The Project Gutenberg eBook of A line o' gowf or two
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: A line o' gowf or two
Author: Bert Leston Taylor
Author of introduction, etc.: Chick Evans
Release date: April 2, 2025 [eBook #75777]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc, 1923
Credits: Susan E. and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LINE O' GOWF OR TWO ***
A Line o’ Gowf or Two
_BOOKS BY BERT LESTON TAYLOR_
A PENNY WHISTLE
THE SO-CALLED HUMAN RACE
THE WELL IN THE WOOD
A LINE O’ GOWF OR TWO
_In Preparation_
THE EAST WINDOW
_And others in a uniform collected edition, to be ready later_
_New York: Alfred · A · Knopf_
[Illustration: “_Hew to the line, let the divots fall where they may._”]
A Line o’ Gowf
or Two
by
Bert Leston Taylor
_With an Introduction by
Charles (“Chick”) Evans_
New York [Illustration] 1923
Alfred · A · Knopf
COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.
_Published, March, 1923_
_Set up, electrotyped, and printed by
the Vail-Ballou Co., Binghamton, N. Y.
Paper furnished by W. F. Etherington & Co., New York.
Bound by H. Wolff Estate, New York._
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
_Acknowledgments for permission to use material are due ~The
Chicago Tribune~, ~Golf Illustrated~, ~The Golfer’s Magazine~
and ~Mr. Payson Sibley Wild~._
Foreword
If desired may be pronounced “Guff”.
B. L. T.
Introduction
By Charles Evans, Jr.
A man once said to me: “I consider the daily reading of B. L. T.’s column
equal to a liberal education in English.” The thought immediately came
to me that whatever it was necessary for B. L. T. to do he did well; and
as his chief business in life was the writing of English he did that
with an accuracy, a beauty and grace of expression at which the rest of
us could only marvel. Of course, my attention was first called to him
because of his interest in golf, and I began reading his column mainly to
see what he might say about the game, but I ended by being interested in
everything that he wrote about, and that often seemed to mean the whole
universe.
I cannot remember exactly when I first met him, but I think that it was
at one of the indoor golf schools where he was practicing, and we began
discussing golf in a desultory sort of way. That part of my remembrance
is hazy, however, but another meeting stands out with peculiar
vividness. We were at the Cliff Dwellers, and deaf and blind to the
clamor and brilliancy about us we retired into a corner, and with the aid
of a cane or an umbrella we worked out the golf swing segment by segment.
It was his idea of the way to learn it. It showed his thoroughness, and
it may be said truthfully that by the time the demonstration was over he
had mastered the theory of the swing. It was then very apparent that he
was fast yielding to the charms of the enchantress.
After that he and I played a good many games of golf together. It was
a great pleasure for me and I hoped that he enjoyed it. We presented a
marked contrast. He had learned his golf at a comparatively late age; it
was a cerebral production, a good one, too, and like all such things it
had improved with time. Had he lived longer I am sure that his game would
have become a very fine one. Indeed I often thought that it had developed
faster, considering the time he had been able to give to it, and certain
physical limitations, than any game I had ever watched. His eyes had
been long over-worked, and I do not think that during his early life
he had given much time to athletics. These two things are a drawback,
but in spite of them his game improved with surprising rapidity. On the
other hand I had picked up my game when a small boy and it was largely
imitative. I had fine eyesight and I had played every game that the
“vacant lot” or the school playground permitted. When I reached years of
reason I spent a great deal of time trying to find out why certain shots
were played in certain ways. When the reasons were unearthed I frequently
discarded the methods, having proved to my own satisfaction that other
ways were easier, and based on a sounder theory.
Mr. Taylor may have thought at times that I was helping him with golf. I
knew that he was helping me. Through his eyes I was often able to see the
theory of the shot, and I confess that many of us imitative golfers work
from a false foundation, and do not know why or how we play our shots,
and that is the reason why, when the game that we learned without reason
deserts us, we are unable to find the way back quickly. Mr. Taylor’s
whole attitude towards the game and everything else in life impressed
upon me the intrinsic value of sound methods. In a way he is linked in
my mind with Edgewater, for he, Mr. MacDonald, and I played many games
there, and they are things that we are very glad to remember.
The greatest compliment ever paid my game of golf I received from B. L.
T. The text is not now before me, because like many another thing that I
prized and preserved most carefully its exact sanctum is unknown, but he
said, in that priceless column that daily intrigued me, and thousands of
others, that he had gone out one day to play golf with me and to try to
find out the secret of my golf swing. He declared that it was rhythm, and
added: “The morning stars have nothing on Mr. Chick.”
I have received much of praise and of blame in my life, and I have
tried to bear both philosophically, feeling often that one was just as
far wrong as the other, but never before have the morning stars and I
occupied a place, to my advantage, in the same sentence. It may have been
hard on them, but as for me, I was thrilled to the depths of my being.
It made me wonder, too, if B. L. T. (what a world of affection dwells
in those initials, whether spoken or written!) was not right in this:
That any art, however humble, and often it may be the humblest, must
be rhythmic, a part, infinitesimal though it may be, in the great song
that the morning stars sing; and whether it be the sweep of the artist’s
brush, the measured beat of the poet’s song, the movement of a game, or
dance, it answers to the universal swing.
B. L. T. had a mind that continually asked why. Therefore when he
discovered at first hand the overwhelming difficulties of the putt, and
the overwhelming ignorance of all golfers, amateur or professional,
concerning it, he put his mind to the task and evolved a new theory, or
rather he decided that the billiard-player, not the golfer, was using the
right method to get the ball into a sunken receptacle. “Keep your eye on
the ball,” is a sacred, ancient golf law. Even the small boy, picking up
his game when and where he can, learns it, and no one is more dogmatic
than he in its promulgation. B. L. T. attacked us right here. He said,
“Keep your eye on the hole and not on the ball.” Various matches were
played to try out this theory, chiefly among newspaper men, I fancy, and
I think that Mr. Taylor lost most of them, which may or may not have been
conclusive, for it would have taken a longer time than had been given
to weld a new theory solidly into one’s game. Ordinarily I should say,
however, that Mr. Taylor should have beaten the other men.
I could not recommend looking at the hole, but I can say that the best
putting I ever did was achieved by keeping my eye, not on the ball, but
on a spot two or three inches in advance of it. But whether right or
wrong, B. L. T.’s golf theories were always inspiring and they made a
game with him a stimulating occasion that we were never willing to miss.
Our days with him upon the links were all too short. Without warning
the news of his illness crept about. “Threatened with pneumonia,”
some one said, and before we realized the threat the end had come. Few
men could have been so missed. Thousands had found his column a sort
of daily bread, and mind and heart were hungry when he laid aside his
pen. His golfing friends missed him with an aching sense of loss; they
felt that something irreplaceable had gone from their lives. Now it is
a pleasure to them to learn that Mrs. Taylor has prepared a carefully
edited collection of all B. L. T.’s sayings and writings about golf.
It is just such a record as we have wished vainly to have. In his own
inimitable style a student of the game has told us about it, and in this
little book, the fine fugitive things, the glancing wit, the keen flashes
of human nature that illuminated all that he said or wrote, have been
preserved. And we are very grateful.
CHARLES EVANS, JR.
A LINE-O’-GOWF OR TWO
_Motto: Hew to the Line, let the divots fall where they may._
STARTING KEATS TWO UP.
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
The turf upon the fairgreen still is soft,
And offers many perfect brassie lies.
* * * * *
When Rome started to burn Nero turned to fiddling. Had there been a golf
course nearby he likely would have golfed instead.
* * * * *
Lady giving order for a caddie at a Country club: “Please send me two
small ones or one large one.”
* * * * *
Golf is a great game because it leads a man to self-restraint and poise.
There is the case of the philosophical player at Glenview. After topping
three new balls into the river he threw his midiron into the drink,
pitched his bag of clubs after it, and then chased the caddie to the
clubhouse.
* * * * *
The abolition of the stymie by the Western Golf Association will be
applauded by those golfers—or, rather, golf players—who delight in five
and ten-cent syndicates. When a man has a jitney or a drive invested in a
hole it is “unfair” to have his investment jeopardized by a stymie. Then
again, the holes are too small. The W. G. A. might consider enlarging the
cup to the diameter of a peck measure.
ON ADDRESSING THE BALL.
Some players accost the ball opprobriously, employing the adjective
“pock-marked.” Others regard it dubiously, hopelessly, prayerfully,
tremulously, disgustedly, resignedly. Still others eliminate the
troublous sphere from their consciousness (it can be done), and swing
through the spot where the _Ding an sich_ would be if the consciousness
had not refused to entertain the notion of its existence.
When Bishop Berkeley said there was no matter—
And sliced it—’twas no matter what he said.
The best way to address the ball is neither fiercely nor dreamily, but
quizzically; as one should say, “Well, well, little pest! And so you are
going on a long journey. Take keer of yourself!” Bang!
THE BALLYROT STYLE.
“Pairsonally,” said Mr. Sandy McTosh, professional at Ballyrot—the word
“personally” being a waggle with which every pro preludes a shot at the
King’s English—“pairsonally, I punch the ba’, nae sweep it. I dinna use a
besom in gowf, though ’tis useful in curling.” Pressed for an analysis of
his perfect stroke, “Oh, ay,” said Mr. McTosh, and obligingly took up a
driver. “I tak’ the club in ma hands, and raise it so; and then”—his face
fairly radiated intelligence—“I gie the ba’ a guid skelpin’. Ay.” Nothing
could be more transparent; and by adopting the Ballyrot style we expect
to add at least a few more strokes to our score.
* * * * *
We were discussing the golf stream, and Leopat was reminded of a
fisherman acquaintance, Bill Rice, who having recently begun golf,
fancied that everybody was as interested as he. Seeing Dick Lang, another
fisherman, go by, he called out: “I got six in bogey to-day.” “You’re a
liar,” replied Dick. “There ain’t no such stream in the hull state.”
* * * * *
A medical adviser suggests chair-swinging for men who cannot golf. It
has the disadvantage that it cannot be practised in the open, without
attracting the attention of the idle curious. On the other hand, it
is not an expensive sport—a kitchen chair will last for years—and it
is almost as interesting as indoor golf. Chair-swinging might also be
recommended to those whose scores run over 100.
* * * * *
“The Essence of the Matter,” holds up as an exposition of the soundest
technique we have encountered. Technique resides chiefly in the fingers,
in golf as in piano playing. Its first use, and its last, is to enable
the player to produce any desired effect with a minimum of effort. One
man, without exertion, will drive a ball fifty yards farther than another
man who delivers what seems to be a terrific blow. Mr. Percy Grainger
will sail through a Tchaikowsky concerto at the conventional tempo, and
yet, so impeccably smooth is his performance, he seems to be playing it
much faster than you have ever heard it played before. Speed is necessary
in golf; in piano playing an impression of speed suffices.
YOU NEVER CAN TELL.
It was Saturday afternoon, and a cup match was under way. We were
standing near the first tee, smoking a cigar and watching one
manifestation of the inefficiency of the human race. The weather was dry,
and the course was noticeably in need of rain.
A friend ambled out, garbed for battle, but unaccompanied by implements
or bag-bearer. “Aren’t you playing?” we queried. “I’m waiting for my
opponent,” he replied. “He is taking a lesson from the professional.”
“Congratulations!” we exclaimed. “The match is as good as won. No man was
ever able to hit a ball for a week after taking a lesson.”
Our friend smiled complacently, and we left him to his waiting triumph.
A few hours later, when we encountered him again, the smile was on the
other side of his countenance. “Jones trimmed me,” said he; “never knew
him to play so well.”
Moral: All signs fail in a dry time.
* * * * *
“When a player puts four balls into a pond,” queries a reader, “would you
call it playing golf or pool?”
WITHOUT WHICH NOT.
Of the instructing of dubs there is no end. Yet how little emphasis is
placed on the _sine qua non_, the _multum in parvo_, the _e pluribus
unum_! As Edmond Dantes observed, when he finished three up on his
enemies, all human wisdom is contained in the five words, “Get back of
the ball!”
HEWING TO THE LINE.
There were three dubs stood on a tee,
And they were dubs as dubs could be.
The par for that there hole was three,
But all they made was B. L. T.
W. B. H., JR.
“THE ESSENCE OF THE MATTER.”
Mr. Hammond’s article in the world’s greatest golf magazine for September
was interesting in more ways than two. The photograph of Ernest Jones
shooting a 72 with only one leg to his name, and that a left, was an
arc-light of illumination. One-legged golf is what we have all been
hoping for. It does away with the problem of the shifting of weight from
one pin to another; it eliminates the perplexities of stance; it prevents
heaves and swayback; it precludes pivoting on the left great-toe (unless
the player is a Mordkin); it reduces the game to its simplest terms, and
leaves the pundits not a leg to stand on. Surgeon, get the saw! On to the
operating room!
Mr. Hammond mentions Jones’ conviction that “the fingers are the essence
of the matter.” They must be, since the cracks all have the game at their
fingers’ ends.
THE QUINTESSENCE OF THE MATTER.
The Essence of the Matter having been definitely exposed, suppose we
consider the quintessence, “the perfect flower and efflorescence,” the
Pythagorean ether, and this quintessence we esteem to be a “fine careless
rapture.”
* * * * *
We will say this much for golf. It begets an ambition to succeed—at golf.
* * * * *
While we are praising golf, we will say still another thing for it. Its
first rule contains the sum of human wisdom: “Keep your eye on the ball.”
This being understood, we now inquire—
Why, if putting is as simple a matter as it is cracked up to be—and it
is even simpler—why practise it, as the doctors enjoin? Why not merely
do it? Whatever genius may be in the fine arts, genius in the gentle art
of putting is _not_ infinite capacity for taking pains; it is possible
to putt well and take no pains whatever. If a man must practise, let
him practise the fine careless rapture of the singing thrush, for this
includes confidence, relaxation and everything else that the doctors
say should enter into the least complex of strokes. If anyone should
not comprehend what is meant by this fine careless rapture, we might
reply with Burke—or somebody—that we are not obliged to find him a
comprehension.
Perhaps the next simplest thing to putting is rolling off a log. Prithee
consider what would happen if a man practised _that_ for an hour each
day, paying excessive care to the position of his hands and feet, the
relaxing of his muscles, the eye fixed on the ground, and so forth!
Eventually he would execute the roll-off in a self-conscious, constrained
manner, and, if it were possible, he would miss the ground once out of
five times. If he also practised following through he would stand an
excellent chance of breaking his neck.
MAKING IT EASY FOR DEMOCRACY.
“I want,” writes Mr. Francine in the _Golfer’s Magazine_, in his
prolegomena to a disquisition on form, “I want to take good golf out of
the class of accomplishments that belong to gifted characters only, and
pass it on to the common people.” Quelque want, nace-paw? Why pause here?
Why not take poetry out of the class of accomplishments that belong to
the gifted, and sometimes dissolute, characters only, and pass _that_ on
to the undeniably common people? It is a simple matter to tell a mute
inglorious Milton what constitutes good poetry; all he needs then is pen
and ink. The golf swing is simple, and so is the line—
“_I will arise now, and go to Innisfree._”
Why should only a few gifted characters write stuff like that, and only
a few other gifted ones whale a golf ball a mile without slicing it to
Helngon?
* * * * *
Medal play is certain to retain its popularity in a country the motto of
which is “Safety First.”
* * * * *
Suggestion for the opening of an essay on putting by any celebrated
professional: “At the outset I may commence by beginning to say that
putting cannot be taught.”
AN ALL-AROUND LINKS.
[From an ad of a Southern resort.]
You can sail, bathe, motor, play tennis or play golf on the finest
nine-hole golf course in the South.
* * * * *
Speaking of democratizing the U. S. G. A. and making the game safe
for democracy, an old lady accosted a man who was poking a ball along
the edge of a public course. “What do you call that game?” she asked.
“Dunno,” said the man. “This is the first time I ever played it.”
On the same course, a child was heard to announce: “I’m going to play
golf, too, when I’m six years old.” “Here!” called a waiting and weary
democrat, “take my clubs. You’ll be six years old when my number is
called.”
RULES FOR PORCH GOLF.
Our interest is solicited by W. J. T. in behalf of the Porch Golfer, who
burns up perfectos and works his elbow in a praiseworthy endeavor to
reduce the floating debt of his club. Should he not be subject to rules,
as is the regular golfer? As a starter, the following is suggested:
Rule I. “Keep your eye on the high-ball and swallow through.”
II.—Foursomes shall have precedence over twosomes. It costs no
more to make four high-balls than to make two, and the club
gets twice the revenue.
III.—When a player is carried out of bounds he shall not be
permitted to put another ball into play.
IV.—A golfer soleing his face on the table shall be
disqualified.
V.—A player holing his opponent’s ball shall be penalized one
round.
VI.—Should a player, when addressing his ball, roll off the
porch he may be replaced; penalty, one round.
VII.—In case of rain, snow, or darkness the player shall take
the same.
A GOLFER’S GARDEN OF VERSES.
OFFICE IN SUMMER.
In winter, when the links are white,
I’m at the office until night.
In summer, when the course is green,
I always catch the 12:15.
I have to stay till then to see
The business folks who bother me.
There’s always something to detain,
And more than once I’ve missed my train.
And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
That I must office half the day,
With only eighteen holes of play?
WHOLE DUTY OF GOLFERS.
A golfer, when he plays with you,
Should speak when he is spoken to,
And keep his score-card free from fable;
At least as far as he is able.
RAIN.
The rain is raining all around,
It falls on turf and tree;
But I don’t care how wet I get—
I made that hole in three!
TRAVEL.
Winters I should like to go
Where there is no cold and snow,
Where, below another sky,
Lureful links Elysian lie;—
Where, with nothing else to do,
I should golf the whole day through,
Pausing only now and then
For a bite, then back again.
Southward I would track the sun:
Travel always broadens one.
THE PRO.
The friendly Pro so tanned and tall
I love with all my heart:
He shows me how to hit the ball,
And shares with me his art.
He wanders here, he wanders there,
Instructing dubs like me,
And charges for his counsel rare
A very modest fee.
He drops a ball upon the tee
And knocks it half a mile:
“There, hit it that way, man,” says he,
And never cracks a smile.
PRAYERS.
Every night my prayers I say,
And ask a better score next day;
And every day, for all my care,
My card would make St. Andrew swear.
HAPPY THOUGHT.
The world is so full of a number of links,
I’m sure we should all be as happy as kinks.
HOW TO TOP A MASHIE.
One of the prettiest shots in golf is the topped mashie. The ball flies
low, like swallow on the river’s brim, and, crossing the green, comes
to rest in the clean white sand of a deepish depression, vulgarly
termed a trap. The majority of golfers execute this shot naturally, but
not inevitably; now and then they get under the ball, which of course
prevents a top, the result being an ordinary pitch. To make certain of a
top, it is only necessary to have the left hand, at the moment of impact,
a few inches in advance of where it was when the ball was addressed.
This means that the pivot on which the club swings (the left wrist in a
short shot, the left elbow in a long) is transferred to a point nearer
the flag, and the lower edge of the clubhead, instead of connecting with
the ball at 90 degrees south latitude, meets it anywhere from 35 to 45
degrees south. In the works of the golf masters, old and young, we have
seen no reference to this advancing of the pivotal point in the swing,
from which omission we conjecture that the idea has not yet occurred to
them.
Another pretty mashie shot is that which sends the ball well to the right
of the green, where commonly there is some sort of hazard. The simplest
way to bring this off is to pronate the left forearm. This facilitates
cramping the down-swing and pushing the ball off to starboard.
* * * * *
There is no accounting for tastes, in love or golf. Many expert players
use a mashie with a narrow face, whereas we prefer one with a square chin.
PEMMICANIZED GOLF.
In selecting a driver, choose a club that is neither too long nor too
short. If too long, you must stand away from the ball; if too short, you
must stand in to it.
Choose a shaft that has just the right amount of whip; a whippy shaft is
not desirable, neither is one that is rigid.
The lie is important. Expert opinion is against a too flat lie, and the
best authorities disapprove of the ultra-upright.
Be particular about the weight. A heavy driver is likely to be unwieldy,
while one too light would not be wieldy enough.
The best plan is to have your professional measure you for a club. The
ready-made ones soon bag at the knees.
THE METAPHYSICIANS.
Far—far as Arcturus—be it from us to dissipate the mist of theory that
envelops the so-called royal and undeniably ancient game, or to diminish
by one the methods of its madness. The more the merrier, as Noah remarked
when he led the way to the Ark. The fairway is wide, and we had as soon
knock a ball through it in one style as another; variety spices the
journey, and wards off monotony. It is only when, approaching the green,
we require accuracy in direction, that we dismiss theory and resort to
the primitive expedient of striking the ball with the club-face at right
angles to the line o’ flight—in other words, returning the club-face
to the position it was in when the ball was addressed. The trick is so
simple, when the mind is disburdened of all other consideration, that
we are a little ashamed of the inevitable result; it is so much more
interesting to try to reach the pin by the most complicated method,
involving a nice consideration of stance and grip, division of labor
between the hands, pronation, concentration, pausation, and what not. If
every stroke in golf were reduced to its lowest terms, what would the
pundits do for an audience?
WHY.
Why, when the sun is gold,
The weather fine,
The air (this phrase is old)
Like Gascon wine;—
Why, when the leaves are red,
And yellow, too,
And when (as has been said)
The skies are blue;—
Why, when all things promote
One’s peace and joy—
A joy that is (to quote)
Without alloy;—
Why, when a man’s well off,
Happy and gay,
_Why_ must he go play golf
And spoil his day?
“A DEEP STUDENT OF THE GAME.”
We have found on the links at Manchester, Vt., opportunity for uncommonly
deep study. It took us three (ladder-steps) to get out of one pit. The
caddie retrieved the ball.
* * * * *
“Romberg’s Sign,” says a medical writer, indicates locomotor ataxia;
if, when the eyes are closed, the body sways several inches, we have a
positive Romberg. On the other hand, if the eyes are open when the body
sways, we have the average golfer. In either case, when the condition is
advanced, “the body is likely to topple over.”
Pourquoi, indeed? He goeth forth at noon-time, chattering, laughing,
overflowing with goodnature. He cometh in at eventide, sore, sullen, and
silent, except for an occasional curse. Man that is born of woman is full
of foolishness.
CONCERNING SPIN.
“There is no ball that will run more straightly to the hole than an
ordinary putt,” deposes one pundit, meaning a ball to which no spin has
been imparted. On the o. h., a physicist tells us that the cut ball will
hold the tenor of its way more evenly than the uncut ball. The reason, we
conjecture, is that the deflecting material on a green exhausts itself in
opposing the spin on the ball, and so has little chance to interfere with
its forward motion. One may ascertain in practice what line a ball will
take, curved or straight, with any given spin, and he may then hew to
that line in full confidence that the spin will keep it in its course,
whether the shot be a pitch or a putt.
“THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GOLF.”
We were smoking a pipe in the laboratory of Dr. Sike, the eminent student
of the soul and less eminent golfer. All about us were queer looking
instruments for measuring the mental processes of the so-called human
race. We indicated one contraption and asked its use.
“That,” said Dr. Sike, “is the well-known Poggendorff illusion.”
“Never drove into Pogg. What’s his club?”
