by Julie Ganz
He and his opponent, to whom, as a matter of discretion and confidence, we must refer as Mr. A., had just ended their match at Mid-Surrey one pleasant day, and Sir Archibald was trying his last putt over again as golfers often do. It was a putt of two feet. He had missed it before; but now, of course, he rolled the ball in every time. A question arose about circumstances altering cases, as they so commonly do in golf, and of responsibility weighing heavily on the mind that hesitates; and Sir Archibald declared that nobody in good health could be such a fool as to miss a two-feet putt like that, if he really examined the line thoroughly, and took the proper pains. Just then the open champion of the period was passing by the green, and they called him up and asked his views upon the missing of two-feet putts. Taylor denied that a man was a fool for missing them. He mentioned the psychology of the business, and very forcibly argued that a two-feet putt was a very difficult thing, that the more important it was the more difficult it became, and that the longer one thought about it the more impossible did it seem to hole it. “Ah! ” said he, with the solemn countenance he assumes when discussing the terrors of this game, and the deep emphasis he makes when he admits the difficulties it creates for him, “Ah!” he murmured, “if I had never missed any putts of one foot, let alone the putts of two! I tell you, sir, the two-feet putt, when it has to be done—mind you when it has got to be done—is one of the most difficult things in the world to do, and never mind the fact that your babies can do it all the time! Take that from me, sir!”This was a touch of the real Taylor, the true philosopher, one who knows the game.
Mr. A., who is sometimes aggressive in manner, brought the matter in discussion to a pretty point at once. “Look here, Strand,” said he, “I will tell you what I will do. I will place this ball here, so, exactly two feet from the hole, and I will give you a fortnight, but not less than a fortnight, to hole that putt. You are not to practise it here at this hole on this green in the meantime; but you may place the ball in position if you like, and look at it. And a fortnight today, at ten o’clock in the morning, you must make the putt, and I will bet you fourteen guineas, being a guinea a day for waiting, that you do not hole it. We will have the position of the hole properly marked, so that a fortnight hence it shall be in the same place.”
The champion said he would tell Lees, the green-keeper, and that should be done. Strand, with a laugh, accepted the wager, and the matter was settled.
The events that followed were curious. In the club-house there was then little disposition to attend to the accounts of the proceedings that were furnished by both parties. The men who had finished rounds were too much occupied with their own troubles or joys.
At his club in town that evening, Sir Archibald, over dinner, related the circumstances of the wager to a few friends, with an appearance of considerable satisfaction with himself, and seemed a little surprised that the other members of the party did not at once approve of his proceeding as sound and business-like.
“Of course, you know, Strand, my good man,” said Mr. Ezekiel Martin, a successful stockbroker, “these putts are missed sometimes, and I don’t suppose it makes it any easier for you by waiting a fortnight. It’s like carrying over in the House till one is a very tired bull.”
“Nonsense!” exclaimed Sir Archibald, “I could go out now and hole that putt nineteen times out of twenty in the dark!”
“I believe you could,” answered Martin, “but doing it in the dark, when you cannot see the hole and realise all the imaginary difficulties, is very different from doing it in broad daylight; and putting now, on the spur of the moment, as it were, is very different from putting when you have a whole fortnight to think about what you are going to do.”
