Soon or late one of these stiff-legged players was bound to unscrew or fracture the limb. For this school the wooden leg is the ideal pivot.

“GOLIF.”

“Much virtue in If,” as the Bard of Avon (sometimes referred to as Shakespeare) remarked. “If I hadn’t looked up—” “If I hadn’t tried to kill the ball—” “If I hadn’t sliced—” “If I hadn’t turned my body too soon—” In view of these and other Ifs, lame and impotent explanations (commonly known as alibis), the World’s Greatest Obsession might appropriately be spelled “Golif.”

An account of an aviation stunt on Chesapeake’s strand includes the instructive information that the aviator “began his loops with graceful curves, accurately timed.” Our first thought was that all curves are graceful, but the Short Skirt has negatived that notion; and some of the most ungraceful golf swings we have observed undeniably described curves. The intriguing item in the aviation story was the accuracy of the timing. If we only knew how a sky terrier times his curves we might be able to explain how Mr. Ouimet or Mr. Evans times his’n.

“All Mrs. Gourlay Dunn-Webb’s male ancestors for generations, including her father and mother, have been golf experts and teachers.”

THE GOLFING DOCTOR.

A lady in Lake Forest, Ill., whose cottage is within a few yards of the tenth hole at Onwentsia, tells us that there are no good players in the club. It seems that the members of foursomes gather at this tee to make up their matches for[94] the day, and the lady in the cottage has overheard so much self-depreciation, she has come to the natural conclusion that every player in the club ought to be started at least six up.

Whenever we play at Onwentsia we think of an odd happening at the first tee a few years ago. A waiting foursome of plutocrats were discussing a Certain Rich Man. “Oh, he’s not so well off,” remarked one; “his income can’t be more than $250,000 a year.” At that moment a visiting golfer from the Skokie club, who was in the act of swinging, topped his drive and fell into a swoon.

It is an old saying that too much abuse of a man will enlist sympathy for him. So with the stymie. Many players who considered it merely a necessary nuisance are beginning to feel that they can’t keep house without it.

IN THE LATE BILL NYE’S BAILIWICK.

Sir: Can you inform me where one might procure a good golf hound? The animal chosen must have a sense of smell that will not be deflected by the dust and gnats in the buffalo grass, a sense of sight that is unerring, and the courage and agility to retrieve balls which have rolled down gopher holes. Ours is a nine-hole course. The first hazard consists of discarded objects of[95] various sorts forming what might be called the city dump. The other hazards are prairie-dog villages and the tribe of gopher. To keep thoughtless cattle from making their beds on our greens we have the latter enclosed with barbed wire. But even here the game flourishes.

When we added a wing to our Cannery last Spring, we reserved a shelf for golf phrases that exhibit signs of decomposition. The canning season is now here, and Jar No. 1 has been set on the shelf, bearing the label, “A close student of the game.”

SOUNDS SARCASTICAL.

Sir: I read: “Kenneth Edwards by his play to-day demonstrated that he is possessed of the courage of a lion.” In the face of these noble sentiments concerning two adulated young men propelling a harmless sphere across the virgin sward, how puerile appear Hercules’ twelve labors, Napoleon’s conquests, and Cato’s success in learning Greek at eighty!

Golf is becoming a democratic game—who can doubt it? Private and public links multiply. And yet—and yet—when a national tournament is on nobody calls up a newspaper office to inquire about the score.

A pedometer test shows that a housewife walks two miles while preparing three meals, but father walks twice as far doing a round of golf and doesn’t make any fuss about it.

We were admiring the niblick of Chick (“Charles”) Evans. The next morning he sent us one just like it. Quite Japanese—the courtesy, not the niblick. But in Japan you are supposed to return the gift, are you not? How about it, “Charles”?

WE, TOO, PASS.

Relying on our superior wisdom, Mr. George O’Neil has relayed to us the following problem from a Kentucky gentleman:

“Dear Sir: I have played golf six years. I play an average game but my iron work has been awful. Lately a friend suggested pronating the left hand (turning it over) just as you start the back-swing, and I must say it worked wonders. I tried the same theory with wooden clubs and the same was disastrous. Why should this work on one and not the other? What really happens when you pronate? Why should a player have to use this method for results?”

We supposed the relative merits of the flat swing and the upright swing had been definitely[97] defined. At least we recall a learned scientific exposition in “Golf Illustrated” some months ago. “Of course,” we remarked to Hon. Bob MacDonald, the lank pro at Indian Hill, “of course you swing upright, whereas we ought to swing flat.” “A flat swing,” replied Hon. Bob, “is no good to anybody.”

SCIENCE IN THE WOODS.

In summer journeys through the woods we have admired (as what forest pilgrim has not) the ax work of our guides; and there is little to choose between the best white artist and the best Indian. Bill was perhaps our favorite, and it was always a pleasure to watch him work—especially if the day was warm. His execution was precise, no matter how precarious the stance—as, for example, when he placed one foot on the bow of the canoe and the other on a floating log, and tackled the river barricade which the Chippewa calls “ge-bok-wah.” Bill grasped his ax with the o. f. palm grip. We tried to induce him to use the Vardon grip, explaining that the two hands would function more nearly like one, but Bill couldn’t see it; nor could we make him visualize the motion of the ax as a sweep, rather than a hit. We had better luck when we got on the subject of the left being the master hand. Bill agreed to give that the once over. He did,[98] and nearly cut his feet off. After that we could do nothing with him.

“AM I TO SET MY LIFE UPON A THROW?”

Omar Khayyam, the well-known wine agent, related musically that when young he eagerly frequented the company of the well informed, and listened to cubic miles of heated air; and that, so far as unravelling the plot of the universe was concerned, he might as profitably have spent his time in digging holes in the desert. And so it is that while we hear “great argument” about the golf swing, it remains to the majority (and we fear it must continue to remain) a royal and ancient arcanum.

Take some recent punditial ponderings put forth by men who, as Editor Behr has said, can never be satisfied with their perceptions until they have translated them into thought. A writer in “The American Golfer” illumines the arcanum with this lightning flash:

It seemeth to us that any one who tries for a final effort when the clubhead is two feet from the ball is endeavoring to encompass the improbable, and is getting away as far as possible from the idea of “throwing the head of the club at the ball,” as advocated by leading academicians. We asked Mr. George O’Neil to explain the throw, and he replied that “the clubhead must lead in the movement, and pull after it the shaft of the club and the player’s hands, arms, and body.” This dictum may, to some mentalities, be packed with significance, but it means little in our mental life. A throw’s a throw. We, too, essay a throw, but we throw what is in our hands to throw, which is the other end of the club. What becomes of the head of it we do not know, but we are sustained and soothed by the unfaltering trust that if it continues attached to the shaft it will take care of itself.

After all, the difference between Tweedledum and Tweedledee is more fancied than real. Both of these heroes drive a long ball. It is only when they attempt to translate their perceptions into thought that they slice to the rough.

Our gossip, C. B. Lloyd, who has taken miles of moving pictures of the golf swing, writes us that, in the case of many celebrated players, the pictures show that the clubhead does not leave[100] the ball before the hands and arms are set in motion. That coincides with our observation, C. B., and applies particularly, we conjecture, to upright swings.

A THING OF BEAUTY.

“CONSULT HARRY VARDON.”

Dear Mr. Vardon: We cannot supply a photograph of our chief golfing fault, but perhaps we can make it clear to you. Our great trouble is splitting our psyche; we seem not to be able to give an undivided soul to the ball. Just as we are ready to shoot, something of less importance—immortality, the war, or the cost of living—comes to mind, and the result, as often as not, is a top. Any little suggestion will be appreciated by your constant reader and admirer.

Among those recently bitten by the golf bug is Old Bill Byrne, and he is making, as he was bound to make, interesting discoveries. “A man isn’t a good player,” sezzee, “until he can make his drive sound like the wind storm in ‘Way Down East.’”

Sir: Last Sunday our Beau Brummel appeared in the latest golfing costume, cutaway, striped trousers and straw hat. And he played.

Evans, Edwards, Hutchison, and MacDonald are to play over George Ade’s golf course, for the Red Cross; and it may encourage these excellent players to learn that Messrs. Ade, McCutcheon, Atkinson, and Ye Ed all pitched to the flag on the short hole one day. There was, unfortunately, no gallery.

When we wrote: “None of the golfers were wearing derby hats,” we knew we should start someone. “None are” is good English, and once out of perhaps fifty times we prefer it to “None is.”

FOGGY.

“The ball is played well back off the right toe,”—the St. Andrews run-up is under discussion,—“and the hands are held well in front. This naturally tips the face of the mashie forward, reducing the loft.” Is there any other reason for holding the hands forward except to reduce the loft? If not, why not use midiron or cleek? There is, of course, a reason, but it is not mentioned. We can account for the perfect opacity of golf writers only on the classic theory that language was invented to conceal thought.

Steel shafts are mentioned, since hickory is temporarily scarce; and steel shafts will do as well as wood or concrete for the dub, just as a steel fish rod serves the ignoble purpose of the impaler of worms.

Readers who attach significance to what is termed the fitness of things will be enthralled to learn that Charles E. Ball has been re-elected president of the Tampa Golf Club.

