I
Now that Winthrop Watson Wilkins has taken his clubs away and cleaned out his locker some of the fellows are ready enough to admit that he wasn't half bad. On this point I agree with them. He was not. He was two-thirds bad, and the remainder was pure, abysmal, impenetrable ignorance.
Windy Wilkins may have meant well—perhaps he did—but when a fellow doesn't know, and doesn't know that he doesn't know and won't let anybody tell him that he doesn't know, he becomes impossible and out of place in any respectable and exclusive golf club. I suppose his apologists feel kindly toward him for eliminating Adolphus Kitts and squaring about a thousand old scores with that person, but I claim it was a case of dog eat dog and neither dog a thoroughbred. I for one am not mourning the departure of Windy Winkins, and if I never see him again, I will manage to bear it somehow.
They say that every golf club has one member who slips in while the membership committee is looking the other way. In Windy's case the committee had no possible excuse. There was an excuse for Adolphus Kitts. Adolphus got in when our club absorbed the Crystal Springs Country Club, and out of courtesy we did not scrutinise the Crystal Springs membership list, but Windy's name was proposed in the regular manner. All that was known of him was that he was a stranger in the community who had presumably never been in jail and who had money. The club didn't need his initiation fee and wasn't after new members, but for some reason or other the bars were down and Windy got in. The first thing we knew he landed in our midst with a terrific splash and began slapping total strangers on the back and trying to sign all the tags and otherwise making an ass of himself. He didn't wait for introductions—just butted in and took things for granted.
"You see, boys," he explained, "I've always been more or less of an ath-a-lete and I've tried every game but this one. Now that I'm gettin' to the time of life when I can't stand rough exercise any more, I thought I'd kind of like to take up golf. I would have done it when I lived in Chicago, but my friends laughed me out of it—said it was silly to get out and whale a little white pill around the country—but I guess anything that makes a man sweat is healthy, hey? And then my wife thought it would be a good thing socially, you know, and—no, waiter, this round is on me. Oh, but I insist! My card, gentlemen. That's right; keep 'em. I get 'em engraved by the thousand. Waiter! Bring some cigars here—perfectos, cigarettes—anything the gentlemen'll have, and let it be the best in the house! I don't smoke cigarettes myself, but my friends tell me that's the next step after takin' up golf! Ho, ho! No offence to any of you boys; order cigarettes if you want 'em. Everybody smokes on the new member!"
Well, that was Windy's tactful method of introducing himself. Is it any wonder that we asked questions of the membership committee? No out-and-out complaints, you understand. We just wanted to know where Windy came from and how he got in and who was to blame for it. Most of the information was furnished by Cupid Cutts.
Cupid is pretty nearly the whole thing at our club. In every golf club there is one man who does the lion's share of the work and gets nothing but abuse and criticism for it, and Cupid is our golfing wheel horse, as you might say. He is a member of the board of directors, a member of the house committee, chairman of the greens committee, and the Big Stick on the membership committee. He is also the official handicapper, which is a mighty good thing to bear in mind when you play against him. I have known Cupid to cut a man's handicap six strokes for beating him three ways on a ball-ball-ball Nassau.
Cutts is no Chick Evans, or anything like that, but, considering his physical limitations, he is a remarkable golfer and steady as an eight-day clock. He is so fat that he can't take a full-arm swing to save his life, but his little half-shot pops the ball straight down the middle of the course every time, and he plays to his handicap with a persistency that has broken many a youngster's heart. Straight on the pin all the time—that's his game, and whenever he's within a hundred yards of the cup he's liable to lay his ball dead.
There are lots of things I might tell you about Cupid Cutts—he's a sort of social Who's Who in white flannels and an obesity belt, and an authority on scandal and gossip, past and present—but the long and short of it is that it would be hard to get on without him, even harder than it is to get on with him. Well, we asked Cupid about Windy Wilkins, and Cupid went to the bat immediately.
"Absolutely all right, fellows, oh, absolutely! A little rough, perhaps, a diamond in the rough, but a good heart. And all kinds of money. He won't play often enough to bother anybody."
That was where Cupid was wrong two ways. Windy played every day, rain or shine, and he bothered everybody. He was just as noisy on the course as he was in the locker room, and when he missed his putt on the eighteenth green the fellows who were driving off at No. 1 had to wait until he cooled down. And when he managed to hit his drive clean he yelled like a Comanche and jumped up and down on the tee. He did all the things that can't be done, and when we spoke to him kindly about golfing etiquette he snorted and said he never had much use for red tape anyway and thought it was out of place in sport.
