The Best Golf Stories Ever Told

by Julie Ganz

  As Henry Alderson trudged back to the club-house it seemed as though the events of the last half-hour had been nothing more than the disordered fancies of a noon-day nightmare. But there was the ball in his hand, the tangible evidence of what had happened. And, after all, the bargain had been entirely in his favor. Whoever the dark gentleman may have been, and Henry Alderson shuddered as he reflected upon one unholy possibility, he was certainly no business man. The wonderful ball was in his, Henry Alderson’s, possession, and his chances of eternal salvation were as good as ever.

  “Somebody has been stupid,” chuckled Mr. Alderson to himself as he entered the grill-room of the club and took up the luncheon card.

  The handicap match had been put down for three o’clock It was a monthly affair, and the winner had the proud distinction of wearing a silver cross for the following period of thirty days. It was a coveted honor, but of course not to be compared with the Hong-Kong Medal, which was always played for at the end of the golfing year. No one knew why it was called the Hong-Kong Medal, and it was certain that its donor had never in his life been out of the Middle States. But the appellation seemed to chime in with the somewhat fanciful phraseology that prevails in all things pertaining to golf, and it possessed a sonorous clang tint that was suggestive of tomtoms and barbaric victories.

  It is needless to say that Henry Alderson invariably entered all the club competitions, and as invariably came out at the bottom of the list. And yet no one had worked harder to insure success. He was absolutely saturated with the theory and literature of golf, and could rattle off the roster of open and amateur champions with the fluency of a prize Sunday-school scholar reciting the names of the kings of Judah and Israel. He neglected nothing in the way of precept or practice, and when the club champion got married he had even thought of following his example for its possible effect upon his game. But when he ventured to propose the expedient to Miss Kitty Crake he met with a decided rebuff.

  “I shall never,” said Miss Crake, “marry a man who is not on the scratch list. When you have won the Hong-Kong Medal, why then we shall see.”

  Of course, such an answer could be nothing less than the most absolute of refusals. Even in his wildest dreams he had never hoped to come in better than fourth in the monthly handicaps, and that too with an allowance of thirty-six strokes. It is true that there were other young ladies who might have accepted a less heroic standard of excellence than the winning of the Hong-Kong, but Henry Alderson felt that the matrimonial experiment was not worth trying unless Kitty Crake could be induced to take part in it. And so there the matter rested.

  When Mr. Alderson stepped to the teeing-ground that afternoon for his first drive he felt unaccountably cool and collected, in spite of the fact that Miss Crake stood in the very forefront of the “gallery.” It was one hundred and seventy-seven yards to the first hole, and he usually “hooked ” his ball into the “Punchbowl ” hollow at the left, or else feebly topped it along the ground in the one consuming desire to get away from the spectators. But today there should be another tale to tell. For an instant he thought of directing the magic ball to land upon the puttinggreen dead at the hole, but he reflected that such a phemonenal stroke would undoubtedly be put down as a fluke. It was the part of wisdom to go quietly, and so he picked out a spot some twenty yards short of the green, but in good line, and affording a generous “lie.”

  As he lifted his club and swung through he was uncomfortably conscious of having transgressed at least eighteen out of the twenty-three cardinal precepts for correct driving, but already the ball was on its way, and, amidst a hearty burst of applause, led, as he could see, by Kitty Crake, it fell precisely as he had determined. A skilful approach laid him dead, and the hole was his in three. A subdued buzz ran around the circle of the “gallery,” and everybody bent forward to watch his second drive across the “Punch-bowl.” Straight over the yawning hollow flew the ball, and the crowd clapped again; but the play was now too far away to watch, and there were others ready to drive off. Henry Alderson disappeared in the direction of the “meadow ” hole, and Miss Crake went to the club-house piazza to make tea. “Poor fellow,” she thought, “his foozling will be all the worse when it does come.”

  It was a very successful tournament, and Henry Alderson won it by the credible score of eighty net. He blushed as the President handed him the silver cross, but the spectators clapped vigorously; for he had always been a good fellow, albeit a bad golfer, and his victory was a popular one.