A standard of amateurism is needed in art, says Max Eastman. “We cherish that standard in sport, where it does very little good and quite an amount of harm. It is idealism of a kind, but it is misplaced idealism.” We must agree with[103] Max; indeed, any man whose first name is Max is more than likely to be right. There is Max Beerbohm for one, and Max—— But we digress, as Ulysses remarked when his ship was blown nine points to leeward. What we started to say was, there are two kinds of golfers—gentlemen and gents. The former might be admitted to national tournaments, the latter barred. You know the golfing gent. He has spoiled more than one afternoon for you.

LIFE’S LITTLE MIDIRONIES.

To aim at the southern hemisphere of the ball, and then hit it above the equator.

PUTTING.

Putting is probably the favorite feature of indoor golf, but very few persons who are practising it have any notion of what they are about. Statistics, especially those that are known as reliable (as George Birmingham says), show that of eighty-six longish putts, forty-one go to the right of the hole and thirty-nine to the left; the remaining six, by great good fortune, fall into the cup. The fortunate play is always heartily congratulated.

Champ or dub, pro or amateur, hardly any one putts accurately seven days in the week. For that reason a great mystery is made about it. It is said that putting, the simplest and most important part of the game, cannot be taught, and the statement is true to this extent, that a man cannot teach something that he hasn’t reasoned out and come to understand. Professional coachers scoff at “book learning” (that is, those who haven’t written books on the game); but all of[105] consequence that is known in this world was learned from books. You don’t really know a thing until you have taken it apart and linked it together again. You can do this with any stroke in golf. And your stroke is as strong as its weakest link.

You remember that glorious Thursday (shall you or your friends ever forget it?) when you were putting in wonderful form; you holed a number of long ones and laid the others dead. But Friday! If the hole had been big enough to bury a dog in you would have missed it. Now, a happy-go-lucky method that embraces such a variation is no method at all. The difference between your Thursdays and Fridays should be a matter of inches, not a matter of feet. What you require is a method of taking the putter back and bringing it forward, that shall, on your bad days, keep the ball somewhere near the line. Your putt must be as nearly as possible automatic, not temperamental. If this cannot be taught the fault is with the instructor.

When you drive from the tee for a distant flag, it doesn’t matter if you are ten feet off the line, nor need your second shot give you too much concern. When you come to pitch or run up to the green the margin of error shrinks. Once on the green it disappears; accuracy is now demanded. Yet on every green one sees putts of a[106] few inches fluffed, a putt of two feet is studied with great care, while a six foot putt is gone about as gravely as an operation for appendicitis, and much less expeditiously.

II.

Place the ball twelve inches from the hole. This putt has been missed, although I cannot understand how—unless the player was stricken with paralysis at the moment of moving his club, or was intoxicated, and, seeing two balls, played the wrong one. There are, of course, persons with so poor an eye that, when they try to throw coal into a furnace, they strike the outside of the furnace two inches below the fuel door. But paralytics, heavy drinkers, and cross-eyed persons will never become accurate putters, so we may dismiss them from consideration; we may also dismiss the twelve-inch putt as unmissable. Now place the ball two feet from the hole. This putt can be foozled, and the easiest way to achieve that absurdity is to putt with the arms. Many players putt with the arms, perfectly still, and putt very well—on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. On the alternate days they are what is called off their game, and in such cases it is usual to ascribe the unhappy conditions to an inscrutable providence and not to a fault in the method of taking[107] back the club. It is agreed, I assume, that the putter should be taken straight back on the line of the hole, and it is difficult to do this with the arms, stiff or relaxed, as half an inch on either side of the line means inaccuracy. A man might learn to do this with practising constantly for ten years. But then he would have to spend fifteen years learning to bring the putter back in the same line, which is even more difficult. One can take a flat swing with the club around his right leg and run the ball to the hole—but only on Tuesday, Thursday or Saturday; and he might have to play a match on Friday.

There is no accounting for the tastes of golfers, and it may be that for many of them the very uncertainty in erratic putting may be one of the game’s attractions. Those persons are advised to putt with their arms, and if a wider margin of error is desired it can be obtained by letting the right hand turn over when the ball is tapped. If an even more brilliant result is wished for, the player may stand well back from the ball, with legs spread wide. In this attitude he can miss the rim of a cistern.

III.

Man’s arms have always been of great service to him. In the arboreal age they helped him swing from tree to tree. Later they were useful[108] for transporting Christmas bundles, embracing the lady of his choice, making political speeches, and so on. But man’s arms were never designed for putting; this is work for the wrists. These are well-oiled hinges, easily controlled; they can be trained to work almost automatically; they can brush a ball a few inches or they can flick it a hundred yards; they can caress or smite. Even in the long drive it is the turn of the wrists that puts the pace on the ball. When professional coaches play they play with the wrists; when they instruct the novice they spend their time telling him how to wave his arms. There are a few exceptions.

Let us return to the ball, as the novelist “returns to his story.” We left it two feet from the hole. To propel it so that it will strike the back of the cup it is necessary to take the putter straight back. Stand as close to the ball as the lie of the putter allows. Face as you please; it pleases me to face along a line at an angle of forty-five degrees. Having soled the club, anchor your elbows to your body, and don’t weigh anchor for an instant. You can take the club back along the extension of the imaginary line between the ball and the hole by bending, not turning, the wrists, but there is lack of freedom. You can also take it back by turning the left wrist inward, as in the full iron shot, but the clubhead will[109] leave the line. A third way remains—to violate one of the best rules of golf and turn the left wrist outward. The turn must be decided and it suffices to lift the putter and keep it on the line. Make the turn slowly and let the clubhead swing forward smoothly.

Concerning the putt of greater length than three or four feet, I am not disposed to be dogmatic or ride a theory to death; besides, I should inevitably collide with that nebular hypothesis of golf known as “the feel of the club.” But for a yard putt I don’t care how the club feels if I can keep the ball on a straight line to the hole. O’Neill refuses to subscribe entirely to my method. He flatters me by saying I can putt any fashion. Even if this were true, which it is not, I can putt best in the way indicated.

IV.

Don’t look at the ball! Nothing is more fatal to consistent accurate putting than the habit of looking at the ball. The fact that many persons who do look at it putt very well, and often brilliantly, merely proves that man is a patient and persistent animal, and can overcome almost any obstacle. I am aware that “keeping the eye on the ball” is regarded as a virtue; the agreement on this point is pathetic. But I have found in jogging through this world, that oftentimes a[110] piece of advice works very well if it is turned upside down. I never could see any good reason for falling in a trance over a ball before putting it, and I suspect that this is one of the theories which work well when reversed.

To draw, freehand, a straight line from A to B do you look at A? No, you look at B. Does a billiard player look at the cue ball when making a shot? No: having taken his “stance” and made his calculations, he fixes his eye on the object ball. Billiards is played with the wrists, and the cue is taken back automatically, as a putter should be; and so you will never master the art of putting until you swing your club as unconsciously as you move your arm in tossing nuts to a squirrel, or pitching a quoit or doing a number of other things of a similar nature.

Looking up from the ball is fatal; your head moves. Looking at the hole is not; your head remains still. Take your line carefully and as deliberately as you please, and, having soled your club, fix your attention on the hole, and don’t look back at the ball.

For the benefit of golfiacs who depend exclusively on this department for hope and inspiration we are “able to say” that poor putting is due, in[111] great measure, to the foolish notion that “perfect golf” allows two putts to the green. A putt from any part of the green that does not sink is an unsuccessful putt, and no amount of self-delusion can make it otherwise. Hardly anybody tries to hole a long putt; the player is satisfied with “laying it dead”; if it stops within two feet of the hole he is tickled pink, and his companions congratulate him, saying, “Very good, Eddie! That’s laying ’em up!” He ought to know—and we take pleasure in telling him—that the only good putt is the putt that sinks, and that he will never, except by accident, sink a long putt if he continues to cherish the delusion that “laying ’em dead” is good putting.

In a word, an “approach” putt that fails to drop is really a re-proach. The word approach should be eliminated from the game and pin or hole substituted.

THE MASHIE.

The difference between a putter and a mashie is that the face of one is straight and the face of the other is laid back. For short pitches you take the mashie back in the same way that you move the putter, and with a mere turn of the wrist you “chip” the ball toward the hole. It is assumed[112] that tall grass or rough turf lies between, for no sensible person will run up over smooth turf with a mashie when he can use a midiron or cleek—unless he has deluded himself for years with the notion that the difference between one club and another is more than a difference of weight and loft. The over-use of the mashie is generally due to cowardice; the lofted face promises to get the ball up, and it frequently does.

This timidity is due to the moss-grown tradition that it is essential to “keep your eye on the ball.” Now when a man can repeatedly top a ball that he is looking steadily at, it ought eventually to dawn on him, as it dawned on me, that looking at the ball is one of the causes of topping. I don’t recall ever having topped a croquet ball, or ever having given a thought to the swing of the mallet. Having taken aim, one looks at the wicket and strikes the ball; that’s all there is to it. So in golf. When you want distance you look at the ball, because you are going to “soak” it; but when direction or delicacy of stroke are wanted, you look at the hole, or at that spot on the green where you design to drop the ball.

You stand very “open,” with your right foot well advanced and your right elbow anchored to your hip; you let the club swing on the hinge of your wrists—straight back and straight forward—and when you reach the ball you flick it sharply[113] or gently, as the distance may require. A child that never pitched ball can do this. A man who has devoted years to glaring at the ball will have some difficulty at first, because perfect relaxation is possible only when your attention is on the flag.

II.

