by Julie Ganz
“Come on; be a sport; make it a ball Nassau—”
“Why should I give you a stroke? Here’s my suggestion—”
“All right! All right! Count it up yourself! 5, 7, 4, 9, 6, 6, 8—”
“Five aces in one! I’ll stand!”
“Hey, Jim! I had a par five—”
“Waiter! Waiter! I didn’t order soup!”
“That’s ground under repair. It says so on the card—”
“Oh, I couldn’t hit a balloon. Worst I ever did!”
“Well, if you start us one up on each nine and—”
“Confound it! I didn’t make the rules! It costs you two strokes!”
“Telephone! Telephone for Mr. Smithson! Mrs. Smithson calling—”
“Well, my handicap’s too low. He’s been under ninety twice this year, and the best I ever made in my life was a ninety-four, and still I’ve got to give him three strokes—”
“Waiter! Hurry along that club sandwich, will you?”
“If you’d just keep that left shoulder down, Bill, and remember to follow through—”
“I’ll bet you I break 110—”
“Oh, if I could putt, I’d be all right. I just can’t putt.”
“Here, give me that check! Oh, come now; that’s not right—”
“Then I went all to pieces—”
“Well, if I’d been playing my game—”
“Honest, I’d like to play you even, but I haven’t touched a club since June—”
“Oh, I was awful!—How about you?”
“Waiter!”
Mr. Mott smiled happily, and button-holed the chairman of the handicap committee.
“Made up yet?” he inquired.
The chairman was prone to brevity.
“Yes. How’d you come out this morning?”
“Rotten!” said Mr. Mott, promptly. “Tore up my card; I was fierce. Know anybody that’s looking for a match?”
“Yes, there’s a new member out by the caddy-house. Don’t know who he is, but he’s alone. I thought somebody ought to give him a welcome. You do it, Val.”
“Good idea—I will.” Mr. Mott edged his way to the outer door, bellowed over his shoulder to one who had bellowed a question at him—the answer was “Pretty fair—for me!”—and emerged to the gravel walk. At this hour the vicinity of the first tee was deserted, but before the professional’s tiny house Mr. Mott saw a lanky stranger dallying in an attitude of longing; Mr. Mott drew near and grinned. The stranger looked up, and presently grinned in return.
“Waiting for somebody?” asked Mr. Mott.
“No,” said the stranger. “Just taking my chances; I’m a new member.”
“Indeed! My name’s Mott.”
“Chapman’s mine.”
They shook hands. Mr. Mott glowed with the consciousness of duty well done.
“I’m alone, too. Suppose we try it?”
“I’d be glad to. Your name up for the handicap?”
“Not yet.”
“I’ll put it up,” volunteered Mr. Mott In the top space on the ruled sheet tacked to the scoreboard he scrawled his own patronymic, and added his stroke allowance. “What’s yours?”
“They haven’t given me one. I’ve been in the club only a week.”
“Well” said Mr. Mott, uncertainly, “then you can’t very well compete—”
“Oh, I’m not going to. I’m not strong for tournaments, anyway. If you don’t mind, I’ll just attest your round; I’m not in condition anyway.”
“All right.” Mr. Mott dusted his hands, and stepped over to the caddy-master. “A couple of boys ready? Who do I draw? This one? My bag there? Now, son, your job is to watch the ball. You remember that, will you? Let’s have the driver.” He strode within the fatal inclosure, and swung the club experimentally at a trespassing cigarette stub. The stub leaped forward a yard, accurately on the line. “What do you play around in?”
“Oh, I’m erratic,” said Chapman, watching intently. “You take the honor, please.”
“Well, if you say so.” He chuckled. “Might as well take it when I can get it. I may never have another chance.” He teed an almost new ball, and took his stance; waggled, hesitated, stooped, glanced at his caddy, and glared at him. “Another ball,” he said shortly. “Red-line Silver King out of the pocket.” The caddy, overwhelmed with guilt, furnished it. It was of the same brand, the same marking, the same weight, and showed the same degree of wear and tear as the original choice; but Mr. Mott, for reasons comprehended only by golfers, regarded it with far greater satisfaction. It was the ball with which he had made the last hole in a par five on the morning round. It was, so to speak, already broken in, trained, biddable. Mr. Mott teed it, and after swinging once or twice in exaggeratedly correct form, lunged downward savagely.
