The Best Golf Stories Ever Told

by Julie Ganz

  I remember one honest man who declined to be a party to this conspiracy. He was complaining of his bad play, and in particular of how he had lost a certain hole in spite of having received a stroke there. I murmured that I had been very lucky at that hole, and got down a very long putt for a three. My friend refused to be consoled. “Yes, sir,” he said, and his manner was worthy of Dr. Johnson, “but if I had put my third dead, as I ought, you would not have holed your long putt.”

  This kind of spurious consolation at any rate does little harm. It is rather contemptible, but it may stop us from getting angry. There is, however, another kind which is sometimes administered by an adversary which quite justifies us in striking him to the earth with a niblick. We are, let us imagine, playing a hole which, with a favouring breeze, we can reach very easily with a drive and an iron shot. We ought, therefore, to do a four, but, in fact, we do a five, a result with which we express ourselves as dissatisfied. Thereupon our offensive beast of an opponent says, “Oh well, it is a Bogey five.’’ If I were on the jury in a trial for murder, and it was proved that this provocation had been given, nothing should induce me to find the prisoner guilty. What more deadly insult can there be than to insinuate that we cannot form our own estimate of the score in which we ought to do a hole; that we have to be instructed on that point by a half a dozen old gentlemen sitting in committee and imagining what an imaginary old gentleman would do.

  A form of consolation, which has a substratum of sense underlying it, is often expressed in the words, “Well, anyhow, I hit the ball.”True, the ball is at the bottom of the deepest bunker on the course, and the hole is hopelessly lost, but still. In this case there is a distinction to be drawn as to the spirit in which we say the words. If we are merely arrogant, puffed up with the fact of hitting the ball farther than our opponent, although his ball is lying on the turf and ours in a bunker, then we are also silly, because the object of the game is to get into the hole in the smallest possible number of shots. If, on the other hand, we rejoice only because that cleanly hit shot gives promise of future shots, which shall be hit not only clean but straight, then we are being moderately sensible. On this second ground it is sometimes almost cheering to begin a match with a fine long hit in the direction of long-on. A long hook generally means that we are at any rate getting well through with the shot. When we have warmed to our work, and the early morning stiffness has disappeared, we may reasonably hope that the length and the follow-through will remain and the hook disappear. In the same way it is endurable to start a round with a long putt in which the ball races past the hole, far out of holing distance. It is bad if it is going to frighten us and make us short for the rest of the round. It is good if we accept it merely as evidence that we are doing that most difficult thing, hitting the ball a fine, free blow with the middle of the putter.

  Doubtless all these are but the idlest fancies, and we should do well to cast them from us. But there are few who have the strength of mind to light their battles without some support, however illusory. There are at golf so many horrible things that we know are going to happen, and that do happen. There is the really appalling way in which history repeats itself in the matter of hazards. I do not know who originally remarked that “familiarity breeds contempt,” but I do not believe he was a golfer. Rather does it too often breed an intolerable measure of respect. A year ago I spent a most delightful month at Ashdown Forest, and at the end of it I knew exactly what I was going to do at nearly every hole. I knew that I should push my first tee shot into the heather, and at the fourth hole hit my second far too gently and off the heel of the iron. At the dreaded “island” hole I should give a horrible lurch of my body, resulting either in an ineffectual sort fluff or else in a half-topped skimmer which raced far over the green. At the twelfth I should hit the ball beautifully clean, and my follow-through would be much admired by anybody seeing me from afar off, but the ball would fly away to the left with the accuracy of a homing pigeon, ultimately to repose in a particular patch of bracken. Finally, at the fifteenth, I should pitch just too far; the ball would run down the sloping green into a rut, while I called gods and men to witness that it was a grossly unfair shot. Much as I loved Ashdown, I began to long for a course where the doctrine of predestination should not oppress me quite so heavily: where to get into a hazard should be an unpleasant surprise instead of being merely part of a daily routine. It is, of course, a dreadful mistake to be a fatalist at golf, but it is one dreadfully difficult to avoid. Consider the case of our match with Jones, whom for some reason we are particularly anxious to beat. We are both on the green in the same number of strokes. Jones plays the odd; he makes an execrable putt and runs some three or four yards past the hole. We feel practically certain that we have only to get dead in the like in order to win the hole. Let our ball be within two feet of the hole, and we will bet anything in reason that Jones makes a most miserable attempt for the half. We play, and we do not lay our ball dead. We do not make such a vile putt as he did, but we are several feet away from the hole. Nobody could possibly give us that putt; certainly not Jones, who is an ungenerous fellow, and likes his pound of flesh. The worst of it is that now it is absolutely certain that he will hole his four-yard putt. We may shut our eyes and buoy ourselves up by murmuring sotto voce, “He is sure to miss it.” The rattle of his ball against the tin will soon undeceive us; not that we ever really were deceived, the thing was and is a certainty. Moreover, a similar tragedy befalls us in respect to bunkers. Jones puts his ball into a bunker. “We’ve got you this time,” we say to ourselves, and, removing the eye too impetuously, deposit the ball in the very identical bunker. As we approach the bunker we observe that one ball is lying teed on a little pinnacle of sand; the other, what there is visible of it, is in a deep footmark in close proximity to a perpendicular black board. There is no need to inquire which ball is which. Of course, Jones is on the pinnacle. We knew he would be.

