The Golf Omnibus

by P. G. Wodehouse

  Arthur Jukes relapsed into a moody silence. He broke it once, crossing the West Street Bridge, to observe that he would like to know if I called myself a friend of his his—a question which I was able to answer with a whole-hearted negative. After that he did not speak till the car drew up in front of the Majestic Hotel in Royal Square.

  Early as the hour was, a certain bustle and animation already prevailed in that centre of the city, and the spectacle of a man in a golf-coat and plus-four knickerbockers hacking with a niblick at the floor of a car was not long in collecting a crowd of some dimensions. Three messenger-boys, four typists, and a gentleman in full evening-dress, who obviously possessed or was friendly with someone who possessed a large cellar, formed the nucleus of it; and they were joined about the time when Arthur addressed the ball in order to play his nine hundred and fifteenth by six newsboys, eleven charladies, and perhaps a dozen assorted loafers, all speculating with the liveliest interest as to which particular asylum had had the honour of sheltering Arthur before he had contrived to elude the vigilance of his custodians.

  Arthur had prepared for some such contingency. He suspended his activities with the niblick, and drew from his pocket a large poster, which he proceeded to hang over the side of the car. It read:

  COME

  TO

  McCLURG AND MACDONALD,

  18, WEST STREET,

  FOR

  ALL GOLFING SUPPLIES.

  His knowledge of psychology had not misled him. Directly they gathered that he was advertising something, the crowd declined to look at it; they melted away, and Arthur returned to his work in solitude.

  He was taking a well-earned rest after playing his eleven hundred and fifth, a nice niblick shot with lots of wrist behind it, when out of Bridle Street there trickled a weary-looking golf-ball, followed in the order named by Ralph Bingham, resolute but going a trifle at the knees, and Rupert Bailey on a bicycle. The latter, on whose face and limbs the mud had dried, made an arresting spectacle.

  “What are you playing?” I inquired.

  “Eleven hundred,” said Rupert. “We got into a casual dog.”

  “A casual dog?”

  “Yes, just before the bridge. We were coming along nicely, when a stray dog grabbed our nine hundred and ninety-eighth and took it nearly back to Woodfield, and we had to start all over again. How are you getting on?”

  “We have just played our eleven hundred and fifth. A nice even game.” I looked at Ralph’s ball, which was lying close to the kerb. “You are farther from the hole, I think. Your shot, Bingham.”

  Rupert Bailey suggested breakfast. He was a man who was altogether too fond of creature comforts. He had not the true golfing spirit.

  “Breakfast!” I exclaimed.

  “Breakfast,” said Rupert, firmly. “If you don’t know what it is, I can teach you in half a minute. You play it with a pot of coffee, a knife and fork, and about a hundred-weight of scrambled eggs. Try it. It’s a pastime that grows on you.”

  I was surprised when Ralph Bingham supported the suggestion. He was so near holing out that I should have supposed that nothing would have kept him from finishing the match. But he agreed heartily.

  “Breakfast,” he said, “is an excellent idea. You go along in. I’ll follow in a moment. I want to buy a paper.”

  We went into the hotel, and a few minutes later he joined us. Now that we were actually at the table, I confess that the idea of breakfast was by no means repugnant to me. The keen air and the exercise had given me an appetite, and it was some little time before I was able to assure the waiter definitely that he could cease bringing orders of scrambled eggs. The others having finished also, I suggested a move. I was anxious to get the match over and be free to go home.

  We filed out of the hotel, Arthur Jukes leading. When I had passed through the swing-doors, I found him gazing perplexedly up and down the street.

  “What is the matter?” I asked.

  “It’s gone!”

  “What has gone?”

  “The car!”

  “Oh, the car?” said Ralph Bingham. “That’s all right. Didn’t I tell you about that? I bought it just now and engaged the driver as my chauffeur. I’ve been meaning to buy a car for a long time. A man ought to have a car.”

  “Where is it?” said Arthur, blankly. The man seemed dazed.

  “I couldn’t tell you to a mile or two,” replied Ralph. “I told the man to drive to Glasgow. Why? Had you any message for him?”

  “But my ball was inside it!”