“Good ball!” approved Chapman.
“Too high,” said Mr. Mott, with meretricious disgust. It was the longest drive he had made from the first tee in six weeks.
The stranger hit a prodigious hook out of bounds. On his second attempt the hook was less pronounced; he was in the rough. The two players set out fraternally on their journey.
“Been playing much lately?” inquired Mr. Mott.
“Not a great deal. Only once or twice since April.”
“You’ve got a fine follow-through, though.”
“Unfortunately, there’s more to the game than that,” deprecated Chapman. He selected a spoon, and was hole-high to the left of the green.
“Beautiful! Just a trifle off,” commented Mr. Mott. With the sole of his club he patted down a worm-cast; with his heel he deleted a tuft of grass from the complications of his lie. He made his effort, and afterwards he held himself rooted to the spot until he had verified, by three swings at vacancy, his unexpressed opinion that, given another opportunity, he would have split the flag, instead of dubbing fifty feet downhill. “I can’t keep my head down,” he lamented. “Oh, well—” He turned suddenly to his caddy, and sent a bolt of lightning at him. “Watch this one!” he ordered. And the caddy obediently watched it hobble a hundred yards, and disappear among the leaves of a dry trench.
As Mr. Mott, looking aggrievedly at a pair which had come up behind him and were yelling “Fore!” at the top of their lungs, stood on the first green and noted his score, he was impelled to quote history.
“I had a six here this morning,” he sighed. “It’s a tricky green, isn’t it?”
“Very,” agreed his partner. “You keep the honor all the way, will you? You’re in the tournament, and I’m not.”
“Just as you say. On this one you want to aim pretty well to the left of the mound.” Mr. Mott drove thirty yards to the right of it. “Doggone it!” he exclaimed, with his hands on his hips, “that club’s no earthly good; I can’t hit the broad side of a bam with it! It isn’t balanced, or something. Further to the left, Mr. Chapman.” Here Chapman sent forth a towering drive which at least was out of trouble. “That’s safe! You’re lucky.”
“Oh, I’m not kicking,” said Chapman placidly. “But I’m afraid you’re in the pit.”
“I see,” said Mr. Mott, getting into his stride, “that that Bobby Jones hasn’t been doing as well this season as he did last. Well, that’s the way it ought to work out. He’s too young to have all that success; it might have spoiled him. Besides, the national’s no place for a boy like that. I was hoping he wouldn’t go too far at Merion a year ago.”
“He made a seventy-four,” said Chapman, shrugging his shoulders, “and a seventy-six and a seventy-seven—”
“Oh, that’s not so very remarkable. You take these caddies; they watch good players, and get hold of a good swing, and they’re not bothered with nerves—”
“Pardon me, but I think you’re back there about ten yards, Mr. Mott.”
“So I am! Much obliged! Fore!”
Within a quarter of a mile there was no one who might conceivably have been endangered by Mr. Mott’s recovery from the sand-pits, but his warning cry was
both mechanical and peremptory. He eyed the flag, three hundred yards in advance, and with his eye still on it he played the mashie-niblick in the stroke which made Edward Ray internationally famous. It made Mr. Mott apoplectic. Thenceforward he progressed by slow and circuitous stages to the sloping green, and upon his arrival he was too deeply perturbed to sympathize with Chapman, whose iron shot had found a trap, and whose approach was beyond the hole. To be sure, the sinking of a long putt did much to salve the irritation in Mr. Mott’s bosom, and although Chapman also holed a twenty-footer, Mr. Mott secretly felt, and generously withheld the statement, that Chapman had been excessively fortunate in the roll of the green. And he was too much absorbed in his own cosmos to inquire Chapman’s score.
The third hole was short; that is, it was short for scratch-players. Mr. Mott had seen Tommy Kerrigan, the club professional, once play it with a heavy mashie; he had seen Sumner Hollander, who, although rated at nine, was Mr. Mott’s ideal performer, overplay it with a mid-iron. Therefore Mr. Mott, who, if he could have reached the pin with a full brassey once out of three trials, would have owed sacrifices to the gods and blessings to a beam wind, chose a mid-iron.
