The Best Golf Stories Ever Told

by Julie Ganz

  I have met hundreds of golfers who never saw a hole made in a single shot, but I have had the good luck to place three of such holes to my credit. The first one was at the old Oyster Bay Golf Club. I drove across a pond a distance of 150 yards to the third green. The shot was only a mashie pitch for an adult player, but I was only fourteen years of age and used a mid-iron. Imagine my delight when, upon reaching the green, I found the ball in the hole!

  Four years later I was playing in a four ball match at the Deal Golf Club and used a driving iron on the sixth tee. The ball was at least three feet off the line of the flag, but when it struck the green 175 yards distant, it kicked in toward the cup. We saw it roll on the putting green but did not suspect where it was until one of the caddies found it in the hole.

  Shortly before I won the championship at Wheaton in 1912, Marshall Whitlatch and I were playing Oswald Kirkby, New Jersey State champion, and Robert C. Watson, who is now president of the United States Golf Association. The match was over the excellent nine hole course of the Mahopac Golf Club. The first hole is about 120 yards from the tee and the green is out of sight. The gallery had gone ahead and members of it called back stating where Kirkby’s, Watson’s and Whitlatch’s balls landed. Then I hit mine.

  “It’s on the green!” cried the gallery.

  Silence for a few seconds.

  “It’s dead to the hole!”

  Another second’s silence.

  “It’s in!!!”

  “Travers,” said Watson, “you’re a robber!”

  One day I was practicing putting on the green devoted to that purpose at the Montclair Golf Club. Near by was the regular eighteenth green. “Tom” Anderson, the club professional, took half a dozen balls, went back about two hundred yards to a point from which he could not see the green and practiced brassie shots. Soon he came into the club house and announced with natural pride that out of six brassie shots he had holed one in one shot, two in two shots and three in three shots. After “Tom” had fittingly bought liquid refreshment for the crowd, it was gently broken to him that a mischievous waiter had sneaked upon the putting green, placed one ball in the hole and assembled the remaining five nearby. Then “Tom” said—but no, let me draw the curtain on the scene!

  However, it is only fair to “Tom” to state that during his long golfing career he has holed many a drive in a single shot.

  Oftentimes a player makes a hole in the second shot under circumstances that give the feat as sensational a character as holing out in one. For example, at the Metropolitan Open Championship on the Englewood links in 1912 Gil Nichols, a well-known professional, holed a second shot with a cleek at a distance of between 180 and 200 yards.

  The most remarkable putt I ever saw was one made by Walter J. Travis at Garden City in 1908 during the second round of the national amateur championship. He was playing against H. H. Wilder of the Vesper Country Club in a desperately contested match that went to the forty-first green before Travis won. Wilder had the veteran dormie, 4 up and 4 to play, but Travis won the thirty-third Travis Won and thirty-fourth holes. Travis was playing for life because a single halved hole meant defeat. On the thirty-fifth (seventeenth hole) Travis’s ball lay between two mounds on the putting green, each mound being about a foot high, and he had to make a twenty-five foot putt to win the hole. Either because he was stymied, or for some other reason, Travis could not play straight for the hole which was on the same level as his ball. He studied the shot a minute, then deliberately played up the side of one mound toward the hole twenty-five feet distant. The ball climbed the mound, ran along its rounded top for at least fifteen feet, then slantingly ran back to the level green again and rolled into the hole.

  On another occasion, when Travis was stymied at this hole, I saw him play directly away from the hole up the side of one of the mounds. The ball ran part way up the slope, then rolled down again and went into the cup.

  Now and then holing even the third shot is quite as remarkable as holing the first. Not long ago an Upper Montclair golfer was playing in England with a British professional and his son. When they reached a certain hole, distance about 400 yards, the professional remarked with natural pride:

  “I got this hole in 3 once—only time it’s ever been done, sir.”

  “Huh!” cried the American in jest, “I could do it in 3 myself if you would let me play without a coat.”