“The Styx Country Club, if any.”
“And what was his illusion, that the flag moves after you shoot?”
[Illustration]
“You are nearer the mark than you think,” said the Doctor; and taking
up a pencil he drew two perpendicular lines (as represented in Fig. 1).
Then he added the oblique line, and pushed the paper across the table.
“Continue that line across the ditch,” he instructed.
We did so, and the result is indicated by the dark line in Fig. 2; the
real line is the dotted one. The illusion is corrected by looking down
the oblique line.
Dr. Sike lit an introspective cigarette.
“Suppose that a fairway,” said he. “If a ditch or road cuts the line of
play at that slant, the player should aim a bit to the left.”
“Unless the ditch runs northeast-southwest. Then he should hold to the
right.”
“Exactly so.”
We poked the ashes in our pipe with a deep contemplative forefinger, and
remarked that the illusion would not seriously affect the play of the
average golfer, but that it might mean the loss of a match to an accurate
approacher like Mr. Chick Evans or ourself.
“But hold on,” we second-thoughted. “The player is not, as in this test,
looking down the ditch, but down the line that crosses it. Wouldn’t that
correct the illusion?”
“A slight illusion would remain, if the player established his line of
play by looking along the ground, and if the ditch were wide enough to
disclose two lines.”
“Otherwise the Poggendorff person contributed nothing of permanent value
to the psychology of golf.”
“Exactly so,” said Dr. Sike, and plunged into a revery. Presently he
emerged. “Still,” said he, “the majority of shots would fly to the right.”
“Because of the cosmic tendency to slice?”
“Exactly so. Will you pass the matches?”
“How is it,” we asked Dr. Sike, as we passed the matches, “that after one
has taken the line of his putt and transferred his attention to the ball,
he still can view the line with ‘that inward eye which is the bliss of
solitude’?”
“Eye-pull,” said the Doctor, lighting a laconic cigarette.
“What an alibi!” we whatted. “A gentleman who blows a five-foot putt has
only to remark to his partner: ‘Sorry. My eye-pull isn’t on straight
to-day.’”
“Exactly so,” said Dr. Sike. “To some persons, like myself, the line of
the putt is clearly defined, as a darker green in the grass; to others
the line is not present, but these locate the target just as accurately.
All this is quite apart from the visual imagery referred to in the
Wordsworth poem. The eye——”
What followed was highly technical, and we regret that our memory failed
to imprison the Doctor’s exact words; but we gathered that the eye is a
mawxstrawnry organ, which can do everything except talk. The technical
explanation would, of course, be a-b-c to a reader like Max Behr, who
looked in “A Critique of Pure Reason” for a definition of amateurism, and
is now working on the Hegelian Hypothesis of Professionalism; but we fear
the average reader would be puzzled by such phrases as “accommodation
pull,” “convergence pull,” and “binocular disparity.” Therefore, to
put it as simply as possible, we will say that when a man takes the
line of his putt the muscles of his eyes set themselves, his head and
neck muscles co-ordinate, and there is probably co-ordination in the
semi-circular canals. The eye-pull once established, it remains after
attention is transferred to the ball—how long we cannot say, but long
enough to serve the purpose of all except those extremely deliberate
persons who fall asleep over their putts. We should advise, therefore,
putting as rapidly as is consistent with an unhurried stroke.
“Strange to say,” mused Dr. Sike, “although innumerable experiments in
eye-pull have been made and recorded in laboratories, there has been no
attempt to relate them to golf, which is the proper study of mankind.”
“But science is coming round,” said we. “The last two or three years have
brought a great deal of speculation and research.”
“Yes, yes,” yessed the Doctor. “Even the watchers of the skies are
beginning to admit that Canopus, Aldebaran, and the Pleiad Seven are only
exaggerations of a golf ball, which is the symbol of the universe.”
* * * * *
“Now, if we imagine amateurism as a great sea, and in the midst of it a
little island....”—Mr. Behr, at the annual meeting.
Why, then, on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, at any country club, we can
define an island. An island is a professional entirely surrounded by dubs.
* * * * *
“Did you ever take up the game?” we asked Arthur Whiting, the musician.
“I took it up and put it down,” said he, and mentioned two shots that
were memorable. The first was made with a driver, the pet club of the
lady who was showing him how to wield it. The head broke off and wound
itself around the lady’s neck. “And your second shot?” we inquired. “Ah,”
said he, “the second shot—” An interruption at this point put the game
out of his mind. It was undoubtedly a remarkable second shot.
SUNDAY SCHOOL FOR GOLFERS.
Sir: One member remarked that his wife had agreed to play with him in the
afternoon if he would go to church in the morning. I’ve agreed to play
with my wife in the afternoon if she doesn’t make me go to church in the
morning. Which bargain is best?
J. M. P.
* * * * *
Spring to the golfer is something more than Spring.
* * * * *
Spring or no spring, we shall open the season to-day.
The driver, son!
The Compleat Golfer;
OR, THE IDLE MAN’S RECREATION.
[_A discourse betwixt a Golfer and one that would have knowledge of the
game._]
INTRODUCTORY.
GOLFATOR. A fine morning, sir, as fresh as when this world was young. I
mark you have a sack of golfing tools upon your back. Are you for the
links thus early?
SCHOLAR. Ay, sir, for I am resolved to learn this game, of which you
spake so bravely yester-night, and rose betimes to buy these tools; and I
do entreat you to instruct me in the art of striking the ball, that I may
be well launched upon my adventure.
GOLF. Well, sir, as for that I am at your pleasure, yet I am loath to
launch any man upon so great a sea of troubles, but would persuade him
rather to forego the hazard.
SCHOL. Nay, I am not to be persuaded, but am impatient to be at the
business, and to strike a ball that it may fly to a great distance.
GOLF. Marry, sir, consider well, there is yet time to withdraw. Have you
a wife?
SCHOL. Not I, nor do I contemplate such folly.
GOLF. I am rejoiced, for what is your loss is some maid’s gain. A woman
that has a golfer for husband might as profitably be wed to a sailor,
or to an adventurer in polar lands. Haply you have a business that will
suffer.
SCHOL. Not I, again. My worldly goods are all in stocks and bonds, and
I have nought on my mind of greater import than the learning of this
ingenious game. Let us then to the links, and be at it.
GOLF. In good season, Scholar. I pledge you I am in no haste to watch
your antics, and since you are but of a middle age there is great store
of time before you. Come, let us sit beneath this tree, in the branches
of which a robin is chirping, and we will speak further of the adventure
to which you are committed.
First, you are to know that the chief end of golf, as I view it, is not
to strike the ball with greater skill than your adversary, but to give
strength to your character, and, if it be needed, to reform it. Patience
and a good temper, courtesy and a pleasant speech, these be marks of the
true golfer, yet are they virtues that one may put on as a mask, whereas
I would have you wear them honestly.
SCHOL. Master, I am all ears, like an ass, and I entreat you to fill them.
GOLF. Clap then a hand to one of them, that my counsel may not escape
you. You are to reflect, Scholar, that in tennis, or in a passage at
foils, or in any other game of great movement, there is not the space of
a moment in which to desire ill luck to your adversary, but this golf is
a game of so great deliberation, that whilst you address the ball I may
pray fervently that you top or founder it, or that you miss it entirely,
and this I hold to be no true spirit.
SCHOL. Would you beseech heaven that your adversary strike the ball with
greater cunning than yourself?
GOLF. Marry, sir, I would hope that he struck it fairly, and that I
struck it fairly in my turn, and that good fortune might attend us both.
SCHOL. Sir, I will endeavor to give such current to my thought. Shall we
not seek the links now? I am impatient to have knowledge of this great
game.
GOLF. The which you will presently be as impatient to be rid of, and
seeking to dispose of this sack of tools for a tenth of their cost.
Marry, sir, when I reflect on the tribulations in store for you I could
weep, as a mother regards her female babe, and laments the ills that it
is heir to. Here is as fine a morning as ever broke upon this world, with
a sweet wind from the south, and birds calling from the greening boughs;
yet must you mar your day and mine. But since there is no help for it,
let us to your undoing.
THE FIRST HOLE.
SCHOL. Well, Master, here am I upon the tee. How shall I strike the ball?
GOLF. As you will. For this first stroke I would have you assail the ball
in any fashion that may please you; for it will be a great time hence
when you please yourself again, before which day you shall be slave to
this dogma and that, and a great grief to your friends.
SCHOL. Shall I stand in this fashion?
GOLF. Nay, bestride not the ball like the colossus which was at Rhodes,
for in such stiff and ungraceful posture you cannot put hip and shoulder
into the blow. There be many strange golfers that spread themselves
in this fashion, and play with elbows, to the great detriment of the
landscape, so that when I walk over the links I could wish for blinders,
that horses wear. Let your feet be more neighborly, so, and have at it.
SCHOL. The ball is gone, yet I saw it not.
GOLF. Well hit, Scholar; as true a ball as ever left wood, and as far as
the most.
SCHOL. Why, sir, it was nought. I did but swing the club, and felt not
the blow.
GOLF. A brave shot, Scholar, which you shall have sweet remembrance of
these many months to come. Marry, sir, if you take my advice you will
rest content, and sell these tools of wood and iron, to your great peace
of mind and the continued esteem of such friends as now you have.
SCHOL. Sir, I take not your meaning. Let us to the ball, that I may
strike it again, for my impatience is not to be described.
GOLF. Come, then; for compared with the task of staying you, it were
a profitable employ to discourse to the deaf, or to show pictures to
the blind. A sparrow, new come from the southland, sings for a mate in
yonder maple tree, yet I warrant you hear him not. There are patches
of springing green in the brown carpet of the links, yet this pleasing
tapestry serves but as background for your ball. Here it lies, well up.
Take now this other club of wood, the which is shod with brass, and
whilst you fall upon the ball I do desire to look another way.
SCHOL. Saw you the ball, Master?
GOLF. Nay, I did avert mine eyes the while you smote it; but this scarred
turf will bear witness to the stroke. You are to observe that the ball
was pulled and foundered, and will be close at hand, methinks in yonder
copse. Let us to it.
SCHOL. What must I do, now, with the ball?
GOLF. Cast it upon the turf and make further trial. And do you clap an
eye on the ball the while you strike it, or fix your gaze on yonder flag;
either, as it please you, so long as your head be at rest. Sir, I shall
ever marvel why a golfer must cock his head up at every stroke, like a
robin questing worms, for since the greater number of players top the
ball, or fling it in any direction save the right one, you would conceive
they would avoid to look up as long as might be, that they be spared
sight of their woeful want of skill. Marry, sir, if I played as the
majority I would close mine eyes with each stroke, and ask to be led as a
blind man to the ball.
SCHOL. Sir, I will endeavor to abide by your counsel, and I pray you
attend me. Now, sir!... Maledictions! Another ill stroke, yet I looked
upon the ball.
GOLF. Nay, my good Scholar, your head did come up with the jerk of the
hanged ere the ball was struck. So little of concentration hath the
average man that he cannot bring his mind to a focus for a few seconds;
wherefore he avoids to read a serious book, or to attend a serious play,
or to give ear to music which is other than a tinkle. I shall give you
counsel in plenty, and to some small part of it you will give attention,
and thus you may curtail your apprenticeship a year; but the larger
part of what I shall tell you will be wasted on these sparrows that
flit about us, and for a great while you will go from bad to worse, as
the saying is, pursuing this notion and another, and reading many books
upon the matter, the which are writ by players that preach the one thing
and practise the other, until there remain no fresh folly that you may
commit. Truly, I would not pass through the travail which is before you
for a great sum of money.
SCHOL. Sir, it is but a dismal prospect that you offer, yet am I resolved
at all pains to learn this noble game; therefore I beg you to unlock the
storehouse of your knowledge and set me in the right path.
GOLF. That I will do, and gladly. But do you step aside a moment, for
hither come two golfers that would play this hole.... Good morning, sirs.
A fine, sweet day, is it not?
FIRST PLAYER. Sir, I should have made that last hole in five, but that a
worm-cast marred my putt.
GOLF. A grievous accident, and all too common. Will you play by us?
FIRST PLAYER. With pleasure, sir. Yesterday I did make this hole in four,
and Saturday a week I was so fortunate as to get a three.
GOLF. Say, rather, so skillful; and, sir, I am enraptured to learn of
your cunning and would desire a much longer tale of it. Good morning,
gentlemen.... And there, my honest Scholar, you may perceive yourself
in the sorrowful days that are to come, a burden and a grief to your
friends, to whom you must relate the ill luck that robbed you of a four
at this hole, and the conspiracies of nature that prevented a five at
that; for it is ever want of luck and not want of skill that addeth
strokes to a score, and many a summer’s day that promised fair has been
marred by a cuppy lie or ruined utterly by a worm-cast. Marry, sir, I
had as lief listen to a play actor recounting his greatness as to a man
besotted by this game of golf.
SCHOL. Shall I make further trial with this club?
GOLF. Nay, sir, you have done enough mischief with that tool. Put it in
the sack and let us to a putting-green; for whoso would walk must begin
by creeping, and much may be made of a golfer that is caught young.
THE SECOND HOLE.
SCHOLAR. Well, Good Master, I have belabored the ball to no purpose and I
entreat you, sir, to counsel me in the way of striking it, else I shall
come to no understanding of the art.
GOLFATOR. You are to know, Scholar, that concerning the Drive there is
nought that is Rosicrucian, nor is it a thing to be approached with
incantations, though there be many that give it an air of mystery and
make of it a business of much weight and complication. Nor do we find
among the wiseacres of the game more agreement than was brought to the
building of the great tower in Babel, as is shown in the vast number of
theories, the one contradicting the others, and all of them as owlish as
you please.
SCHOL. I am rejoiced, Master, to learn this thing, for I had esteemed the
proper striking of a ball to be a most difficult art.
GOLF. The difficulty resides in yourself, sir, and not in the mechanics
of the stroke, which are most plain and simple; therefore I have deemed
it wise to prepare you against the thousand follies that you shall
commit, so that when you have made the round of them you shall not sink
into discouragement, but take up the matter afresh with a mind purged of
vanities and errors.
SCHOL. But, Master, might not one begin at this point, without entering
upon the follies of which you speak?
GOLF. Yes, if one and twenty had the wisdom of two score years, but
nature hath decreed it otherwise, and there be many things of great
simplicity that are to be come by only through experience. Let us take
the matter of looking at the ball. I was reading of late a writing that
contained much sound sense, and it was declared that this golf is the
only game played with a ball in which the player looks upon the ball
instead of the direction he would have it fly. Now, sir, this is but half
a truth. It is true that the skillful player sees the ball, as a tennis
player sees it, yet his mind is upon the line of its flight, which the
club’s head must travel; whereas the unskillful player has his mind upon
the ball, which charms him as a serpent is fabled to charm a bird; so
that to tell a novice to keep his eye upon the ball is but mischievous
counsel, and I pray you avoid this thing.
SCHOL. Yet, Master, you did advise me, but a little time ago, to clap an
eye upon it.
GOLF. Marry, sir, that was to divert you from cocking up your head like a
little bird, before ever the ball was struck. Take now your driver, and
we will consider the matter of swinging it.
THE THIRD HOLE.
SCHOLAR. Well, Master, I have pursued this ball unto the second green,
smiting it some dozen times, and not once fairly; yet you would have me
believe that it is but a simple matter.
GOLFATOR. Ay, sir, as simple as the boiling of an egg; yet is there no
trick so simple but care must be brought to the turning of it; and you
are to know that the stroke in golf and the boiling of an egg are the
same in this, that to time it rightly is nine-tenths of the matter.
SCHOL. It may be, sir, that I am ill fitted to this game, and shall never
come to skill in it, for it seemeth of great difficulty, despite your
fair words.
GOLF. Well, Scholar, to speak truth, your antics have been most
fantastical, and what skill you may come to no man can say; therefore if
you are for withdrawing I do again heartily counsel you so to do, and to
give your leisure to a more profitable employ, as the study of mares’
nests or the collecting of phœnix eggs; but if you are resolved to have
knowledge of this ingenious game I am still at your service.
SCHOL. Then, sir, I entreat you to teach me this stroke, that you say is
so simple.
GOLF. Why, sir, you have but to do certain things and to avoid doing
certain other things and the trick is learned. The things you are to do
are to stand easily, neither stiffly nor limply; to sole the club at
a right angle to the line of the ball’s flight; to take the club back
smoothly, seeing to it that the wrists start the motion and the arms
follow, and that the wrists turn inward during or at the height of the
swing; and to strike downward with decision, timing the blow to the
thousandth of a second, and letting the arms draw the body around in a
natural fashion. And the things you are not to do are these: you must
not let the club’s head flop at the height of the swing, nor stiffen the
muscles at any time, nor move your head, nor heave your shoulders like a
ship in a sea, nor hop upon your left great toe as a ballet dancer, nor
fall upon the ball, nor fall backward, nor pound the ball as if it were
a peg for a tent, nor cock up your head as a tomtit, nor fall into other
errors of which I shall speak later. These divers matters kept in mind,
the ball will fly straight, and to a great distance.
SCHOL. On my word, Master, it were a rare feat to hold so many things in
mind at the one moment.
GOLF. My good Scholar, it is not to be compassed, yet do we see scores
of hapless creatures endeavoring the impossible; for it is the way of
many teachers of this game to bedevil the novice with a multitude of
instructions, so that the poor wretch is at his wits’ end. Therefore I
commend to you the learning of one thing before another, and the thing
you are first to come by is a free wrist; for in tennis, or in handball,
or in bowls, as in this golf, it is a supple wrist that puts pace on the
ball and gives it direction. And you are to observe this principle again
in the fine art of casting a fly for trouts, and in the play of foils,
so that a man that has reached to three score and ten, though the vigor
of his prime is past, is yet able to take trouts or to wield a rapier
with the youngest.
SCHOL. Sir, I am heartened by the thought that there is a likeness
between the casting of a fly and the swinging of a club, for I have some
skill with the rod.
GOLF. Then, Scholar, you must know that the rod itself does the work,
guided by the wrist, so that a man may throw a fly for hours without
fatigue; therefore you have but to conceive yourself as casting with the
left wrist, and you have the secret of every stroke in golf; for it is
all of the putt and the beginning of the drive.
SCHOL. I take your meaning, Master. You would have me to swing in this
fashion.
GOLF. Marry, sir, that had been a sorry performance on a trout river, for
you were forward with your cast before ever your line had straightened
behind you. Whip back your clubhead, as a brown hackle on a leader, pause
until all is straight behind and free of kinks, then forward with the
wrists, and the arms will follow.
SCHOL. Sir, your words are as a torch in a dark night.
GOLF. Practice then this back cast diligently, let the ball fly where it
will. And I would I were at this moment in a little river, knee-deep in
sweet running waters, and casting here and there for trouts; for that,
Scholar, is a game worth two of this.
THE FOURTH HOLE.
GOLFATOR. Come, my good Scholar, let us tarry a space beneath this maple,
that we waste not the morning utterly, but give ear to the meadowlarks,
and take in the sweet scents which the sun distilleth from the new leaves
and grasses. And if your mind still be on this golf you may view, to your
profit, the players that pass by us; for it is as needful to know what to
avoid doing as what to do.
SCHOLAR. Here comes one that has played these many years, yet methinks he
performs but indifferent well.
GOLF. Ay, sir, and should he attain to the years of Noah he would come to
no greater skill. This is one that, scorning instruction, hath worked out
his own game—a poor thing but his own. There be many such, and when they
play one against the other, commonly for stakes, ’tis a great battle of
blunders. Mark you that drive! The green is but an iron shot away, but
the ball has fallen a score of yards on this side.
SCHOL. Yet he smote it mightily.
GOLF. A lusty stroke, that might have served in the driving of a fence
post, but one that is as ill suited to the propelling of a golf ball as
the stroke of a pile driver, the which it counterfeits. The marvel is,
not that the ball fell short, but that it flew so far.
SCHOL. Ay, marry, he swung like a knight of Camelot upon an adversary’s
shield.
GOLF. Not so, else there had been room for praise. Think you the heroes
of Camelot buffetted the enemy so ineptly, fighting their own selves
at the top of the swing, as most golfers do? Nay, I promise you. Sir
Launcelot timed his mighty blows; nor did he strike stiffly, in a piece,
but drove sharply with his wrists, on which his sword turned as upon
a hinge, his great arms following, and there was naught to resist his
cleavage. Wherefore the fame of his follow-through spread through all the
land. And this matter of the follow-through you are now to consider.
GOLF. You are to know, my honest Scholar, that the follow-through,
concerning which an infinite deal of nothing is said and written, is like
to the snark, and he that setteth out to compass its taking will have his
trouble for his pains. For the follow-through is the result of a proper
stroke, and not the cause of it; it hath not a separate existence, as a
something to be sought after; therefore I would have you take no thought
of it.
SCHOL. Yet, Master, have I seen players practising this thing with
exceeding industry.
GOLF. Marry, sir, Simple Simon was as well employed. But ’tis the way of
man to seek after the ends and take no thought of the means, and to look
upon success as a something bestowed by heaven upon one mortal and denied
to another. This is but vanity and vexation of spirit, as the Preacher
saith. My good Scholar, this golf teacheth a man more things than one,
and if you have any philosophy in you you shall nurture it and bring it
to a full flower; but if you are wanting in philosophy you shall have
as much profit in the beating of a carpet, for the which a multitude of
golfers are by nature fitted.
SCHOL. Sir, your words are as apples of gold in pictures of silver.
GOLF. Fairly spoken, Scholar; yet I mark you are impatient to be forward
with your game, such as it is. Take, then, your iron and I will counsel
you in the using of it.
SCHOL. I have heard, Master, that ’tis easier to play with the iron than
with a club of wood.
GOLF. As to that there be two opinions, as usual, and you will be wise to
follow either, for I am satisfied that they are of equal value.
THE FIFTH HOLE.
GOLFATOR. You are to observe, my honest Scholar, that although your iron
is a shorter tool than your wooden, you may do quite as much mischief
with it; nay, sir, more, I warrant, for the head of the club being of
metal, you may hack a ball to pieces with it in a few wild strokes.
Wherefore it is that the experienced golfer plays his iron shots with
less frenzy than he brings to his drive, striving to hit the ball cleanly
and with exactness.
SCHOLAR. Sir, I shall endeavor the cultivating of this virtue, in
accordance with your wise counsel.
GOLF. You are to observe again, that in the free stroke of the drive
’tis all one whether the ball fly ten yards to this side or that of the
true line of its flight, but as you draw near to the flag this true line
becomes a matter of first importance. Marry, sir, if your desire for
knowledge of this game were deeper than yonder ditch, I would have you
to begin at the edge of the putting green, and to withdraw by degrees to
greater distances, until you reached a point where the wrists no longer
sufficed to propel the ball, by the which time they might be trained to
some purpose.
SCHOL. Nay, Master, my desire for knowledge of this ingenious game is as
deep as any well.
GOLF. Then, sir, I have read you wrongly, for I mark that you clutch
your iron with impatience, and gaze into the distance, and then upon this
ball at your feet, and you do have the seeming of one that would smite
the ball most lustily. Smite it, then, good Scholar, and have done with
it. Ah! A most marvelous slice! The ball hath flown far into the wood, as
a startled quail. Come, let us follow it, and though we find it not we
may happen upon matter of more importance.