“I don’t see it,” replied Sir Archibald, yet he began to feel a little uneasy. On returning home that night, instead of going to bed at once he went into his study, laid a tumbler on its side on the carpet, and putted from a measured two feet for about half an hour. He holed most or them, and tumbled into bed feeling that Martin had been “pulling his leg,” as people say. In the morning he engaged a gardener to smooth down a piece of his lawn, planting in a little putting-green turf, and he had a hole made in it, and a circle with two feet radius drawn round the hole, so that he could putt from every point. When this work was done, he spent an hour in practising there, and succeeded well. He only missed about one in ten. He tried seven different putters, with approximately equal results. In the afternoon he went down to Mid-Surrey, played a match, and lost it by missing a short putt at the home hole. After tea, he went out on to the eighteenth green, found the spot where the hole was the day before, examined it carefully, and saw that there were slight differences in the texture of the grass round about, and that there was a little depression to the left side. He had not noticed this before. However, said he to himself, it would be easy to make allowances for these things, but he began now to doubt whether thirteen days ahead he would use his wry-necked putting cleek or bolt the putt with an aluminium putter. Where there are troubles of that kind it is often better to make short work of the putt by the bolting way, and have an end of it. At home that evening he did more putting practice on the carpet, and did not hole them quite so well. Lady Strand, who understands her husband thoroughly, and is the sweetest, gentlest sympathiser, coaxed him to telling her the trouble, for she saw that one existed. With perfect wisdom she suggested that he should wipe the fourteen guineas from the current account as already lost, and face the task as one who had all to gain and nothing to lose. Of course, her husband said, it was not the money, but the frightful jackass he would look if he missed the putt.
He went to his club in town the next day instead of going to golf, and took with him a book containing a chapter on putting, by Willie Park. He stretched himself out on a Chesterfield in a corner of the library, and gazed at two spots on the carpet which he had measured as being two feet from each other. Eventually, he decided that that was not good for him, since equal distances in furnished rooms, as is well known, look longer than they look outside. He lunched with a few friends, and brought up the subject again.
“Give him the money and have done with it, Strand. You are sure to lose!” said the brutish Martin.
“I wish I had not to wait for a fortnight,” murmured Strand.
“Ah! He knew! The other man knew!” rejoined Martin. “He knows the game of golf! What I cannot understand is why he did not give you a year and make it 365 guineas. You would have sold out in six weeks at £200!”
Sir Archibald wrote a letter to Mr. A. that evening, intimating that he would probably have to leave town the week after the next. He hinted that it might be convenient if they got their wager out of the way beforehand, and if he putted a week from then. Mr. A. replied that he was sorry it would not be convenient for him to attend then, and that the signed terms of the contract had better be abided by.
Sir Archibald bought two new putters on the following day, and in the afternoon he had Taylor out for an hour, and they went practising on the putting lawn just outside the garden gate. Sir Archibald was putting very well then; but he insisted that it would be a good thing to change the ball he was using, which was rather lively. After he had done with Taylor, he went to look at the place on the eighteenth green where he would have to putt, and it seemed that the coarse grass had fattened up considerably with the rain that had fallen, and that the sand below it was distinctly gritty. It began to seem that he would have to run the ball in at the right side of the hole. He asked Lees some questions about the grasses on that green, and was sorry he could not take a little Mid-Surrey turf home with him. He was feeling a little tired when he reached his home that night, and as it was Thursday he suggested to Lady Strand that they should go to Folkestone for the week-end, and not bother at all about golf, which they did accordingly. He found it delightful to linger on the leas and not be worried with the game.
This kind of thing continued and became worse and worse again during the days that followed. There was practi
ce, thought, and purchase continually, and unfortunately the proportion of missed putts at two feet, both on the carpet, on the practice lawn, and on the greens at Mid-Surrey, Coombe Hill, and Woking, began to increase. At putts of three feet, four, and five, Sir Archibald was marvellous, and, of course, he never missed the very little ones; but the two-feet putts bothered him all the time. He attributed it to his liver; and he was certainly looking worn. Matters were not improved by such inconsiderate remarks as were made by Martin, Evans, and others, whenever he had a two-feet putt to do, such as “Now, Strand, that’s just your distance!” It was only a joke; but in the circumstances it was not perhaps in good taste.
On the evening of the twelfth day Strand, after deliberation, wrote a letter to A. in which he said he feared he would not be able to go down to the course at the appointed time, and intimated that, according to the terms of the wager, he would hand over the fourteen guineas to him when next they met. Before posting this letter he went and did a little practice in the dusk on the lawn outside the house. He seemed to get them down with some confidence on this occasion, and Lady S., watching him, called out cheerily, “Silly boy! as if you could really miss! Now what shall I buy with the fourteen guineas?”