  In England it is bad form to play divested of this garment; in America there is no taboo of the sort, and most American golfers cannot play well when wearing a coat.

  “I’ll lay you thirty shillings to one you can’t do it in 3,” said the professional.

  “And I’ll do the same,” said his son.

  “The bet’s on,” replied the American, Stripping off his coat. A long drive was supplemented by a strong brassie shot, and the American found his ball in front of a very high bunker, beyond which the green was hidden. Although the hole itself was invisible, he could see the flag marking it and he had one shot left. Taking his mashie he pitched the ball over the bunker, and when they reached the green and found his ball in the hole, the sixty shilling blow almost killed both father and son!

  In golf as in every other game of skill there are players who are a bit inclined to draw upon their imaginations in the matter remarkable shots, but now and then even strictly veracious players are fooled by some mischievous person and believe all their lives that they have performed some extraordinary feat. Several years ago a passerby was standing near a certain hole on the links at Essex Falls, N. J., when he noticed two balls, one after another, land on the putting green in front of him. They had come from the tee which could not be seen from the putting green because of intervening trees and bushes. The moment the two balls struck the putting green an equal number of boys dashed out of the bushes, picked up the balls, placed them in the hole and immediately vanished. His curiosity aroused, the passerby waited for further developments. In a few moments a very fat and dignified looking old gentleman and an equally plump and dignified looking old lady, attired in golf costume, sauntered up to the green and made a long, vain search for the balls.

  Finally the fat man casually inspected the hole, then frantically beckoned the fat lady to approach. She did so hurriedly and the pair, side by side, peered into the cup.

  “Great Scott! We both holed out in one!” shouted the fat man.

  “Great heavens! so we did!” screeched the fat lady, and plucking the two balls from the cup they started on the run to tell their friends the remarkable tale. No doubt they are telling it yet!

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  THE STORY OF THE “COAT OF TORTURE”

  CHARLES EVANS

  It was a happy and tremendously exciting day when I played my first round in the British Amateur at Prestwick. I lasted to the fifth round, but I did not play all of them. For the first round I drew a bye, although I was very anxious to begin play, and was a little nervous and excited over the delay.

  In my next round my opponent, A. E. Latter of the Royal Blackheath Club, was compelled by illness to forfeit the match. In the third round I defeated Captain F. H. Stephens of the West Dorset Club, 5 and 3, and in the fourth round I defeated Sidney H. Fry, of the Royal North Devon Club, by 4 and 3. Of course I was pleased with the results and felt that I was playing well.

  I might as well confess that I did not expect to lose in my match with Bruce Pearce. I felt that here was a man I would be meeting on more nearly equal terms, for his knowledge of the course could be little if any better than mine, and my game in the Troon tournament had been better than his.

  The chief feature of my match with Bruce Pearce, according to reports, was the shedding of my coat on the nineteenth hole. At least that seemed to be the point of the game that attracted the greatest attention, and thereby hangs a tale and the little question of the power of suggestion. Ordinarily a Scottish May is cold and calls for heavy tweeds, which are generally worn. I had been practicing at Atlanta, Georgia, and my clothes were l
ightweight. Even the new overcoat that I had bought at Liverpool I had lost on the train on the way to Prestwick.

  It happened that Silas H. Strawn of Chicago, president of the United States Golf Association and a good friend of mine, was touring the British Isles with William V. Kelley, a member of the Chicago Golf Club, and, of course, they were coming on to the championship at Prestwick. On the way Mr. Strawn made some purchases in Glasgow, and the thought came to him that I would probably need a tweed golfing suit such as was worn for that climate. So he brought one on. I was delighted with it and felt that for once I was properly clothed for the championship. I was experiencing a feeling of satisfaction when the weather began to get warm and I, unaccustomed to tweeds, began to suffer, but I was not willing to change back to my old clothes.

  The culmination of my discomfort was reached in my match with Bruce Pearce. The sun beat down mercilessly, and I grew hotter and hotter in my unaccustomed garments. Time and again I felt that I would have to remove my coat, but I had no belt for my knickerbockers. Then the thought began to haunt me that I would ask some one to lend me a belt so that I could remove my coat, but the knickers were not cut to be worn with a belt, but came up on my back in a most extraordinary fashion.