“I’m not generally as bad as this,” he explained when the ball had found cover in a growth of underbrush. “I’m not getting my wrists into it, that’s all. I don’t know what’s the matter with me today. I don’t seem to have any snap. It’s costing me a stroke a hole, too.”
“Easily,” said Chapman. He, too, was off the line, but he was near enough to the green to use a putter while Mr. Mott was still flailing at the underbrush, and he was down in four to Mr. Mott’s six.
“Now for a long one,” complained Mr. Mott, climbing the eminence to the fourth tee. “Well, I suppose I’ll have to take that driver of Kerrigan’s again. If I had any sense I’d drive with an iron. Well, never mind. I believe in playing the right club. Watch it, boy!” He hit a screaming liner down the alley for more than two hundred precious yards, and posed diligently and without motion, until the ball had not only come to rest, but had also lain quiescent for several seconds. He regarded the club-head in general perplexity. He tested the spring of the shaft. He breathed deeply, and made way for Chapman; and after Chapman, owing to a half-top, had failed by a full rod to equal that drive of Mr. Mott’s, he relentlessly fought down the smile which struggled for its outlet. Indeed, he was rather astonishingly severe and unemotional for a man who had just accomplished a praiseworthy feat, and got back on his game. He endeavored by conversation to disguise his glory.
“You’ve just joined the club, Mr. Chapman?”
“Only a week ago, Mr. Mott.”
“Pretty nice course, don’t you think? It’s very hard. It’s harder by three strokes than any other course in the metropolitan district, and the fairway’s a bit ragged, and the greens are pretty nearly hopeless; but you wait five years! I tell you, a man’s got to keep out of the rough on this course or he’s dished. I like a stiff course; it’s the only kind to have. Where did you play formerly?”
“Over in Boston—Woodland.”
“Oh! Do you know Francis Ouimet?”
“I should say I do! Do you?”
“Well, not personally,” said Mr. Mott, with some haste. “But of course . . . If he had more time to play, he’d be a wizard, wouldn’t he? Fore!”
“You’re in the pit!” shrilled Mr. Mott’s caddy.
“Well, don’t tell me about it now!” roared Mr. Mott, turning livid. He glanced at Chapman. “Excuse me, I thought you’d played. Well, of all the—” He saw Chapman’s stinging brassey, which had threatened to sail into a grove of pines to westward, suddenly veer to the east, and drop lazily abaft the green.
“Pretty lucky,” said Chapman. “I played for a slice, but—”
“Lucky! I wish I had half your luck! I’d be down to a three handicap, by gosh! See my ball anywhere, caddy? You said it was in the pit.”
The boy indicated it.
“It bounced over, sir.”
“Humph!” said Mr. Mott, accepting the gift of the fates without evident thankfulness. “Well, why don’t you watch it, boy? Tell me it’s in the pit, and then . . . Stand still, will you? Stop rattling those clubs!” He hit a high iron and lost it in the sun. “Say, I didn’t see that one at all.”
“Neither did I,” said Chapman. “But it sounded like a clean hit.”
Mr. Mott shifted the responsibility to his faithful retainer, who was nonchalantly chewing gum.
“Did you mark it, caddy?”
“No, sir; couldn’t see it drop, Sun’s in my eyes.” Mr. Mott snorted, and tossed his cleek to the ground.
“Good Lord!” he snapped. “What d’ you think you’re paid for? D’ you think I hire you to lose balls? Anybody can carry the clubs; your job is to watch the ball! Why didn’t you mark it? That’ll make three I’ve lost today, and you—”
“It’s on,” stated the caddy, chewing rapidly.
“On! Where?”
“On the green. Over by the sprinkler.”
Mr. Mott coughed delicately, and looked at Chapman under his lashes. Chapman wasn’t on; Chapman wasn’t on by a good ten yards, but Mr. Mott was on in three, and the hole was a par five.
“I’ve got a chance for a birdie,” he whispered to himself, “a chance for a four. It’s four hundred and eighty yards, and I’ve got a chance for a four. For a birdie. . . . Good shot!” Chapman had clipped up neatly.