  “Splendid!” said Miss Kitty Crake, and Henry Alderson ascended forthwith into the seventh heaven.

  During the month that followed there were some tremendous surprises in store for the record-holders. Three days after the handicap Alderson did the course in eighty-two, thereby breaking the amateur record, and that same afternoon he tied the best professional score. The Green Committee promptly reduced him to the scratch list, and there was some informal talk of sending him to represent the club at the National Amateur meeting. Montague, the holder of the Hong-Kong Medal for two years running, was visibly uneasy. He began to spend more time on the links, and held surreptitious conversations with Alderson’s favorite caddie.

  But there was a friend as well as an enemy to keep close watch upon Henry Alderson. There was a change in him that only Kitty Crake noticed at first—a change that both annoyed and alarmed her. The becoming modesty with which he had achieved his first successes had entirely disappeared. Almost imperceptibly he had grown self-sufficient and opinionated, and his attitude towards his fellow-players was at times little short of offensive. He seemed to take an insolent delight in openly flouting the hoary traditions of the game, and in giving the lie direct to each and every venerable truism incrusted in golfing lore. He invariably used a wrong grip; he played with a full swing for all distances, including the shortest of putts, and he never under any circumstances condescended to keep his eye upon the ball. It was maddening to his fellow-golfers, but his scores were a sufficient answer to all remonstrances. Indeed, it may be said that his steadily decreasing averages were beginning to cause the Green Committee considerable uneasiness. For a player to return cards of sixty-four and then fifty-six and then forty-nine seemed to argue unfavorably for the sporting character of the links. Such kind of play was plainly injuring the reputation of the club, and at least the Honorary Secretary was emboldened to hint as much. The very next day Henry Alderson returned a total of eighteen for the full round of holes, and handed it with a mocking smile to the Honorary Secretary himself. This was too much, and Henry Alderson was promptly summoned to appear before the outraged majesty of the Green Committee. But it all ended in smoke. No one could deny that extraordinary scores of a hole in one stroke had been made on several occasions, and in this case it was simply an established phenomenon multiplied by itself eighteen times. “And, gentlemen,” concluded Henry Alderson. “I did it all with a wooden putter.”

  The Green Committee had nothing more to say, but they were plainly dissatisfied, and at once set about putting in some new hazards.

  And yet—will it be believed?—‘Henry Alderson was not a happy man. Egotistical and arrogant as he had become, he yet could not fail to perceive that he had lost immensely in the esteem of his clubmates. Nobody cared to play a match with him; and although at first he had put it down to jealousy, he was gradually forced to admit to himself that the reason lay deeper. Worst of all, Kitty Crake was decidedly cool in her manner towards him. He could not understand it, for his golf was certainly above reproach, and he knew that nothing now could prevent him from winning the Hong-Kong Medal. Once it was pinned upon his breast he would be in a position to demand an explanation and the fulfilment of her promise. But there was still another reason for his wishing that the match was over. Strange as it may appear, the very name of golf had become an abhorrence to him. And yet it was not so strange, after all, when one stops to consider. There is nothing so tiresome as perfection, and this especially applies to golf, as possessing an essen
tially feminine nature. It is the capriciousness, the inconstancy, of golf that makes it a folly so adorable, and Henry Alderson’s game had arrived at a pitch of intolerable perfection. He had long ago discovered that the ball would not be a party to a poor shot. Goaded into fury by the monotonous consistency of his play, he had tried the experiment of ordering the ball into a bunker, or at least a bad lie. But the soulless piece of gutta-percha would have none of his foozling. It simply would not be denied, and after a few trials Henry Alderson resigned himself to his fate, comforting himself with the reflection that, having won the medal (and Kitty Crake), he would give up golf forever.