SCHOL. The ball cannot be far in the wood, Master. I marked it by this
dead tree, yet we find it not.
GOLF. ’Tis most cunningly hidden. Do you sit down, honest Scholar, and
rest your eyes, for much searching for a lost ball doth weary them. See,
here is a brave array of trilliums, nodding welcome to us, as jocund a
company as the poet’s daffodils. Here, too, is columbine, that begins to
show itself, and Bethlehem’s Star, and many other wilding flowers.
SCHOL. Sir, I thought to walk directly to the ball, since I saw it drop
among these trees.
GOLF. Marry, sir, believe your ears sooner than your eyes, and your
nose before either; but not one of the senses is to be trusted. Yet if
mine eyes serve me now, here is yellow lady’s-slipper, that I have not
seen before in this countryside, and it were well worth losing a ball
to come upon this solitary plant, for I see no others of the family. I
have found them in great number farther north, where, too, I chanced one
rememberable day on the orchid Arethusa, that grows in bogs, and is the
loveliest of plants. Mark you the gold in the sunlight, shewing that the
summer draws on; and hearken to that thrasher overhead, who would have
you to believe that singing is the chief business of life.
SCHOL. Think you that the ball struck upon a tree and was flung deeper
into the wood?
GOLF. ’Tis conceivable, for I never saw ball that had less notion of
whither it was flying. Let us press farther into the thicket, for ’tis a
rare place to loiter in. This, you are to observe, is the compensation
for a foolish stroke at golf, for he that plays straight before him sees
nought but a strip of turf, and ever his thought is of his next stroke,
whether he shall take wood or iron to it.
SCHOL. Good fortune, Master! Here is the ball, among these trilliums, the
which it is very like in color.
GOLF. And fairer to your eye than any flower. I observe, sir, that
you have the makings of a golfer, and are not to be diverted by the
babbling of brookwater, and the twittering of birds, and other natural
distractions. Let us return, then, to the fairgreen, where you may make
further trial of your iron.
THE SIXTH HOLE.
SCHOLAR. Sir, hither comes a pair of golfers that would play this hole.
Shall we stand aside until they pass?
GOLFER. Aye, sir, and I particularly charge you to remain stock still
the while, and to breathe as lightly as a summer night; for one of these
golfers, he that strutteth before the other, would have Nature to make a
pause whilst he swing his club, and is fretful as a porcupine if a caddy
do but shift an arm or leg, or a sparrow twitter in a nearby tree.
SCHOL. Sir, I shall take the pattern of the rabbit, that freezeth, as the
saying is, when the predacious owl booms through the darkened wood.
[_The players approach._]
GOLF. Good morrow, gentlemen. How fares the match?
FIRST PLAYER. Indifferent well, sir; for what with the gabbling of these
caddies and their clicking of clubs together, and the great number of
noises round about, one might suppose himself to be on the links of
Bedlam.
[_The players drive and pass on._]
GOLF. There goeth one that is a great affliction to his fellows, and is
to be found this world over. Now, ’tis but common courtesy to refrain
from talking whilst a player drives his ball, but he that is disturbed
by such a trifle lacketh control of his mind, and were he a surgeon I
should not summon him to so small an operation as the lancing of a boil.
Why, sir, if there be any virtue in this game it is that it teacheth one
control, and he that cannot dispatch a ball save in a church-yard hush
hath somewhat the matter with his wits, or hath no salt of humor in him.
To play a round with such a golfer is a great waste of time, save it be
done in the way of penance, for which purpose a hair shirt were not more
serviceable.
SCHOL. Will you counsel me, Master, in the use of this iron?
GOLF. Willingly, honest Scholar, and for beginning do not hold the club
loosely in the palms of your hands, but grip it firmly with your ten
fingers. This is the first principle of iron play.
THE SEVENTH HOLE.
GOLFATOR. Well met, honest Scholar. The birds have mated and reared their
young since last I saw you, and the summer is over and gone. How fares it
with you? Indifferent well, methinks, for I observed you to strike a ball
a few minutes since.
SCHOLAR. Truly, Master, this golf is a thing that is not come by quickly,
and I well nigh despair of mastering it.
GOLF. Then let me advise you to abandon it in season, that you may be
spared much vexation, and your friends many afflicting tales.
SCHOL. Nay, sir, I am resolved at any cost to lay hold of the secret, to
which end I have vowed the rest of my days.
GOLF. Truly, a worthy ambition. Now there be men that have vowed their
days to so futile a thing as the mapping of the farthest stars, which is
of small purpose compared with the mastering of this incomparable game.
Good luck to you then, honest Scholar.
SCHOL. Sir, what luck I have now and again is the fruit of such counsel
as you have given me, and I entreat you further to instruct me in the
art of striking the ball, that it may fly straight, and not match the
crescent of the young moon.
GOLF. Marry, sir, you will never bring off a skillful shot, save by
accident, until you put rhythm into your stroke; nor is aught else of
value achieved in this life save by rhythm. A sage once said that if
he but had his way he would write the word “Whim” above every man’s
door-way. Now, sir, in the place of this “Whim” I would write the word
“Rhythm.”
SCHOL. I take not your meaning, Master. What, in so many words, is this
priceless Rhythm?
GOLF. Marry, sir, he that could answer you in so many words would have
the tongue of all philosophy.
THE EIGHTH HOLE.
GOLFATOR. Well met, Scholar. Much water has passed the miller’s wheel
since last we were in company; and, marry, much has fallen on these fair
acres, which too oft at this season are sere and brown; and thus we have
compensation for the cool winds and drenching rains of this so backward
summer. Saw you ever so green a sward, and grasses so void of dust? Yet
mark you the chatter of yon robin, that never gets his fill of rain, so
that methinks some far ancestor of his was a water fowl, or perchance
a flower that grew in water, since to my fancy birds are but flowers
that have taken wings. But peradventure you had rather I question you
concerning your towardness in the game of golf, as I mark you have your
tools by you, and I may hazard that you have prospered exceedingly.
SCHOLAR. Why, good Master, to speak truth, this ingenious game has so
bedeviled me that I mark not if the grass be brown or green, or if robin
or blackbird chatter by my path. As for my towardness, I have practised
with great diligence, and have been directed by this teacher and that,
and all excellently well, yet do I find myself at a stand, and unable to
advance beyond a moderate skill.
GOLF. I pray you, Scholar, make trial with your club of wood, that I may
observe in what fashion you handle it.
SCHOL. There, Master! Is that not well swung? And that? And that?
GOLF. Marry, an excellent swing, save that it lacks freedom and rhythm,
and has no power in it, otherwise a most worthy swing, that might be of
great service in knocking apples from a tree. One may observe with half
an eye, Scholar, that you have been well instructed in every detail save
one, the which concerns the striking of the ball.
THE NINTH HOLE.
GOLFATOR. You are now to know, worthy Scholar, that whatsoever skill you
may come to in the wielding of your tools, naught of great consequence
is to be achieved at this ingenious game save by the cultivating of the
highest powers of concentration, as has well been said by Mr. Travers,
and other notable performers; and to the acquiring of this faculty you
are to sacrifice all else in life; for what is of greater moment in this
world than the proper striking of a ball?
SCHOLAR. Alas, good Master, it is this great faculty that I so sadly
lack; for from the moment that I raise my wood or iron until I bring it
back, my mind is, as you might observe, a blank.
GOLF. A perfect blank, truly; ’tis as if no mind existed. But thus it is
with the majority, therefore be not cast down.
SCHOL. This concentration, sir, is it aught save the fixing of the eye
upon the ball?
GOLF. Ay, marry, much more. There is an attention of the eye, and an
attention of the mind, and there is also an attention of the soul,
and all three of these you shall require. There are lower forms of
concentration, and much has been achieved through them. Thus one man sets
his mind to the building of a system of philosophy; another man puts
himself to the discovering of a satellite of our sun beyond the farthest
that is known, or to the devising of an hypothesis that may explain the
beginnings of matter, and the movements of the stars; a third man gives
his life to the writing of plays, as Shakespeare or Euripides. All these
are excellent pastimes, that require concentration; but they are of
little import compared with the striking of a ball so it fly straight and
to a great distance.
SCHOL. And how, Master, may this concentration be found?
GOLF. Marry, sir, by the endless iteration of the magical words, Keep
the eye upon the ball! Give your days to this, good Scholar. ’Tis not
necessary to say the words loudly, but so much power is there in the
spoken word that one must do more than think the conjuration; a low
murmur, or a mumble, will serve. There be those that, observing a man
going about muttering to himself, will be moved to scoff, but these,
being ignorant of the great matter going forward, need not be considered.
Persist, worthy Scholar, and ere the snow lies in winrows on these links,
your heart’s desire will be well toward fulfilment.
A LINE-O’-GOWF OR TWO
_Hew to the Line, let the divots fall where they may._
ALICE IN BUNKERLAND.
“If forty pro’s wrote forty books,
Besides what books there are,
Do you suppose,” the Walrus said,
“I’d play this course in par?”
“I doubt it,” said the Carpenter,
And lit a fresh seegar.
* * * * *
“The golfer is about the only mortal proud of being in a
hole.”—Philadelphia Ledger.
Zazzo? A cribbage player holes out as gleefully as a golfer.
* * * * *
No department of the game discloses more variation than iron work. For
example, some players take turf; others take to the woods.
* * * * *
“The really interesting question is, why will not men listen to women?”
says Alice Duer Miller. It’s this way, lady. After a hard day on the golf
links a man gives reluctant ear to discussions of the music of Ravel and
DeBussy, the Epicureanism of Marius, the influence of democracy on Greek
culture, and other subjects which the ladies persist in introducing.
Collectively, women are rather strenuous. Individually they are easy to
listen to, especially if they are easy to look at. And if they punctuate
their discourse with taps of a fan and what are known as speaking
glances, they may disquisish on any topic, from figs to futurism.
* * * * *
The farmers around Brook, Ind., have voted to keep their clocks at the
old time. Comrade Ade will likely use both times—the old for his farm,
and the new for his golf course.
ANOTHER NOTED MEMBER OF THE FAMILY WAS A COLONEL.
[Ad in an Ohio paper.]
For Sale—Bookcase and doctor’s library, including skull of Lucretia
Bogie, a noted murderess. W. H. Garnette, East Monroe, O.
* * * * *
“Golf,” again we read, “is a game that demands courtesy and politeness.”
Makes us think of coal at the present writing. The demand exceeds the
supply.
* * * * *
“Golf Playing Is Newest Cure for the Insane.”—Newspaper Headline.
As the Latins used to say, Similia similibus curantur.
* * * * *
Our golfing ambition may be stated in three words: Length without
strength.
SHAKESPEARE ON THE AMATEUR QUESTION.
_Horatio_—Is it a custom?
_Hamlet_—Ay, marry, is’t;
But to my mind, though I am native here
And to the manner born, it is a custom
More honour’d in the breach than the observance.
* * * * *
There are two theories to explain the steadiness of champions in
gruelling (to coin a word) tournament play. One is “heart of oak,” and
the other is head of the same material.
THE TURF-TEARERS.
Demos has taken to golf in America. In Lincoln Park, Chicago, Demos
wears suspenders and a derby, and Mrs. Demos has been seen pushing a
perambulator from hole to hole. For the delectation of Demos, golf links
and books are multiplying, and eventually every town will have at least
two libraries—the Carnegie and the Golf.
HELPFUL HINT NO. 640.
When in doubt pronate the forearm.
* * * * *
To Inquiring Golfer: Qualifications for membership in the Lincoln Park
Golf Club are a derby hat and a coupla clubs. No one is allowed to tee
off unless he is thus equipped.
[Illustration]
Golf magazines are showing spring fashions for players; effete east
stuff, chiefly. A natty make-up which will be seen at the Lincoln Park
Country Club is exhibited in the accompanying illustration.
* * * * *
We were sitting on the porch of the clubhouse at Brae Burn, listening
to a discussion of the prohibition of Sunday golf at other courses. A
gentleman who looked like a substantial pillar of the church offered his
views. “Cut all your church subscriptions,” said he. “That will put a
stop to this nonsense.”
* * * * *
Mr. Ouimet qualified with a score of 79 and a temperature of 103. That
established the temperature record for the course, which is uncommonly
difficult.
* * * * *
When, one day, we engaged a caddy to walk around with us, although
we carried only a midiron, we fancied we had reached the Height of
Affluence; but we know a man who drives a Ford and carries a chauffeur on
the rear seat.
DEGENERATE DAYS.
For years our hard-boiled foursome
Came to the eighteenth hole;
And then the struggle for a par,
To save a payment at the bar.
The café beckoned from afar
To every thirsty soul.
When now on Sunday morning
Fred steps upon the tee,
With dull despair his brow is wet;
We do not care what score we get—
For ice cream sodas are the bet,
The price of victory.
“The time has come,” I heard Fred mutter,
“For me to fall upon my putter.”
DOUBLE BARREL.
* * * * *
Golfers, the days are growing shorter. Get out after dinner and save some
daylight for the farmers.
* * * * *
“Golf has its jokes, undoubtedly,” says Dr. Francis Hackett, “but it has
no joke such a joke as golf itself.” If Francis were thirty or forty
years younger he would yell “Fore!” whenever he saw a man going along
with a bag of clubs.
* * * * *
We have frequently wondered why we play such a messy game on a golf
course new to us. Mr. Vardon explains. “The perspective of the course” at
Inverness bothered him.
* * * * *
When Harry Vardon relates that he putted from the edge of the green, and
“thanks to the fates of golf” the ball fell into the cup, he means that
he made a damned good putt and is wholly aware of the fact.
* * * * *
Mr. Harding, we read, shoots Chevy Chase in 95, “but is known to be
ambitious to reach par,” which is 71. Any golfer should be able to get a
laugh out of that.
WONDER WHAT THIS OISEAU DID?
From the Morris, Man., Herald.
To the Editor: Kindly allow me to make a public apology in your paper
concerning my conduct in a game of ball between Emerson and Morris. I
feel very sorry and ashamed of myself for losing my hasty temper. I could
not have been in my right mind to do just as I did, to allow such a
provocation to make me do as I did. It seems like a bad dream to me and
never will forget it. In my 24 years of playing I never lost control of
myself before. I forgive the player who was the cause of my weakness, and
hold no ill-will to any one. It will be better for me to say no more.
JIM D. MCLEAN.
The gentleman could not be more regretful if he had tanked up and punched
somebody at the Lambs’ Club.
ON THE OTHER HAND—
From the Kansas City Star.
It is a tribute both to the game of golf and to those who play—the fact
that you never read of two players getting into a brawl over the golf
table and hitting each other on the head with a golf cue.
* * * * *
Those persons who feel sorry for Chick Evans because he can’t putt may
like to know that Vardon and Ray, interviewed when they returned to
England, agreed that “Evans with his new club is the best putter in the
United States.”
* * * * *
Paying club dues for the three months beginning January first used to
be our notion of zero in entertainment. We are obliged to lower the
temperature twenty degrees since the war tax was added to the dues.
* * * * *
One of the things in golf most difficult to explain is “the feel of the
clubhead.” We have tried to convey an idea of the sensation to persons
who have solicited an opinion, but without success. Perhaps this will
explain it: Take a full swing with the mashie for a chip shot of ten or
twenty yards. Practise that for a while, and you will begin to discover
that there is something at the end of the shaft.
* * * * *
The young woman with the golf club who appears on magazine covers or in
railway folders is shown, as often as not, holding the implement in an
exceedingly awkward manner. Artists of yesteryear were better observers.
A reproduction of a painting, “The Golf Players,” by Pieter de Hooch
(1630-1677), represents, for one item, a child holding a club as a Vardon
of that period might have grasped it.
* * * * *
Mr. Topping is a well known American golfer, and the mention of his name
has evoked many smiles and decrepit jests. It is not generally known,
however, that he is related on the paternal side to the Hookers and on
the other wing to the Slicers, two other celebrated clans whose lineage
details occupy many pages in the _Almanac de Golfa_.
* * * * *
After prayerful consideration the Western Golf Association has ruled that
as long as a golfer depends on the literary merits of his articles to
sell them, he will retain his amateur standing. One could almost whittle
a wheeze out of that.
THE DUB.
When Frederick was a little lad
He practised the pianner,
And practised it, we need not add,
In ladhood’s usual manner.
His progress was more slow than snail’s,
Of skill came no increase;
But Frederick would not practise scales—
He wished to “play a piece.”
At golf Fred cannot use his hands,
He has no sense of rhythm;
And yet he thinks he understands—
You cannot argue with’m.
Dub will remain his middle name
Till death shall him release.
He doesn’t care to LEARN the game—
He wants to “play a piece.”
* * * * *
When the Preacher observed that there was no new thing under the sun,
he articulated a mouthful, as a contemporary slangily remarked of
Demosthenes. A Denver man relates in the _Golfer’s Magazine_ that he
keeps his eye off the ball, instead of on it, from the drive to the putt.
Unlike the feat which we recently noticed on an oratorio programme, “Rest
in the Ford,” this can be done. Several years ago we demonstrated to
our own content that it was possible to use a mashie accurately while
scrutinizing the flag, and during one season we putted while glaring
at the hole; but in the longer shots we preferred more freedom of the
neck—ours not being of the giraffe type—and so maintained an “eyes
front” attitude. About that time Mr. Charles Clarke, professional to
the Rothersham Club at York, published his “Common Sense Golf,” which
contained this admonition:
“And most important of all, for putts of six feet and under, _look at the
hole and not at the ball_. I know it is a very unorthodox thing to say,
and it will require no little courage at first to get used to the method.
But the difficulty exists only in the imagination; the lie of your ball
is as nearly as possible perfect, and all the preliminary adjustments
have been made. A back-swing of a few inches, and a short, firm tap is
all that is required. Personally I have improved my holing out enormously
since adopting this method, and there are days when I can scarcely miss a
two-yard putt.”
Our hypothesis, which we arrived at independently of the Rothersham pro
(as Adams located the planet Neptune “unbeknownst” to Leverrier) was
challenged by Grantland Rice and Jerome Travers; and so we arranged a
test with Mr. Rice. But a heavy shower interposed, and we agreed to try
the thing on a new dog—Mr. Ring Lardner, who up to that time had not
trifled with a golfing implement. He was required to putt eighteen holes
while looking at the hole, and to repeat while looking at the ball.
The result was slightly in favor of the latter method, but this was
fairly attributable to increased familiarity with the putter. Personally
(_sic_), we can putt as well one way as the other, and all that we ever
maintained for the eye-on-hole style was that it would improve the work
of one who putted badly. If a man putts well by any method, let him keep
the even tenor of his way, nor heed the rumble of a distant drum.
* * * * *
Golf is advised for training camps by the War department, to counteract
the tension of intensive training. The beneficial effect lies in the
mental rest during the swing; from the moment the ball is addressed until
it is struck the mind is an absolute blank. The poorer the player, the
more strokes he takes, and the greater the mental rest.
WE’VE TRIED IT ON A GOLF BALL, BUT IT DOESN’T WORK.
Sir: In the Rotarian for this month: “Like a rubber ball, the Spirit of
Rotary will not be cowed by any one.” Did you ever try to cow a rubber
ball?
R. C. S.
* * * * *
The Empory Gazette admits that something is to be said for golf; that
“a man can play the game without being hooted and abused as though he
was a wife beater.” But the same can be said for every other game except
baseball.
* * * * *
Isn’t the weather provokingly delightful? Here we have a compilation of
verse, a novel, and a few smaller matters planned out, and the golfing
weather persists out of reason.
HAVING THEIR SLICE OUT, MEBBE.
[From a Rockford contemp.]
GOLF SEASON CLOSES.
H. S. Wortham underwent a minor operation at Rockford hospital yesterday
morning.
L. D. Ray underwent a minor operation at Rockford hospital Sunday.
* * * * *
Time to put away your golf tools. Navigation on the Yukon river has
closed.
* * * * *
Economically war is much more wasteful than golf. In war a waster bullet
is a total loss, but when you lose a golf ball somebody else finds
it, and eventually your initials are worn off it. By the way, has the
question been discussed, and settled, whether it is good sportsmanship to
stamp your initials on a ball? We never stamped more than a dozen, and
none of these, when lost, was ever returned to the shop.
FRENZIED JOHN.
He worked as hard at golf
As any man alive;
For nothing went the time he spent—
He always sliced his drive.
He held himself like this,
He held himself like that;
By hook and crook he tried to look
And see where he was at.
He changed his stance and grip—
It mattered not at all;
The same old thing with every swing,
He sliced the bally ball.
He put his right foot forward,
He put his right foot back;
But still his game remained the same—
He sliced at every crack.
He told it to the lockers,
He told it in the hall,
Till more and more it grew a bore
To hear he sliced the ball.
He read the books of Vardon,
Of Taylor, Braid, and all;
But every shot went straight to pot—
He sliced the cursed ball.
He went to Doctor Vardon,
And got the best advice;
He whaled the pill till he was ill,
Nor ever lost his slice.
Doc took him out to pasture,
And showed him what to do,
And while the Doc was there to knock
He hit them fairly true.
But after Doc departed
The stuff was off again:
He shot it on to Helngon,
And nearly went insane.
He tried to hit it easy,
But still his trouble grew;
He tried, like Jesse Guilford,
To split the ball in two.
No matter how he whacked it,
He sliced into the tall.
“O Lord, how long!” his frenzied song;
“How must I hit the ball?”
Again to Old Doc Vardon
He tottered for advice.
Said Doc: “We’ll have to operate,
And cut away that slice.”
He overlapped with Vardon,
He underlapped with Vaile—
And sliced into the garden
Of Mr. Ezra Hale.
He trained with Doctor Hammond—
“The Essence of the Matter”—
Old Simpson, Bart., he knew by heart,
And yet his score grew fatter.
He put his right hand under,
He put his right hand up,
But still the ball would hunt the tall,
Nor ever reach the cup.
He put his heels together,
He put his heels apart.
With anguished brow he wondered how
He’d ever learn the art.
He laid the club-face forward,
He laid the club-face back.
His face grew thin, his chest fell in,
His mind began to crack.
(Note: _This poem was never finished by Mr. Taylor._ Ed.)
* * * * *
Mr. Pradt of Wausau, Wis., writes to us: “One day last summer I found my
ball, after a fine approach, lying in a hole on the back of a toad. Would
you hold that the ball was teed up?” We should hold, off hand, that it
was toad up.
STYMIED.
Sir: This is the situation at a summer resort course in Wisconsin:
Chorus of Young Ladies: “Oh, is that the professional?”
Caddie: “Yes, but he’s married.”
J. G. L.
* * * * *
Did you happen to see this wheeze in a recent issue of _London Punch_:
“In New York a club has been started exclusively for golfers. The others
insisted on it.”
* * * * *
The headline, “Finds a Husband on Golf Links,” reminds us of the lady who
observed sagely: “There is one good thing about golf. You always know
where your husband is.”
* * * * *
Young Mr. Ouimet’s feat of holing out in one iron shot contains a helpful
hint for the novice. When the hole is only 243 yards away take a midiron.
A driver might put you over the green.
OVERHEARD AT A SMALL-TOWN BALL GAME.
Umpire: “Boy, that’s certainly some tear you gave your pants when you
slid.”