  Golf is a horribly unforgiving game. We are told that “the cards never forgive,” but the experience of a lamentable bridge player is that they are not half so relentless as golf clubs and balls. I was once upon a time playing in the semifinal of a certain handicap tournament.

  Going to the last hole, which was an easy one, I was dormy one down; my opponent had to receive a stroke, and he hit a good tee shot. A more depressing predicament from my point of view could not be conceived. As we were walking up to our respective balls the enemy remarked that he hoped his favourite driver, which had some ailment or other, would hold out for the final. At those words the fire of hope, which had almost gone out, absolutely flared up in my breast. Surely the golfing fates could never forgive a speech that flouted them so impudently. Nor did they forgive, for the rash man’s second shot went plump into a bunker, he took three putts on the green, and neither he nor his driver played any part in the final of that tournament.

  PART V

  GOLF HISTORY GOLF MUSINGS

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  IF I WERE A GOLF INSTRUCTOR

  JEROME DUNSTAN TRAVERS

  If I were a golf instructor it would be some little time before my pupil were allowed to go round the links. Starting with the wooden clubs, driver and brassie, I would have him learn each club separately. I would place him on the tee with a peck of golf balls beside him and a caddie on the fair green ahead to chase them. For an hour at a time I would instruct him in the art of driving alone, striving to correct his mistakes before they became habit, showing him how to grip his club, how to address the ball, how to follow through properly. At the end of an hour, if he were an apt pupil, he would know something about driving whereas, if he had devoted the time to play over the links with six different clubs, he would have learned nothing of value about any one of them.

  Then I would take him out on the fair green, place a brassie in his hand and have him put in another hour learning how to use this club. I would explain to him the difference between a good brassie lie and a poor one, laying particular stress upon
the fact that a poor lie usually means a poor shot and that one of the first things to learn about this club is when not to use it.

  If, after an hour of driving and another hour of brassie play, the novice felt the need of something less strenuous, I would then have him devote another hour to putting. I would show him the proper stance and how to grip the club and at the end of his first long lesson he would know more about putting than the average beginner knows after he has played the entire course a dozen times with all the clubs.

  In the same manner I would instruct him in the use of the cleek, mid-iron, and mashie, assigning from half an hour to an hour to each club, and when he had gained a fair working knowledge concerning the manipulation of these clubs and the driver, brassie and putter, I would turn him loose upon the links for an entire round of the eighteen holes. When, in response to different needs, he was compelled to play one club after another, each club would not be a comparative stranger but an old friend with which he was already familiar through hours of practice. I do not carry a cleek myself because I get better results with a driving iron, but I would not advise a novice to follow this example. Also, unlike many players, I do not use a spoon because I found that it shortened my game and that I was playing it when I should have relied upon the mid-iron.

  I have laid particular stress upon the necessity for long practice with each club because it is difficult for a beginner to learn the game if he only plays eighteen holes once or twice a week and contents himself with that. Walter J. Travis, who learned to play golf after he was 35, is probably the most remarkable example of what can be accomplished by constant, patient, untiring practice. No man in America ever worked so hard to become a great golfer as he did, and as his reward he has won the amateur championship of the United States three times and the British amateur championship once. Furthermore, he is the only American amateur who ever succeeded in winning the British championship.

  When Travis is “off his game” and is not driving, approaching, or putting as he should, he goes out on the links alone and plays with one club or another for hours, practicing the same shot over and over until he has recovered his very best form.

  I have done the same thing myself on many occasions. I have played the same shot fifty times. I have putted for two hours at a stretch, placing my ball at varying distances from the hole, trying for short putts, long putts, up hill and down hill putts and putts across a side hill green where the ball must follow a crescent-like course if it is to be holed out or go “dead to the hole.” During the afternoon round of my match against Harold H. Hilton, the British champion, at the national amateur championship on the Apawamis links in 1911, I had before me what my own club’s champion declared was an “impossible” putt. Of the two thousand people following the match, most of those near the green no doubt shared his opinion. I was not very hopeful myself. My ball was at least twenty feet from the hole, the green was of the undulating, billowy type and it was a down hill putt.

  Remembering the old adage, “Never up, never in,” I struck the ball a bit too hard, but it raced down the green as if drawn by a magnet, struck the opposite side of the cup, leaped into the air an inch or two and dropped safely into the hole.

  “If you hadn’t hit the hole exactly square, Travers, you would have been out of bounds,” was Oswald Kirkby’s humorous description of the shot after the game.

  A putt of this sort is usually called a “lucky” putt, and no doubt there is a certain element of luck about it. Yet hours and hours of practice produced the skill and judgment that sank that “impossible” putt.