  The day of the contest for the Hong-Kong Medal had come at last, and all golfdom had assembled to see the battle. A roundrobin protesting against the admission of Henry Alderson as a competitor had been presented to the Green Committee, but that autocratic body had decided to ignore the protest. “It will be better,” said a wise man, “to let him win rather than to give him a handle for a grievance. Let him take the medal, and then we can settle upon some pretext to expel him from the club. Montague has had detectives on the case, and thinks he can prove that Alderson has been playing tennis within the last two months. That will be sufficient in the eyes of all true golfers.”

  As it happened, Alderson and Montague were paired for the great event, and, of course, they had the gallery with them. Just before they started Alderson mustered up his courage and walked over to where Kitty Crake was standing. She did not raise her eyes as he approached, and he was obliged to speak twice before he could gain her attention.

  “I trust that I am to have the benefit of your good wishes,” he said, meaningly.

  She looked at him in frosty surprise.

  “I don’t think that they will help you much.” And then, with cutting deliberation, “I devoutly wish that the Hong-Kong Medal had never existed.”

  “Mr. Montague and Mr. Alderson,” called out the referee. The two contestants came forward, and Kitty Crake ostentatiously turned her back as the play began.

  In all the annals of the Marion County Golf Club a closer and more exciting match had never been played. Montague was certainly putting up the game of his life; and Alderson, while not showing any phenomenal work, was nevertheless returning a faultless score. Not a mistake had been made on either side, and at the end of the seventeenth hole honors were exactly even. But Montague was visibly breaking under the strain.

  When Montague stepped forward to drive for the home hole it was plain that he was very nervous. Twice he tried to tee his ball, but his trembling fingers refused their office, and he was obliged to call upon a caddie for assistance. As he came up for the “address ” he was deathly pale, and little beads of sweat were standing upon his forehead. The club swung back, and then descended upon the ball, but with a feeble, crooked blow that “sliced” it hopelessly into the bushes. A groan went up. Montague had “cracked,” and the match was lost.

  Up to this point Henry Alderson had played as though in a dream. At last he understood—those cold, stinging words of Kitty Crake could have but one meaning. She did not wish him to win! It was only too plain that she had never loved him, and that she regretted her idle words about the winning of the medal and the promise that they implied. What was he to do?

  One thing was certain: he had no chance, in any event, with Kitty Crake. Of course he might go on and win the medal, and then humiliate her by contemptuously refusing to press his claim; but the revenge was an unmanly one, and he could not bring himself to adopt it. Again, he might withdraw, and so give the prize to Montague. He knew that the latter was desperately anxious to retain possession of the trophy. It was the pride, the joy, the treasure, of his otherwise empty life. The Montague infants had all cut their teeth upon the medal’s firm and glittering edge. It was the family fetich; the one thing that distinguished them from the common herd of their neighbors, who lived in precisely the same pattern of suburban villa, but whose interest in life never rose above the discussion of village improvements or the election of a vestryman. Henry Alderson hesitated; his heart grew soft within him. And yet to give it up after it had cost him so much!

  “Oh yes, a fair enough player, but a trifle short in his driving.”

  It was Montague who spoke, and Henry Alderson felt instinctively that the remark referred to him. His cheeks burned as he heard the half-veiled insult that only a golfer can understand in its full significance, and he incontinently forgot all about his generous resolution to withdraw. He stepped up to the tee.

  “I dare say I can reach the green in two,” he said, carelessly.

  The hole was some four hundred yards away, and Montague smiled sarcastically. His enemy was about to be delivered into his hands.

  “I’ve done two hundred and forty yards of straight carry,” continued Alderson.

  “Hym!” coughed Montague.

  “And I’d back myself to make it three hundred.”

  “Why not four?” said Montague.

  “Six hundred, if you say so,” returned Alderson, hotly.

  “Or perhaps out of sight,” sneered Montague.

  “Off the earth,” retorted Alderson.

  Montague made no reply, but turned away to hide his satisfaction. Alderson was deliberately going to “press,” and every student of the art of golf knows what that implies. But there is nothing more uncertain than a certainty—in golf.