For straightaway work (and that is all that need concern the inexperienced player) the mashie can do nothing that the midiron cannot do, except to put the ball higher in the air and more at the mercy of the wind. Yet, when the average golfer gets within a hundred and fifty yards of a green out comes his mashie, and one of two things happens: if the ball is half topped it goes to perdition; if it is hit clean it drops short of the green. A lower flying ball would have reached the green or passed it. But “many are called and few get up.”

Of ten players, nine overswing with all the irons, and especially with the mashie. Now, a mashie, like a cheap piano, cannot be forced by the average player without disastrous results. A very skilful player can force a club in an emergency, but if he were to force it at all times he would soon cease to be a very skilful player. I know of no holes that call for a long shot with a mashie. If you find yourself one hundred and[114] fifty or more yards from a green, and the ball has to be dropped dead, that is both your misfortune and your fault; your previous shots were short.

If, in the back-swing, your mashie passes the perpendicular, and your wrists are carried higher than your equator, you are forcing the stroke. Even if you are in the predicament referred to, and have to have a long ball, it is better to do the forcing with your wrists and forearms than to wrap the club around your neck. As to where you should look while executing the shot, I find that the pleasantest results are obtained by letting the eyes follow the ball. You don’t lift your head or shoulders to do this; you merely roll your head, and your eyes follow the entire flight of the ball. Nothing is gained, and something is risked, by staring at the ground after the bird has flown.

THE MIDIRON.

Before continuing these illuminating remarks on golf, it might be well to echo the warning of Andrew Lang in an introduction to an edition of Walton’s Angler. “If there are any facts in this book,” he said in effect, “they got in by accident.” This being understood, we may proceed to consider that indispensable tool, the midiron.

The most satisfying shot in golf would be the drive, if you drove well every day; but all the circumstances[115] of this stroke are not always within your control; on the off days driving is something that, since it must be done, ’twere well it were done quickly. But the short shot with the iron, up to, say, seventy-five yards, is, next to putting (which is as simple as beanbag), the easiest thing to do imaginable. You need to keep but two things in mind: first, you must lay the right elbow against the side and take the club back with the wrists and forearms; second, you must finish the stroke with the knuckles of the right hand underneath. This in itself insures the clubhead being carried through on the line. When this has become automatic you may add the crowning touch—finishing with the clubhead very low, the blade laid flat, and your arms perfectly straight and pointed at the flag.

Don’t look at the ground after the ball is gone. Let everything follow it,—club, arms, eyes and body. A very good plan is to practise the shot with eyes on the flag. When you discover that you can hit a ball without looking at it you will have no trouble in looking at it when the occasion requires.

And this, in a word, is what I have been driving at, that you cannot play golf easily, gracefully and accurately until you have lost all fear of the ball and have got rid of the notion that keeping your eye on it is the fundamental principle of the[116] game. Almost any professional will tell you that it is not looking at the ball that enables you to drive two hundred yards; it is keeping your shoulders in one plane throughout the stroke.

THE PLEASURES OF HOPE.

“Let firmness combined with ease be your motto,” advises George O’Neil. Or, as Horace suggested to Maecenas, on the links of Ancient Rome, “Otium cum dignitate.”

Woman’s place, as Socrates said, is in the home. One of her appeared on a public golf course yesterday in so transparent a skirt that four members of a foursome topped their approach shots, and one of them left his ball on the green.

Golf would be a perfect game if it were not for the golf gabble; and this must be accepted as inevitable. If a person who is conscious of the absurdity of golf gabble is unable to quit it, how hopeless is the case of the unconscious gabbler.

Here’s an example of it: We bring off a good[118] iron shot, and instead of ascribing it (silently) to chance or happy circumstance, we must announce to our companion that at last we have solved the secret of the iron shot. And so we gabble our way around the course, till the sound of our own voice is wearisome to our own ears.

Olds Grant Rice and Bill Hammond of the N. Y. Mail and Sun respectively came out and golfed with ye Scribe. Grant is a regular player, but Bill is kind of irregular.

The Saturday Review says that the fascination of golf is understandable, but “the wicked hate of the non-player is less easy to grasp.” Nobody objects to the game itself; it is the incessant gabble about it that bores one to tears. Tie a non-player to a bench in the locker room of any golf club and he would go mad within the hour.

Golf is a gabby game because it is so stuffed with ifs—“if I hadn’t hooked,” “if I hadn’t looked up,” “if the ball hadn’t hit the bunker,” etc. And it is all a great waste of breath, nobody is interested in your “ifs,” not even the man you are playing with.

Hon. Brand Whitlock, staff correspondent for the Line at Brussels, advises us that there is a good golf course there, and that the Flemish caddies touch their caps politely and do not seek to draw players into intimate and animated conversation.

In Wilmette, we gather, the goats are those who play golf on Sunday, and the sheep are those who go to church. This classification is flattering to neither flock.

Curious golfers who may follow the learned arguments on “what constitutes a good hole” must conclude that the purpose of the architects is not to make the game easy for democracy. Par figures mean nothing to the average player; they are for the few gifted beings who participate in national tournaments. As courses are now laid out, there is a “short way to the green,” calling at the outset for a carry of, say, 190 yards. The next thing will be to station a policeman at the bunker, to chase off the course a player so unlucky as not to carry the hazard.

“Golf is the pastime of small men with large incomes, who are too old to play tennis and too dull to talk to women.”—Walter Pritchard Eaton.

It is also the pastime of large men with small[120] incomes, who vary golf with tennis, and who are too busy to hang around a samovar discoursing the drayma.

To be entirely fair to Mr. Eaton (although one is under no compulsion to be fair to a dramatic critic), he put the sniffy remarks about golf into the mouth of one of his short-story characters. Tennis players should not scorn Golf. We have discovered that playing golf improves our tennis game at least fifty percent. Golf compels deliberation in striking; and waiting for a tennis ball, instead of leaping at it, is the secrecy of accuracy; not to mention the turn of wrist when the racquet (or golf ball) is taken back. This is what keeps the tennis ball out of the net and the golf ball out of the rough.

A golfer in Rockland, Me., has a cat which chases the ball and sits by it until the player arrives. This is interesting chiefly as being the solitary reason for a cat’s existence.

“Each caddy should be at his ball by the time the player arrives.”—Indian Hill note.

ON THE STYXVILLE GOLF LINKS.

“Bozzy,” chuckled Dr. Samuel Johnson, “you were but a novice at the game.”

The amiable lexicographer teed off on the links of the Styxville Golf Club and he and Boswell, his caddie, leisurely followed the ball.

“Yes, Bozzy,” continued Dr. Johnson, “I used to think you the most enterprising press agent that ever tooted a horn, but when I compare your work with the twentieth century article I am convinced that you were the merest alphabetarian.”

“Pooh, pooh! A press agent who publishes only what has happened would starve to death these days. But I have you even on that count. How about the time I lost my pantaloons and was too late at the Cheshire Cheese. Not a word about it in your celebrated ‘Life of Johnson.’ By the way, what became of the ball? Did you keep your eye on it?”

Boswell located the gutta percha and remarked that he considered the loss of his patron’s unmentionables too trivial an item for a dignified biography.

“Sir,” cried Dr. Johnson, relapsing into his ancient stilted manner, “you are an unconscionable blockhead. When, not long ago Booth Tarkington lost his trousers a great ado was made by the[122] press agent and the papers were full of it. ’Twas not half so good a tale as mine. You might have scribbled a whole chapter about it. Dick Steele made an excellent jest on the matter and Noll Goldsmith a set of verses, Davy Garrick gagged his lines with it and put the house in an uproar. Give me the cleek.”

“Nay, Bozzy, you were a very good press agent for our day, but you would not stand much show if you were on earth to-day. Tarkington wouldn’t keep you a week. You couldn’t caddie five minutes for Irving Bacheller or Ham Garland, or Hop Smith, or any other modern man of letters. Boz, you’re a back number.”

Golfers, especially those addicted to slicing, will approve a plan to pasture sheep in the rough and on the crest of bunkers. A well cropped rough will take much of the gloom out of their zigzag operations.

GOLF AND GRUEL.

Golf and gruel are both Scotch, and as inseparably associated as kilts and bagpipes.

THE LAY OF THE LAST GOLFER.

WHY INDEED?

A Philadelphia golfer gets on the First Page for playing 144 holes of golf in one day. But this is by no means a record. It was tied by Slason Thompson of Old Elm, who was far[124] from considering it a remarkable feat. It would be much more noteworthy if the Philadelphia person should eat 144 pies between sun-up and sun-down.

WINTER GOLF.

“All the benefits of outdoors winter golf in the tropics, at the Indoor Golf School.”—Ad.

“Pairfect,” said Mr. Joe MacMorran, when we indulged him in the pleasure of watching us swing a golf club. “The swing is pairfect. All ye need is control.” Or, as the distinguished Kansan said of hell and western Kansas, all that either place needs is water and good society.

During a golf match at Greenwich this week an approach by Vardon was so strong that the ball passed the green and hit a lady on the bounce, recoiling to the flag. “Some back spin!” cried another spectator.

THE PROPER SPIRIT.

Sir: I am resolved to essay the game of golf again after having yielded to discouragement for a season. But now I am fired by a new ambition. Reason has taught me that the greater the number of swats I can get at the pill the more I get for my money. This attribute of mind will enable me to preserve an even temper and measurably reduce (or reduce measurably) my output of rude language. I shall welcome on the bunkers or elsewhere the theory that I am better off where I am than where I’m going next. If I can get a hundred wallops in a round I get more fun and exercise than my friend who finishes in eighty, and is chesty about it.

