by Julie Ganz
“Listen! Three in the brook,—” Mr. Mott’s mouth opened slowly, and his jaw fell,—”three in the brook,” he repeated in horror, “and—”
“And nine out, sir. You yelled ‘Fore!’ and counted the next stroke five—”
“Give me the mid-iron,” said Mr. Mott, abruptly. “Get down there and mark this shot!” He wheeled to gaze at the scene of his recent dredging operations. “Three in the brook, four, five, six, seven—Hey! Stop swinging those clubs! Well, I said it was seven! Three in the brook—”
“Your honor, Mr. Mott.”
“Thank you.” He teed for the short sixth across a threatening ravine. “Caddy! wake up there!” He turned to his partner with a gesture of Christian resignation. “Don’t you wish,” he asked, “that just once in a while you’d find a caddy that showed some interest in the game?”
The sixth hole was a trifling matter of a hundred and fifty yards; but to render it attractive to experts, there were mental, physical, and psychological hazards cunningly placed by nature, aided and abetted by Donald Ross. As Mr. Mott wavered on the tee, he saw a deep gully, weed-infested and spotted with frowning rocks; he saw pits limiting and guarding the green; he saw trees and excavations and a stone wall. Upon its misshapen mound of sand he saw the Silver King waiting resignedly for its certain punishment. He saw his mid-iron, broad bladed and heavy, a club capable of propelling thirty pennyweight of rubber and silk an eighth of a mile and more if properly coerced. Yet Mr. Mott discounted the inherent qualities of that iron, just as he discounted the elasticity of the golf-ball and the power of his wrists and forearms. He recalled that on the last few occasions of his attack upon this hole he had shafted his ball over the stone wall, and he wondered dumbly how he might prevent a repetition of the error. Instinct warned him to go for the hole, and play with assurance; but for several minutes he hadn’t been on good terms with his instinct. He struggled to revive the warnings of those who have written text books, to remember what Taylor or Braid or Travers has prescribed as antidotes for shafting tee-shots. “Stop talking!” he growled at the caddies. “How d’ you think I can drive when you’re talking!” Out of the obscurity of printed words a phrase flashed to his brain and he was aware that as Haultain says, he was about to pivot on the head of the left thigh-bone, working in the cotyloidal cavity of the os innominatum. He placed the mid-iron in position, and told himself that upon his life he wasn’t to move his right gastrocnemius or sartorius except torsionally. He rehearsed, in one mad instant, platitudes affecting the right elbow, the eyes, the left knee, the interlocking grip, and the distribution of weight. He lifted the club stiffly, and brought it down again. Too cramped! He settled himself more comfortably, and peered at the stone wall. The green, half bathed in golden sunshine, half purplish in dense shadow, seemed to reach out yearning arms to draw the Silver King to its broad bosom. A hundred and fifty yards, par three. Mr. Mott caught his breath in a quick intake, and drove sickeningly into the stone wall.
“Oh, tough!” said Chapman.
But the features of Mr. Mott expressed no rage. On the contrary, he was smiling placidly, as a parent smiles at a wayward child. The crisis had come and gone; the most difficult obstacle of the entire round was now a matter of indifference to him; he had known positively that he was destined somehow to entangle himself with that stone wall, and now he had done it. Even so, he didn’t begrudge his partner that arching shot which spanned the ravine, and lacked not more than a yard or two of carrying the green; on the contrary, he was glad that Chapman had done so well.
“I always dub this hole,” he said cheerfully. “I got a two on it last July, but ordinarily I’m satisfied if I get a four. You’re well up there; still a tiny bit of a hook, though. But you’re doing a lot better since I told you.”
“I’m working hard enough to straighten ’em out,” deprecated Chapman.
“Well, if you take a nice, easy swing, and don’t pull your body round, you’ll get good results. I hope you don’t mind my telling you.”
“Far from it,” said Chapman, humbly.
Mr. Mott’s caddy pointed to the ball, which was virtually unplayable among the stones. Mr. Mott, now that he had passed the climax of his round, was suddenly dogged and determined. It was all well enough to flub the drive, but this approach of his was serious business. He broke off a reed or two which interfered with his stance; he commandeered both caddies to assist him in the removal of sundry large rocks; he bent the grasses so that he had a fighting chance to smash through with his deepfaced mashie. Down on the green Chapman was watching earnestly. On the sixth tee a fast-moving foursome was emitting comments which blew across the ravine, and caused the muscles of Mr. Mott’s jaw to tighten significantly. Duffer, was he! He’d show ’em whether he was a duffer or not! He focused on the flag, and swung the mashie in a wide ellipse.