Casey (colored): “Shuah is. Mighty near havin’ to call this game off on
’counta darkness.”
WHIT.
THE GOLFER.
“The only man who can play a good game of golf is he who has no
brains.”—ANDREW LANG.
Like Man With Hoe he leans upon his club,
And gazes groundward with a vacant air;
A wretched, brainless, golf-besotted dub—
A brother to the Hatter and the Hare.
Ah, what to him the “swing of Pleiades”
Whose mind is fixed on swinging on the pill,
Whose only mental processes are these:
“I must grip tight, and keep my head quite still.”
Ah, what to him the pull of Jupiter—
This muddy-headed clod, this witless wight—
Who fears that _he_ may “pull,” or, commoner,
Slice off into the bushes on the right.
For aught he knows whom golf hath so besot,
The sky has fall’n, or is about to fall;
For heaven and earth, and time and space are not
To him whose gaze is glued upon the ball.
“The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,”
May all have bumped th’ inevitable hour,
For aught _he_ knows, infatuated slave!
So come away and leave him to his club,
His rubber pill, his fixed and vacant stare.
’Tis but a brainless, golf-besotted dub,
A brother to the Hatter and the Hare.
* * * * *
According to Mr. Jim Barnes, whose new and really valuable book of
golf-swing photographs has just left the press, one can get more fun out
of golf by knowing what he is about when wielding the various clubs. But
according to Capper & Capper, “How to Get More Fun Out of Golf” depends
on wearing athletic union suits with swiss-ribbed bottoms.
* * * * *
Observe how easily the Western Golf Association, confronted, like
the peace conference, with the problem of the stymie, reverses its
perplexity! The player of the ball nearer the hole may play it or lift
it, at his option.
DOES TOBACCO AFFECT YOUR GAME?
We are not sure whether smoking has an adverse influence on our game,
such as it is; but we felt a bit concerned the other day when we missed a
thirty-foot putt. For—
Tidal fury surges o’er us,
And we breathe a savage “Tut!”
When, with all the green before us,
We don’t hole a ten-yard putt.
AN EXTREMELY INTELLIGENT DOG.
Sir: I have a remarkable dog, a Scotch terrier, bought of a caddy at
St. Andrews. This dog has seen some pretty good golf, and is a bit of
a critic. I took him to the links to watch my game. My approach to the
second flag was within five yards, and the dog disconcerted me by sitting
by the hole and alternately watching it and me. My putt went wide and
seven or eight feet past. The dog arose and began digging frantically at
the hole to make it larger. Intelligent?
BRASSIE CLEEK.
PROBLEM OF CONDUCT.
A drives. Before A reaches his ball B drives, and his ball strikes A in
the back. A waits for an apology. B comes up and says: “Why didn’t you
duck, you rummy? That’d been a peach of a drive.”
What should A do?
WHY GOLF DIVOTEES GO INSANE.
“Putting is extremely simple “Of all the golfing arts putting
and easy to learn.”—_P. A. is the most unteachable.”—_Bernard
Vaile._ Darwin._
“Although putting appears to “The putt is without doubt
be the simplest thing in golf the easiest stroke to learn.”—_P.
to the beginner, after a little A. Vaile._
experience he will find out that
it is the most difficult part of
the game.”—_Jerome Travers._
“It is impossible to assert “The best way is to let the
with too passionate an emphasis body go slightly forward with
that the player must not try the club as the ball is
to assist the club on its path struck.”—_Tom Ball._
by sympathetically moving his
body forward in unison with
it.”—_Bernard Darwin._
“The plan of playing for the “Always go for the back of
back of the hole is all right the hole.”—_Innumerable
in certain shots.”—_J. L. Low._ Authorities._
DO YOU KNOW THIS ONE?
[From Tom Daly’s department in the Philadelphia Ledger.]
Somebody, probably our favorite story-teller among golfers, narrated
to us the tale of a man whom the same John D. invited to play on the
Rockefeller private course at Cleveland. The guest had neglected to
provide himself with balls. “Lend Mr. Blank a couple of old balls,
George,” said the host to his caddie. “There’s no old balls in the bag,
Mr. Rockefeller,” replied the caddie. “No?” exclaimed the host, and after
a pause, “well, I guess you’ll have to lend him a new one, then.”
* * * * *
We have wondered ever and anon—and sometimes as frequently as now and
then—where the illustrators get their golf models for the decorating of
magazine covers. Perhaps on public links, where there is no grip or
stance so absurd that it may not be observed.
WHY GOLF DIVOTEES GO INSANE.
(_Concerning the use of the mashie_)
“The blade is better for being “Better results can be obtained
deep.”—_Mr. Travis._ by using a mashie with a
narrow face.”—_Mr. Travers._
“The ball has to be picked up “Follow through as in the
rather abruptly.”—_Bernard drive.”—_Mr. Travis._
Darwin._
“Draw in the arms a trifle “There is no drawing in at the
immediately after the ball is moment of crossing to produce
struck.”—_Mr. Travis._ the cut.”—_P. A. Vaile._
“The player must take turf “It matters very little whether
after hitting the ball.”—_Mr. the player takes ground with
Travers._ him or not.”—_Simpson, Bart._
“The back-swing is long or short, “Many will remember the wonderful
according to the distance from accuracy Jamie Anderson acquired,
the green.”—_A multitude of hitting a full blow at all distances,
authorities._ and regulating the length of his
loft by the inches of turf he took
behind the ball.”—_Simpson, Bart._
“Keep your eye on the “Keeping the eye on the ball is not
ball.”—_Chorus of pundits._ of first importance.”—_George
O’Neil._
GUFFLE FOR GOLFERS
For the benefit of golfers who depend on this department exclusively for
their tips on the game, we have engaged Mr. Donald MacBawbee, the famous
professional at Prairie Dog, as first aid to the helpless, and we feel
safe in promising that he will add delightfully to the complications of
the sport.
Mr. MacBawbee is 5 feet 11⅜, and carries the conventional clubs, with
the addition of two implements which he calls a soakum and a pushum. The
first is a bludgeon of wood, and is employed for dispatching the ball
from the tee; the second is an iron for push shots. The grip of this
iron is tapered to a point at the end, so that when the hands are pushed
forward, which Mr. MacBawbee claims is the proper way to make the shot,
the chance of the hands slipping is reduced to an irreducible minimum.
The Prairie Dog pro is committed to heavy clubs, and consequently he
prefers lignum vitae to the conventional hickory. Concerning the length
of the implements he has very decided opinions. No golfer, he says,
should attempt to wield a club taller than himself or shorter than his
golf bag. A happy medium, he suggests, will prove most satisfactory.
Mr. MacBawbee lays much emphasis on the matter of stance. Two ways of
confronting the ball, he says, are the ramrod stance and the cab-horse
stance. The first is to be avoided, as several cases are recorded of
players who have broken a leg in swinging. The cab-horse stance is easy,
graceful, and relaxing. As an arch is stronger than a straight line, the
firmest of all stances, says Mr. MacBawbee, is the hoop stance, but this
is possible only for very bowlegged golfers. For this stance he advises
that the feet be placed rather near each other.
* * * * *
Says Mr. Jock Hutchinson, who is illuminating the arcanum of golf for the
benefit of the Dub Family Robinson, “I am 5 feet 10¼ inches in height,
weigh 137 pounds, and carry twelve clubs.” That bag would bar him from
the Lincoln Park Country Club.
Hon. Jock’s arsenal of irons includes one which he calls a “stopum.”
Percy Hammond’s bag includes a peculiar instrument which might be called
a “topum.”
* * * * *
Besides a “stopum” every bag of golf clubs should contain a startum,
a topum, a sliceum, a hookum, a sclaffum, a killum, and, for general
utility, a dubum.
* * * * *
Doc Hammond’s golf bag has two new clubs in it besides his topum—a
lose-um and a wet-um.
* * * * *
Home-bound from the links, we were thinking, for the somethingth time,
that golf was a great waste of time and money, when we observed a citizen
starting out to break a few hundred clay pigeons. Everything is relative,
as Box remarked to Cox.
FAMOUS LAST LINES.
“The shower bath is the best part of the game.”
THE LINKS OF ANCIENT ROME.
Fragments from the Diary of Maecenas.
Latin Verses by P. Sebleius Ferus
(Payson S. Wild).
I—AUGUSTUS FIT CUPIDUS SCIENDI (C II K)
_Maecenas vult ut Princeps faciat quod intemperanter promiserit._
“Nuper, Octavi, dixisti iturum
Te mecum olim et campos visurum
Ubi libentes iam ludimus illa
Altivolante, durissima pila.
Die mihi, vetule, saltem spectare
Nonne nunc vis, si nondum tentare?”
_Octavius respondet breviter “Minime pol in tuo daguerreotypo.”_
Frustra cum Imperatore locutus,
Impedimenta ac fustes indutus,
Abii atque quaesivi amicos
Qui iam profecti ad agros apricos.
Sed vix discesseram fessus orando,
Cum Caesar, fessus et ipse negando,
Talia reddit adstantibus fando:
_Princeps affirmat hunc ludum sibi nihil in lusibus esse._
“Bella, Rapinae, Incendia, Caedes,
Carmina, Litterae, Templa et Aedes,
Quae sunt res publicae, graves et durae,
Illis furentibus nihil sunt curae;
Immo pol VINUM, MULIERES, CANTUM,
Non tantum diligunt, antea quantum!
Namque NOVICIUS LUSUS DAMNABILIS
Nescio quis, et, ut dicunt, mirabilis
Fascinavisse videtur sodales
Quondam carissimos contubernales.
Eam rem omnem non facio flocci;
Sum studiosior COMICI SOCCI,
Amo PICTURAS MOVENTES vel PONTEM,
Cupidus nunquam per vallem aut montem
PILULAM ALBAM sequendi in fontem!
_Sed putat illum sibi investigandum saltem._
“At cantilenam eandem cur cano;
Num decet ipsi mentiri tyranno?
Huc AUTOMOVENS VEHICULUM ferte!
Quid-INEL agant comperiam certe.”
II—AUGUSTUS UTITUR LINGUA VULGARI SED LUDUM DISCIT.
_Maecenas pilam expellit dum Princeps adridet._
Pilam expuleram aggere primo,
Cum Imperator iam illitus limo,
Clamans “Quid! Istoc est totum?” apparet,
Atque observat dum pila volaret
PEDES per caelum ad terram SESCENTOS.
“En,” inquit, “sane homunculos lentos,
Qui quot diebus exercent iam dudum
Effeminatum eiusmodi ludum!
_Hic Maecenatem exululat (ut ita dicamus)._
“Quam PUTRIS ICTUS hic proximus erat!
Talis ut aegre peritus pol ferat;
Tu imbecillus es, hercle, Maecenas;
Quid fluit tibimet, quaeso, per venas?
‘ATAVIS EDITE REGIBUS’—quippe;
Hoc enim luderet ludo XANTIPPE!
Si non potuero longius sphaeram
Quam tu impellere, causam tum quaeram.
Clavam da mihi; ostendam, sceleste,
Ego tu faciam. Omnes adeste!”
_Augustus “fusillum exspirat.”_
Ita locutus, tenaciter prendit
Clavam et statim ad aggerem tendit.
Spuens confestim in mediam manum,
Pectore scelus anhelans profanum,
Agitat baculum sat negligenter;
S-s-s-t! ferit sphaeram (ut putat) valenter.
At tamen haece immobilis iacet,
Atque Augustus attonitus tacet.
Puer cachinnat, qui saccum ferebat,
Temporis tamen momento silebat,
Nam ululatum iam Princeps tollebat:
“STULTE DAMNATE, AD USQUE AVERNAM
VOLO TU EAS GEHENNAM INFERNAM!”
_Maecenas leniter loquitur._
Tum ridens “Oculos,” inquam, “attollis;
PILULA illa est, minime FOLLIS.”
“Istud pro DI IMMORTALES excide!
Si placet, eris dum mortuus, ride!
_Princeps lepidopteron acquirit._
Heus, VESPERTILIO, caece, ausculta:
Quae tibi faciam ea sunt multa.
Ego et tu excercebimus soli—
Pilam amittere edepol noli!”
_Maecenas amicique ludunt pocillum undevicensimum._
Nos modo CAUDAS GALLORUM MARTINI,
Modo lagenas arcessimus, vini.
THE LINKS OF ANCIENT ROME.
English version by B. L. T.
I—AUGUSTUS BECOMES C2K.
_Maecenas reminds the Emperor of a rash promise._
“Octavius, I’ve often heard you say
That you’d cut out the work some sunny day,
And have a look at our new country club.
Why not this aft, old top? Put on a sub;
Come down and watch us shoot a round of golf,
Whether you stay to play or stay to scoff.”
_Augustus returns a laconic “Nix.”_
“Nix on that golf stuff,” said the Emperor,
And so to prod him further I forbore.
Grabbing my clubs I chucked them in my car,
And made the two miles to the links in par;
While Caesar, peeved at having stood me off,
Let go the following remarks on golf:
_Augustus defines golf as his notion of zero in recreations._
“War, glory, statecraft, and the Muses Nine
No longer charm these golf-mad friends of mine;
Wine, skirts, and song have also lost their hold
Beside this strange new game that, I am told,
By old and young and wise and foolish played is—
For which I would not give a hoot in Hades.
Me for the play or moving picture show,
A hand at bridge, or any game with go;
But chasing white pills round a vacant lot
Is my idea of entertainment, _not_.
_But he decides to look it over._
“But here I am, singing the same old tune.
I’ve really not much on this afternoon,
And can, as old Maecenas said, knock off
And watch him shoot a hole or two at golf.
My motorcycle, boy! I’d like to see
Just wotinel this d. f. game may be.”
II—AUGUSTUS INDULGES IN STRONG LANGUAGE, BUT DECIDES TO LEARN THE GAME.
_Maecenas drives, and the Emperor sniffs._
I whaled the ball two hundred yards or more—
A screamer—when up wheeled the Emperor,
Exclaiming, as he watched the sphere sail off,
“Ye gods! Is _that_ the total sum of golf!
Weaklings and mollycoddles, what a shame
To waste your time on such a baby game!
_He bawls Maecenas out._
“And you, Maecenas, ‘Son of Ancient Kings’
(As Flaccus boy satirically sings
In his last book, ‘A Line-o’-Verse or Two’),
Is that the best, old scout, that you can do?
A stroke most ladylike! Why, on my soul,
I’d back Xantippe for a ball a hole!
Say, if I couldn’t slam that piffling pill
Over the crest of yonder fir-clad hill
I’d go jump in the Tiber. Here, I say,
Give me that mallet! Caddy, stand away!”
_Augustus short-circuits himself._
Preluding thus, the Top Card took his stance,
Giving the “pill” a quick, contemptuous glance,
Then swung the driver with terrific force,
And—missed the ball a foot or two, of course.
A caddy snickered, then discreetly blew,
And Caesar after him the driver threw,
With certain objurgations, warm and tinglish,
That look less rude in Latin than in English.
_Maecenas speaks in part as follows._
I laughed and said, “You see, it takes some skill:
You didn’t keep your eye upon the pill.
The striking surface, you’ll observe, is small;
It’s not, Octavius, a soccer ball.”
_The Emperor gets the bug._
“Aw, cut that out, for love of Mike!” said he.
“Laugh if you will—I grant it’s one on me.
Son of a bat!”—he called the nearest caddy—
“We’ll learn this game _alone_. Come on, my laddie;
And if you lose this new ball in the rough
What I will do to you will be enough!”
_Maecenas and his friends play the Nineteenth Hole._
So off they went, while we the club bar found,
And ordered dry martinis all around.
A LINE-O’-GOWF OR TWO
_Hew to the Line, let the divots fall where they may._
HAD HERRICK GOLFED.
Gather ye foursomes while ye may,
The old year fast is going;
And this same sky that smiles to-day
To-morrow may be snowing.
* * * * *
Why do British golfers, in their photographs, always look as if they were
four down at the turn, and American golfers as if they were six up?
THAT WE SHAN’T MAKE A 73.
Sir: I absolutely refuse to putt for a hole if a ball which has already
been holed is not removed. What is your pet golfing superstition?
H. F.
* * * * *
Pursuing a red ball over the wintry lea is a pastime that leaves us cold.
But, for compensation, one does not hear, in the locker room, that the
shower is “the best part of the game.”
* * * * *
“Golf,” writes Professor William Lyon Phelps in “The New Republic,” “has
done more for swearing than any other modern employment; it has made
taciturn gentlemen as efficient as teamsters. The disappointments of golf
are so immediate, so unexpected, so overwhelming. Nearly all men, and
women, too, must swear naturally in their thoughts; else how explain such
easily acquired efficiency!”
Professor Phelps’ observations coincide with ours. Once, having addressed
the recreant ball in terms more pointed than polite, we remarked to the
caddy: “The ladies never talk that way, do they?” “Oh,” said he, “they
say worse things than that.” Which moved us to inquire: Should a youth of
tender years caddy for a lady?
* * * * *
“Golf is the peculiar pastime of a peculiar people”; and particularly
peculiar are the persons into whose soul the iron has entered and
displaced the wood. A friend of ours, Colonel Talmadge, of Glen View, is
one of these eccentrics. He was starting out for a round one day, toting
a ton of iron, when his partner inquired: “Where are you going with all
those dental instruments?”
* * * * *
The news that a golf pro in Louisiana was buried with his favorite clubs
set us wondering what might be the width of the River Styx. While waiting
for the ferry the shade might tee up a few balls and see whether he
could carry the hazard.
* * * * *
“Golfing Wonder—One-Legged Man’s Win in Open Tournament.”—London Mail.
He couldn’t kick, eh?
* * * * *
The grounds and greens committee of the Evanston Golf Club concludes:
“Transgressions of the rules embodied in paragraphs 1 to 14 shall be
reported at once to the rules and etiquette committee.” But why, a member
wants to know, send the fourteen points abroad again?
FOR GOLF BUGS ONLY.
In 1909, P. A. Vaile, the w. k. golf nut, discoursed in “Modern Golf” on
the superior merits of the open stance. The model he selected for his
illustrations, George Duncan, was shown hewing to that stance, let the
chip shots fall where they might. However, a little study convinced us,
then learning the game, that, while the open stance might be all right
for Duncan, it was all wrong for us; whereupon we adopted the square
stance, and, like the person in the soap ad, we have “used no other
since.”
Now hearken to George Duncan, writing in 1920: “Generally speaking,” says
he, “I should say that the best stance is the square one. I found it to
be the best, but, before I made the discovery, I went through a trying
time in which I had many aggravating cutting of tee shots.... To many (I
know it did to me) the open stance would appear to be the natural method
of standing up to a golf ball. I can only repeat that if your trouble is
slicing, you will continue to have plenty of it to face if you do not get
to the square stance.”
Better late than never.
* * * * *
A good argument against the theory that man is descended from the monkey
is the average golfer. Now, the monkey is nothing if not imitative, but
a golfer can watch a professional swing all day without being able to
imitate his motions. No swing could be more obvious than that of our
canny friend, Joe MacMorran; he merely hauls off and hits the ball, which
is all that is necessary. Josephus weighs, when he is eating well, 104
pounds, yet he knocks the ball half a mile, or thereabouts.
FOR GOLF NUTS ONLY.
Dear Beechnut: Why do I call you a beechnut? Because it’s the only nut
older than a chestnut. What do you mean in 1920 by trying to hold me
answerable for what George Duncan and I thought in 1909? On golf we are
like Art J. Balfour in politics—of whom you may have heard, although you
would not approve of his follow through. We have no settled convictions.
We must expand with the exigencies of modern golfomania.
You know yourself, from personal experience, that the stance for the pull
at the 19th hole has been recently changed to the open square, and even
at that it requires a fine push to get a shot of any length or depth.
When such a radical change as this takes place overnight you must not
mind George Duncan changing his mind once in ten years—and I am not sure
that I don’t agree with him.
P. A. VAILE.
THE NINETEENTH HOLE.
[From the Des Moines Register.]
Mr. and Mrs. Harry Hole will entertain the Nonpareil Club Friday evening
at their home, 1502 Twenty-fourth street.
* * * * *
Once in an aeon or two somebody says something about putting that is as
a light in a dark place, as a staff to a blind man, as a voice crying in
the wilderness. Thus spake George Zarathustra O’Neil:
“It will be objected that no putting green is as smooth as a billiard
table, but such objectors will hardly maintain that the majority
of putts that miss do so because they are thrown off the line by
inequalities in the surface of the green. The fact is that most putts
that miss were not played properly—and that is the whole truth.”
WHOLE DUTY OF CADDIES.
A caddie should be, first of all,
As silent as the Sphinx of fable;
And he should watch the flying ball,
At least as far as he is able.
That, with acknowledgment to Stevenson’s heirs and assigns, covers
the case to our notion. It may be desirable to give a caddie a polite
education, including French and dancing, but the duty of a caddie is
simple. So long as he is reticent and watches the ball, we don’t mind if
he stands an inch too near us while we shoot, or whether he bats an eye
while holding the flag for a putt.
* * * * *
Miami, with its 19-hole golf course, has a rival in Pensacola, which
calls itself “The Oasis of West Florida.” One who was there tells us that
it is well camouflaged.
* * * * *
We have read half a ton of golf books, and in none of them is it advised
to start the hands back before the club head. Yet, as C. B. Lloyd’s
moving pictures show, many if not most of the crack players employ that
method. Don’t they know what they do?
* * * * *
“Lord Northcliffe is shown contemplating a long drive on the celebrated
golf course at Biarritz, where he is much at home.”—The incomparable
Examiner.
As the gentleman has a mashie in his hands, he is evidently a
considerable contemplater.
* * * * *
“Warren K. Wood and Will Diddel, paired against Chick Evans and Kenneth
Edwards.”
Hey, Diddel, Diddel, the cat and the fiddle,
The ball sailed over the moon,
The gallery laughed to see such sport,
And Chick drove the green with a spoon.
* * * * *
“With the upright swing,” writes Hon. Jock Hutchison, “you must of
necessity take some turf. Any novice knows when he has taken too much.”
True; the limit is a pound. But what the novice needs to know is that it
is more important to put back turf than to take it.
* * * * *
Speaking of the Lincoln Park Country Club, F. D. P. reports that the
golfer in the skin-tight, bowery blue sweater failed to make a clean
drive although he spat on both hands.
* * * * *
A carping correspondent asks why cartoonists, column conductors, and so
forth, drop into golf when they can’t think of anything else to draw or
write about. We can reply only for this department. We touch the subject
of golf infrequently, and then chiefly for the benefit of readers in
remote corners of the land, who write to us to ask about such elementary
things as the difference between square and open stance. These novices
are almost sure to get off on the wrong foot if they read almost any
of the books about golf. Herr Einstein’s explanation of his theory is
translucent compared with the average golf writer’s exposition of his
stroke.
The results are sometimes deplorable. There is Ed Freschl, who wrote
the other day that golf does not reduce his circumference. Very likely
not—with his swing. He probably entertains that curious notion of the
“follow-through” which the writers emphasize—the notion of “letting the
arms go forward freely,” as if that would get you anything. Ed will never
take up any belt-holes by extending his arms in prayer.