“Have we too many golf clubs?” inquires the valued Post. It has always seemed so to us. We usually get around with a driver and a putter—one drive to the green and one putt to the hole.

OUR VILLAGE.

A well worn golf pencil was picked up by your correspondent. What scores it could tell of.

Brand Whitlock writes from St. Andrews that he had a fine time on the most famous links in the world, he especially enjoying the Scotch of the caddies.

In the great fourth-estate golf tournament, Old Pop Wells and Ye Ed qualified as captains of canal boats. We out-cussed Pop on the first round, but he more than evened things up on the second, we being two down at the end.

Ye scribe shot a game of golf with Chick Evans, who allowed that our clubs, bag, shoes, and hat are all o.k., and that all we need is a little skill.

Many are complaining that the golf season is at a conclusion; but, as the native at Lake George said, Hell, did you think it was going to be summer all the time?

The frost is on the niblick and the putter’s in the shock. When a man has to play in a couple of undershirts, flannel shirt, sweater, paper vest,[127] and a mackinaw coat, it is time to hang up the fiddle and the bow, for as a fellow said, hownl can you play if you can’t follow through?

Ed Beck and Homer Chandler, accompanied occasionally by their wives, are motoring through the effete east, tearing up the golf courses en route.

Mr. Jack Hoag, for whose golfic opinions we entertain unmitigated respect, writes that “to hit a ball with a wooden club with the wrists loose is to have a feeling that the club itself is stopped when the ball is hit.” Therefore he advises tightening the grip at the impact. It pains us to differ with Mr. Hoag. A golf ball opposes to the clubhead hardly more resistance than a puff ball, as two minutes experimenting will show. Sounder advice, we think, is this: grip loosely or grip tightly, but never change throughout the stroke.

The mother of Hamilton Post, the golfer, was a Miss Stump; the wedding took place in Garrett Woods’ chapel, and the clergyman was Dr. Bockwood. Pass the matches.

FIRST AID TO THE GOLF DUB.

A prominent dub said to us one day: “I’ve taken a good many lessons, and every line of instruction[128] I’ve received sounds perfectly foolish.”

Obviously, the instruction is at fault, for, next to rolling off a log, there is nothing easier than driving a ball with, say, a midiron.

Take a box of balls and an iron, and station yourself a short distance from a putting green. Lay the club on the ground; you won’t need it for ten minutes or so. Now, with your right hand pitch the balls, one by one, at the flag just as you would pitch an indoor baseball, or throw a bowling ball down an alley—underhand. The only difference between this motion and the golf stroke is that in the bowling “address” you face the pins, whereas in golf your left side is toward the pin. Hence the turn of the body.

After you have chucked the dozen balls, you will discover, if you are not utterly imbecile, two or three things: you can’t chuck the ball underhand when your right hand is shoulder high; the arm must come down first; your body has come part way round and your left hip has gone forward; and, of chief importance, the knuckles of your hand are underneath when the ball is dispatched.

Precisely the same motions are gone through with when you use the midiron. If, after half an hour’s practice, with or without the club, you can’t acquire the knack, you had better quit. You are hopeless.

The two things sought for are distance and direction. Concerning the first we have nothing at present to offer; our conclusions have not yet jelled.

Direction is a simpler matter. Accuracy in approaching and good direction in longer shots may be acquired by the simple expedient of relaxing the grip of the right hand after the ball is struck—relaxing it, not slightly, but completely; the fingers barely retaining a hold on the club. Most duffers pull or drag all their iron shots away to the left of the flag; letting go with the right hand will remedy this. The left hand, the grip of which is constant throughout the stroke, goes merrily on its way, uncrumpled, unhampered and unchecked.

One can, at will, pull or slice a golf ball around a bunker or other obstruction, and we should think it possible to rifle a cannon in such a way that a round shell could be shot around a corner.

State convicts are to be employed on the public roads of Illinois. This will be good for the roads, and as good as golf for the convicts, as the work will “take them out in the open air.”[130] And it is a more pleasant sight to watch a man mending a road than to watch a dub golfer ruining the turf of a fairgreen.

The star player of Greenwich Golf Club is Mr. Topping, who may be related to F. Dub, whose name we saw once in an account of a golf match.

When, on a Saturday you have bought a golf club or tennis racket in a department store, has it occurred to you that the clerk who sold you the things would like to be setting forth that afternoon, like yourself, for a turn on the links, or in the park? It has? Then you are more thoughtful than some people.

SUNDAY GOLF.

There is Sunday golf at Onwentsia now, in the afternoon; the forenoon, which is the better half of the day, is set apart for church-going. A considerable time ago a well known pastor announced that if the members of a certain golf club would not come to the gospel he would take the gospel to the golfers, but, so far as we remember, no services were held at the home tee. “The better[131] the day, the better the deed,” does not hold true of golf. As a friend jingles it—

THE GAME IN STAGELAND.

Mr. Collins, the dramatic reviewer of the Chicago Evening Post, has recently taken up the r. and a. g.; consequently his critical eye is cast upon characters in plays who are introduced in golfing regalia. He reports to us two interesting discoveries to date. In “Parlor, Bedroom, and Bath,” the contents of the golf bag consist of three brassies and four putters, and in “Good Bye, Boys,” the bag holds two drivers and a midiron. It is scarcely necessary to say that the realistic Mr. Belasco is not connected with either production.

Discovered again, the meanest man. Playing in a game that called for a penny a stroke, the pot to go to the Red Cross, he lifted when he pitched into a bunker, and conceded the hole.

FIRST AID.

(Reply: Any smooth piece of turf. Do not[132] attempt to sclaff in tall grass, as the club might break on a concealed stone.)

Sherlock writes: “I look at the ball, but I top it just the same. What do you make of that, Watson?”

(Reply: Very likely you look at the ball with your left eye, instead of your right. The right eye, being farther from the ball, can see farther under it. The cleanest hitter we know has a left eye of glass.)

Moron writes: “I am a chronic slicer; so desperate is my disease, I have to allow for the slice on every shot, even in practice swings. Can anything be done?”

(Reply: Cut out meats, eat plenty of green vegetables, and take long walks in the open air—which is really the most convenient place for long walks. Report to us again in three years.)

Fluff writes: “With a strong wind blowing from east to west, should I slice or pull?”

(Reply: You neglect to say whether you are going north or south. If you are going south, pray give our regards to the bunch at Belleair.)

A valued reader, Mr. D. Precox, writes us that, after testing a suggestion we advanced in March, he perfectly agrees that topping is invited by regarding the ball with the left eye, but discouraged by regarding it with the right. “Unfortunately,”[133] he communicates, “my left eye is not of glass, like your cleanest hitter’s, nor can I break it of the habit of looking at the ball. In these critical circumstances what would you advise?” We can only refer Mr. Precox to the best of authorities. If his left eye offends him, let him pluck it out. No sacrifice is too great. What is an eye more or less when a perfect pitch to the pin is demanded?

BULWER LYTTON ON GOLF.

“I ask your indulgence, gentlemen,” said the new President of the U. S. G. A., “if I make any mistakes in my more or less ignorance of parliamentary procedure.” Our advice to President Perrin is that he take a niblick when he gets into trouble. There is nothing better for quelling a cantankerous delegate.

THE PENDULUM PUTT.

As we find the theories of others are more diverting than our own, which are merely scientific, we shall but seldom intrude an opinion, and then only for the purpose of adding to the general confusion. Thus we may take this occasion to record that the so-called Pendulum Putt is an overpraised[134] institution. Any man, or almost any man, may become a grandfather, but no man can be grandfather’s clock; a tall clock has no nerves and no muscles, and it lives a quiet, regular life. The Pendulum Putt is not more inevitable than another. In our laboratory experiments we have putted in every language, including the Scandinavian and Profane, and have found that the hole can be missed as easily by one method as by another. The least attractive style is that which requires a consideration of their navels (known in California as “sunkist navels”), and a strict adherence of the putter blade to the line o’ flight. The method we finally adopted does not require that the putter be taken back or brought forward on any invariable, ineluctable line; any line, within reason, will do. That decided on, putting ceased to be as troublesome as a hair shirt, and we now approach the green sustained and soothed by an unfaltering trust, instead of like the quarry-slave at night, scourged to his dungeon.

Mr. Chick Evans drove two or three dozen golf balls into the west wind once for our special delectation, and golf dubs will be glad to learn that after analyzing Mr. Chick’s stroke we concluded that the great secret of golf and the only secret, is rhythm. Mr. Chick’s rhythm is perfect. The morning stars have nothing on him.

ON THE FIRING LINE.

GOLFING WISDOM FROM THE ANCIENTS.

SIMPLIFIED SPORT.

Sir: A golfing friend of mine was telling a friend, not a golfer, how difficult it was to play over the ditch on our course. The party of the second part said, “Why don’t they fill up the ditch?”

(Your party of the second part is evidently related to the old lady who, watching a tennis[136] game, asks, “Why don’t they take down the net?”)

The new professional at our club is Mr. Al Falfa, winner of last year’s open, when he pitched a ton of hay in six forks under par. Mr. Falfa uses the closed stance in pitching, as he believes it facilitates the follow-through. In hoeing, however, he inclines to a square stance, the feet being close together. As adviser to the greens committee, he advocates dandelions and dock as being superior to spinach. As a majority of our club is going in for gardening, the new pro’s teaching time is already filled.

QUAD ERAT DEMONSTRANDUM.