  “Now that,” said Ralph, “is really unfortunate! Do you mean to tell me you hadn’t managed to get it out yet? Yes, that is a little awkward for you. I’m afraid it means that you lose the match.”

  “Lose the match?”

  “Certainly. The rules are perfectly definite on that point. A period of five minutes is allowed for each stroke. The player who fails to make his stroke within that time loses the hole. Unfortunate, but there it is!”

  Arthur Jukes sank down on the path and buried his face in his hands. He had the appearance of a broken man. Once more, I am bound to say, I felt a certain pity for him. He had certainly struggled gamely, and it was hard to be beaten like this on the post.

  “Playing eleven hundred and one,” said Ralph Bingham, in his odiously self-satisfied voice, he as addressed his ball. He laughed jovially. A messenger-boy had paused close by and was watching the proceedings gravely. Ralph Bingham patted him on the head.

  “Well, sonny,” he said, “what club would you use here?”

  “I claim the match!” cried Arthur Jukes, springing up. Ralph Bingham regarded him coldly.

  “I beg your pardon!”

  “I claim the match!” repeated Arthur Jukes. “The rules say that a player who asks advice from any person other than his caddie shall lose the hole.”

  “This is absurd!” said Ralph, but I noticed that he had turned pale.

  “I appeal to the judges.”

  “We sustain the appeal,” I said, after a brief consultation with Rupert Bailey. “The rule is perfectly clear.”

  “But you had lost the match already by not playing within five minutes,” said Ralph, vehemently.

  “It was not my turn to play. You were farther from the pin.”

  “Well, play now. Go on! Let’s see you make your shot.”

  “There is no necessity,” said Arthur, frigidly. “Why should I play when you have already disqualified yourself?”

  “I claim a draw!”

  “I deny the claim.”

  “I appeal to the judges.”

  “Very well. We will leave it to the judges.”

  I consulted with Rupert Bailey. It seemed to me that Arthur Jukes was entitled to the verdict. Rupert, who, though an amiable and delightful companion, had always been one of Nature’s fat-heads, could not see it. We had to go back to our principals and announce that we had been unable to agree.

  “This is ridiculous,” said Ralph Bingham. “We ought to have had a third judge.”

  At this moment, who should come out of the hotel but Amanda Trivett! A veritable goddess from the machine.

  “It seems to me,” I said, “that you would both be well advised to leave the decision to Miss Trivett. You could have no better referee.”

  “I’m game,” said Arthur Jukes.

  “Suits me,” said Ralph Bingham.

  “Why, whatever are you all doing here with your golf-clubs?” asked the girl, wonderingly.

  “These two gentlemen,” I explained, “have been playing a match, and a point has arisen on which the judges do not find themselves in agreement. We need an unbiased outside opinion, and we should like to put it up to you. The facts are as follows.”

  Amanda Trivett listened attentively, but, when I had finished, she shook her head.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know enough about the game to be able to decide a question like that,” she said.

  “Then we must consult St. Andrews,” said Rupert Bailey.
r />   “I’ll tell you who might know,” said Amanda Trivett, after a moment’s thought.

  “Who is that?” I asked.

  “My fiancé. He has just come back from a golfing holiday. That’s why I’m in town this morning. I’ve been to meet him. He is very good at golf. He won a medal at Little-Mudbury-in-the-Wold the day before he left.”

  There was a tense silence. I had the delicacy not to look at Ralph or Arthur. Then the silence was broken by a sharp crack. Ralph Bingham had broken his mashie-niblick across his knee. From the direction where Arthur Jukes was standing there came a muffled gulp.

  “Shall I ask him?” said Amanda Trivett.

  “Don’t bother,” said Ralph Bingham.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Arthur Jukes.

  9

  THE HEEL OF ACHILLES

  ON THE YOUNG man’s face, as he sat sipping his ginger-ale in the club-house smoking-room, there was a look of disillusionment. “Never again!” he said.

  The Oldest Member glanced up from his paper.

  “You are proposing to give up golf once more?” he queried.