* * * * *
Brother Whigham takes a lusty crack at some of the “enormities” of golf,
No. 2 being “the horrible habit of counting scores and competing for
silver pots on Saturday afternoons.” Medal scores produce the “strong
east winds in the locker room” which George Ade once referred to, and
are a nuisance in more ways than one. Some pencil players remain on the
putting green, lost in computation, and it is necessary to drive into
them to wake ’em up.
* * * * *
The links of the Gary Country Club are laid out on the Atlas plan,
reports the Gary Tribune. “That is, squares each 100 feet in size,
measure numerically one way and alphabetically the other. This greatly
facilitates the locating of any particular section of the grounds when
necessary.” The idea being, we take it, that when a player slices into
the ball he has only to consult his atlas to locate the ball.
* * * * *
Much personal property was destroyed in the fire at the Glen View Country
Club; but they saved the trophies! What’s the use of having a fire if you
don’t get rid of the trophies?
“THE ART OF GOLF.”
Readers and writers of the game are discovering Sir Walter Simpson,
whose “Art of Golf” is a classic not so much because of the instruction
it contains as because of the graceful style in which the instruction
is conveyed. In this respect it resembles “The Compleat Angler.” Old
Izaak’s instruction to fishermen was sound enough, but we cherish his
pages for something more than that. Sir Walter wrote the book himself,
we conjecture—another peculiarity distinguishing it from most of the
dull-thud volumes on the Five-Foot Shelf of Golf Books. Copies of it
appear to be scarce; a gentleman writes to “The American Golfer” that
he has a Simpson in his library, which “makes at least two copies in
America.” We’ll make it three; there is a copy in the Chicago Public
Library. And we shall be much surprised if Mr. Dana, the golfing
librarian of Newark, N. J., hasn’t Simpson in _his_ temple of erudition.
SUPREME IGNORANCE.
Sir: The scene is a picnic in the middle of the fairway of Hole 1.
Question, by a judge of the Supreme Court: “What do they use this part of
the golf grounds for?”
J. P. M.
Cornell, Ia.
* * * * *
A player on a public course in Chicago broke a leg during his upswing
at Tee No. 1. Very likely he is, or was, a disciple of that school of
thought which insists on having the right leg as rigid as the well known
ramrod. Soon or late one of these stiff-legged players was bound to
unscrew or fracture the limb. For this school the wooden leg is the ideal
pivot.
“GOLIF.”
“Much virtue in If,” as the Bard of Avon (sometimes referred to as
Shakespeare) remarked. “If I hadn’t looked up—” “If I hadn’t tried to
kill the ball—” “If I hadn’t sliced—” “If I hadn’t turned my body too
soon—” In view of these and other Ifs, lame and impotent explanations
(commonly known as alibis), the World’s Greatest Obsession might
appropriately be spelled “Golif.”
* * * * *
An account of an aviation stunt on Chesapeake’s strand includes the
instructive information that the aviator “began his loops with graceful
curves, accurately timed.” Our first thought was that all curves are
graceful, but the Short Skirt has negatived that notion; and some of the
most ungraceful golf swings we have observed undeniably described curves.
The intriguing item in the aviation story was the accuracy of the timing.
If we only knew how a sky terrier times his curves we might be able to
explain how Mr. Ouimet or Mr. Evans times his’n.
* * * * *
“All Mrs. Gourlay Dunn-Webb’s male ancestors for generations, including
her father and mother, have been golf experts and teachers.”
Does this prove, queries J. U. H., that golf un-sexes one?
THE GOLFING DOCTOR.
The patient’s brow was hot and dry,
His pulse was running rather high;
The missus, worried by his groans,
Dispatched a call for Doctor Jones.
Doc, summoned from his favorite game,
Picked up his other tools and came;
And presently he reached the door,
Exclaiming as he entered, “Fore!”
He drew a chair beside the bed,
And felt the patient’s feverish head;
He took his pulse, and said, “I see.
He’s doing it in 93.
Too high,” said he, “Too high by far;
He’s twenty-one beats over par.”
Then turning to the anxious wife,
“He’s not in danger of his life;
His general health is good enough,
He’s merely slicing to the rough.
These simple pills I leave with you
Will get him down to 72.
He’ll soon be back in summer form.
Good morning, madam. Rather warm.”
* * * * *
A lady in Lake Forest, Ill., whose cottage is within a few yards of the
tenth hole at Onwentsia, tells us that there are no good players in the
club. It seems that the members of foursomes gather at this tee to make
up their matches for the day, and the lady in the cottage has overheard
so much self-depreciation, she has come to the natural conclusion that
every player in the club ought to be started at least six up.
* * * * *
Whenever we play at Onwentsia we think of an odd happening at the first
tee a few years ago. A waiting foursome of plutocrats were discussing a
Certain Rich Man. “Oh, he’s not so well off,” remarked one; “his income
can’t be more than $250,000 a year.” At that moment a visiting golfer
from the Skokie club, who was in the act of swinging, topped his drive
and fell into a swoon.
* * * * *
It is an old saying that too much abuse of a man will enlist sympathy
for him. So with the stymie. Many players who considered it merely a
necessary nuisance are beginning to feel that they can’t keep house
without it.
IN THE LATE BILL NYE’S BAILIWICK.
Sir: Can you inform me where one might procure a good golf hound? The
animal chosen must have a sense of smell that will not be deflected
by the dust and gnats in the buffalo grass, a sense of sight that is
unerring, and the courage and agility to retrieve balls which have rolled
down gopher holes. Ours is a nine-hole course. The first hazard consists
of discarded objects of various sorts forming what might be called the
city dump. The other hazards are prairie-dog villages and the tribe of
gopher. To keep thoughtless cattle from making their beds on our greens
we have the latter enclosed with barbed wire. But even here the game
flourishes.
JOSH B. P.
Laramie, Wyo.
* * * * *
When we added a wing to our Cannery last Spring, we reserved a shelf for
golf phrases that exhibit signs of decomposition. The canning season is
now here, and Jar No. 1 has been set on the shelf, bearing the label, “A
close student of the game.”
SOUNDS SARCASTICAL.
Sir: I read: “Kenneth Edwards by his play to-day demonstrated that he
is possessed of the courage of a lion.” In the face of these noble
sentiments concerning two adulated young men propelling a harmless sphere
across the virgin sward, how puerile appear Hercules’ twelve labors,
Napoleon’s conquests, and Cato’s success in learning Greek at eighty!
J. F. B.
* * * * *
Golf is becoming a democratic game—who can doubt it? Private and public
links multiply. And yet—and yet—when a national tournament is on nobody
calls up a newspaper office to inquire about the score.
* * * * *
A pedometer test shows that a housewife walks two miles while preparing
three meals, but father walks twice as far doing a round of golf and
doesn’t make any fuss about it.
* * * * *
We were admiring the niblick of Chick (“Charles”) Evans. The next morning
he sent us one just like it. Quite Japanese—the courtesy, not the
niblick. But in Japan you are supposed to return the gift, are you not?
How about it, “Charles”?
WE, TOO, PASS.
Relying on our superior wisdom, Mr. George O’Neil has relayed to us the
following problem from a Kentucky gentleman:
“Dear Sir: I have played golf six years. I play an average game but my
iron work has been awful. Lately a friend suggested pronating the left
hand (turning it over) just as you start the back-swing, and I must say
it worked wonders. I tried the same theory with wooden clubs and the
same was disastrous. Why should this work on one and not the other? What
really happens when you pronate? Why should a player have to use this
method for results?”
* * * * *
We supposed the relative merits of the flat swing and the upright swing
had been definitely defined. At least we recall a learned scientific
exposition in “Golf Illustrated” some months ago. “Of course,” we
remarked to Hon. Bob MacDonald, the lank pro at Indian Hill, “of course
you swing upright, whereas we ought to swing flat.” “A flat swing,”
replied Hon. Bob, “is no good to anybody.”
SCIENCE IN THE WOODS.
In summer journeys through the woods we have admired (as what forest
pilgrim has not) the ax work of our guides; and there is little to choose
between the best white artist and the best Indian. Bill was perhaps our
favorite, and it was always a pleasure to watch him work—especially if
the day was warm. His execution was precise, no matter how precarious the
stance—as, for example, when he placed one foot on the bow of the canoe
and the other on a floating log, and tackled the river barricade which
the Chippewa calls “ge-bok-wah.” Bill grasped his ax with the o. f. palm
grip. We tried to induce him to use the Vardon grip, explaining that the
two hands would function more nearly like one, but Bill couldn’t see it;
nor could we make him visualize the motion of the ax as a sweep, rather
than a hit. We had better luck when we got on the subject of the left
being the master hand. Bill agreed to give that the once over. He did,
and nearly cut his feet off. After that we could do nothing with him.
“AM I TO SET MY LIFE UPON A THROW?”
Omar Khayyam, the well-known wine agent, related musically that when
young he eagerly frequented the company of the well informed, and
listened to cubic miles of heated air; and that, so far as unravelling
the plot of the universe was concerned, he might as profitably have spent
his time in digging holes in the desert. And so it is that while we hear
“great argument” about the golf swing, it remains to the majority (and we
fear it must continue to remain) a royal and ancient arcanum.
Take some recent punditial ponderings put forth by men who, as Editor
Behr has said, can never be satisfied with their perceptions until they
have translated them into thought. A writer in “The American Golfer”
illumines the arcanum with this lightning flash:
“The ideal timing consists in gradually increasing the speed of
the swing from the start so that the maximum will be attained
when we connect with the ball.... We should try to put the
final effort into the stroke when the clubhead is about two
feet away from the ball.”
It seemeth to us that any one who tries for a final effort when the
clubhead is two feet from the ball is endeavoring to encompass the
improbable, and is getting away as far as possible from the idea of
“throwing the head of the club at the ball,” as advocated by leading
academicians. We asked Mr. George O’Neil to explain the throw, and he
replied that “the clubhead must lead in the movement, and pull after
it the shaft of the club and the player’s hands, arms, and body.” This
dictum may, to some mentalities, be packed with significance, but it
means little in our mental life. A throw’s a throw. We, too, essay a
throw, but we throw what is in our hands to throw, which is the other
end of the club. What becomes of the head of it we do not know, but we
are sustained and soothed by the unfaltering trust that if it continues
attached to the shaft it will take care of itself.
After all, the difference between Tweedledum and Tweedledee is more
fancied than real. Both of these heroes drive a long ball. It is only
when they attempt to translate their perceptions into thought that they
slice to the rough.
* * * * *
Our gossip, C. B. Lloyd, who has taken miles of moving pictures of the
golf swing, writes us that, in the case of many celebrated players, the
pictures show that the clubhead does _not_ leave the ball before the
hands and arms are set in motion. That coincides with our observation, C.
B., and applies particularly, we conjecture, to upright swings.
A THING OF BEAUTY.
(_To Old E. C., Donor._)
I care no dam for diamonds or rubies,
For ornaments in silver or in gold;
Such baubles are for babies or for boobies—
A dozen Kohinoors would leave me cold.
Jewels are something I would never bawl for;
To me they’re merely bits of colored rocks.
But one thing, Ed, I simply have to fall for—
A dozen virgin golf balls in a box.
“CONSULT HARRY VARDON.”
DEAR MR. VARDON: We cannot supply a photograph of our chief golfing
fault, but perhaps we can make it clear to you. Our great trouble is
splitting our psyche; we seem not to be able to give an undivided
soul to the ball. Just as we are ready to shoot, something of less
importance—immortality, the war, or the cost of living—comes to mind,
and the result, as often as not, is a top. Any little suggestion will be
appreciated by your constant reader and admirer.
* * * * *
Among those recently bitten by the golf bug is Old Bill Byrne, and he is
making, as he was bound to make, interesting discoveries. “A man isn’t a
good player,” sezzee, “until he can make his drive sound like the wind
storm in ‘Way Down East.’”
* * * * *
Golf is being made safe for democracy, as items like the following
indicate:
ON THE LINKS OF THE GARFIELD TOWN AND COUNTRY CLUB.
Sir: Last Sunday our Beau Brummel appeared in the latest golfing costume,
cutaway, striped trousers and straw hat. And he played.
M. A. C.
* * * * *
Evans, Edwards, Hutchison, and MacDonald are to play over George Ade’s
golf course, for the Red Cross; and it may encourage these excellent
players to learn that Messrs. Ade, McCutcheon, Atkinson, and Ye Ed all
pitched to the flag on the short hole one day. There was, unfortunately,
no gallery.
* * * * *
When we wrote: “None of the golfers were wearing derby hats,” we knew we
should start someone. “None are” is good English, and once out of perhaps
fifty times we prefer it to “None is.”
FOGGY.
“The ball is played well back off the right toe,”—the St. Andrews
run-up is under discussion,—“and the hands are held well in front. This
naturally tips the face of the mashie forward, reducing the loft.” Is
there any other reason for holding the hands forward except to reduce
the loft? If not, why not use midiron or cleek? There is, of course, a
reason, but it is not mentioned. We can account for the perfect opacity
of golf writers only on the classic theory that language was invented to
conceal thought.
* * * * *
Steel shafts are mentioned, since hickory is temporarily scarce; and
steel shafts will do as well as wood or concrete for the dub, just as a
steel fish rod serves the ignoble purpose of the impaler of worms.
* * * * *
Readers who attach significance to what is termed the fitness of things
will be enthralled to learn that Charles E. Ball has been re-elected
president of the Tampa Golf Club.
* * * * *
A standard of amateurism is needed in art, says Max Eastman. “We
cherish that standard in sport, where it does very little good and
quite an amount of harm. It is idealism of a kind, but it is misplaced
idealism.” We must agree with Max; indeed, any man whose first name is
Max is more than likely to be right. There is Max Beerbohm for one, and
Max—— But we digress, as Ulysses remarked when his ship was blown nine
points to leeward. What we started to say was, there are two kinds of
golfers—gentlemen and gents. The former might be admitted to national
tournaments, the latter barred. You know the golfing gent. He has spoiled
more than one afternoon for you.
LIFE’S LITTLE MIDIRONIES.
To aim at the southern hemisphere of the ball, and then hit it above the
equator.
_You may break, you may shatter the state if you will,_
_But the golfer who won it will gab of it still._
Putting, Mashie and Midiron.
PUTTING.
I.
Putting is probably the favorite feature of indoor golf, but very few
persons who are practising it have any notion of what they are about.
Statistics, especially those that are known as reliable (as George
Birmingham says), show that of eighty-six longish putts, forty-one go to
the right of the hole and thirty-nine to the left; the remaining six,
by great good fortune, fall into the cup. The fortunate play is always
heartily congratulated.
Champ or dub, pro or amateur, hardly any one putts accurately seven days
in the week. For that reason a great mystery is made about it. It is said
that putting, the simplest and most important part of the game, cannot
be taught, and the statement is true to this extent, that a man cannot
teach something that he hasn’t reasoned out and come to understand.
Professional coachers scoff at “book learning” (that is, those who
haven’t written books on the game); but all of consequence that is known
in this world was learned from books. You don’t really know a thing until
you have taken it apart and linked it together again. You can do this
with any stroke in golf. And your stroke is as strong as its weakest link.
You remember that glorious Thursday (shall you or your friends ever
forget it?) when you were putting in wonderful form; you holed a
number of long ones and laid the others dead. But Friday! If the hole
had been big enough to bury a dog in you would have missed it. Now, a
happy-go-lucky method that embraces such a variation is no method at all.
The difference between your Thursdays and Fridays should be a matter of
inches, not a matter of feet. What you require is a method of taking the
putter back and bringing it forward, that shall, on your bad days, keep
the ball somewhere near the line. Your putt must be as nearly as possible
automatic, not temperamental. If this cannot be taught the fault is with
the instructor.
When you drive from the tee for a distant flag, it doesn’t matter if you
are ten feet off the line, nor need your second shot give you too much
concern. When you come to pitch or run up to the green the margin of
error shrinks. Once on the green it disappears; accuracy is now demanded.
Yet on every green one sees putts of a few inches fluffed, a putt of two
feet is studied with great care, while a six foot putt is gone about as
gravely as an operation for appendicitis, and much less expeditiously.
II.
Place the ball twelve inches from the hole. This putt has been missed,
although I cannot understand how—unless the player was stricken with
paralysis at the moment of moving his club, or was intoxicated, and,
seeing two balls, played the wrong one. There are, of course, persons
with so poor an eye that, when they try to throw coal into a furnace,
they strike the outside of the furnace two inches below the fuel door.
But paralytics, heavy drinkers, and cross-eyed persons will never become
accurate putters, so we may dismiss them from consideration; we may also
dismiss the twelve-inch putt as unmissable. Now place the ball two feet
from the hole. This putt can be foozled, and the easiest way to achieve
that absurdity is to putt with the arms. Many players putt with the arms,
perfectly still, and putt very well—on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
On the alternate days they are what is called off their game, and in such
cases it is usual to ascribe the unhappy conditions to an inscrutable
providence and not to a fault in the method of taking back the club. It
is agreed, I assume, that the putter should be taken straight back on the
line of the hole, and it is difficult to do this with the arms, stiff or
relaxed, as half an inch on either side of the line means inaccuracy. A
man might learn to do this with practising constantly for ten years. But
then he would have to spend fifteen years learning to bring the putter
back in the same line, which is even more difficult. One can take a flat
swing with the club around his right leg and run the ball to the hole—but
only on Tuesday, Thursday or Saturday; and he might have to play a match
on Friday.
There is no accounting for the tastes of golfers, and it may be that
for many of them the very uncertainty in erratic putting may be one of
the game’s attractions. Those persons are advised to putt with their
arms, and if a wider margin of error is desired it can be obtained by
letting the right hand turn over when the ball is tapped. If an even more
brilliant result is wished for, the player may stand well back from the
ball, with legs spread wide. In this attitude he can miss the rim of a
cistern.
III.
Man’s arms have always been of great service to him. In the arboreal age
they helped him swing from tree to tree. Later they were useful for
transporting Christmas bundles, embracing the lady of his choice, making
political speeches, and so on. But man’s arms were never designed for
putting; this is work for the wrists. These are well-oiled hinges, easily
controlled; they can be trained to work almost automatically; they can
brush a ball a few inches or they can flick it a hundred yards; they can
caress or smite. Even in the long drive it is the turn of the wrists that
puts the pace on the ball. When professional coaches play they play with
the wrists; when they instruct the novice they spend their time telling
him how to wave his arms. There are a few exceptions.
Let us return to the ball, as the novelist “returns to his story.” We
left it two feet from the hole. To propel it so that it will strike the
back of the cup it is necessary to take the putter straight back. Stand
as close to the ball as the lie of the putter allows. Face as you please;
it pleases me to face along a line at an angle of forty-five degrees.
Having soled the club, anchor your elbows to your body, and don’t weigh
anchor for an instant. You can take the club back along the extension of
the imaginary line between the ball and the hole by bending, not turning,
the wrists, but there is lack of freedom. You can also take it back by
turning the left wrist inward, as in the full iron shot, but the clubhead
will leave the line. A third way remains—to violate one of the best
rules of golf and turn the left wrist outward. The turn must be decided
and it suffices to lift the putter and keep it on the line. Make the turn
slowly and let the clubhead swing forward smoothly.
Concerning the putt of greater length than three or four feet, I am not
disposed to be dogmatic or ride a theory to death; besides, I should
inevitably collide with that nebular hypothesis of golf known as “the
feel of the club.” But for a yard putt I don’t care how the club feels if
I can keep the ball on a straight line to the hole. O’Neill refuses to
subscribe entirely to my method. He flatters me by saying I can putt any
fashion. Even if this were true, which it is not, I can putt best in the
way indicated.
IV.
Don’t look at the ball! Nothing is more fatal to consistent accurate
putting than the habit of looking at the ball. The fact that many persons
who do look at it putt very well, and often brilliantly, merely proves
that man is a patient and persistent animal, and can overcome almost any
obstacle. I am aware that “keeping the eye on the ball” is regarded as
a virtue; the agreement on this point is pathetic. But I have found in
jogging through this world, that oftentimes a piece of advice works very
well if it is turned upside down. I never could see any good reason for
falling in a trance over a ball before putting it, and I suspect that
this is one of the theories which work well when reversed.
To draw, freehand, a straight line from A to B do you look at A? No,
you look at B. Does a billiard player look at the cue ball when making
a shot? No: having taken his “stance” and made his calculations, he
fixes his eye on the object ball. Billiards is played with the wrists,
and the cue is taken back automatically, as a putter should be; and so
you will never master the art of putting until you swing your club as
unconsciously as you move your arm in tossing nuts to a squirrel, or
pitching a quoit or doing a number of other things of a similar nature.
Looking _up from_ the ball is fatal; your head moves. Looking _at_ the
hole is not; your head remains still. Take your line carefully and
as deliberately as you please, and, having soled your club, fix your
attention on the hole, and _don’t look back at the ball_.
V.
For the benefit of golfiacs who depend exclusively on this department for
hope and inspiration we are “able to say” that poor putting is due, in
great measure, to the foolish notion that “perfect golf” allows two putts
to the green. A putt from any part of the green that does not sink is an
unsuccessful putt, and no amount of self-delusion can make it otherwise.
Hardly anybody tries to hole a long putt; the player is satisfied with
“laying it dead”; if it stops within two feet of the hole he is tickled
pink, and his companions congratulate him, saying, “Very good, Eddie!
That’s laying ’em up!” He ought to know—and we take pleasure in telling
him—that the only good putt is the putt that sinks, and that he will
never, except by accident, sink a long putt if he continues to cherish
the delusion that “laying ’em dead” is good putting.
In a word, an “approach” putt that fails to drop is really a re-proach.
The word approach should be eliminated from the game and pin or hole
substituted.
THE MASHIE.
I.
The difference between a putter and a mashie is that the face of one
is straight and the face of the other is laid back. For short pitches
you take the mashie back in the same way that you move the putter, and
with a mere turn of the wrist you “chip” the ball toward the hole. It
is assumed that tall grass or rough turf lies between, for no sensible
person will run up over smooth turf with a mashie when he can use a
midiron or cleek—unless he has deluded himself for years with the
notion that the difference between one club and another is more than a
difference of weight and loft. The over-use of the mashie is generally
due to cowardice; the lofted face promises to get the ball up, and it
frequently does.
This timidity is due to the moss-grown tradition that it is essential to
“keep your eye on the ball.” Now when a man can repeatedly top a ball
that he is looking steadily at, it ought eventually to dawn on him, as it
dawned on me, that looking at the ball is one of the causes of topping.
I don’t recall ever having topped a croquet ball, or ever having given a
thought to the swing of the mallet. Having taken aim, one looks at the
wicket and strikes the ball; that’s all there is to it. So in golf. When
you want distance you look at the ball, because you are going to “soak”
it; but when direction or delicacy of stroke are wanted, you look at the
hole, or at that spot on the green where you design to drop the ball.
You stand very “open,” with your right foot well advanced and your right
elbow anchored to your hip; you let the club swing on the hinge of your
wrists—straight back and straight forward—and when you reach the ball you
flick it sharply or gently, as the distance may require. A child that
never pitched ball can do this. A man who has devoted years to glaring at
the ball will have some difficulty at first, because perfect relaxation
is possible only when your attention is on the flag.
II.