At Old Elm last fall we were knocking around in a foursome, one member of which was a visitor from the east. We paired with him, but he was unaware of the singular honor accorded him. After apologizing for missing a short putt, he confided to us that his putting had been ruined by his following the advice of a writer in some golf magazine, who advocated looking at the hole instead of the ball. “If ever I meet that chap,” said he, “I’ll take a niblick to him.” As we dislike violent scenes, we did not enlighten the gentleman.

Quite otherwise the case of Old Al Dennis of Skokie, whom we persuaded to give the theory a trial. For several seasons he has looked at the hole while putting, and is wholly satisfied with the result. Why wake him up?

Of 365 persons who use the expression “the psychology of golf,” 365 know nothing of psychology, and 273 can spell the word. As it happens, one of our friends is a distinguished psychologist and something of a golfer, and our conversations have been more or less illuminating. We may report some of them in this incomparable department of uplift.

Mr. Punch gives us a picture of a golfer subduing a burglar with a cleek, and Mr. Fox shows us a golfer pitching coals into his furnace with a mashie. So perhaps the missus will admit that the game is not an utter waste of time.

Mr. Varden’s game is a drive, a mashie, and a couple of putts. Thanks to temperament and years of practice, he has concentration and perfect control of his muscles. Self-control is nearly all of golf, and few people play seventies because few people possess self-control.

We do not envy the man with the vegetable temperament. The man we envy is the man with the nervous temperament, who has acquired control[138] of himself. He may not live so long as the vegetable person, but while he is living he is living.

About this “perfect golf” or “faultless golf” that figures so frequently in the accounts of matches. It isn’t. For if a par four, allowing two putts, is perfect golf, one under par would be “more perfect.” One under par—one putt on each green—would be perfect golf, and this is accomplished by good players frequently and by ordinary players occasionally.

They have been playing golf at Bayside for the Mary Garden cup. Another clever substitute for losing one’s jewels.

Mr. Darwin, who knows how to play golf as well as how to write about it, has pleasantly but plainly indicated that there is a difference between a real golf course and the usual links to be found hereabouts. Any course on which a player can slice or hook badly without penalty is fit only for lady golfers or for males who are content to slop around in ninety-something with nothing worthier in view than winning a “syndicate” from two or three other dubbers.

Anybody can drive a golf ball a considerable distance, but not every one can drive in a straight line. The man who CAN do it should be rewarded with a good lie for his second. The man who can’t should experience the terrors of the pit and the jungle. After a season of continuous punishment he may do one of two things—quit the game, or learn how to play it.

The dear old Saturday Review has discovered, to its own satisfaction, why Vardon and Ray were beaten by Ouimet. The concentrated will power of the gallery did it, and the idea, says the S. R., “is based upon the latest teachings of psychology.” “Englishmen,” it adds, “are seldom at their best when playing games in America.”

Can you—as Baucis inquired of Philemon—beat it? Apparently the denser atmosphere of the British Isles is a non-conductor of psychological force; otherwise, Mr. McLoughlin could not have brought home the Davis Cup, and Heinrich Schmidt could not have held Harold Hilton until the last gun was fired.

Women are queer. They can’t see the difference between playing eighteen holes of golf and digging eighteen shrub holes in a garden.

Another cousin of Young Grimes, reports D. M. V., refers to a w. k. golf implement as a Skenecaddy putter.

Entrants for the Printers’ Golf tournament were requested to “hole all puts and replace all pivots.” A proofroom foozle.

She will e-vent-u-al-ly. But first she must re-turn to the edge of the green and pick up her bag.

Why does she not lay the bag on the far side of the green, so as not to de-lay the game?

II.

Some one must be breath-ing heav-i-ly. There! Ever-y one is now hold-ing his breath.

Oh, he has hit the ball, but he has knocked it on-ly a lit-tle way. What is he so sore a-bout?

A rob-in chirped just as he raised his club, and it spoiled his drive. If he could catch that bird you bet he would wring its neck.

III.

The us-u-al thing. “Aw-ful-ly sor-ry, old man. I’d no i-de-a I should drive so far.”

IV.

No, he is mere-ly ad-dress-ing the ball. That is what is called the pre-lim-in-ary wag-gle.

Not in the least. So far as they are con-cerned, the men in front can run and be damned.

VI.

He has lost his ball and is mo-tion-ing for the play-ers be-hind him to play through.

Yes, that’s a com-mon trick. Let us hope some-body will hit the man in the bean.

THE LADY GOLFER.

The Oklahoma Times refers editorially to the Nineteenth Amendment. The editor, it is conjectured, is probably a golfer, and has confused the amendment with the hole.

Society over here doesn’t make much of golf. For one thing, all sorts of people play it; then there isn’t much chance to exhibit millinery, while to watch a match one has to walk three or four miles. It is easier to pretend an interest in tennis.

Golf seems a great waste of time, until you[145] see a man shooting at clay pigeons or starting off to attend an automobile race.

We believe we have discovered a method of hitting a golf ball with certainty and precision, and we pass it on to the great army of toppers. You know what you do; you step up to the ball apprehensively and hit it timidly and ineffectively. Then, when it hop-skips into the rough you waste all manner of epithets on it. The language is all right, but it is applied at the wrong time.

Try this; tee the ball, stand over it threateningly, and glare at it balefully. As you swing back, say, between shut teeth, “You pock-marked”—the adjective brings you to the top of the swing, when you pause an instant to gather all your energy. Then apply the noun—any you may fancy—at the same time smiting the ball as if it were the head of a rattler.

The secret of the method is a maximum of concentration. Your malignant gaze has never left the ball. It is surprising the distance you get—if you don’t smash your club. Even that’s better than topping.

THE COMPULSION OF HABIT.

Sir: Gentleman with two golf clubs in his hand stepped into an elevator in the Railroad Exchange. After the car started up he yelled[146] “Four!” The man standing in front of him ducked his head.

Meditating on the fact that the English have beaten the Scotch at their own game of golf, a correspondent writes, “Is there, in the whole history of games, another case like this?” Sure. There’s polo. It originated in Asia.

We do not wish to add to the already extensive list of words and phrases used in writing of golf, but it occurs to us that “led the field” would be a serviceable phrase in reporting a qualifying round.

Suggestion to crack golfers: Why not get photographed in the act of finishing a drive?

“Keep your eye on the ball,” writes Arthur Taylor, the w. k. golfer. And he adds, quizzically; “Which eye?” It makes a difference.

Speaking of golf (which we do on the slightest encouragement) the Pall Mall Gazette has been considering the best hole in a choice of 50,000. The experts do not agree, naturally, but they do agree that the best “blind hole” is the Alps hole at Prestwich.

At a meeting of 10,000 Chicago golfers, it was agreed that the most attractive hole was the nineteenth.

In his preface to his book, “The New Golf,” P. A. Vaile writes: “Unless one can play, or at least talk intelligently about golf, one has to miss about three-quarters of the conversation in any country club—and many other places in America.” That were indeed a deprivation.

As for the instruction in the book; the essence of it is that one should grip the club tightly and think of nothing except hitting the ball. Sound advice; there is no better. It is almost impossible to explain the golf stroke because of its simplicity. One might write a book explaining how to swim, but if the novice persisted in throwing up his hands he would go under. Similarly, if the golf novice persists in attacking the ball in a complex and unnatural manner, elaborate treatises on the simplicity of golf will do him no good.

A large part of Mr. Vaile’s book is taken up in pooh-poohing the theories of other writers, which are for the most part pooh-poohable. The question arises, what would Mr. Vaile and the others do for material if the game were not enveloped in mystery, and the simplest club shot considered as solemnly as the ordination of a bishop?

A golf bag that does not require a caddy is among the season’s novelties. It is, we assume, so contrived that every now and then it slams itself[148] on the ground with sufficient force to break the shaft of the driver or brassie.

A popular fallacy, usually cherished by the missus, is that a man can get as much physical good from weeding a garden as from playing eighteen holes of golf.

From Milwaukee comes the regret that we have deserted the r. and a. game for a mere automobile. We found that hauling on a wheel ruined the delicacy of our approaching game.

Nineteenth Hole has a yarn to tell. His opponent drove a ball under a low-limbed thorn apple, and as he crawled into the thicket on his tum, N. H. said j. l. t. “Keep your head down!”

There is nothing surprising in the news that a caddy found a diamond necklace on the links. A caddy is likely to find anything except the thing you pay him to keep an eye on.

A GREAT GAME.

Sir: A tall youth who golfs (by courtesy) at Jaxon park has a wig-wag and swing which suggests a combination of St. Vitus, tango, and locomotor ataxia. As he was teeing off with much ceremony the other day a Scotch devotee of the game remarked: “’Tis a great game! There’s[149] a mon who gets a’ there is in it. Before he heets the ba’ he’s used every mooscle in his body except his ears.”

“Near Golf Links”—Ad of a South Haven resort. Obviously, again, a hyphen is missing.

It is never too late to learn. From their more recent disquisitions we observe that professional golfers are learning something about the game, and are advocating methods precisely the reverse of their former instruction.

ADDRESSING THE BALL.

“The revolutionists hold much of southern Finland along the Finnish golf,” reports the Minneapolis Journal. And A. E. B. thinks it must be annoying to have those seaside links cluttered up with Bullsheviki, Red Guards, and other things.

The difference between a summer member and a regular member of a golf club is that the summer member does not enjoy the privilege of paying dues during the winter.

GOLF ATHLETES.