  I was 3 up and 5 to go, and with every step I became more irritated by the heat. I began to slip behind. We were even on the eighteenth and had to play an extra hole. Then when I was in a bunker and he on the green, with the match safely his, I did what I had wanted to do throughout the whole match. Before making my shot I took off that coat of torture. It could do me no good then, but instinctively when all was lost I followed a desire that had obsessed me from my first drive to the last niblick shot. It was a great relief, but unproductive at that stage of any good to my game.

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  THE STORY OF THE GOLF COURSE MYSTERY

  CHESTER K. STEELE

  There was nothing in that clear, calm day, with its blue sky and its flooding sunshine, to suggest in the slightest degree the awful tragedy so close at hand—that tragedy which so puzzled the authorities and which came so close to wrecking the happiness of several innocent people.

  The waters of the inlet sparkled like silver, and over those waters poised the osprey, his rapidly moving wings and fan-spread tail suspending him almost stationary in one spot, while, with eager and far-seeing eyes, he peered into the depths below. The bird was a dark blotch against the perfect blue sky for several seconds, and then, suddenly folding his pinions and closing his tail, he darted downward like a bomb dropped from an aeroplane.

  There was a splash in the water, a shower of sparkling drops as the osprey arose, a fish vainly struggling in its talons, and from a dusty gray roadster, which had halted along the highway while the occupant watched the hawk, there came an exclamation of satisfaction.

  “Did you see that, Harry?” called the occupant of the gray car to a slightly built, bronzed companion in a machine of vivid yellow, christened by some who had ridden in it the “Spanish Omelet.” “Did you see that kill? As clean as a hound’s tooth, and not a lost motion of a feather. Some sport—that fish-hawk! Gad!”

  “Yes, it was a neat bit of work, Gerry. But rather out of keeping with the day.”

  “Out of keeping? What do you mean?’’

  “Well, out of tune, if you like that better. It’s altogether too perfect a day for a killing of any sort, seems to me.”

  “Oh, you’re getting sentimental all at once, aren’t you, Harry?” asked Captain Gerry Poland, with just the trace of a covert sneer in his voice. “I suppose you wouldn’t have even a fish-hawk get a much needed meal on a bright, sunshiny day, when, if ever, he must have a whale of an appetite. You’d have him wait until it was dark and gloomy and rainy, with a north-east wind blowing, and all that sort of thing. Now for me, a kill is a kill, no matter what the weather.”

  “The better the day the worse the deed, I suppose,” and Harry Bartlett smiled as he leaned forward preparatory to throwing the switch of his machine’s self-starter, for both automobiles had come to a stop to watch the osprey.

  “Oh, well, I don’t know that the day has anything to do with it,” said the captain—a courtesy title, bestowed because he was president of the Maraposa Yacht Club. “I was just interested in the clean way the beggar dived after that fish. Flounder, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, though usually the birds are glad enough to get a mossbunker. Well, the fish will soon be a dead one, I suppose.”

  “Yes, food for the little ospreys, I imagine. Well, it’s a good death to die—serving some useful purpose, even if it’s only to be eaten. Gad! I didn’t expect to get on such a gruesome subject when we started out. By the way, speaking of killings, I expect to make a neat one today on this cup-winners’ match.”

  “How? I didn’t know there was much betting.”

  “Oh, but there is; and I’ve picked up some tidy odds against our friend Carwell. I’m taking his end, and I think he’s going to win.”

  “Better be careful, Gerry. Golf is an uncertain game, especially when there’s a match on among the old boys like Horace Carwell and the crowd of past-performers and cup-winners he trails along with. He’s just as likely to pull or slice as the veriest novice, and once he starts to slide he’s a goner. No reserve comeback, you know.”