Mr. Mott took his putter, and made an awkward jab at the ball. It fled at a disconcerting angle. Mr. Mott flushed, pursued the gutty, and jabbed again. Then he lifted himself erect, and poured out into the world the offscourings of his innermost soul. He reviled himself, the Silver King golf-ball, the Vaile putter, the greenskeeper, the turf, the contour of the land, the Scotch who had invented the game, and the promoters who had organized the club. As an afterthought, he hurled the putter into a convenient hazard, and, seizing the first weapon which came to hand,—a niblick,—struck so fair and true that the ball went down for a six, one over par.
“Too bad!” said Chapman. “I missed an easy one, myself.”
“I had a chance for a four,” declared Mr. Mott, loudly. “Of all the rotten putting I ever saw in my life that was the worst! On the green in three, and three putts! These greens are rotten! Worst in the world; and believe me, I’ve seen some bad ones! Where’s my driver? Hurry up, there!”
While his mood was of grim resolution, and he concentrated rigidly upon the act, he drove off in excellent form and with highly creditable results.
“There!” he ejaculated. “Now I’m getting back on my game. That old war-club certainly does poke ’em out when I hit ’em right. But three putts, and only one over par at that! If our greens were as good as they’ve got at Wykagyl or Sleepy Hollow—”
He observed that his companion had again hooked, and by virtue of his own superiority of direction he was vastly exhilarated. The second shots, too, filled him with passionate joy, for he was safely over the brook, while Chapman had pulled into tall grass. Mr. Mott sidled toward his partner, and made diplomatic overtures of assistance.
“If you don’t mind my telling you,” he said, “you stand too far back of the ball. You can’t help hooking when you do that. You push the face of the club right across the ball. It’s like a masse shot in billiards. You’re getting good distance, but you hook all the time. Just straighten ’em out and you’ll be ’way out every time. Stand farther ahead, and you’ll be all right.”
“I certainly am hooking ’em,” acknowledged the lanky man.
“Well, if you don’t mind my telling you—”
“Not a bit!”
“More like this,” said Mr. Mott, illustrating. “Go back slower, and let go with your right hand at the top of the swing. Then take hold hard with your left when you start to come down. It’s the left hand that does the business. And follow through more. Now, you take that last shot of mine; I hit three inches behind the ball, and the follow through saved it. All of i
t was bad but the follow through; but what happened? It went as straight as a die. Say, are those people going to stay on that green all night? Fore!”
“Oh, they haven’t holed out yet.”
“Yes, they have; they’re counting their scores. Some people don’t realize there’s such a thing as etiquette in this game. Fore!”
He topped into the brook.
“Fore!” said Mr. Mott, waving his niblick.
He hammered the ball into a bank of yielding clay.
“Fore!” rasped Mr. Mott, setting his teeth.
He essayed a pitching stroke, a lofting stroke, an extricating stroke, and two shoveling strokes, and the last of these brought him to solid earth.
“Fore!” shouted Mr. Mott, wild-eyed. He ran an approach to the edge of the green and panted violently. “Four—and I’m on in five,” said Mr. Mott, utterly innocent. “Where’d you go?”
“Just off—over by the water-pipe.”
Mr. Mott exhaled luxuriously, and fanned himself with his hat.
“That isn’t bad. One of you boys take the flag. Good work!” Secretly he held that Chapman’s run-up was a fearful fluke.
“Sink it now,” urged Chapman, encouragingly.
Mr. Mott tried his best to sink it, and missed by a bare inch.
“Throw that back here!” he ordered.
The second endeavor was flawless. Legally, Mr. Mott had taken two putts; morally, he had taken one—the last one. It was this consciousness of innate ability, this realization that if he had aimed a hair’s-breadth farther to the left he would have sunk the first attempt that cheered and inspired him. He could have done it if he had really cared about it. And Chapman missed a two-footer!
“If you don’t mind my telling you,” said Mr. Mott, with admirable restraint, “you can putt a whole lot better if you turn the face of your putter over toward the hole. It puts a drag on the ball. It makes it run close to the ground. I had a six; no, seven. That first one should have gone down. Seven.”
“Twelve,” said his caddy, apprehensive, but judicial.
Mr. Mott turned upon him vehemently.
“Twelve! What in thunder are you talking about? Five on the green—”
“No, sir, ten—”