Mr. Mott, by virtue of that mysterious and extraordinary sense with which some men are sometimes gifted, had known with utter privity of knowledge that he was sure to recover from the rough. There was no doubt about it; it was his destiny. What he hadn’t known, or remotely suspected, was that he would cover sixty good yards with that clean swipe, and lose his ball in the wilderness of the adjacent jungle. And even in that moment when he most commiserated with himself for the gross faultiness of the club and the grave defects of the ball, he wasn’t nearly so much tortured by the necessity of playing three, still from trouble, as he was by the necessity of allowing that cynical foursome to go through. His gorge rose at the mere conception of being passed; in match-play he would have conceded the hole instanter rather than suffer the ignominy of signaling a foursome to take precedence; but in medal-play he must finish every hole and hole every putt; so that he fretted impatiently for five long minutes, spoke to his caddy in curt monosyllables, and majestically expelled from the course, as a thief and a pirate, a soiled and tattered renegade who leaned over the wall and offered to sell him two second-hand floaters for a quarter. In days gone by Mr. Mott had bought perhaps two dozen balls from that self- same urchin, that boy who wearily spent the long summer evenings in beating thicket and brush for abandoned gutties; but today he looked askance upon the scoundrel, and saw him plainly for what he was, a trafficker in illicit wares, a golf-hound outlawed and thrice condemned. Besides, last Saturday Mr. Mott had purchased four old balls from him only to discover later that two of them were balls which Mr. Mott himself had lost a fortnight ago. They had his initials on them.
The foursome, completing their routine with incredible speed and skill, disappeared in the middle distance. Mr. Mott played three, and Mr. Mott played four, and if he hadn’t kept majestic control over his temper, he would have dumped his clubs in the nearest pit, brained his caddy with a patent putter, and started incoherently for Bloomingdale. As it was, he merely confirmed the theory that the terminology of masculine hysteria is limited to four suffixes, and played five without caring whether he found the hole or Long Island Sound. As a matter of fact, he found the hole.
“Bully!” said Chapman. “I made mine, too; thought we’d better save time. I putted while you were hunting.”
Mr. Mott, red and perspiring, shook his head sadly.
“I ought to have had a four,” he maintained. “I wasted a shot That’s eight strokes I’ve absolutely thrown away this round. I ought to have had a four-easy. If you don’t mind my telling you, you’d better play straight for the big tree. Then your hook’ll make it come around into the fair.” Whereupon Mr. Mott hit a very high, very short hook, and as he postured in the guise of Ajax,—save that Ajax presumably had no such costume and no such implement to intensify the dramatic value of his gestures,—he fervently apostrophized the wind, which had taken a perfectly straight ball and blown it into a trap. He wasn’t influenced in his decision by the sight of a marker-flag drooping lazily on its staff, nor by the circumstance that Chapman’s drive, which attained almost equal height, came to earth without a single degree of deviation from the line of shortest distance.
“The wind took it right around!” flamed Mr. Mott, snatching his niblick.”Fore!”
It was a good out, and Mr. Mott played a goodly third. His fourth, however, was abortive, although the divot flew gracefully. Mr. Mott withheld his analysis until Chapman had curved an approach within striking distance of the green, and then his finer sensibilities prompted him to disregard himself and to tutor Chapman.
“That was a nice ball,” he began sincerely, “but you’re still hooking. Why don’t you try addressing it with the heel of the club? That makes you come around in after it. You try that, and see what it does. And I’ve noticed you go back too fast. You can’t do that and keep your balance unless you’re a good player. Slow back, and crook your left knee more. In at the ball, I mean. Like this!” His delsarte was masterly; and although he foundered the shot, the ball rolled and rolled until it trickled on to the green and stopped dead. “Well, that’s the idea, but I didn’t get it up enough,” said Mr. Mott with decent reserve. Subsequently they each used the putter twice.