So Strand tore up the letter and went to bed for rest.
On the night before the appointed day he slept badly. He was putting in his mind until three o’clock in the morning. Then he rose, went in his pyjamas into the study, made a line on the top of his aluminium putter indicating the striking point, and went back to bed, but did not sleep. For some time he tried an imaginary humming of the “Jewel Song” from Faust, and repeated a few lines from Scott’s “Lady of the Lake”—old dodges of his for assisting distraction and sleep—but they did not serve, nor did a fixed vision of millions of balls falling in an endless stream from the mouth of a pump and disappearing instantly through a golf hole in the ground.
At five-thirty he rose again and took his bath. He hesitated as to what golfing suit he should wear. Finally, for the sake of complete ease, and that there should be nothing to attract his eye from the ball, he put on some dark-blue flannels.
He looked at his breakfast, pecked at a sole, and at nine-fifteen, feeling distinctly unwell, he took a taxi for the course. He had one great consolation upholding him. At five minutes past ten it would all be over. He felt that he knew how glad a condemned criminal must be that at five minutes past eight on a certain morning—or a minute or two earlier with a little luck—a black flag would be hoisted on the prison pole.
At seven minutes to ten he drank a large brandy and soda and went out to the eighteenth green. Mr. A. and a few others were there to see the business properly carried out. Taylor placed the ball exactly two feet from the hole, which was cut in the proper place. He had his watch in his hand.
Sir Archibald bent down and examined the putt with great care. He essayed to pick up what seemed to be a “loose impediment” on his line, but saw that it was not loose. The putt seemed very difficult now, and he wished he had brought his plain putting cleek out with him, but it was too late.
At ten o’clock exactly, Taylor said, “Now, Sir Archibald, will you kindly putt?”
Sir Archibald Strand looked like a man who had been hunted down. He made one swift glance around him, but saw no escape, so he pulled himself together, smiled a little sadly, and said to himself, “Don’t be a fool, Archie!”Then he faced the putter to the ball; the club was trembling slightly. He swung it back much too far, checked it in the return swing, and came on to the ball in a nervous, stupid sort of way, doing little more than touch it. The ball took a line to the right of the hole, and did not run more than fourteen inches.
You may have thought that Sir Archibald used unfortunate words and was dismayed. He did not. A look of established happiness and placid contentment spread upon his countenance, as a streak of sunlight might flash across a plain. “Ha!” he sighed in relief. He took from his pocket a cheque for fourteen guineas already made out, and handed it to Mr. A., and then joyfully exclaimed: “Thank heaven, it is finished! Now, my friends, we will honour this unusual occasion in a suitable manner at your convenience, and this afternoon I leave for Sandwich for a week of golf. And no letters are being forwarded.”
* * * * *
Let us now enter consideration of this matter in a proper frame of mind, seriously and not looking contemptuously upon the problem of holing even the very shortest of putts as no problem at all after the affected manner of the inexperienced and uninformed general public. Let us approach it cautiously and in an analytical spirit. We should take the evidence of expert witnesses upon happenings in their careers, in our endeavour to discover the real truth. We have already remarked upon the case of the hunter who shot tigers and cringed at putts, and of the great champions who all missed them on the eighteenth green at St. Andrews, when they were playing for nothing less than the championship. We have also contemplated the circumstances of the distressed baronet who was given a fortnight in which to hole a two-feet putt, suffered intolerable agonies during the period, and was only restored to happiness when he had failed at the stroke. Now let us pay regard to the experience of a little child only six years old, who was completely successful at many putts in succession, at distances of from one to six feet, all the most perilous situations. This remark able demonstration was witnessed by the proud parents, by a great professional, and by myself.