Sir: As a fellow sport will you kindly assist me to hand a few remarks to those people who speak of golfers as “athletes.” Athlete is an over-worked word, anyhow, and to tack golfers on to its tail, is about the limit. To my notion golf is a game fit only for ladies and doddering old men. You are at liberty to give my address to any golf “athlete” who thinks he would like to “take a fall” out of me.—Buck (Ex-champion tiddlediwinks athlete.)

One or two professionals have admitted that when you look at the hole in putting the ball keeps wonderfully on the line, but they think they sense the distance better by looking at the ball.

FOOTNOTES TO BAEDEKER.

Between the fort and the town sprawls the links of the Barifield Golf Club, as “sporty” a course as you please. I remarked a clubhouse and a number of putting greens; for the rest one plays anywhere across the rock-strewn landscape. Wire fences surround the putting greens, on which the grass is tall and thick. A herd of cows were cropping the fairgreens and these I took to be members of the Greens Committee. Although it was Saturday afternoon, only two players were on the links, and they, as long as they remained in view, were searching for balls among the myriad stones of the hillside.

At Manchester, Vermont, we were the honored guests of Dr. P. Sibleius Ferus, the distinguished Latin scholar and gentleman. An evening’s conversation with Dr. Ferus is as stimulating as I conceive an evening with Dr. Middleton to have been. I also shot a round of golf with the doctor on the links of the Ekwanok Club—the most beautiful course I ever expect to see. The score? No matter.

It was a new experience to play golf among the mountains. It is a passionate golfer who can disregard[152] the distracting views from the tees and regard the ball as raptly as certain Hindu gentlemen contemplate their equators. Upon the flat and smoky links on the south side of Chicago concentration is easy. The ball is the handsomest object in sight. There, too, it seems a more important matter than among the mountains. Of course one may look at it this way: A golf ball is a symbol of infinity; it is as perfect a sphere as Aldebaran; the power that sends it winging is one with the power that moves the stars in their courses; the laws that govern its flight and trajectory are as immutable as the laws that bind Arcturus and his sons. The trouble is, if you get to thinking in that groove while addressing the ball you are apt to laugh, and that spoils your drive.

Chicago golfers who may have played around the links of the Claremont Country Club of Oakland, will agree that the course may be classified as “sporty” especially in August. The earth is baked hard and the turf burnt brown, and the ball, however driven, runs like a kangaroo. If the drive deviates from the straight and narrow path the ball rolls down hill to heaven and the caddy knows where. One usually aims ten or more points to the right or left of the flag; and so many shots must be played off steep slopes that a man with one leg six inches shorter than the other[153] would have a decided advantage over the conventionally legged player.

A writer in Drover’s Journal remarks that we are “trying to tell Jerry Travers how to play golf.” The gentleman is wrong, as usual; we should assume to teach a duck how to swim. But putting is a department of golf in which one man’s opinion is as good as another’s.

A child cannot drive a ball 250 yards, but a child can putt better than a number of gentlemen we know who have been playing golf for years—provided the child is permitted to function naturally, as when it plays croquet.

When a seasoned player, distant only a dozen feet from the cup, can putt a ball a yard to the right or left of the hole, it shows that something is practically wrong. Yet one sees such pathetic exhibitions of inaptitude on every green.

SPEAKING OF PUTTING.

“Putts and calls are the safest and surest method of trading in wheat, corn or oats, because your loss is absolutely limited to the amount bought.”—Ad.

In Golf Illustrated, Mr. Francis Ouimet writes that when, in his approach putt, he runs by the[154] cup only eight feet, he is more confident of holing the next putt than if the approach had been three or four feet short? When a man overruns the cup eight feet, would you call that sensing the distance?

THE SEVENTEENTH OF MARCH.

Sir: Apropos of the day, likewise apropos of one of your hobbies, it might interest you to know that golf as a game is of Irish origin, having been played by Cuchullian, a personality who figures largely in Irish heroic literature. In fact, it is said that the snakes left Ireland because of an unsuccessful attempt of a kind old mother snake to hatch a consignment of golf balls which she mistook for eggs. Whereupon she rallied all her ilk and they betook themselves to a land more suitable for incubating purposes.

KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE HOLE!

Sir: If I fail to hold my place on the team this year, it will be because your eye-on-the-hole stuff has made a good putterer out of a mediocre putter, and the crime will rest upon your colyum.

Stick to it, old man, and you’ll come out all right. Two eminent psychologists have assured us that our theory is absolutely sound, and we’d[155] rather have their opinion than that of Harry Vardon, who confesses that he doesn’t know anything about putting.

HAPPY HINTS FOR GLOOMY GOLFERS.

A large percentage of golf gloom arises from slicing. A golfer’s idea of hell is to stand on a hot tee for a million years and slice balls out of bounds. The chronic slicer is a wretched figure and he falls as low as he can when, giving up hope of ever hitting a straight ball, he aims a quarter of a mile to the left of the flag.

There are at least seven causes of slicing. The commonest is the vicious practice of bringing the clubhead down outside the line of the ball’s flight. This imparts a rotary motion to the ball, and the flight of it describes a crescent. You do this nine times out of ten. But do not despair; we can help you. We can teach you to hit inside the line.

Buy from a commission merchant a basket of very, very bad eggs, and give these to the caddy to carry. When you tee your ball, or come up to it on the fairgreen, place an egg about three inches away from the ball and an inch or so back of it. Now swing, being careful to keep the clubhead from straying beyond the line, otherwise you will smash the egg and scatter the malodorous contents. Before a dozen eggs are broken[156] you will quit slicing or be asked to resign from the club.

If the egg remedy fails, procure a piece of dynamite and use that instead. This will effect a permanent cure.

L. E. B. says his wife claims to be a Class A-plus golf widow. When she passes to her reward she hopes it will be early in the week, so the incident will not interfere with husband’s Sunday golf.

Florence quotes from one of H. G. Wells’s slams at golf, concluding with, “The uglier a man’s legs are, the better he plays golf.”

“I play a beastly game,” adds Florence; “how about you?” Oh, a regular Chippendale of a game, my dear.

Sir: I am sure I saw her on the golf course one windy day. We offer her the privilege of our course for entire season if she will agree to keep herself in shape.

The consensus of our readers seems to be that the maiden whose legs are “noticeably bowed” should take up golf, as she would likely develop a peach of a game.

Sir: Sunday I looked at the hole and missed the putt. At the nineteenth hole I looked at the ball four times and was then eighty cents in the hole.

ASIDES.

Davy: A light golf ball (floater) will rise fifteen or twenty feet higher than a heavy ball. A light ball should always be used when you have to “hold the green.”

L. V. B. Your experience coincides with that of many people. Putting cannot be taught; not because it is too hard, but because it is too easy. It is like instructing a duck in the art of natation.

After a round of golf a man might acquire a reputation for originality by announcing, in the locker room, that “at this time of year the shower bath is the best part of the game.”

“I must have looked up,” said our friend, A. E. D., as he replaced a divot. And he added: “Why don’t we have a list of such remarks, numbered to save time?” “Why not, indeed?” said we, who are nothing if not helpful. And so we offer a short list which golfers may extend as they wish:

With such a list agreed on, when a man topped his driver he would merely ejaculate, “Two!” and sit down.

All true golfers believe in a golf hereafter. Brand Whitlock was okaying St. Andrews with a famous “pro” who remarked, of a certain putting green, that there was none larger or finer, and Whitlock’s aged caddy added: “Not in this world.”

One of the pleasures of playing golf at Old Elm is a notable absence of small bets in the matches such as a ball a hole or a piffling “syndicate.” Old Elm golfers play for blank cheques.

A gentleman writes us that our look-at-the-hole theory works all right in practice, but breaks down in actual play. We beg to assure him that that is his fault not the theory’s. The test of every stroke is what you do with it in practice, when the muscles are relaxed and you function almost mechanically.

Frexample, the Worthington Ball Company[159] does not employ a crack golfer to test its products; it has a mechanical driver at its plant in Ohio. If the ball flies straight they know it is perfectly round; if one brand flies farther than another, they know that that is the longest ball. There is nothing “psychological” about it.

FAR FROM THE M. C.

As bearing on the great obsession we may note that of the twelve volumes added to the library of the Union League Club of Chicago, “since the last report,” eight were about golf.

Casually glancing at a ladies’ tournament, we observed that while the follow-through of the players was open to criticism, the show-through was perfect.

When a lady golfer cries “Fore!” the safe thing to do is to step between her and the flag and call, “Shoot!”

An English writer having asserted that golf is a nerve-wrecking game, the Interstate Medical Record welcomes discussion of the subject, as a change from the eternal debate on sex and neurasthenia. Now, for several years, we have made a rather close study of golf and golfers, and we are well assured that golf as a health-giving recreation is a greatly overlauded institution.

We will consider, now, only the person with a nervous temperament: for him, golf is decidedly not a restful game. The failure to bring off a shot that he knows perfectly well how to play, due to the refusal of the muscles to obey the instructions of the mind, sets up an irritation conscious[161] or subconscious, that more than offsets the good derived from a round on the links.

If golf works this way on a man who knows why he bungles a stroke, imagine what it does to the man who can’t tell what ails him, and must make periodic visits to the golf doctors to have his affliction diagnosed.

The best thing about golf is that it cultivates patience and perseverance. But so does the telephone.

WE SYMPATHIZE AND UNDERSTAND.