For straightaway work (and that is all that need concern the
inexperienced player) the mashie can do nothing that the midiron cannot
do, except to put the ball higher in the air and more at the mercy of the
wind. Yet, when the average golfer gets within a hundred and fifty yards
of a green out comes his mashie, and one of two things happens: if the
ball is half topped it goes to perdition; if it is hit clean it drops
short of the green. A lower flying ball would have reached the green or
passed it. But “many are called and few get up.”
Of ten players, nine overswing with all the irons, and especially with
the mashie. Now, a mashie, like a cheap piano, cannot be forced by the
average player without disastrous results. A very skilful player can
force a club in an emergency, but if he were to force it at all times he
would soon cease to be a very skilful player. I know of no holes that
call for a long shot with a mashie. If you find yourself one hundred and
fifty or more yards from a green, and the ball has to be dropped dead,
that is both your misfortune and your fault; your previous shots were
short.
If, in the back-swing, your mashie passes the perpendicular, and your
wrists are carried higher than your equator, you are forcing the stroke.
Even if you are in the predicament referred to, and have to have a long
ball, it is better to do the forcing with your wrists and forearms than
to wrap the club around your neck. As to where you should look while
executing the shot, I find that the pleasantest results are obtained by
letting the eyes follow the ball. You don’t lift your head or shoulders
to do this; you merely roll your head, and your eyes follow the entire
flight of the ball. Nothing is gained, and something is risked, by
staring at the ground after the bird has flown.
THE MIDIRON.
Before continuing these illuminating remarks on golf, it might be well
to echo the warning of Andrew Lang in an introduction to an edition
of Walton’s Angler. “If there are any facts in this book,” he said in
effect, “they got in by accident.” This being understood, we may proceed
to consider that indispensable tool, the midiron.
The most satisfying shot in golf would be the drive, if you drove well
every day; but all the circumstances of this stroke are not always
within your control; on the off days driving is something that, since it
must be done, ’twere well it were done quickly. But the short shot with
the iron, up to, say, seventy-five yards, is, next to putting (which is
as simple as beanbag), the easiest thing to do imaginable. You need to
keep but two things in mind: first, you must lay the right elbow against
the side and take the club back with the wrists and forearms; second, you
must finish the stroke with the knuckles of the right hand underneath.
This in itself insures the clubhead being carried through on the line.
When this has become automatic you may add the crowning touch—finishing
with the clubhead very low, the blade laid flat, and your arms perfectly
straight and pointed at the flag.
Don’t look at the ground after the ball is gone. Let everything follow
it,—club, arms, eyes and body. A very good plan is to practise the shot
with eyes on the flag. When you discover that you can hit a ball without
looking at it you will have no trouble in looking at it when the occasion
requires.
And this, in a word, is what I have been driving at, that you cannot
play golf easily, gracefully and accurately until you have lost all fear
of the ball and have got rid of the notion that keeping your eye on it
is the fundamental principle of the game. Almost any professional will
tell you that it is not looking at the ball that enables you to drive two
hundred yards; it is keeping your shoulders in one plane throughout the
stroke.
A LINE-O’-GOWF OR TWO
_Hew to the Line, let the divots fall where they may._
THE PLEASURES OF HOPE.
Hope springs eternal in the human jar;
Man never is, but always to be par.
* * * * *
“Let firmness combined with ease be your motto,” advises George O’Neil.
Or, as Horace suggested to Maecenas, on the links of Ancient Rome, “Otium
cum dignitate.”
* * * * *
Woman’s place, as Socrates said, is in the home. One of her appeared on a
public golf course yesterday in so transparent a skirt that four members
of a foursome topped their approach shots, and one of them left his ball
on the green.
* * * * *
Golf would be a perfect game if it were not for the golf gabble; and
this must be accepted as inevitable. If a person who is conscious of the
absurdity of golf gabble is unable to quit it, how hopeless is the case
of the unconscious gabbler.
Here’s an example of it: We bring off a good iron shot, and instead of
ascribing it (silently) to chance or happy circumstance, we must announce
to our companion that at last we have solved the secret of the iron shot.
And so we gabble our way around the course, till the sound of our own
voice is wearisome to our own ears.
It’s a Scotch game. We borrowed it from the Scotch, but we added the
gabble.
* * * * *
Olds Grant Rice and Bill Hammond of the N. Y. Mail and Sun respectively
came out and golfed with ye Scribe. Grant is a regular player, but Bill
is kind of irregular.
* * * * *
The Saturday Review says that the fascination of golf is understandable,
but “the wicked hate of the non-player is less easy to grasp.” Nobody
objects to the game itself; it is the incessant gabble about it that
bores one to tears. Tie a non-player to a bench in the locker room of any
golf club and he would go mad within the hour.
Golf is a gabby game because it is so stuffed with ifs—“if I hadn’t
hooked,” “if I hadn’t looked up,” “if the ball hadn’t hit the bunker,”
etc. And it is all a great waste of breath, nobody is interested in your
“ifs,” not even the man you are playing with.
* * * * *
Hon. Brand Whitlock, staff correspondent for the _Line_ at Brussels,
advises us that there is a good golf course there, and that the Flemish
caddies touch their caps politely and do not seek to draw players into
intimate and animated conversation.
* * * * *
In Wilmette, we gather, the goats are those who play golf on Sunday, and
the sheep are those who go to church. This classification is flattering
to neither flock.
* * * * *
Curious golfers who may follow the learned arguments on “what constitutes
a good hole” must conclude that the purpose of the architects is not to
make the game easy for democracy. Par figures mean nothing to the average
player; they are for the few gifted beings who participate in national
tournaments. As courses are now laid out, there is a “short way to the
green,” calling at the outset for a carry of, say, 190 yards. The next
thing will be to station a policeman at the bunker, to chase off the
course a player so unlucky as not to carry the hazard.
* * * * *
“Golf is the pastime of small men with large incomes, who are too old to
play tennis and too dull to talk to women.”—WALTER PRITCHARD EATON.
It is also the pastime of large men with small incomes, who vary golf
with tennis, and who are too busy to hang around a samovar discoursing
the drayma.
To be entirely fair to Mr. Eaton (although one is under no compulsion to
be fair to a dramatic critic), he put the sniffy remarks about golf into
the mouth of one of his short-story characters. Tennis players should
not scorn Golf. We have discovered that playing golf improves our tennis
game at least fifty percent. Golf compels deliberation in striking; and
waiting for a tennis ball, instead of leaping at it, is the secrecy of
accuracy; not to mention the turn of wrist when the racquet (or golf
ball) is taken back. This is what keeps the tennis ball out of the net
and the golf ball out of the rough.
* * * * *
Of course you know that Lady Brassie is a champion golf player in England.
* * * * *
A golfer in Rockland, Me., has a cat which chases the ball and sits by
it until the player arrives. This is interesting chiefly as being the
solitary reason for a cat’s existence.
* * * * *
“Each caddy should be at his ball by the time the player arrives.”—Indian
Hill note.
But what happens is: “Hurry up, kid! I’ve found the ball.”
ON THE STYXVILLE GOLF LINKS.
“Bozzy,” chuckled Dr. Samuel Johnson, “you were but a novice at the game.”
The amiable lexicographer teed off on the links of the Styxville Golf
Club and he and Boswell, his caddie, leisurely followed the ball.
“Yes, Bozzy,” continued Dr. Johnson, “I used to think you the most
enterprising press agent that ever tooted a horn, but when I compare your
work with the twentieth century article I am convinced that you were the
merest alphabetarian.”
“I put down everything that happened,” said Boswell, humbly.
“Pooh, pooh! A press agent who publishes only what has happened would
starve to death these days. But I have you even on that count. How about
the time I lost my pantaloons and was too late at the Cheshire Cheese.
Not a word about it in your celebrated ‘Life of Johnson.’ By the way,
what became of the ball? Did you keep your eye on it?”
Boswell located the gutta percha and remarked that he considered the
loss of his patron’s unmentionables too trivial an item for a dignified
biography.
“Sir,” cried Dr. Johnson, relapsing into his ancient stilted manner, “you
are an unconscionable blockhead. When, not long ago Booth Tarkington lost
his trousers a great ado was made by the press agent and the papers
were full of it. ’Twas not half so good a tale as mine. You might have
scribbled a whole chapter about it. Dick Steele made an excellent jest on
the matter and Noll Goldsmith a set of verses, Davy Garrick gagged his
lines with it and put the house in an uproar. Give me the cleek.”
Leaning on the club he gazed at his abashed biographer with a twinkling
eye.
“Nay, Bozzy, you were a very good press agent for our day, but you would
not stand much show if you were on earth to-day. Tarkington wouldn’t keep
you a week. You couldn’t caddie five minutes for Irving Bacheller or Ham
Garland, or Hop Smith, or any other modern man of letters. Boz, you’re a
back number.”
* * * * *
Golfers, especially those addicted to slicing, will approve a plan to
pasture sheep in the rough and on the crest of bunkers. A well cropped
rough will take much of the gloom out of their zigzag operations.
GOLF AND GRUEL.
Why are golf matches referred to as “gruelling contests?”
—IGNORAMUS.
Golf and gruel are both Scotch, and as inseparably associated as kilts
and bagpipes.
THE LAY OF THE LAST GOLFER.
Come, Winter, come, and free me from the thrall
Of Golf! Bestrew the lureful links with snow:
For they that are condemned to chase the ball
Are hopeless as the Person with the Hoe.
Midsummer form is gone, nor all my play
Can win it back to cancel half a stroke;
The driver’s off, the brassie’s had its day,
The mashie’s blown, my putting is a joke.
And yet I chase the ball around the lot
(He needs must whom the golfing devil drives),
Hoping I may—but knowing well I’ll not—
Pull off a brilliant string of fours and fives.
Sound, Winter, then, “the trumpets of the sky,”
Lock up the links and throw away the key;
Else, like a self-doomed Sisyphus, must I
Pursue this foolish game from tee to tee.
WHY INDEED?
Short colloquy on a street car:
“Why the hell don’t you go to war instead of carrying golf clubs?”
“Why the hell don’t you go to war yourself?”
* * * * *
A Philadelphia golfer gets on the First Page for playing 144 holes of
golf in one day. But this is by no means a record. It was tied by Slason
Thompson of Old Elm, who was far from considering it a remarkable feat.
It would be much more noteworthy if the Philadelphia person should eat
144 pies between sun-up and sun-down.
WINTER GOLF.
“All the benefits of outdoors winter golf in the tropics, at the Indoor
Golf School.”—AD.
Within the grimy Loop’s environs,
The rubber pill may be addressed,
A man may swing his golfing irons,
And let his fancy do the rest.
The murmur in the street below,
The elevated’s boom and roar,
Will sound—if fancy have it so—
Like surf upon a tropic shore.
The air within the driving stall
Does not suggest a Stilton cheese,
To one whose mind is on the ball
’Tis fragrant as a tropic breeze.
We, upon whom the spell is laid,
For tropic things care not a whoop,
Imagination’s artful aid
Will bring the tropics to the Loop.
The sun, the breeze, the fields, the rest—
Of them let railway folders sing.
We know, who are by golf obsessed,
The Pill’s the thing! the Pill’s the thing.
* * * * *
“Pairfect,” said Mr. Joe MacMorran, when we indulged him in the pleasure
of watching us swing a golf club. “The swing is pairfect. All ye need
is control.” Or, as the distinguished Kansan said of hell and western
Kansas, all that either place needs is water and good society.
* * * * *
During a golf match at Greenwich this week an approach by Vardon was
so strong that the ball passed the green and hit a lady on the bounce,
recoiling to the flag. “Some back spin!” cried another spectator.
THE PROPER SPIRIT.
Sir: I am resolved to essay the game of golf again after having yielded
to discouragement for a season. But now I am fired by a new ambition.
Reason has taught me that the greater the number of swats I can get
at the pill the more I get for my money. This attribute of mind will
enable me to preserve an even temper and measurably reduce (or reduce
measurably) my output of rude language. I shall welcome on the bunkers
or elsewhere the theory that I am better off where I am than where I’m
going next. If I can get a hundred wallops in a round I get more fun and
exercise than my friend who finishes in eighty, and is chesty about it.
MIKE.
* * * * *
“Have we too many golf clubs?” inquires the valued Post. It has always
seemed so to us. We usually get around with a driver and a putter—one
drive to the green and one putt to the hole.
OUR VILLAGE.
A well worn golf pencil was picked up by your correspondent. What scores
it could tell of.
Brand Whitlock writes from St. Andrews that he had a fine time on the
most famous links in the world, he especially enjoying the Scotch of the
caddies.
In the great fourth-estate golf tournament, Old Pop Wells and Ye Ed
qualified as captains of canal boats. We out-cussed Pop on the first
round, but he more than evened things up on the second, we being two down
at the end.
Ye scribe shot a game of golf with Chick Evans, who allowed that our
clubs, bag, shoes, and hat are all o.k., and that all we need is a little
skill.
Many are complaining that the golf season is at a conclusion; but, as the
native at Lake George said, Hell, did you think it was going to be summer
all the time?
The frost is on the niblick and the putter’s in the shock. When a man has
to play in a couple of undershirts, flannel shirt, sweater, paper vest,
and a mackinaw coat, it is time to hang up the fiddle and the bow, for as
a fellow said, hownl can you play if you can’t follow through?
Ed Beck and Homer Chandler, accompanied occasionally by their wives, are
motoring through the effete east, tearing up the golf courses en route.
* * * * *
Mr. Jack Hoag, for whose golfic opinions we entertain unmitigated
respect, writes that “to hit a ball with a wooden club with the wrists
loose is to have a feeling that the club itself is stopped when the ball
is hit.” Therefore he advises tightening the grip at the impact. It pains
us to differ with Mr. Hoag. A golf ball opposes to the clubhead hardly
more resistance than a puff ball, as two minutes experimenting will show.
Sounder advice, we think, is this: grip loosely or grip tightly, but
never change throughout the stroke.
* * * * *
The mother of Hamilton Post, the golfer, was a Miss Stump; the wedding
took place in Garrett Woods’ chapel, and the clergyman was Dr. Bockwood.
Pass the matches.
FIRST AID TO THE GOLF DUB.
A prominent dub said to us one day: “I’ve taken a good many lessons, and
every line of instruction I’ve received sounds perfectly foolish.”
Obviously, the instruction is at fault, for, next to rolling off a log,
there is nothing easier than driving a ball with, say, a midiron.
Take a box of balls and an iron, and station yourself a short distance
from a putting green. Lay the club on the ground; you won’t need it for
ten minutes or so. Now, with your right hand pitch the balls, one by
one, at the flag just as you would pitch an indoor baseball, or throw a
bowling ball down an alley—underhand. The only difference between this
motion and the golf stroke is that in the bowling “address” you face the
pins, whereas in golf your left side is toward the pin. Hence the turn of
the body.
After you have chucked the dozen balls, you will discover, if you are not
utterly imbecile, two or three things: you can’t chuck the ball underhand
when your right hand is shoulder high; the arm must come down first; your
body has come part way round and your left hip has gone forward; and, of
chief importance, the knuckles of your hand are underneath when the ball
is dispatched.
Precisely the same motions are gone through with when you use the
midiron. If, after half an hour’s practice, with or without the club, you
can’t acquire the knack, you had better quit. You are hopeless.
We have a few remarks to make about the iron shots.
The two things sought for are distance and direction. Concerning the
first we have nothing at present to offer; our conclusions have not yet
jelled.
Direction is a simpler matter. Accuracy in approaching and good direction
in longer shots may be acquired by the simple expedient of relaxing
the grip of the right hand after the ball is struck—relaxing it, not
slightly, but completely; the fingers barely retaining a hold on the
club. Most duffers pull or drag all their iron shots away to the left of
the flag; letting go with the right hand will remedy this. The left hand,
the grip of which is constant throughout the stroke, goes merrily on its
way, uncrumpled, unhampered and unchecked.
* * * * *
One can, at will, pull or slice a golf ball around a bunker or other
obstruction, and we should think it possible to rifle a cannon in such a
way that a round shell could be shot around a corner.
* * * * *
State convicts are to be employed on the public roads of Illinois. This
will be good for the roads, and as good as golf for the convicts, as the
work will “take them out in the open air.” And it is a more pleasant
sight to watch a man mending a road than to watch a dub golfer ruining
the turf of a fairgreen.
* * * * *
Cannery! Special delivery! “Playing superlative golf.”
* * * * *
The star player of Greenwich Golf Club is Mr. Topping, who may be related
to F. Dub, whose name we saw once in an account of a golf match.
* * * * *
When, on a Saturday you have bought a golf club or tennis racket in a
department store, has it occurred to you that the clerk who sold you the
things would like to be setting forth that afternoon, like yourself, for
a turn on the links, or in the park? It has? Then you are more thoughtful
than some people.
SUNDAY GOLF.
There is Sunday golf at Onwentsia now, in the afternoon; the forenoon,
which is the better half of the day, is set apart for church-going. A
considerable time ago a well known pastor announced that if the members
of a certain golf club would not come to the gospel he would take the
gospel to the golfers, but, so far as we remember, no services were held
at the home tee. “The better the day, the better the deed,” does not
hold true of golf. As a friend jingles it—
“O, wad some power
The giftie gie us
To ken the days
The Lord be wie us!”
THE GAME IN STAGELAND.
Mr. Collins, the dramatic reviewer of the Chicago Evening Post, has
recently taken up the r. and a. g.; consequently his critical eye is
cast upon characters in plays who are introduced in golfing regalia. He
reports to us two interesting discoveries to date. In “Parlor, Bedroom,
and Bath,” the contents of the golf bag consist of three brassies and
four putters, and in “Good Bye, Boys,” the bag holds two drivers and a
midiron. It is scarcely necessary to say that the realistic Mr. Belasco
is not connected with either production.
* * * * *
Discovered again, the meanest man. Playing in a game that called for a
penny a stroke, the pot to go to the Red Cross, he lifted when he pitched
into a bunker, and conceded the hole.
FIRST AID.
A Goop writes: “What is good for sclaffing?”
(Reply: Any smooth piece of turf. Do not attempt to sclaff in tall
grass, as the club might break on a concealed stone.)
Sherlock writes: “I look at the ball, but I top it just the same. What do
you make of that, Watson?”
(Reply: Very likely you look at the ball with your left eye, instead of
your right. The right eye, being farther from the ball, can see farther
under it. The cleanest hitter we know has a left eye of glass.)
Moron writes: “I am a chronic slicer; so desperate is my disease, I
have to allow for the slice on every shot, even in practice swings. Can
anything be done?”
(Reply: Cut out meats, eat plenty of green vegetables, and take long
walks in the open air—which is really the most convenient place for long
walks. Report to us again in three years.)
Fluff writes: “With a strong wind blowing from east to west, should I
slice or pull?”
(Reply: You neglect to say whether you are going north or south. If you
are going south, pray give our regards to the bunch at Belleair.)
* * * * *
A valued reader, Mr. D. Precox, writes us that, after testing a
suggestion we advanced in March, he perfectly agrees that topping is
invited by regarding the ball with the left eye, but discouraged by
regarding it with the right. “Unfortunately,” he communicates, “my
left eye is not of glass, like your cleanest hitter’s, nor can I break
it of the habit of looking at the ball. In these critical circumstances
what would you advise?” We can only refer Mr. Precox to the best of
authorities. If his left eye offends him, let him pluck it out. No
sacrifice is too great. What is an eye more or less when a perfect pitch
to the pin is demanded?
BULWER LYTTON ON GOLF.
In hands of golfing men entirely great
The swing is mightier than the club.
* * * * *
“I ask your indulgence, gentlemen,” said the new President of the U.
S. G. A., “if I make any mistakes in my more or less ignorance of
parliamentary procedure.” Our advice to President Perrin is that he take
a niblick when he gets into trouble. There is nothing better for quelling
a cantankerous delegate.
THE PENDULUM PUTT.
As we find the theories of others are more diverting than our own,
which are merely scientific, we shall but seldom intrude an opinion,
and then only for the purpose of adding to the general confusion. Thus
we may take this occasion to record that the so-called Pendulum Putt
is an overpraised institution. Any man, or almost any man, may become
a grandfather, but no man can be grandfather’s clock; a tall clock
has no nerves and no muscles, and it lives a quiet, regular life. The
Pendulum Putt is not more inevitable than another. In our laboratory
experiments we have putted in every language, including the Scandinavian
and Profane, and have found that the hole can be missed as easily by one
method as by another. The least attractive style is that which requires a
consideration of their navels (known in California as “sunkist navels”),
and a strict adherence of the putter blade to the line o’ flight. The
method we finally adopted does not require that the putter be taken back
or brought forward on any invariable, ineluctable line; any line, within
reason, will do. That decided on, putting ceased to be as troublesome as
a hair shirt, and we now approach the green sustained and soothed by an
unfaltering trust, instead of like the quarry-slave at night, scourged to
his dungeon.
* * * * *
Mr. Chick Evans drove two or three dozen golf balls into the west wind
once for our special delectation, and golf dubs will be glad to learn
that after analyzing Mr. Chick’s stroke we concluded that the great
secret of golf and the only secret, is rhythm. Mr. Chick’s rhythm is
perfect. The morning stars have nothing on him.
ON THE FIRING LINE.
At thought of what may hap to-day
I’m not disturbed a bit;
And who may triumph in the fray
Perplexes me no whit.
The doings in Convention hall
Afford me no concern;
I do not speculate at all
On how the tide will turn.
I ask not who may hit or miss,
Who perish, who survive:
The thing that bothers me is this—
_Why did I hook that drive?_
GOLFING WISDOM FROM THE ANCIENTS.
Where there’s a will there’s no sway.
SIMPLIFIED SPORT.
Sir: A golfing friend of mine was telling a friend, not a golfer, how
difficult it was to play over the ditch on our course. The party of the
second part said, “Why don’t they fill up the ditch?”
A. H. R.
Waterloo, Ia.
(Your party of the second part is evidently related to the old lady who,
watching a tennis game, asks, “Why don’t they take down the net?”)
* * * * *
The new professional at our club is Mr. Al Falfa, winner of last year’s
open, when he pitched a ton of hay in six forks under par. Mr. Falfa
uses the closed stance in pitching, as he believes it facilitates the
follow-through. In hoeing, however, he inclines to a square stance,
the feet being close together. As adviser to the greens committee, he
advocates dandelions and dock as being superior to spinach. As a majority
of our club is going in for gardening, the new pro’s teaching time is
already filled.
QUAD ERAT DEMONSTRANDUM.
At Old Elm last fall we were knocking around in a foursome, one member of
which was a visitor from the east. We paired with him, but he was unaware
of the singular honor accorded him. After apologizing for missing a short
putt, he confided to us that his putting had been ruined by his following
the advice of a writer in some golf magazine, who advocated looking
at the hole instead of the ball. “If ever I meet that chap,” said he,
“I’ll take a niblick to him.” As we dislike violent scenes, we did not
enlighten the gentleman.
Quite otherwise the case of Old Al Dennis of Skokie, whom we persuaded to
give the theory a trial. For several seasons he has looked at the hole
while putting, and is wholly satisfied with the result. Why wake him up?
Of 365 persons who use the expression “the psychology of golf,” 365 know
nothing of psychology, and 273 can spell the word. As it happens, one of
our friends is a distinguished psychologist and something of a golfer,
and our conversations have been more or less illuminating. We may report
some of them in this incomparable department of uplift.