  When I was playing for the championship at Wheaton in 1912, I got into a very high and formidable bunker on an approach shot. The ball was at the very base of the bunker, close up, and the situation was such a difficult one that I had little hope of getting over with one shot. However, I took my mashie niblick, got well under the ball with it and much to my gratification the ball crawled up the steep side of the bunker, moved slowly across its top, struck the putting green, and rolled up dead to the hole. A putt gave me a four and captured the hole.

  Many a time I have thrown a dozen balls into a bunker and practiced for an hour endeavoring to discover the most successful method of getting out of this difficult hazard. As in the case of the “impossible” putt, the Chicago bunker shot was successful because hours of faithful study had been devoted to learning the way to do it.

  Many beginners do a great deal of unnecessary fussing about their clubs, discarding this one or that one as of no value when lack of skill and proper practice are more responsible for bad play than lack of merit in the clubs. A novice should buy good clubs and should be largely guided in their selection by a capable professional or amateur. Clubs with whippy shafts are to be avoided and the purchase of every new freak club that is placed on the market is a foolish expenditure of money.

  In taking up the game the beginner should familiarize himself thoroughly with the etiquette and the rules. Playing the wrong ball, failing to let the pair behind go through when his ball is lost, playing into the pair ahead, or upon the putting green before they have holed out, talking or moving about when an opponent is making a shot, cutting across the course and endeavoring to get in ahead of other players who are going round the entire links—these and other simple infractions of rules and etiquette make the careless beginner unpopular and are the cause of many unpleasant experiences.

  Not long ago I heard of a very prominent man who made all sorts of fun of golf and for years refused to try to play. It was a simple, foolish, easy game, he said, and he knew it would not interest him. Finally a friend dragged him to the links, teed a ball for him and told him to drive. When he had struck four times at the ball without even touching it, he became so exasperated that he bought a set of clubs that very day and started with determination to conquer the little white ball.

  A month later the friend who had dragged him to the links met him hurrying toward the golf club although his left arm was in a sling.

  “What are you going to do?” asked the friend.

  “Oh, I broke my arm,” was the enthusiastic reply, “but I’m going down to play with one hand!”

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  STORIES OF PROPER GOLF ETIQUETTE

  JOSEPH WALKER MCSPADDEN, Ed.

  In connection with the game of golf there are certain points of etiquette which, though not of such a nature as to fall within the jurisdiction of written law, are pretty accurately defined by the sanction of custom. Breach of these observances is not punished by the loss of the hole or of a stroke, but rather by the loss of social status in the golfing world. You do not exact an immediate penalty from him who thus outrages les convenances; but in your heart of hearts you propose to yourself the severest of all forms of punishment,—never to play with him again.

  Of all delinquents against the unwritten code, the grossest offender is perhaps he who stands over you, with, triumph spiced with derision, as you labor in a bunker, and aggressively counts your score aloud. The act of coming ostentatiously out of his own path to look at you is, of itself, almost on the boundary line between good and bad form. Apart from the indecent gloating over your misfortunes which such conduct on his part would seem to imply, it also contains the infinitely more offensive suggestion of a suspicion of your possible unfair dealing when shielded by the bunker’s cliff from his espionage. But when he goes the length of audibly counting up your unhappy efforts/with undisguised satisfaction as the sum increases, you can scarcely look upon it otherwise than as an impugnment either of your arithmetic or of your honesty.

  There are, indeed, certain circumstances which may almost, in a medal competition, justify such a proceeding; for in a medal competition, in the absence of markers, each player is responsible for the correctness of the score, as returned, of the other, and, setting the question of honesty—as it is to be hoped we may—on one side, there are medal-players whose arithmetic, as a matter of fact, is not above suspicion. It is, moreover, far more di
fficult than is generally recognized to keep exact account of the strokes at those unfortunate holes where the total approaches the two figures. It is scarcely possible for a man to be in honest doubt as to whether he has played four strokes or five; but it is a very different thing where a question arises as to whether he has played eight or nine. One among so many is a small item easily forgotten. Nevertheless, unless the player for whom one is scoring is known to be what is called a “bad counter”—which not a few perfectly honorable gentlemen and golfers unquestionably are—there is no justification for the audible enumeration, one by one, of his strokes. One’s duty to one’s neighbor—in this case, to all the others engaged in the competition—can be adequately performed, without offense to the sufferer, by silently marking off on the card each stroke as it is played. Should the player think fit to contest the accuracy of this marking, each stroke may for the future be audibly impressed upon him, as it is played, without any regard to the sufferings which he will then have deservedly brought upon himself.

  But all such espionage can only be justified by a sense of your responsibility to the other competitors. In a match there is no conceivable excuse for it. If it be a friendly match, to start with, it cannot long continue such if either subject the other to such indignities; and if it be a big match, there will be a sufficient number of onlookers to check any possible inaccuracy of scoring. If you have not faith in a man’s scoring, do not play with him; and if you play with a man, do not act in such a way as to suggest that you are suspicious.