  “Not golf. Betting on golf.” The Young Man frowned. “I’ve just been let down badly. Wouldn’t you have thought I had a good thing, laying seven to one on McTavish against Robinson?”

  “Undoubtedly,” said the Sage. “The odds, indeed, generous as they are, scarcely indicate the former’s superiority. Do you mean to tell me that the thing came unstitched?”

  “Robinson won in a walk, after being three down at the turn.”

  “Strange! What happened?”

  “Why, they looked in at the bar to have a refresher before starting for the tenth,” said the young man, his voice quivering, “and McTavish suddenly discovered that there was a hole in his trouser-pocket and sixpence had dropped out. He worried so frightfully about it that on the second nine he couldn’t do a thing right. Went completely off his game and didn’t win a hole.”

  The Sage shook his head gravely.

  “If this is really going to be a lesson to you, my boy, never to bet on the result of a golf-match, it will be a blessing in disguise. There is no such thing as a certainty in golf. I wonder if I ever told you a rather curious episode in the career of Vincent Jopp?”

  “The Vincent Jopp? The American multi-millionaire?”

  “The same. You never knew he once came within an ace of winning the American Amateur Championship, did you?”

  “I never heard of his playing golf.”

  “He played for one season. After that he gave it up and has not touched a club since. Ring the bell and get me a small lime-juice, and I will tell you all.”

  It was long before your time (said the Oldest Member) that the events which I am about to relate took place. I had just come down from Cambridge, and was feeling particularly pleased with myself because I had secured the job of private and confidential secretary to Vincent Jopp, then a man in the early thirties, busy in laying the foundations of his present remarkable fortune. He engaged me, and took me with him to Chicago.

  Jopp was, I think, the most extraordinary personality I have encountered in a long and many-sided life. He was admirably equipped for success in finance, having the steely eye and square jaw without which it is hopeless for a man to enter that line of business. He possessed also an overwhelming confidence in himself, and the ability to switch a cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other without wiggling his ears, which, as you know, is the stamp of the true Monarch of the Money Market. He was the nearest approach to the financier on the films, the fellow who makes his jaw-muscles jump when he is telephoning, that I have ever seen.

  Like all successful men, he was a man of method. He kept a pad on his desk on which he would scribble down his appointments, and it was my duty on entering the office each morning to take this pad and type its contents neatly in a loose-leaved ledger. Usually, of course, these entries referred to business appointments and deals which he was contemplating, but one day I was interested to note, against the date May 3rd, the entry:

  “Propose to Amelia.”

  I was interested, as I say, but not surprised. Though a man of steel and iron, there was nothing of the celibate about Vincent Jopp. He was one of those men who marry early and often. On three separate occasions before I joined his service he had jumped off the dock, to scramble back to shore again later by means of the Divorce Court lifebelt. Scattered here and there about the country there were three ex-Mrs. Jopps, drawing their monthly envelope, and now, it seemed, he contemplated the addition of a fourth to the platoon.

  I was not surprised, I say, at this resolve of his. What did seem a little remarkable to me was the thorough way in which he had thought the thing out. This iron-willed man recked nothing of possible obstacles. Under the date of June ist was the entry:

  “Marry Amelia”;

  while in March of the following year he had arranged to have his first-born christened Thomas Reginald. Later on, the short-coating of Thomas Reginald was arranged for, and there was a note about sending him to school. Many hard things have been said of Vincent Jopp, but nobody has ever accused him of not being a man who looked ahead.

  On the morning of May 4th Jopp came into the office, looking, I fancied, a little thoughtful. He sat for some moments staring before him with his brow a trifle furrowed; then he seemed to come to himself. He rapped his desk.

  “Hi! You!” he said. “It was thus that he habitually addressed me.

  “Mr. Jopp?” I replied.

  “What’s golf?”

  I had at that time just succeeded in getting my handicap down into single figures, and I welcomed the opportunity of dilating on the noblest of pastimes. But I had barely begun my eulogy when he stopped me.

  “It’s a game, is it?”

  “I suppose you could call it that,” I said, “but it is an off-hand way of describing the holiest⎯”

  “How do you play it?”