Sir: I feel that I have an indisputable right to wail at your wailing place. I am being ridiculed and relentlessly persecuted by various amateur golfer friends because, forsooth, I have dared to defend your theory of k. y. e. o. t. h.

Much may be made of a golfer if he be caught young. After he has played a few years, you can’t tell him anything.

Speaking of “golf and athletic sports” a dispatch from New York mentions “precious stones and jewels.”

THE TRAINING OF CADDIES.

Sir: Didn’t that English writer who implied that we were committing an economical sin by training caddies to become a class worthless except as boys of burden, exaggerate things somewhat? Frinstance! At Jackson Park one day a caddie made a perfectly good nurse girl while the father and mother of the child played eighteen holes of golf. I can vouch for this, as I was nearby when the brave bag-bearer decided that pushing a baby buggy was not beneath his dignity.

Jackson Park society note: Applications for lockers at the Golf shelter clubhouse should be made to-day—Mr. Jim McGinnis will assist in receiving the guests, and the weather man has promised to pour.

Query by the Golfer’s Magazine. “Does golf cause men to neglect their wives?”

Not being a golfiac, we cannot say, but if the answer is in the affirmative, the wives must be singularly unattractive.

Is there another bore comparable with the man who is just learning golf? He bores the friend who was so foolish as to show him the game. He bores the good souls who are kind enough to play around with him. He bores his family and all his acquaintances. And finally (if able to view himself objectively) he bores himself.

If we had not made a vow never again to parody “The Ancient Mariner” we might easily turn one on the golfiac who holds you with his glittering eye. But it would be a shame to do it.

“When you have practised with your mashie on the various golf courses around Chicago,” writes L. T., “and have hit a foot behind the ball and splashed mud all over you and into your mouth, have you ever decided which are the best tasting links?” Well, we fancy the Skokie pot bunkers, though the Glen View links are uncommonly rich. We usually eat with a niblick.

It may not be possible to write an interesting baseball story in ordinary English but it is possible in the case of Golf. The articles by Mr.[164] Darwin in the W. G. N. are uncommonly interesting. He was not long in discovering that American players are weak with their irons, as any one with half an eye can see. This weakness is due to over swinging and to lack of instruction. Visit any golf club and watch the members play. Men who have played for years are content to dub around in ninety something. It is pathetic. The self-taught golfer moves us to tears.

Golf in itself is not an important thing, but if a thing is worth doing at all, it is worth doing well. It is worth doing gracefully, too, unless nature has denied a man all sense of rhythm, which seldom happens.

UPLIFTING THE CADDIE.

Gratifying is the response to the inquiry, “What should be done to occupy, instruct, or amuse the caddie during the long waits?”

Sir: What shall be done is asked, to occupy, amuse or instruct the caddie during the long waits? Why, teach them to caddie, of course! One of ’em, at the Homeward links, planted himself at the side of each green, and whistled “On the Mississippi” while we were trying to putt. Obviously, it can’t be done—to that tune!

F. W. P. “During those long waits, sift the caddie for golf balls. I think I know where you can get a new one if you hurry.”

C. P. S. “I always improve the time by reading to my caddies from ‘How to Keep Well.’”

E. McC. “Started by handing him the W. G. N. folded so the Line alone was visible. He calmly informed me that he read it every morning before eating, and after breakfast he looked at Brigg’s picture and read the baseball news. Then with a sly look, he remarked: ‘I ain’t seen you make it yet.’ Now, you got me into this, and it is up to you to reinstate me in the good opinion of my caddie—if he ever had a good one.”

E. E. R. “Uplifting one to-day, I found him standing on my perfectly good Black Circle.”

J. M. W. “Since school began, a small boy who hitherto had been a ‘model of a pupil,’ has been brought before the principal three times for using ‘the most terrible language.’ Questioned as to how he had spent his vacation, the miscreant confessed that he had caddied on a local golf course. The principal suggests that caddies be supplied with earmuffs, to be worn through the long and profane waits.”

Another way to uplift the caddie is to follow the example of Col. MacDonald of Edgewater[166] and blow the boys to a good feed and a little good will.

JUST AS YOU SAY.

Sir: Asked my caddie his views, and he suggested shorter hours and higher pay. I guess it is about time to drop the subject.

When you are put up at a club and invited to sign a friend’s name for anything you desire, always provide yourself with a hard pencil. It lasts longer.

Some players, not many, replace divots; but it is better to disregard them, as the cavity prepared with your iron leaves an ideal brassey lie for a following player.

After driving into the party ahead, the correct explanation is: “I didn’t think I was going so far.”

Always use a wooden club on a caddy. A niblick is too messy.

Before pocketing a ball lost by another player it is well to wait until the ball has stopped rolling.

A character in one of Mr. Thomas’ plays remarks that there is nothing less worth watching than a bum game of billiards. But at Ormond Beach a gallery watched Mr. Rockefeller play a round of golf.

MR. LEGION.

If we Americans took good government as seriously as we take the game of golf, we might hope to overhaul the millennium.

Whether in his relations to others or in the game of golf, almost everybody tries to do too much at one time. So from now to the end of the year we shall attempt but two things—(1) to be kind to those around us; and (2) to learn how to use a mashie. Fore!

Fine distinctions are being drawn between amateur and professional golfers. In the case of the amateur one may occasionally be in doubt,[169] but we can always tell a professional by the way he handles his iron clubs.

To throw coal accurately into the furnace, reports R. E. T., after experimenting, you must keep your eye on the opening, stand “open” and use a pendulum swing. Correct. And in order to get the coal to the back of the furnace you must have a free follow-through. A jerky stroke piles the coal near the door.

Many golfers are setting out for the so-called sunny southland, where for two or three months, they will hook and slice with all their clubs, and pitch balls with a mashie in every direction except toward the flag. We say nothing about the wooden club, but the fluffed iron shot always evokes our compassion. Sooner than persist in such ineptitude we’d arrange our implements in a neat pile, pour kerosene on them, and strike a match.

There may be more than one way to get a straight ball with an iron, but there is at least one way. All the player need keep in mind are two things, instead of the conventional baker’s dozen. And the first of these is that his right elbow must be in contact with his body throughout the swing until the ball is struck. The second essential is[170] that the knuckles of his right hand must be underneath when the ball is struck. If these two items of a complicated matter are attended to the other eleven will give less and less trouble. What a dub needs is a short cut. There it is. Keep the change.

Golf, says Mr. Taft, is a great boon to humanity. It is indeed. It not only “takes you out in the open air,” but it consumes so much time that you haven’t much left for making speeches and putting your foot in it. Every politician should play golf. Col. Lewis, for example, should swap his pen for a midiron.

Despite the pleasant words said of Mr. Wilson’s golf game his scores probably have to be taken out and buried, as G. Ade expresses it. It may be that he is like the gentleman whom he appointed Minister to Belgium. We were playing with the Hon. Brand, and things weren’t going well. He related an experience at St. Andrews. After he had shot five or six holes, he asked the caddie what he thought of his game—“Aweel,” said the bag-bearer, gloomily, “you have a grand style, but nae luck.”

We have located the man who was first on the links of the Jackson Park Country Club. He got there at three A.M. Sunday morning, and, it being too early to play, he curled up in a rocker and[171] went to sleep. He slept so soundly that when he woke up the starter had given out two hundred tickets.

THE PILL.

In quest of a certain volume of golf scripture we visited the Crerar Library in Chicago. Mr. Andrews, the librarian, apologized for the lack of scripture on his shelves, saying that the Public Library had agreed to take over all amusements. Amusement, forsooth! Golf is a religion, a disease, a fixed idea, a state of mind, a system of metaphysics, what you will—but not an amusement. And Mr. Andrews himself a golfer!

GOLF ILLUSIONS.

Perhaps the greatest illusion about golf is that it is a sociable game. The fact is, that, next to solitaire, golf is the most unsociable game that man has invented. One of many such 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 exaggeration, but only for artistic purposes. On all golf courses one sees the same twosomes or foursomes going the season through. Players avoid other players as they would the plague.[173] 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 procession. Golf a sociable game? About as sociable as a hand at Canfield in the morgue on a rainy afternoon, in November.

The second great illusion about golf is that to play par, especially to win important matches, a man must possess a mysterious something called “temperament.” Now, the only comprehensible temperament is what an English writer has happily termed the wooden temperament. Combine this with a maximum amount of skill, and par golf is possible seven days in the week. Golf rhapsodists are fond of declaring that the successful match player must have a great heart, and an indomitable soul, and all that rot; whereas the requirements are great skill and almost perfect muscular control. Great players with the so-called temperament have blown up under pressure; even the wooden temperament is not proof against an occasional loss of muscular control. Harold Hilton won the finals in this country through a fluke; what good would his temperament have done him if his ball had not struck a rock and bounded to the green? A heart as big[174] as an ox is no assistance if skill and luck are lacking, and many an indomitable soul has topped a critical shot. The only really temperamental player is the man whose score fluctuates between eighty and ninety.

Concerning our giving up smoking, it had to be either that or golf. When a man misses a twenty-five-foot putt he should ask himself whether tobacco is unsettling his nerves.

LOVE’S ANTIDOTE.

(Miss May Sutton avers that “athletics is an antidote for the poison of premature romance.”)

FORE!

An excellent substitute for golf is swatting flies. Although it does not take one out in the open air, it provides more excitement. The full course may be played over in a nine-room apartment, playing from parlor to kitchen and back again, but good sport may be had in a six-room flat. Four or five slapsticks of varying shapes and widths are all the clubs required, and the following suggestions may be useful to those who wish to take up the new sport.