* * * * *
Mr. Punch gives us a picture of a golfer subduing a burglar with a cleek,
and Mr. Fox shows us a golfer pitching coals into his furnace with a
mashie. So perhaps the missus will admit that the game is not an utter
waste of time.
* * * * *
Mr. Varden’s game is a drive, a mashie, and a couple of putts. Thanks
to temperament and years of practice, he has concentration and perfect
control of his muscles. Self-control is nearly all of golf, and few
people play seventies because few people possess self-control.
We do not envy the man with the vegetable temperament. The man we envy
is the man with the nervous temperament, who has acquired control of
himself. He may not live so long as the vegetable person, but while he is
living he is living.
* * * * *
Considerable golfer, Mr. Ouimet. Or is it pronounced Ouimet?
* * * * *
About this “perfect golf” or “faultless golf” that figures so frequently
in the accounts of matches. It isn’t. For if a par four, allowing
two putts, is perfect golf, one under par would be “more perfect.”
One under par—one putt on each green—would be perfect golf, and this
is accomplished by good players frequently and by ordinary players
occasionally.
* * * * *
They have been playing golf at Bayside for the Mary Garden cup. Another
clever substitute for losing one’s jewels.
* * * * *
Mr. Darwin, who knows how to play golf as well as how to write about
it, has pleasantly but plainly indicated that there is a difference
between a real golf course and the usual links to be found hereabouts.
Any course on which a player can slice or hook badly without penalty is
fit only for lady golfers or for males who are content to slop around in
ninety-something with nothing worthier in view than winning a “syndicate”
from two or three other dubbers.
* * * * *
Anybody can drive a golf ball a considerable distance, but not every one
can drive in a straight line. The man who CAN do it should be rewarded
with a good lie for his second. The man who can’t should experience
the terrors of the pit and the jungle. After a season of continuous
punishment he may do one of two things—quit the game, or learn how to
play it.
* * * * *
The dear old _Saturday Review_ has discovered, to its own satisfaction,
why Vardon and Ray were beaten by Ouimet. The concentrated will power
of the gallery did it, and the idea, says the S. R., “is based upon the
latest teachings of psychology.” “Englishmen,” it adds, “are seldom at
their best when playing games in America.”
Can you—as Baucis inquired of Philemon—beat it? Apparently the denser
atmosphere of the British Isles is a non-conductor of psychological
force; otherwise, Mr. McLoughlin could not have brought home the Davis
Cup, and Heinrich Schmidt could not have held Harold Hilton until the
last gun was fired.
* * * * *
Women are queer. They can’t see the difference between playing eighteen
holes of golf and digging eighteen shrub holes in a garden.
* * * * *
Al Seckel is our notion of the Height of Affluence. His valet caddies for
him.
* * * * *
Another cousin of Young Grimes, reports D. M. V., refers to a w. k. golf
implement as a Skenecaddy putter.
* * * * *
Entrants for the Printers’ Golf tournament were requested to “hole all
puts and replace all pivots.” A proofroom foozle.
THE GOLFER’S PRIMER
I.
See the La-dy on the tee. What is she do-ing?
She is writ-ing down her score, which was on-ly nine for that hole.
Why does she not move on? Some men are wait-ing to play.
She will e-vent-u-al-ly. But first she must re-turn to the edge of the
green and pick up her bag.
Why does she not lay the bag on the far side of the green, so as not to
de-lay the game?
Be-cause if she did that she would not be a la-dy golf-er.
II.
See the man on the tee. What is he wait-ing for?
He is wait-ing for the con-vers-a-tion to cease.
Oh, yes. But ever-y one is qui-et now. Why does he not hit the ball?
Some one must be breath-ing heav-i-ly. There! Ever-y one is now hold-ing
his breath.
Oh, he has hit the ball, but he has knocked it on-ly a lit-tle way. What
is he so sore a-bout?
A rob-in chirped just as he raised his club, and it spoiled his drive. If
he could catch that bird you bet he would wring its neck.
III.
See the man. He is danc-ing up and down. What is the mat-ter?
The play-er be-hind him drove in-to him and beaned him with the ball.
Does that hap-pen ver-y oft-en?
Oh, ver-y.
Here comes the man be-hind. Is he go-ing to a-pol-o-gize?
It is cus-tom-ary.
What will he say?
The us-u-al thing. “Aw-ful-ly sor-ry, old man. I’d no i-de-a I should
drive so far.”
What will the first man say?
Not much, but he will keep up a dev-il of a think-ing.
IV.
See the man. Has he a chill?
O, no; it is too hot to have a chill.
Per-haps he has St. Vi-tus’ dance?
No, he is mere-ly ad-dress-ing the ball. That is what is called the
pre-lim-in-ary wag-gle.
But he has been wag-gling for five min-utes, and oth-er play-ers want to
play.
Yes, he is a well-known bird. He be-longs to the wag-tail fam-i-ly.
How long does he wag-gle?
There is no tell-ing. Let us go a-way. He gives me the wil-lies.
V.
See the men run-ning! Is it a foot-race?
O, no. They are play-ing golf.
But why do they run on such a hot day?
They are a-fraid that some-body will ask to play through them.
See, one of them has lost his ball, but he will let it go and drop
an-oth-er.
But the play-ers be-hind them do not seem to be in a hur-ry.
Not in the least. So far as they are con-cerned, the men in front can run
and be damned.
VI.
See the man. He is wav-ing his arm. Why does he do that?
He has lost his ball and is mo-tion-ing for the play-ers be-hind him to
play through.
O, yes. Here they come. But see, the man has found his ball and is
play-ing it.
Yes, that’s a com-mon trick. Let us hope some-body will hit the man in
the bean.
A LINE-O’-GOWF OR TWO
_Hew to the Line, let the divots fall where they may._
THE LADY GOLFER.
When lovely woman whacks the pellet,
Though fair as Helen’s be her face,
Her golfing form (I grieve to tell it)
Is very far removed from grace.
The way she stands, her every motion,
Suggest the airy dinosaur:
She sways, she lifts, she heaves like ocean—
_Ma chère, vous devriez la voir!_
* * * * *
The Oklahoma Times refers editorially to the Nineteenth Amendment. The
editor, it is conjectured, is probably a golfer, and has confused the
amendment with the hole.
* * * * *
Society over here doesn’t make much of golf. For one thing, all sorts of
people play it; then there isn’t much chance to exhibit millinery, while
to watch a match one has to walk three or four miles. It is easier to
pretend an interest in tennis.
* * * * *
Golf seems a great waste of time, until you see a man shooting at clay
pigeons or starting off to attend an automobile race.
* * * * *
We believe we have discovered a method of hitting a golf ball with
certainty and precision, and we pass it on to the great army of toppers.
You know what you do; you step up to the ball apprehensively and hit it
timidly and ineffectively. Then, when it hop-skips into the rough you
waste all manner of epithets on it. The language is all right, but it is
applied at the wrong time.
Try this; tee the ball, stand over it threateningly, and glare at
it balefully. As you swing back, say, between shut teeth, “You
pock-marked”—the adjective brings you to the top of the swing, when you
pause an instant to gather all your energy. Then apply the noun—any you
may fancy—at the same time smiting the ball as if it were the head of a
rattler.
The secret of the method is a maximum of concentration. Your malignant
gaze has never left the ball. It is surprising the distance you get—if
you don’t smash your club. Even that’s better than topping.
THE COMPULSION OF HABIT.
Sir: Gentleman with two golf clubs in his hand stepped into an elevator
in the Railroad Exchange. After the car started up he yelled “Four!” The
man standing in front of him ducked his head.
E. F. W.
* * * * *
Meditating on the fact that the English have beaten the Scotch at their
own game of golf, a correspondent writes, “Is there, in the whole history
of games, another case like this?” Sure. There’s polo. It originated in
Asia.
* * * * *
We do not wish to add to the already extensive list of words and phrases
used in writing of golf, but it occurs to us that “led the field” would
be a serviceable phrase in reporting a qualifying round.
* * * * *
Suggestion to crack golfers: Why not get photographed in the act of
finishing a drive?
* * * * *
“Keep your eye on the ball,” writes Arthur Taylor, the w. k. golfer. And
he adds, quizzically; “Which eye?” It makes a difference.
* * * * *
Speaking of golf (which we do on the slightest encouragement) the _Pall
Mall Gazette_ has been considering the best hole in a choice of 50,000.
The experts do not agree, naturally, but they do agree that the best
“blind hole” is the Alps hole at Prestwich.
At a meeting of 10,000 Chicago golfers, it was agreed that the most
attractive hole was the nineteenth.
* * * * *
In his preface to his book, “The New Golf,” P. A. Vaile writes: “Unless
one can play, or at least talk intelligently about golf, one has to miss
about three-quarters of the conversation in any country club—and many
other places in America.” That were indeed a deprivation.
As for the instruction in the book; the essence of it is that one should
grip the club tightly and think of nothing except hitting the ball. Sound
advice; there is no better. It is almost impossible to explain the golf
stroke because of its simplicity. One might write a book explaining how
to swim, but if the novice persisted in throwing up his hands he would go
under. Similarly, if the golf novice persists in attacking the ball in a
complex and unnatural manner, elaborate treatises on the simplicity of
golf will do him no good.
A large part of Mr. Vaile’s book is taken up in pooh-poohing the theories
of other writers, which are for the most part pooh-poohable. The question
arises, what would Mr. Vaile and the others do for material if the game
were not enveloped in mystery, and the simplest club shot considered as
solemnly as the ordination of a bishop?
* * * * *
A golf bag that does not require a caddy is among the season’s novelties.
It is, we assume, so contrived that every now and then it slams itself
on the ground with sufficient force to break the shaft of the driver or
brassie.
* * * * *
A popular fallacy, usually cherished by the missus, is that a man can
get as much physical good from weeding a garden as from playing eighteen
holes of golf.
* * * * *
From Milwaukee comes the regret that we have deserted the r. and a.
game for a mere automobile. We found that hauling on a wheel ruined the
delicacy of our approaching game.
* * * * *
Nineteenth Hole has a yarn to tell. His opponent drove a ball under a
low-limbed thorn apple, and as he crawled into the thicket on his tum, N.
H. said j. l. t. “Keep your head down!”
* * * * *
There is nothing surprising in the news that a caddy found a diamond
necklace on the links. A caddy is likely to find anything except the
thing you pay him to keep an eye on.
A GREAT GAME.
Sir: A tall youth who golfs (by courtesy) at Jaxon park has a wig-wag and
swing which suggests a combination of St. Vitus, tango, and locomotor
ataxia. As he was teeing off with much ceremony the other day a Scotch
devotee of the game remarked: “’Tis a great game! There’s a mon who gets
a’ there is in it. Before he heets the ba’ he’s used every mooscle in his
body except his ears.”
R. H. C.
* * * * *
“Near Golf Links”—Ad of a South Haven resort. Obviously, again, a hyphen
is missing.
* * * * *
“Play golf on perfect links”—Railroad ad. There ain’t no sich thing.
* * * * *
It is never too late to learn. From their more recent disquisitions
we observe that professional golfers are learning something about the
game, and are advocating methods precisely the reverse of their former
instruction.
ADDRESSING THE BALL.
I do not like the Colonel’s camp,
Because I hate a crowd;
The language there would light a lamp,
And all the talk is loud.
I do not like the Taftian camp,
Its atmosphere is ghoulish;
The language there is dull and damp,
And all the talk is foolish.
I do not like a hue and cry,
I do not like a pall,
A plague on both your camps, say I—
_Hey, Caddy! Watch that ball!_
* * * * *
“The revolutionists hold much of southern Finland along the Finnish
golf,” reports the Minneapolis Journal. And A. E. B. thinks it must be
annoying to have those seaside links cluttered up with Bullsheviki, Red
Guards, and other things.
* * * * *
The difference between a summer member and a regular member of a golf
club is that the summer member does not enjoy the privilege of paying
dues during the winter.
GOLF ATHLETES.
Sir: As a fellow sport will you kindly assist me to hand a few remarks
to those people who speak of golfers as “athletes.” Athlete is an
over-worked word, anyhow, and to tack golfers on to its tail, is about
the limit. To my notion golf is a game fit only for ladies and doddering
old men. You are at liberty to give my address to any golf “athlete”
who thinks he would like to “take a fall” out of me.—Buck (_Ex-champion
tiddlediwinks athlete._)
* * * * *
One or two professionals have admitted that when you look at the hole in
putting the ball keeps wonderfully on the line, but they think they sense
the distance better by looking at the ball.
FOOTNOTES TO BAEDEKER.
At Kingston, Sept. 2, 1912.
Between the fort and the town sprawls the links of the Barifield Golf
Club, as “sporty” a course as you please. I remarked a clubhouse and a
number of putting greens; for the rest one plays anywhere across the
rock-strewn landscape. Wire fences surround the putting greens, on which
the grass is tall and thick. A herd of cows were cropping the fairgreens
and these I took to be members of the Greens Committee. Although it was
Saturday afternoon, only two players were on the links, and they, as
long as they remained in view, were searching for balls among the myriad
stones of the hillside.
* * * * *
At Manchester, Vermont, we were the honored guests of Dr. P. Sibleius
Ferus, the distinguished Latin scholar and gentleman. An evening’s
conversation with Dr. Ferus is as stimulating as I conceive an evening
with Dr. Middleton to have been. I also shot a round of golf with the
doctor on the links of the Ekwanok Club—the most beautiful course I ever
expect to see. The score? No matter.
* * * * *
It was a new experience to play golf among the mountains. It is a
passionate golfer who can disregard the distracting views from the tees
and regard the ball as raptly as certain Hindu gentlemen contemplate
their equators. Upon the flat and smoky links on the south side of
Chicago concentration is easy. The ball is the handsomest object in
sight. There, too, it seems a more important matter than among the
mountains. Of course one may look at it this way: A golf ball is a symbol
of infinity; it is as perfect a sphere as Aldebaran; the power that sends
it winging is one with the power that moves the stars in their courses;
the laws that govern its flight and trajectory are as immutable as the
laws that bind Arcturus and his sons. The trouble is, if you get to
thinking in that groove while addressing the ball you are apt to laugh,
and that spoils your drive.
* * * * *
Chicago golfers who may have played around the links of the Claremont
Country Club of Oakland, will agree that the course may be classified as
“sporty” especially in August. The earth is baked hard and the turf burnt
brown, and the ball, however driven, runs like a kangaroo. If the drive
deviates from the straight and narrow path the ball rolls down hill to
heaven and the caddy knows where. One usually aims ten or more points to
the right or left of the flag; and so many shots must be played off steep
slopes that a man with one leg six inches shorter than the other would
have a decided advantage over the conventionally legged player.
* * * * *
A writer in _Drover’s Journal_ remarks that we are “trying to tell Jerry
Travers how to play golf.” The gentleman is wrong, as usual; we should
assume to teach a duck how to swim. But putting is a department of golf
in which one man’s opinion is as good as another’s.
A child cannot drive a ball 250 yards, but a child can putt better than a
number of gentlemen we know who have been playing golf for years—provided
the child is permitted to function naturally, as when it plays croquet.
When a seasoned player, distant only a dozen feet from the cup, can
putt a ball a yard to the right or left of the hole, it shows that
something is practically wrong. Yet one sees such pathetic exhibitions of
inaptitude on every green.
SPEAKING OF PUTTING.
“Putts and calls are the safest and surest method of trading in wheat,
corn or oats, because your loss is absolutely limited to the amount
bought.”—Ad.
Keep your eye on the pit!
* * * * *
In _Golf Illustrated_, Mr. Francis Ouimet writes that when, in his
approach putt, he runs by the cup only eight feet, he is more confident
of holing the next putt than if the approach had been three or four
feet short? When a man overruns the cup eight feet, would you call that
sensing the distance?
THE SEVENTEENTH OF MARCH.
Sir: Apropos of the day, likewise apropos of one of your hobbies, it
might interest you to know that golf as a game is of Irish origin, having
been played by Cuchullian, a personality who figures largely in Irish
heroic literature. In fact, it is said that the snakes left Ireland
because of an unsuccessful attempt of a kind old mother snake to hatch
a consignment of golf balls which she mistook for eggs. Whereupon she
rallied all her ilk and they betook themselves to a land more suitable
for incubating purposes.
T. O’D.
KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE HOLE!
Sir: If I fail to hold my place on the team this year, it will be because
your eye-on-the-hole stuff has made a good putterer out of a mediocre
putter, and the crime will rest upon your colyum.
FARTHEST NORTH.
Stick to it, old man, and you’ll come out all right. Two eminent
psychologists have assured us that our theory is absolutely sound, and
we’d rather have their opinion than that of Harry Vardon, who confesses
that he doesn’t know anything about putting.
HAPPY HINTS FOR GLOOMY GOLFERS.
A large percentage of golf gloom arises from slicing. A golfer’s idea of
hell is to stand on a hot tee for a million years and slice balls out of
bounds. The chronic slicer is a wretched figure and he falls as low as
he can when, giving up hope of ever hitting a straight ball, he aims a
quarter of a mile to the left of the flag.
There are at least seven causes of slicing. The commonest is the vicious
practice of bringing the clubhead down outside the line of the ball’s
flight. This imparts a rotary motion to the ball, and the flight of it
describes a crescent. You do this nine times out of ten. But do not
despair; we can help you. We can teach you to hit inside the line.
Buy from a commission merchant a basket of very, very bad eggs, and give
these to the caddy to carry. When you tee your ball, or come up to it on
the fairgreen, place an egg about three inches away from the ball and an
inch or so back of it. Now swing, being careful to keep the clubhead from
straying beyond the line, otherwise you will smash the egg and scatter
the malodorous contents. Before a dozen eggs are broken you will quit
slicing or be asked to resign from the club.
If the egg remedy fails, procure a piece of dynamite and use that
instead. This will effect a permanent cure.
* * * * *
L. E. B. says his wife claims to be a Class A-plus golf widow. When she
passes to her reward she hopes it will be early in the week, so the
incident will not interfere with husband’s Sunday golf.
* * * * *
Florence quotes from one of H. G. Wells’s slams at golf, concluding with,
“The uglier a man’s legs are, the better he plays golf.”
“I play a beastly game,” adds Florence; “how about you?” Oh, a regular
Chippendale of a game, my dear.
* * * * *
Sir: I am sure I saw her on the golf course one windy day. We offer her
the privilege of our course for entire season if she will agree to keep
herself in shape.
CHAIRMAN ENTERTAINMENT COMMITTEE.
* * * * *
The consensus of our readers seems to be that the maiden whose legs are
“noticeably bowed” should take up golf, as she would likely develop a
peach of a game.
* * * * *
Sir: Sunday I looked at the hole and missed the putt. At the nineteenth
hole I looked at the ball four times and was then eighty cents in the
hole.
C. S. P.
ASIDES.
Davy: A light golf ball (floater) will rise fifteen or twenty feet higher
than a heavy ball. A light ball should always be used when you have to
“hold the green.”
L. V. B. Your experience coincides with that of many people. Putting
cannot be taught; not because it is too hard, but because it is too easy.
It is like instructing a duck in the art of natation.
* * * * *
After a round of golf a man might acquire a reputation for originality
by announcing, in the locker room, that “at this time of year the shower
bath is the best part of the game.”
* * * * *
“I must have looked up,” said our friend, A. E. D., as he replaced a
divot. And he added: “Why don’t we have a list of such remarks, numbered
to save time?” “Why not, indeed?” said we, who are nothing if not
helpful. And so we offer a short list which golfers may extend as they
wish:
1. “I must have looked up.”
2. “I tried to knock the cover off.”
3. “I should have used an iron.”
4. Omitted to avoid confusion with “Fore!”
5. “High like a house.”
6. “Some drive, that!”
With such a list agreed on, when a man topped his driver he would merely
ejaculate, “Two!” and sit down.
* * * * *
All true golfers believe in a golf hereafter. Brand Whitlock was okaying
St. Andrews with a famous “pro” who remarked, of a certain putting green,
that there was none larger or finer, and Whitlock’s aged caddy added:
“Not in this world.”
* * * * *
One of the pleasures of playing golf at Old Elm is a notable absence
of small bets in the matches such as a ball a hole or a piffling
“syndicate.” Old Elm golfers play for blank cheques.
* * * * *
A gentleman writes us that our look-at-the-hole theory works all right in
practice, but breaks down in actual play. We beg to assure him that that
is his fault not the theory’s. The test of every stroke is what you do
with it in practice, when the muscles are relaxed and you function almost
mechanically.
Frexample, the Worthington Ball Company does not employ a crack golfer
to test its products; it has a mechanical driver at its plant in Ohio.
If the ball flies straight they know it is perfectly round; if one brand
flies farther than another, they know that that is the longest ball.
There is nothing “psychological” about it.
FAR FROM THE M. C.
The Thrasher, on a leafless bough
High in a maple tree,
Pours forth, as only he knows how,
A song of ecstasy.
The sunbeams thro’ the branches sift
Upon the putting green,
Aloft the fleecy cloudlets drift,
The morning is serene.
In town strong men are in the heat
Of party politics;
The air is filled with “Lie” and “Cheat,”
And other verbal tricks.
The Thrasher sings for song’s own sake;
I share his ecstasy.
I have a longish putt to make,
And hole it for a three.
* * * * *
As bearing on the great obsession we may note that of the twelve volumes
added to the library of the Union League Club of Chicago, “since the last
report,” eight were about golf.
* * * * *
Casually glancing at a ladies’ tournament, we observed that while the
follow-through of the players was open to criticism, the show-through was
perfect.
* * * * *
When a lady golfer cries “Fore!” the safe thing to do is to step between
her and the flag and call, “Shoot!”
* * * * *
An English writer having asserted that golf is a nerve-wrecking game, the
Interstate Medical Record welcomes discussion of the subject, as a change
from the eternal debate on sex and neurasthenia. Now, for several years,
we have made a rather close study of golf and golfers, and we are well
assured that golf as a health-giving recreation is a greatly overlauded
institution.
We will consider, now, only the person with a nervous temperament: for
him, golf is decidedly not a restful game. The failure to bring off a
shot that he knows perfectly well how to play, due to the refusal of
the muscles to obey the instructions of the mind, sets up an irritation
conscious or subconscious, that more than offsets the good derived from
a round on the links.
If golf works this way on a man who knows why he bungles a stroke,
imagine what it does to the man who can’t tell what ails him, and must
make periodic visits to the golf doctors to have his affliction diagnosed.
* * * * *
The best thing about golf is that it cultivates patience and
perseverance. But so does the telephone.
WE SYMPATHIZE AND UNDERSTAND.
Sir: I feel that I have an indisputable right to wail at your wailing
place. I am being ridiculed and relentlessly persecuted by various
amateur golfer friends because, forsooth, I have dared to defend your
theory of k. y. e. o. t. h.
Please assure me of at least your sympathy and understanding.
R. E. P.
P. S. I do not golf.
* * * * *
Much may be made of a golfer if he be caught young. After he has played a
few years, you can’t tell him anything.
* * * * *
Speaking of “golf and athletic sports” a dispatch from New York mentions
“precious stones and jewels.”
THE TRAINING OF CADDIES.