The eighth was a respite, and they halved it in four. On the ninth tee, to the frank annoyance of another foursome which had overtaken them, Mr. Mott refused to drive until the quartet ahead had left the green, two hundred and twenty-two yards away, uphill.
“A good wallop’ll carry that far sometimes,” he explained with dignity. “I’ve done it myself. Almost did it this morning. They’re off now, anyway.” Before proceeding to the shot, he condescended to lighten the situation with a ray of humor. “I’d hate to kill anybody,” he said, and after an enormous swing topped not more than a mallet’s length into the tall grass.
From the restive foursome a gruff voice struck harshly upon Mr. Mott’s sensitive ears:
“Well, that was a damn’ humane impulse all right!”
With a medal score of sixty-three for the first nine, Mr. Mott bade farewell to all thought of a silver trophy for his library, and devoted himself to a keen study of ballistics as exemplified by his partner’s chronic hook. For two holes he fairly exuded advice and encouragement, but at the twelfth tee he was staggered to discover that he had counseled an ingrate. Without question, Chapman was improving steadily; the hook was appreciably less, and Mr. Mott had merely said, with the kindest of motives, that Chapman was improving, and that if he’d only remember to stare while he counted three at the spot where the ball had rested before he hit it, he’d do even better. And Chapman, smiling faintly, replied in a gentle tone which contained rebuke:
“Perhaps if you’ll play your own game, Mr. Mott, and let me play mine, we’ll get along well enough as it is.”
Mr. Mott wouldn’t have been human if he hadn’t taken seven on the next hole, and he wouldn’t have been human if he hadn’t experienced a thrill of primitive triumph when Chapman not only hooked his drive, but also his full mid-iron. Granted that his approach was moderately efficient, Chapman deserved nothing better than a seven, or possibly a six, with divine aid; but when he putted wretchedly off direction, and the ball, obviously deflected by the agency of a slope which Mr. Mott hadn’t seen and couldn’t discern curled sharply in toward the cup, and tottered to the lip of it, and dropped, Mr. Mott compressed his lips and said nothing. He realized* that comment was superfluous; when a man had that sort of luck, which simply compensated for two earlier mistakes, there was nothing for a righteously indignant opponent to say. Chapman had even forfeited his earlier right to be joked about it.
But when Chapman achieved a perfect drive on the thirteenth Mr. Mott burst with information.
“That’s the queerest thing I ever saw in my life!”
“What is?”
“Why, that ball was straight as a die! And you stood for another hook!”
“No!” said Chapman.
“But—why, certainly you did. I’d have told you, but you’d begun your swing, and I was afraid of spoiling your shot. It’s the funniest thing I ever saw! Where am I, caddy?”
“In the pit,” said the stolid caddy.
By the time he got out, he perceived that his companion had finished, and was sitting on the bench in the shade. Highly offended at the discourtesy, Mr. Mott whistled as a demonstration of independence, and utilized an unconscionable length of time in a study of topography. To do him justice, he wasn’t seeking to retaliate; he was resolved that by his own excellence in the short game he would display his lack of nerves and his imperturbability in a trying moment. The man whose partner has played out rather than to wait politely while sandpits are under exploration is subject to an adjustment of poise; and although Mr. Mott had the satisfaction of leaving no loophole for criticism, and of holing prettily, he was nevertheless too fundamentally introspective to drive well on the dog-leg fourteenth.
Furthermore, although the region immediately surrounding his ball wasn’t placarded as ground under repair when Mr. Mott began his onslaught upon the turf, it was indubitably in need of repair when Mr. Mott got through with it. He quarried out a blanket of gravelly soil at each of four desperate offensives, and when he toiled wearily up the hillside to the rolling green he took two putts for a nine, and was aware that Chapman, whether befriended or betrayed by fortune, hook or no hook, had beaten him by a margin of many strokes.
But the sun was setting, the end was near, and Chapman was a new member. Mr. Mott relaxed somewhat, tore his tournament score-card to bits, and scattered them on the grass.
“No use keeping that any more,” he said. “I can’t putt on these plowed fields they call greens. They’re a disgrace to the club, that’s what they are. Now, this is what I call a beautiful hole. Four hundred and sixty—over beyond the farthest line of trees. Par five; it ought to be par six.”
“Why?”
Mr. Mott was mildly astonished.
“Because it’s a hard hole.”