  “Pretty well,” I said. “At the beginning of the season I didn’t seem able to keep ’em straight at all, but lately I’ve been doing fine. Getting better every day. Whether it was that I was moving my head or gripping too tightly with the right hand⎯”

  “Keep the reminiscences for your grandchildren during the long winter evenings,” he interrupted, abruptly, as was his habit. “What I want to know is what a fellow does when he plays golf. Tell me in as few words as you can just what it’s all about.”

  “You hit a ball with a stick till it falls into a hole.”

  “Easy!” he snapped. “Take dictation.”

  I produced my pad.

  “May the fifth, take up golf. What’s an Amateur Championship?”

  “It is the annual competition to decide which is the best player among the amateurs. There is also a Professional Championship, and an Open Event.”

  “Oh, there are golf professionals, are there? What do they do?”

  “They teach golf.”

  “Which is the best of them?”

  “Sandy McHoots won both British and American Open events last year.”

  “Wire him to come here at once.”

  “But McHoots is in Inverlochty, in Scotland.”

  “Never mind. Get him; tell him to name his own terms. When is the Amateur Championship?”

  “I think it is on September the twelfth this year.”

  “All right, take dictation. September twelfth win Amateur Championship.”

  I stared at him in amazement, but he was not looking at me.

  “Got that?” he said. “September thir⎯Oh, I was forgetting! Add September twelfth, corner wheat. September thirteenth, marry Amelia.”

  “Marry Amelia,” I echoed, moistening my pencil.

  “Where do you play this—what’s-its-name—golf?”

  “There are clubs all over the country. I belong to the Wissahicky Glen.”

  “That a good place?”

  “Very good.”

  “Arrange today for my becoming a member.”


  Sandy McHoots arrived in due course, and was shown into the private office. “Mr. McHoots?” said Vincent Jopp.

  “Mphm!” said the Open Champion.

  “I have sent for you, Mr. McHoots, because I hear that you are the greatest living exponent of this game of golf.”

  “Aye,” said the champion, cordially. “I am that.”

  “I wish you to teach me the game. I am already somewhat behind schedule owing to the delay incident upon your long journey, so let us start at once. Name a few of the most important points in connection with the game. My secretary will make notes of them, and I will memorize them. In this way we shall save time. Now, what is the most important thing to remember when playing golf?”

  “Keep your heid still.”

  “A simple task.”

  “Na sae simple as it soonds.”

  “Nonsense!” said Vincent Jopp, curtly. “If I decide to keep my head still, I shall keep it still. What next?”

  “Keep yer ee on the ba’.”

  “It shall be attended to. And the next?”

  “Dinna press.”

  “I won’t. And to resume.”

  Mr. McHoots ran through a dozen of the basic rules, and I took them down in shorthand. Vincent Jopp studied the list.

  “Very good. Easier than I had supposed. On the first tee at Wissahicky Glen at eleven sharp tomorrow, Mr. McHoots. Hi! You!”

  “Sir?” I said.

  “Go out and buy me a set of clubs, a red jacket, a cloth cap, a pair of spiked shoes, and a ball.”

  “One ball?”

  “Certainly. What need is there of more?”

  “It sometimes happens,” I explained, “that a player who is learning the game fails to hit his ball straight, and then he often loses it in the rough at the side of the fairway.”

  “Absurd!” said Vincent Jopp. “If I set out to drive my ball straight, I shall drive it straight. Good morning, Mr. McHoots. You will excuse me now. I am busy cornering Woven Textiles.”

  Golf is in its essence a simple game. You laugh in a sharp, bitter, barking manner when I say this, but nevertheless it is true. Where the average man goes wrong is in making the game difficult for himself. Observe the non-player, the man who walks round with you for the sake of the fresh air. He will hole out with a single care-free flick of his umbrella the twenty-foot putt over which you would ponder and hesitate for a full minute before sending it right off the line. Put a driver in his hands and he pastes the ball into the next county without a thought. It is only when he takes to the game in earnest that he becomes self-conscious and anxious, and tops his shots even as you and I. A man who could retain through his golfing career the almost scornful confidence of the non-player would be unbeatable. Fortunately such an attitude of mind is beyond the scope of human nature.