  Henry Alderson swung down upon the ball. Shades of St. Rule! but was there ever such a mighty drive? Three hundred yards away, and it was still rising into the blue ether. Another instant and it had passed entirely out of sight, lost in infinite space. The spectators gasped, and Montague turned livid. But stop a bit. Where was the ball? The referee looked puzzled, and the caddies stared open-mouthed into the sky. And then in a flash it dawned upon Henry Alderson that his boast had been literally made good. He had driven his ball off the earth.

  For a moment his heart stood still. With the ball was gone his golfing reputation, and gone forever. Was there anything else for him in life? The answer came in another flash of inspiration. Yes; he was a free man; now he could play golf again—his own game. Forgotten was the Hong-Kong Medal; forgotten for the nonce was Kitty Crake herself. The fit was upon him—the berserker rage of the true duffer. He turned to the referee.

  “I acknowledge,” he said, “the penalty for lost ball, and play a new one.”

  He teed a ball, an ordinary gutta-percha, and, swinging down upon it, made the most bungling of “tops.” A roar of laughter went up, and Henry Alderson joined in it, the heartiest of all. He caught Kitty Crake’s eye, and she was smiling too. Taking a brassey, he advanced for his second shot, and “missed the globe ” twice running. But what a delightful sensation it was!—this was something like golf.

  Finally, he succeeded in playing inside of Montague, who followed with a splendidly played iron shot out of the bushes. Alderson drove into a bunker, and noted, with an exquisite thrill of pleasure, that his ball had buried itself completely in the sand. It took him three to get out, and the crowd applauded. He “foozled ” a shot into a clump of evergreens, and Kitty Crake clapped her hands. Montague made a phenomenal approach, and landed his ball dead at the hole. Alderson “hooked ” one ball, “sliced ” another, and banged a third into the flag, securing a lucky “rub.” He missed two short putts, and then managed to hit Montague’s ball, holing it, and leaving his own outside. The laughter of the “gallery ” gods cleft the skies, and the referee stepped forward.

  “Mr. Montague eighty strokes, Mr. Alderson ninety-six. Mr. Montague wins the tournament, and retains possession of the Hong-Kong Medal.”

  Curiously enough, it seemed as though the applause that followed the announcement was intended for Alderson rather than for the victor. Men with whom he had not been on speaking terms for months crowded around him to shake his hand. From being the most unpopular man in the club he had suddenly become a hero. It was incomprehensible. Last of all came up Kitty Crake. The crowd had drifted aw
ay, and they were alone. Her eyes were wet and shining, and she held out her hand. He took it, trembling inwardly.

  “Well,” said she at length, “the match is over: have you nothing to say to me!”

  “But—but I lost it,” faltered Henry Alderson.

  “Exactly; and in so doing you just managed to save yourself. You have evidently no idea how simply intolerable a champion at golf may be.”

  “Oh, Kitty—”he began; but they were already at the club-house.

  After they were married he told her the whole story.

  “But there is one thing I never understood,” he concluded, thoughtfully. “If it really were the enemy of mankind, he certainly acted very stupidly in not getting my signature in the good old orthodox way. What had he to show for his side of the bargain?”

  “Oh, that is plain enough,” answered Mrs. Alderson. “So long as pride continues to be one of the seven deadly sins—”

  “Well?”

  “Why, the devil is quite justified feeling cocksure of a medal-winner golf. Poor Mr. Montague!”

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  THE STORY OF ONE GOLF CHAMPION’S PREDICTIONS FOR THE FUTURE OF THE GAME

  BY JOHN G. ANDERSON

  Clairvoyancy departed in volume with the faded red coats of Musselburgh golfers. To prophesy what seemed possible in golf, even if not at all probable, a score of years ago seemed a foolish undertaking, indeed. Why mock at truth? Why say that 700,000 Americans would supplant the 50,000 of 1900? Why risk a statement that the money invested in this outdoor sport would quadruple any other three games which please the rank and file?

  But may not a dreamer dream dreams? We had these men 20 years ago, men with a vision who builded better than they knew. Golf of today is greater than their dreams or apparently their wildest utterings.