“But par’s arbitrary, Mr. Mott.”
“Yes, but the greens committee—”
“The greens committee hasn’t anything to do with it. Any hole up to two hundred and fifty is par three, from that to four fifty is par four, from four fifty-one to six hundred is par five. So this is a par five—and it’s only ten yards too long to be a par four.”
Mr. Mott blinked at the sun.
“What makes you think that?”
“I don’t think it; I know it. The U. S. G. A. changed the figures in April, but the ruling didn’t affect this particular distance at that.”
“Well, I may be wrong, but my impression is that the greens committee fixes the par for the different holes. Anyway, here goes!”
“Nice ball!” said Chapman.
Mr. Mott smiled conciliatingly.
“Tommy Kerrigan made that driver for me,” he said. “It’s a pippin. As soon as I swing I can feel I’m going to hit it clean. I beg your pardon! Did I take your mind off your shot?”
“Not at all. I’m out there about where you are.”
“It was a screamer,” said Mr. Mott, unaware of the inference to be drawn from the compliment. “As good a drive as I’ve seen in a month.”
To his immense gratification, he was hole-high on his second shot, and home on his third. He compelled himself to plan for two putts, to insure himself a par five instead of risking all on a bold steal which might prove, by metamorphosis, to be a gift to the devil. In consequence he very nearly holed out, and he was far too enraptured to care what Chapman got. Chapman had manhandled his chip shot, and Mr. Mott hadn’t noticed the others. Let Chapman account for himself. Par five! Who cared what Chapman got?
According to the custom duly laid down in such cases, Mr. Mott took many practice swings on the sixteenth tee. Temporarily, he had struck his head upon the stars, and with the pride of a champion he swung with a champion’s ease and freedom. Par five! Mr. Mott, with the image of victory statue hovering before his eyes, clipped bits of turf from the scarred tee and ogled the green. Kerrigan had often overdriven it; once when the ground was baked out; it wasn’t much more than two hundred and forty yards. And the rough directly before t
he tee, the trap to the left, and the rough to the right, what were they? Who but novices were to be alarmed by puny obstacles such as these? Surely not the man who has made the long fifteenth in a par five!
“Fore!” he said mechanically.
Mr. Mott drove magnificently, and started hastily over the foot-bridge, then halted at the pleasant laughter of his companion; and shamefacedly stood aside. He never looked to see where Chapman drove; his consciousness was riveted upon a small white object far up on the slope. And since, during his walk, he told himself exactly how he should play his approach, how he should stand, how he should swing, he later stood and swung without destructive uncertainty, and so pitched fairly to the pin. The putt was simple; Mr. Mott achieved it without a tremor.
“Three!” he whispered to himself. “One under par! One under par for two holes! Gosh! If I hadn’t been so rotten up to the fifteenth I’d have had a chance!” Aloud, he said: “Par four’s too much for this hole. It ought to be three. What was yours?”
“Four,” said Chapman. “Your approach was too good; it was a wonder.”
“Pure wrist shot. Notice how I took the club back? Sort of scoop the ball up—pick it up clean? That’s what I’ve been working for—pick ’em up clean with lots of back spin. You get that by sort of sliding under the ball. Well, two more to go!”
“Let’s make ’em good!” adjured Chapman.
“One under par for two holes,” thought Mr. Mott, slashing a low drive to the open. “Say, I guess somebody wouldn’t turn up his nose at that, eh? A five and a three! I was—let’s see—thirtyeight for five holes, and a five and a three make forty-six. Oh, I beg your pardon!” He was wool-gathering squarely in front of Chapman, who presently put a hooked ball somewhat beyond Mr. Mott’s. “My! what a wonderful day for golf!” said Mr. Mott, enthusiastically. “Not a breath of wind, not too hot, just right.”
“It suits me. You got a nice drive there.”
“Too high,” said Mr. Mott. He played a jumping shot which ran briskly over the shallow pit guarding the green, and came to a standstill not twenty feet from the cup. He putted, and was dead. He holed out with neatness and precision, and knew that he had beaten Chapman by a stroke. “Gad, what a green!” said Mr. Mott, pop-eyed. “Like a billiard-table. We’ve got an English greens-keeper here; he’s a wonder. Best greenskeeper in the East. Sleepy Hollow and Pine Valley have nothing on us”