If the fly is on a table top or other broad surface, a mashie may be used. If on a curtain, use the driver and follow through with stroke; this being the only chance to employ the follow-through. If the fly is on light or expensive wall-paper, take a niblick. This is a difficult shot, as the fly must be lifted clear of the wall, after which he is holed out with the putter.

If the fly is on the side of a valuable vase or other bric-à-brac, the putter and a delicate wrist[176] are required. The swing must be checked the instant the fly is crushed and before the club reaches the china. A coffee cup, such as is found in a quick lunchery, is a good thing to practise on. In fact, that is just the place to practise putting.

HOUSEFLY GOLF.

Sir: On Sunday, after the company had gone, the Missus and I played a twosome of your new game of bughouse golf; but on the first hole—“kitchen”—after a good drive off the sink, I foozled my approach into some water from an overflowing drip pan under the icebox. I claimed a right to lift out of casual water, but wifey said I’d forgotten to empty the pan for several days, and that the puddle constituted a regular hazard. Is she right?[1] Then, on the fourth hole, up the hill over the dining table, I sliced my brassie into the sand pit, alias the sugar bowl, and though I could get out with my mashie the ball went back into the pit again and again and I had to use a baffy spoon. After that I got several bogies, and didn’t blow up till I came to the “nursery,” when I laid my approach shot dead against the kid’s toy balloon. I must have pressed a bit, for I couldn’t find the ball afterward.

Sir: Your new “fly” game, as a substitute for golf, should become very popular with those who have had trouble with the old-fashioned outdoor sport. After spending most of my time on hands and knees in the tall grass, peering down gopher holes for eighty-five cent disappearers, I find the new game a refreshing diversion. Have already one good score to submit—

Played the bedrooms in 4, 6, 5, and 3 respectively; parlor, seven; dining-room, five; kitchen, nine; and finished the bathroom in bogey. The flour barrel and range were some trouble, but bunkers add zest to the game. The chandeliers and my wife were mental hazards, which I shall become accustomed to or remove. A friend of mine says the sport is particularly enjoyable out at Calumet, where the flies have nine legs and stand so high they don’t have to be teed. I am open to challenges.

And, as Arnold Bennett would say, with those cadences singing in his head a man will go out and quarrel with a golf ball.

A reader mentions casually that he took sixteen shots for the first hole at Skokie, with three balls in the pond. It doesn’t seem possible. Still, it might be done this way: Three in the pond is six strokes; the seventh was over, the eighth was topped, the ninth was in the bunker; two chops make eleven, out in twelve; thirteenth on the green or thereabouts; and three putts. It’s a great game.

By sheer nerve a golfer with a handicap of twenty-something played through all the threesomes and foursomes ahead of him, on the Skokie, holding them all back, blowing up the entire course, and putting everybody out of humor. When last seen he was smoking a seegar on the club porch, entirely at peace with himself. It must be great to have a hide like that.

The cost of golf balls is to be inquired into. For a reasoning creature, man spends an intolerable time in needless investigation. The manufacturers charge a high price for golf balls because they can get it. There is absolutely no other reason.

GOLF NOTE.

Sir: At Wabash and Madison, I noticed a whitewings using the Varden grip on his implement. Is this au fait in the profession.

Golf players talk and write a great deal about the niblick, but they devote hardly any time to practising with that tool. It is considered a comical club.

The meanest golfer is Pop Royce, who holes a twenty-foot putt, and acts as if he did that sort of thing every day of his life.

Crack golfers find a week of tournament play physically fatiguing. A dub doesn’t tire so easily. He will play thirty-six holes, day after day, and use up as much energy in one drive as a champ needs for a dozen. Vive le dub!

Mr. Taft’s gabby caddy explains that the president plays “consistent” golf. That is to say, he does not bring in a poor score one day and a better one the next, but brings a poor one every day. Thus we observe again the influence of the judicial temperament. It’s a grand temperament, but it never sets any links on fire.

THE DEVIL’S DISCIPLE.

Envy not the men who go south in the winter to continue their golf. They miss the pleasure of waiting for spring days and greening turf. Besides, the more they play the less eradicable become their bad habits.

IN THE WAKE OF THE WAKE.

A stretch of greensward fringed with the morning shadows of oaks and maples; a reach of swampland gay with the colors of October; a flash of tardy songbirds drifting south, reluctant still to go; a small lagoon glittering like steel in the sunlight; a slender shaft rising and falling rhythmically; a click, followed by the graceful flight of a small white sphere that falls obediently upon a square of velvet green—

SCIENCE AND INVENTION.

The Chronomatic Golf Ball is another neat little invention of Prof. B. House of the University of Iowa. It is used only in driving, the object being to avoid the loss of so many balls. The device consists of clockwork imbedded in an ordinary golf ball, which clockwork is set to allow for the time in walking from tee to the end of drive.

Modus operandi: On stroke from club (impact on plunger) the machinery starts. At the expiration of five minutes—or whatever time is allowed for in the setting—a bell rings. The ball is then officially a “lost ball,” but it is actually recovered, the owner being able to follow the sound. Ringing continues until ball is found.

After the golf scientists finish the fascinating study of the pronation of the left hand and forearm, we wish they would take up the matter of rhythm, which is the fundamental law of golf, as it is the law of the almost as interesting universe. An ounce of rhythm is worth a pound of pronation.

The “slow back-swing” comes highly recommended, but its only value is that the dub does not fight himself quite so violently at the top of his swing; his mind is a blank for a shorter space of time. Why a back-swing at all? Why not take stance, turn the body, adjust the club back of the head, and then, when all is set, swat the ball? We have driven dozens of balls that way. It is not beautiful, but it is better than the jerky, snatchy, spasmodic swipe of the average golf player.

Miss Kaiser was defeated in the finals of the woman’s tournament, and Mr. Krupp got as far[184] as the finals at Sandusky. Mr. Rainwater won in the finals at Atlanta. He must be, as Joe Davis allows, a casual player.

In the accounts of important golf tournaments we read, in every other paragraph, about the terrific strain; and if the winner does not “crack under the strain” he is hailed as a person of wonderful nerve and the possessor of a lion heart. We wonder whether the writers, who themselves are players, do not exaggerate this strain stuff. Golf is a good deal a matter of taking pains, and if a person is exceedingly keen to win he will not play carelessly. The concentration which care brings, more than offsets, we are sure, any strain. One plays best when alone on the links, or in a close competition; one plays worst in a “friendly game,” especially if the friend is an inferior player.

Ouimet won against Varden by eliminating the Englishman from his consciousness; to all purposes he was playing solitaire. Travis, whose heart is assayed one hundred percent leonine, walks the links in a trance; he, too, is alone.

If you go out to play a friendly game do not expect a score. If this is necessary to your happiness, erase your friend from your mind at the outset and restore him on the final green. It will not be sociable, but golf is not a sociable game.

If you received an invitation to take a shot on the new golf course at the Elgin State hospital of Illinois, you probably remarked: “Yes, I’m crazy about golf, but not enough to go to Elgin.”

Mr. Evans, the well-known “Chick,” reports that golf is played very seriously by the patients at Elgin. This is remarkable as showing that, in one respect, there is no difference between the persons inside and those outside.

LET THE DIVOTS FALL WHERE THEY MAY.

Sir: Golf enthusiasts will be interested to read in Timothy iv., 7: “I have fought the good fight. I have finished the course.”

(THE LAST LINE OF ALL.)

You know the infallible sign of spring: father on the back porch, cleaning last fall’s mud from his golf shoes.

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“Putting is extremely simple and easy to learn.”—P. A. Vaile.	“Of all the golfing arts putting is the most unteachable.”—Bernard Darwin.
“Although putting appears to be the simplest thing in golf to the beginner, after a little experience he will find out that it is the most difficult part of the game.”—Jerome Travers.	“The putt is without doubt the easiest stroke to learn.”—P. A. Vaile.
[69] “It is impossible to assert with too passionate an emphasis that the player must not try to assist the club on its path by sympathetically moving his body forward in unison with it.”—Bernard Darwin.	“The best way is to let the body go slightly forward with the club as the ball is struck.”—Tom Ball.
“The plan of playing for the back of the hole is all right in certain shots.”—J. L. Low.	“Always go for the back of the hole.”—Innumerable Authorities.

“The blade is better for being deep.”—Mr. Travis.	“Better results can be obtained by using a mashie with a narrow face.”—Mr. Travers.
“The ball has to be picked up rather abruptly.”—Bernard Darwin.	“Follow through as in the drive.”—Mr. Travis.
“Draw in the arms a trifle immediately after the ball is struck.”—Mr. Travis.	“There is no drawing in at the moment of crossing to produce the cut.”—P. A. Vaile.
“The player must take turf after hitting the ball.”—Mr. Travers.	“It matters very little whether the player takes ground with him or not.”—Simpson, Bart.
“The back-swing is long or short, according to the distance from the green.”—A multitude of authorities.	“Many will remember the wonderful accuracy Jamie Anderson acquired, hitting a full blow at all distances, and regulating the length of his loft by the inches of turf he took behind the ball.”—Simpson, Bart.
“Keep your eye on the ball.”—Chorus of pundits.	“Keeping the eye on the ball is not of first importance.”—George O’Neil.

The Project Gutenberg eBook of A line o' gowf or two

A Line o’ Gowf or Two

Foreword

Introduction