  “Oh, I’ve not so sure about that. He’ll be all right if he’ll let the champagne alone before he starts to play. I’m banking on him. At the same time I haven’t bet all my money. I’ve a ten spot left that says I can beat you to the clubhouse, even if one of my cylinders has been missing the last two miles. How about it?”

  “You’re on!” said Harry Bartlett shortly.

  There was a throb from each machine as the electric motors started the engines, and then they shot down the wide road in clouds of dust—the sinister gray car and the more showy yellow—while above them, driving its talons deeper into the sides of the fish it had caught, the osprey circled off toward its nest of rough sticks in a dead pine tree on the edge of the forest.

  And on the white of the flounder appeared bright red spots of blood, some of which dripped to the ground as the cruel talons closed until they met inside.

  It was only a little tragedy, such as went on every day in the inlet and adjacent ocean, and yet, somehow, Harry Bartlett, as he drove on with ever-increasing speed in an endeavor to gain a length on his opponent, could not help thinking of it in contrast to the perfect blue of the sky, in which there was not a cloud. Was it prophetic?

  Ruddy-faced men, bronze-faced men, pale-faced men; young women, girls, matrons, and “flappers”; caddies burdened with bags of golf clubs and pockets bulging with cunningly found balls; skillful waiters hurrying here and there with trays on which glasses of various shapes, sizes, and of diversified contents tinkled musically—such was the scene at the Maraposa Club on this June morning when Captain Gerry Poland and Harry Bartlett were racing their cars toward it.

  It was the chief day of the year for the Maraposa Golf Club, for on it were to be played several matches, not the least in importance being that of the cup-winners, open only to such members as had won prizes in hotly contested contests on the home links.

  In spite of the fact that on this day there were to be played several matches, in which visiting and local champions were to try their skill against one another, to the delight of a large gallery, interest centered in the cup-winners’ battle. For it was rumored, and not without semblance of truth, that large sums of money would change hands on the result.

  Not that it was gambling—oh, my no! In fact any laying of wagers was strictly prohibited by the club’s constitution. But there are ways and means of getting cattle through a fence without taking down the bars, and there was talk that Horace Carwell had made a pretty stiff bet with Major Turpin Wardell as to the outcome of the match, the major and Mr. Carwell being rivals of long standing in the matter of drives and putts.

  “Beastly fine day, eh, what?” exclaimed Bruce Garrigan, as he set
down on a tray a waiter held out to him a glass he had just emptied with every indication of delight in its contents. “If it had been made to order couldn’t be improved on,” and he flicked from the lapel of Tom Sharwell’s Coat some ashes which had blown there from the cigarette which Gayrigan had lighted.

  “You’re right for once, Bruce, old man,” was the laughing response. “Never mind the ashes now, you’ll make a spot if you rub any harder.”

  “Right for once? I’m always right!” cried Garrigan. “And it may interest you to know that the total precipitation, including rain and melted snow in Yuma, Arizona, for the calendar year 1917, was three and one tenth inches, being the smallest in the United States.”

  “It doesn’t interest me a bit, Bruce!” laughed Sharwell. “And to prevent you getting any more of those statistics out of your system, come on over and we’ll do a little precipitating on our own account. I can stand another Bronx cocktail.”

  “I’m with you! But, speaking of statistics, did you know that from the national forests of the United States in the last year there was cut 840,- 612,030 board feet of lumber? What the thirty feet were for I don’t know, but—”

  “And I don’t care to know,” interrupted Tom. “If you spring any more of those beastly dry figures—Say, there comes something that does interest me, though!” he broke in with. “Look at those cars take that turn!”

  “Some speed,” murmured Garrigan. “It’s Bartlett and Poland,” he went on, as a shift of wind blew the dust to one side and revealed the gray roadster and the Spanish Omelet. “The rivals are at it again.”

  Bruce Garrigan, who had a name among the golf club members as a human encyclopaedia, and who, at times, would inform his companions on almost any subject that chanced to come uppermost, tossed away his cigarette and, with Tom Sharwell, watched the oncoming automobile racers.