The child is a boy, and not, as has been stated, a winsome little girl. There is, if I may say it without offence, nothing remarkable about his parents. They are excellent kindly-mannered people, of tolerable middle-class education, simple in their manner of life, and of no pronounced tastes in any direction. The father is in a large timber business in the Midlands, and has probably an income of about six hundred pounds a year. His handicap is 14. He is not a very keen golfer, and seems to spend a fair amount of his time in his garden. A total abstainer, he smokes little, and has no strong tastes in art and literature; but he once told me that in addition to much Scott and a sufficiency of Dickens he had read one of my books on golf. That is the father. As to the mother, she is just one who might be called in the north a nice little body. She is a thoroughly good housewife, domesticated, affectionate, and if she does not play golf she sympathises with it. These are people who are tolerably satisfied with their state. They live in a pleasant house, employ two maidservants, and have no motorcar. Here, surely, is nothing to suggest the creation of genius. Yet they are the parents of this remarkable child who did, with no hesitation, with confidence, certainty, and frequency, what the mighty hunter, the champions, the bold but misguided baronet, and you and I have failed to accomplish.
There is a man of wit and wisdom, Andrew Kirkaldy, who, when you inquire of him what is the most difficult thing in golf, responds with no hesitation that it is to hole “a wee bit divvle of a putt that long!” and so saying he will hold his hands four feet apart. Occasionally he may vary the phraseology, not to its advantage, but the meaning and effect remain the same. Andrew is solid on four feet. But authorities differ a little in this matter of measurement. Some will reduce the distance to thirty inches; others have it that the yard putt is the most trying; I have heard eighteen inches put forward. But it all amounts to much the same thing, that what looks ridiculously easy is very, very difficult. Now this tender little child, who knew nothing of the fears and dangers of this awful game, placed the ball at a distance of two feet from the hole on a curly and slippery green, and with a sublime aplomb hit it straight to the middle of the hole—the first putt of his life and a good one. Then he putted from a yard and holed it again, then from Kirkaldy’s distance and played the stroke just as surely and successfully, and then repeated them many times, never faltering, never failing. We who watched were a trifle sad, and perhaps ashamed. We knew that with all our thought and skill and golfing learning, all our strength and manhood, we could not do the same when at our games, and that, the more we needed to do it by the importance of the golf that was
being played, the more difficult it was. Our selfish consolation was that in time the little child would grow up and then he would not be able to hole those putts, for then he would know that it was a difficult thing to do, and would be embarrassed and defeated accordingly. For it is the golfer’s consciousness of imaginary difficulties that makes him such a strange coward when this putting business is being done. He knows that really the putting is easy, but he knows also that he must not miss, that an inch lost here is as much of a loss as two hundred yards in the driving—and he fears his fate. It is consciousness of the stupidity of missing, nerves, fears, imagination, that make this missing of short putts by the cleverest players, champions as much as any others, the most remarkable thing that happens constantly in any game. There is nothing like it. If it were not so easy, if there were good excuse for failure, those putts would not be missed so frequently. In putting, said Sir Walter Simpson, there is much to think about and much more not to be thought of. “When a putter,” he reflected, “is waiting his turn to hole out a putt of one or two feet in length, on which the match hangs at the last hole, it is of vital importance that he think of nothing. At this supreme moment he ought studiously to fill his mind with vacancy. He must not even allow himself the consolations of religion. He must not prepare himself to accept the gloomy face of his partner and the derisive delight of his adversaries with Christian resignation should he miss. He must not think that it is a putt he would not dream of missing at the beginning of the match, or, worse still, that he missed one like it in the middle. He ought to wait, calm and stupid, till it is his turn to play, wave back the inevitable boy who is sure to be standing behind his arm, and putt as I have told him how—neither with undue haste nor with exaggerated care. When the ball is down, and the putter handed to the caddy, it is not well to say, ‘I couldn’t have missed it.’ Silence is best. The pallid cheek and trembling lip belie such braggadocio.”