Sir: Didn’t that English writer who implied that we were committing an
economical sin by training caddies to become a class worthless except as
boys of burden, exaggerate things somewhat? Frinstance! At Jackson Park
one day a caddie made a perfectly good nurse girl while the father and
mother of the child played eighteen holes of golf. I can vouch for this,
as I was nearby when the brave bag-bearer decided that pushing a baby
buggy was not beneath his dignity.
R. H. C.
* * * * *
A sure-fire recipe for cooling off:
Eighteen holes of golf.
One long cold shower.
One long cold ginger ale (flavored).
* * * * *
Jackson Park society note: Applications for lockers at the Golf shelter
clubhouse should be made to-day—Mr. Jim McGinnis will assist in receiving
the guests, and the weather man has promised to pour.
* * * * *
Query by the _Golfer’s Magazine_. “Does golf cause men to neglect their
wives?”
Not being a golfiac, we cannot say, but if the answer is in the
affirmative, the wives must be singularly unattractive.
* * * * *
Is there another bore comparable with the man who is just learning golf?
He bores the friend who was so foolish as to show him the game. He bores
the good souls who are kind enough to play around with him. He bores his
family and all his acquaintances. And finally (if able to view himself
objectively) he bores himself.
* * * * *
If we had not made a vow never again to parody “The Ancient Mariner” we
might easily turn one on the golfiac who holds you with his glittering
eye. But it would be a shame to do it.
* * * * *
“When you have practised with your mashie on the various golf courses
around Chicago,” writes L. T., “and have hit a foot behind the ball and
splashed mud all over you and into your mouth, have you ever decided
which are the best tasting links?” Well, we fancy the Skokie pot bunkers,
though the Glen View links are uncommonly rich. We usually eat with a
niblick.
* * * * *
It may not be possible to write an interesting baseball story in ordinary
English but it is possible in the case of Golf. The articles by Mr.
Darwin in the W. G. N. are uncommonly interesting. He was not long in
discovering that American players are weak with their irons, as any one
with half an eye can see. This weakness is due to over swinging and to
lack of instruction. Visit any golf club and watch the members play. Men
who have played for years are content to dub around in ninety something.
It is pathetic. The self-taught golfer moves us to tears.
* * * * *
Golf in itself is not an important thing, but if a thing is worth doing
at all, it is worth doing well. It is worth doing gracefully, too, unless
nature has denied a man all sense of rhythm, which seldom happens.
UPLIFTING THE CADDIE.
Gratifying is the response to the inquiry, “What should be done to
occupy, instruct, or amuse the caddie during the long waits?”
Sir: What shall be done is asked, to occupy, amuse or instruct the caddie
during the long waits? Why, teach them to caddie, of course! One of ’em,
at the Homeward links, planted himself at the side of each green, and
whistled “On the Mississippi” while we were trying to putt. Obviously, it
can’t be done—to that tune!
F. D.
F. W. P. “During those long waits, sift the caddie for golf balls. I
think I know where you can get a new one if you hurry.”
C. P. S. “I always improve the time by reading to my caddies from ‘How to
Keep Well.’”
E. McC. “Started by handing him the W. G. N. folded so the Line alone
was visible. He calmly informed me that he read it every morning before
eating, and after breakfast he looked at Brigg’s picture and read the
baseball news. Then with a sly look, he remarked: ‘I ain’t seen you make
it yet.’ Now, you got me into this, and it is up to you to reinstate me
in the good opinion of my caddie—if he ever had a good one.”
E. E. R. “Uplifting one to-day, I found him standing on my perfectly good
Black Circle.”
J. M. W. “Since school began, a small boy who hitherto had been a ‘model
of a pupil,’ has been brought before the principal three times for using
‘the most terrible language.’ Questioned as to how he had spent his
vacation, the miscreant confessed that he had caddied on a local golf
course. The principal suggests that caddies be supplied with earmuffs, to
be worn through the long and profane waits.”
Another way to uplift the caddie is to follow the example of Col.
MacDonald of Edgewater and blow the boys to a good feed and a little
good will.
JUST AS YOU SAY.
Sir: Asked my caddie his views, and he suggested shorter hours and higher
pay. I guess it is about time to drop the subject.
A. McC.
_POPULAR GOLF MAGAZINE PAGE._
_THE AMERICAN GOLFER._
Practical Suggestions.
When you are put up at a club and invited to sign a friend’s name for
anything you desire, always provide yourself with a hard pencil. It lasts
longer.
Some players, not many, replace divots; but it is better to disregard
them, as the cavity prepared with your iron leaves an ideal brassey lie
for a following player.
After driving into the party ahead, the correct explanation is: “I didn’t
think I was going so far.”
Always use a wooden club on a caddy. A niblick is too messy.
Before pocketing a ball lost by another player it is well to wait until
the ball has stopped rolling.
* * * * *
A character in one of Mr. Thomas’ plays remarks that there is nothing
less worth watching than a bum game of billiards. But at Ormond Beach a
gallery watched Mr. Rockefeller play a round of golf.
For a certain golfer
A word sufficed.
And the less they told him
The more he sliced.
A LINE-O’-GOWF OR TWO
_Hew to the Line, let the divots fall where they may._
MR. LEGION.
He belongs to several golf clubs, he is keen about the game.
You would fancy that the pastime was his being’s end and aim.
He plays in all the tourneys, but (the mystery to me!)
He always takes an iron when he stands upon the tee.
* * * * *
If we Americans took good government as seriously as we take the game of
golf, we might hope to overhaul the millennium.
* * * * *
Whether in his relations to others or in the game of golf, almost
everybody tries to do too much at one time. So from now to the end of the
year we shall attempt but two things—(1) to be kind to those around us;
and (2) to learn how to use a mashie. Fore!
* * * * *
Fine distinctions are being drawn between amateur and professional
golfers. In the case of the amateur one may occasionally be in doubt,
but we can always tell a professional by the way he handles his iron
clubs.
* * * * *
To throw coal accurately into the furnace, reports R. E. T., after
experimenting, you must keep your eye on the opening, stand “open” and
use a pendulum swing. Correct. And in order to get the coal to the back
of the furnace you must have a free follow-through. A jerky stroke piles
the coal near the door.
* * * * *
Many golfers are setting out for the so-called sunny southland, where
for two or three months, they will hook and slice with all their clubs,
and pitch balls with a mashie in every direction except toward the flag.
We say nothing about the wooden club, but the fluffed iron shot always
evokes our compassion. Sooner than persist in such ineptitude we’d
arrange our implements in a neat pile, pour kerosene on them, and strike
a match.
* * * * *
There may be more than one way to get a straight ball with an iron, but
there is at least one way. All the player need keep in mind are two
things, instead of the conventional baker’s dozen. And the first of these
is that his right elbow must be in contact with his body throughout
the swing until the ball is struck. The second essential is that the
knuckles of his right hand must be underneath when the ball is struck. If
these two items of a complicated matter are attended to the other eleven
will give less and less trouble. What a dub needs is a short cut. There
it is. Keep the change.
* * * * *
Golf, says Mr. Taft, is a great boon to humanity. It is indeed. It not
only “takes you out in the open air,” but it consumes so much time that
you haven’t much left for making speeches and putting your foot in it.
Every politician should play golf. Col. Lewis, for example, should swap
his pen for a midiron.
* * * * *
Despite the pleasant words said of Mr. Wilson’s golf game his scores
probably have to be taken out and buried, as G. Ade expresses it. It may
be that he is like the gentleman whom he appointed Minister to Belgium.
We were playing with the Hon. Brand, and things weren’t going well. He
related an experience at St. Andrews. After he had shot five or six
holes, he asked the caddie what he thought of his game—“Aweel,” said the
bag-bearer, gloomily, “you have a grand style, but nae luck.”
* * * * *
We have located the man who was first on the links of the Jackson Park
Country Club. He got there at three A.M. Sunday morning, and, it being
too early to play, he curled up in a rocker and went to sleep. He slept
so soundly that when he woke up the starter had given out two hundred
tickets.
THE PILL.
The man who peddles sassafras
May herald Gentle Spring;
The red-breast or the greening grass
A promise o’t may bring;
But I know Spring is on the bound
And leaping o’er the hills
When Old Doc Prentiss gets around
With a pocketful of pills.
He takes one from its paper coat,
A globe of glossy white:
“Now, that will roll right to the hole,
And has a screaming flight.
Take one each day and soak it good,
And slam it through the air;
You’ll get relief from every grief,
And every cark and care.”
Sure harbinger of Spring, is Doc,
With pocket full of pills,
The which I’m sure will quickly cure
My winter’s store of ills.
And when the grasses show less sere,
And softer grow the skies,
I’ll bid farewell to every fear
And wipe my weeping eyes.
* * * * *
In quest of a certain volume of golf scripture we visited the Crerar
Library in Chicago. Mr. Andrews, the librarian, apologized for the lack
of scripture on his shelves, saying that the Public Library had agreed
to take over all amusements. Amusement, forsooth! Golf is a religion, a
disease, a fixed idea, a state of mind, a system of metaphysics, what you
will—but _not_ an amusement. And Mr. Andrews himself a golfer!
* * * * *
When a man has to be coaxed into a golf game he is tired.
GOLF ILLUSIONS.
Perhaps the greatest illusion about golf is that it is a sociable game.
The fact is, that, next to solitaire, golf is the most unsociable game
that man has invented. One of many such stories tells of two Scotchmen,
brothers, who played together in perfect silence up to the twelfth
hole, when one of them let fall a trifling remark; whereupon the other
flew into a passion, declaring that his brother’s gabbing had spoiled
his day. An exaggeration, but only for artistic purposes. On all golf
courses one sees the same twosomes or foursomes going the season through.
Players avoid other players as they would the plague. If a round, even
with old friends, is played sociably, it is at the expense of the game.
Silence and obsequial gloom brood over the putting greens. A match for
the president’s cup is a funeral procession. Golf a sociable game? About
as sociable as a hand at Canfield in the morgue on a rainy afternoon, in
November.
* * * * *
The second great illusion about golf is that to play par, especially to
win important matches, a man must possess a mysterious something called
“temperament.” Now, the only comprehensible temperament is what an
English writer has happily termed the wooden temperament. Combine this
with a maximum amount of skill, and par golf is possible seven days in
the week. Golf rhapsodists are fond of declaring that the successful
match player must have a great heart, and an indomitable soul, and all
that rot; whereas the requirements are great skill and almost perfect
muscular control. Great players with the so-called temperament have blown
up under pressure; even the wooden temperament is not proof against an
occasional loss of muscular control. Harold Hilton won the finals in
this country through a fluke; what good would his temperament have done
him if his ball had not struck a rock and bounded to the green? A heart
as big as an ox is no assistance if skill and luck are lacking, and
many an indomitable soul has topped a critical shot. The only really
temperamental player is the man whose score fluctuates between eighty and
ninety.
* * * * *
Concerning our giving up smoking, it had to be either that or golf.
When a man misses a twenty-five-foot putt he should ask himself whether
tobacco is unsettling his nerves.
LOVE’S ANTIDOTE.
(_Miss May Sutton avers that “athletics is an antidote for the poison of
premature romance.”_)
Alas for them that played a part
In earlier premature romances!
The natural history of the heart
Is full of their extravagances.
If lovers in the vanished years
Had been a trifle more athletic,
Full many a tale that wins our tears,
Would not be classed with the pathetic.
The pangs which Abelard endured
And Heloise’s tears and tingles
Might have been very simply cured
By half a dozen sets of “singles.”
And Romeo and Juliet
Might easily have dodged their troubles,
And ended all their fuss and fret
By mixing in a game of doubles.
One might go on, but why recite?
The simple point that we would pen is,
All lovers’ ills may be set right
By basketball or golf or tennis.
FORE!
An excellent substitute for golf is swatting flies. Although it does
not take one out in the open air, it provides more excitement. The full
course may be played over in a nine-room apartment, playing from parlor
to kitchen and back again, but good sport may be had in a six-room flat.
Four or five slapsticks of varying shapes and widths are all the clubs
required, and the following suggestions may be useful to those who wish
to take up the new sport.
If the fly is on a table top or other broad surface, a mashie may be
used. If on a curtain, use the driver and follow through with stroke;
this being the only chance to employ the follow-through. If the fly is on
light or expensive wall-paper, take a niblick. This is a difficult shot,
as the fly must be lifted clear of the wall, after which he is holed out
with the putter.
If the fly is on the side of a valuable vase or other bric-à-brac, the
putter and a delicate wrist are required. The swing must be checked
the instant the fly is crushed and before the club reaches the china.
A coffee cup, such as is found in a quick lunchery, is a good thing to
practise on. In fact, that is just the place to practise putting.
HOUSEFLY GOLF.
Sir: On Sunday, after the company had gone, the Missus and I played
a twosome of your new game of bughouse golf; but on the first
hole—“kitchen”—after a good drive off the sink, I foozled my approach
into some water from an overflowing drip pan under the icebox. I claimed
a right to lift out of casual water, but wifey said I’d forgotten to
empty the pan for several days, and that the puddle constituted a regular
hazard. Is she right?[1] Then, on the fourth hole, up the hill over the
dining table, I sliced my brassie into the sand pit, alias the sugar
bowl, and though I could get out with my mashie the ball went back into
the pit again and again and I had to use a baffy spoon. After that I got
several bogies, and didn’t blow up till I came to the “nursery,” when I
laid my approach shot dead against the kid’s toy balloon. I must have
pressed a bit, for I couldn’t find the ball afterward.
G. B. M.
[1] Referred to Mr. Joe Davis.
Sir: Your new “fly” game, as a substitute for golf, should become very
popular with those who have had trouble with the old-fashioned outdoor
sport. After spending most of my time on hands and knees in the tall
grass, peering down gopher holes for eighty-five cent disappearers, I
find the new game a refreshing diversion. Have already one good score to
submit—
Played the bedrooms in 4, 6, 5, and 3 respectively; parlor, seven;
dining-room, five; kitchen, nine; and finished the bathroom in bogey.
The flour barrel and range were some trouble, but bunkers add zest to
the game. The chandeliers and my wife were mental hazards, which I shall
become accustomed to or remove. A friend of mine says the sport is
particularly enjoyable out at Calumet, where the flies have nine legs and
stand so high they don’t have to be teed. I am open to challenges.
J. H. C.
* * * * *
“O wild west wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing”—
And, as Arnold Bennett would say, with those cadences singing in his head
a man will go out and quarrel with a golf ball.
“Golfers sleep on Grounds.”—LEAD, South Dakota CALL.
Nothing uncommon. Our friend B. L. M. takes a nap over every putt.
* * * * *
A reader mentions casually that he took sixteen shots for the first hole
at Skokie, with three balls in the pond. It doesn’t seem possible. Still,
it might be done this way: Three in the pond is six strokes; the seventh
was over, the eighth was topped, the ninth was in the bunker; two chops
make eleven, out in twelve; thirteenth on the green or thereabouts; and
three putts. It’s a great game.
* * * * *
By sheer nerve a golfer with a handicap of twenty-something played
through all the threesomes and foursomes ahead of him, on the Skokie,
holding them all back, blowing up the entire course, and putting
everybody out of humor. When last seen he was smoking a seegar on the
club porch, entirely at peace with himself. It must be great to have a
hide like that.
* * * * *
The cost of golf balls is to be inquired into. For a reasoning
creature, man spends an intolerable time in needless investigation. The
manufacturers charge a high price for golf balls because they can get it.
There is absolutely no other reason.
GOLF NOTE.
Sir: At Wabash and Madison, I noticed a whitewings using the Varden grip
on his implement. Is this _au fait_ in the profession.
W. F.
* * * * *
Golf players talk and write a great deal about the niblick, but they
devote hardly any time to practising with that tool. It is considered a
comical club.
* * * * *
The meanest golfer is Pop Royce, who holes a twenty-foot putt, and acts
as if he did that sort of thing every day of his life.
* * * * *
Crack golfers find a week of tournament play physically fatiguing. A dub
doesn’t tire so easily. He will play thirty-six holes, day after day, and
use up as much energy in one drive as a champ needs for a dozen. Vive le
dub!
* * * * *
Mr. Taft’s gabby caddy explains that the president plays “consistent”
golf. That is to say, he does not bring in a poor score one day and
a better one the next, but brings a poor one every day. Thus we
observe again the influence of the judicial temperament. It’s a grand
temperament, but it never sets any links on fire.
THE DEVIL’S DISCIPLE.
The Golfer stood in his room at night,
Pitching balls to a padded chair.
He could work his mashie _there_ all right,
But on the links he was in despair:
’Twas top and sclaff,
Till a horse would laugh,
And the best he’d get was a measly half.
“I never shall learn this game,” quoth he.
“_And I’d tell my soul for a seventy-three!_”
No sooner said, on this fatal night,
Than the Devil walked in, with a bow polite.
“Pledge me your soul, my friend,” said he,
“And to-morrow you’ll shoot a seventy-three.
Don’t think at all
Of stance or grip;
Just swat the ball,
And let ’er rip.
Leave it to me, I’ll turn the trick;
_You_ pin your faith to your Uncle Nick.”
“Done!” said the Golfer—“gladly, too.”
“You’re on,” said the Devil. “Good-night to you.”
Next day, when “Mac” drove off the tee
For the first long hole, he was down in three;
And every other, or near or far,
Was played, somehow, in exactly par.
He sliced, he hooked, he sclaffed, he topped,
But somehow or other he always copped.
If he hit a bunker he blundered o’er,
And rolled to the pin for an easy four.
Over the green, or short, or up,
He trickled the next one to the cup.
Once, when he pulled to a bunker tall,
Which promised to grab and hold the ball,
A caddie said, as he rubbed his eye,
That a _hoof_ had carromed the pellet by;
But none suspected, who saw it kick,
’Twas the cloven hoof of your Uncle Nick.
Hole by hole,
To the eighteenth goal,
Walked the man who had sold his soul;
Drive and iron, and pitch and poke,
Till, matching his card, his friends went broke.
For, adding his score, they found that he
Had shot the course in a _seventy-three_!
Whether his bargain he ought to rue
Depends of course on the point of view.
At least “Mac’s” happier now by far
Than when he was eighteen under par.
He never worries about the trade,
Or ever gives it a thought at all:
And the only sign of the pact he made
Is a puff of smoke where he hits the ball.
* * * * *
Envy not the men who go south in the winter to continue their golf. They
miss the pleasure of waiting for spring days and greening turf. Besides,
the more they play the less eradicable become their bad habits.
IN THE WAKE OF THE WAKE.
A stretch of greensward fringed with the morning shadows of oaks and
maples; a reach of swampland gay with the colors of October; a flash of
tardy songbirds drifting south, reluctant still to go; a small lagoon
glittering like steel in the sunlight; a slender shaft rising and falling
rhythmically; a click, followed by the graceful flight of a small white
sphere that falls obediently upon a square of velvet green—
Oh, shucks! Don’t forget to register.
SCIENCE AND INVENTION.
The Chronomatic Golf Ball is another neat little invention of Prof.
B. House of the University of Iowa. It is used only in driving, the
object being to avoid the loss of so many balls. The device consists of
clockwork imbedded in an ordinary golf ball, which clockwork is set to
allow for the time in walking from tee to the end of drive.
Modus operandi: On stroke from club (impact on plunger) the machinery
starts. At the expiration of five minutes—or whatever time is allowed for
in the setting—a bell rings. The ball is then officially a “lost ball,”
but it is actually recovered, the owner being able to follow the sound.
Ringing continues until ball is found.
WHY IS IT—
That a golf ball knocked out of bounds into high weeds is frequently
findable, while one that lies along the course in short grass will elude
the most patient search?
* * * * *
After the golf scientists finish the fascinating study of the pronation
of the left hand and forearm, we wish they would take up the matter of
rhythm, which is the fundamental law of golf, as it is the law of the
almost as interesting universe. An ounce of rhythm is worth a pound of
pronation.
* * * * *
The “slow back-swing” comes highly recommended, but its only value is
that the dub does not fight himself quite so violently at the top of his
swing; his mind is a blank for a shorter space of time. Why a back-swing
at all? Why not take stance, turn the body, adjust the club back of the
head, and then, when all is set, swat the ball? We have driven dozens of
balls that way. It is not beautiful, but it is better than the jerky,
snatchy, spasmodic swipe of the average golf player.
* * * * *
Miss Kaiser was defeated in the finals of the woman’s tournament, and Mr.
Krupp got as far as the finals at Sandusky. Mr. Rainwater won in the
finals at Atlanta. He must be, as Joe Davis allows, a casual player.
* * * * *
In the accounts of important golf tournaments we read, in every other
paragraph, about the terrific strain; and if the winner does not “crack
under the strain” he is hailed as a person of wonderful nerve and the
possessor of a lion heart. We wonder whether the writers, who themselves
are players, do not exaggerate this strain stuff. Golf is a good deal
a matter of taking pains, and if a person is exceedingly keen to win
he will not play carelessly. The concentration which care brings, more
than offsets, we are sure, any strain. One plays best when alone on the
links, or in a close competition; one plays worst in a “friendly game,”
especially if the friend is an inferior player.
Ouimet won against Varden by eliminating the Englishman from his
consciousness; to all purposes he was playing solitaire. Travis, whose
heart is assayed one hundred percent leonine, walks the links in a
trance; he, too, is alone.
If you go out to play a friendly game do not expect a score. If this is
necessary to your happiness, erase your friend from your mind at the
outset and restore him on the final green. It will not be sociable, but
golf is not a sociable game.
* * * * *
If you received an invitation to take a shot on the new golf course at
the Elgin State hospital of Illinois, you probably remarked: “Yes, I’m
crazy about golf, but not enough to go to Elgin.”
* * * * *
Mr. Evans, the well-known “Chick,” reports that golf is played very
seriously by the patients at Elgin. This is remarkable as showing that,
in one respect, there is no difference between the persons inside and
those outside.
LET THE DIVOTS FALL WHERE THEY MAY.
Sir: Golf enthusiasts will be interested to read in Timothy iv., 7: “I
have fought the good fight. I have finished the course.”
G. A. G.
(THE LAST LINE OF ALL.)
You know the infallible sign of spring: father on the back porch,
cleaning last fall’s mud from his golf shoes.
B. L. T.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LINE O' GOWF OR TWO ***
Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will
be renamed.
Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United
States without permission and without paying copyright
royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™
concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following
the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use
of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project
Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may
do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected
by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark
license, especially commercial redistribution.
START: FULL LICENSE
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online at
www.gutenberg.org/license.
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg™
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in your
possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
Project Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person
or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of this
agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™
electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the
Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the individual
works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
that you will support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting
free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™
works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
Project Gutenberg™ name associated with the work. You can easily
comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when
you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes no
representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
country other than the United States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must appear
prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™ work (any work
on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the
phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed,
performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws
of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is
derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg™
trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all works
posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg™
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg™.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg™ License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a format
other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official
version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website
(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain
Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the
full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
provided that:
• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, but he has
agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation.”
• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™
License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™
works.
• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
receipt of the work.
• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than
are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
cannot be read by your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right
of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
without further opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO
OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in
accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or
additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any
Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg™
Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
from people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™’s
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future
generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.
The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West,
Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up
to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website
and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread
public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state
visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be
freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of
volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
edition.
Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
facility: www.gutenberg.org.
This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