He tramped around on the greens and bothered people who wanted to putt. He talked and laughed when others were driving. He played out of his turn. He drove into foursomes whenever he was held up for a minute, just to let the players know that he was behind 'em.
He was absolutely impossible, socially and otherwise, but the most astonishing thing was the way he picked up the game after the first month or so. Windy was a tremendously big man and looked like the hind end of an elephant in his knickers; but for all his size he developed a powerful, easy swing and a reasonable amount of accuracy. As for form, he didn't know the meaning of the word. His stance was never twice the same, his grip was a relic of the dark ages, he handled his irons as a labouring man handles a pick, he did everything that the books say you mustn't do, and, in spite of it, his game improved amazingly. And he called us moving-picture golfers!
"Every move a picture!" he would say. "You have to plant your dear little feet just so. Your tee has got to be just so high. Your grip must be right to the fraction of an inch. You must waggle the club back and forth seven times before you dare to swing it, and then chances are you don't get anywhere! Step up and paste her on the nose the way I do! Forget this Miss Nancy stuff and hit the ball!"
When Windy got down around 90 he swelled all out of shape, and the next step, of course, was to have some special clubs built by MacLeish, the professional. They were such queer-looking implements that Cupid joked him about them one Saturday noon in the locker room. It was then that we got a real line on Windy, and Cupid found out that even a rough diamond may have a cutting edge.
"You're just like all beginners," said Cupid. "You make a few rotten shots and then think the clubs must be wrong. The regular models aren't good enough for you. You have to have some built to order, with bigger faces and stiffer shafts. Get it into your head that the trouble is with you, not with the club. The ball will go straight if you hit it right."
"Clubs make a lot of difference," said Windy. "Ten strokes anyway."
"Nonsense! A good, mechanical golfer can play with any clubs!"
"I suppose you think you can do it?"
"I know I can."
"And you'd bet on it?"
"Certainly."
Windy didn't say anything for as much as two minutes. The rascal was thinking.
"All right," said he at last. "Tell you what I'll do. I'll make you a little proposition. You say you can play with any clubs. Give me the privilege of pickin' 'em out for you, and I'll bet you fifty dollars that I trim you on an even game—no handicap."
"Yes, but where are you going to get these clubs for me to play with? Off a scrap pile or something?"
"Right out of MacLeish's shop! Brand-new stuff, selected from the regular stock. And I'll go against you even, just to prove that you don't know it all, even if you have been playin' golf for twenty years!"
It was a flat, out-and-out challenge. Cupid looked Windy up and down with a pitying smile—the same smile he uses when an 18-handicap man asks to be raised to 24.
"I'd be ashamed to rob you, Wilkins," said he.
Windy didn't say anything, but he went into his locker and brought out a roll of bills about the size of a young grindstone. He counted fifty dollars off it, and you couldn't have told the difference. It looked just as big as before. He handed the fifty to me.
"It would be stealing it," said Cupid, but there was a hungry look in his eye.
"If you get away with it," said Windy, "I won't complain to the police. Put up or shut up."
Well, it looked like finding the money. We knew that Windy couldn't break a 90 to save his life, and Cupid had done the course in an 84, using nothing but a putting cleek.
"How many clubs can I have?" asked Cupid with his usual caution in the matter of bets.
"Oh, six or eight," answered Windy. "Makes no difference to me."
"I'll take eight," said Cupid briskly. "And if you don't mind, I'll post a check. I'm not in the habit of carrying the entire cash balance in my jeans."
"Fair enough!" said Windy. "You boys are all witnesses to the terms of this bet. I'm to pick out eight clubs—eight new ones—and Cutts here is to play with 'em. Is that understood?"
"Perfectly!" grinned Cupid. "It'll just cost you fifty fish to find out that a mechanical golfer can lick you with strange weapons."
Windy went out and Cupid promised us all a dinner on the proceeds of the match.
"I don't want the fellow's money," said he, "but Windy's entirely too fresh for a new member. A beating will do him good and make him humble. Eight clubs. If he brings me only two or three that I can use—a driver, a mid-iron, and a putter—I'll hang his hide on the fence too easy. He's made a bad bet."
But it wasn't such a bad bet after all. Windy came back with eight clubs in the crook of his arm, and when Cupid caught a glimpse of the collection he howled himself purple in the face, and no wonder. Eight nice, new, shiny, mashie niblicks!
You see, nothing was said about the sort of clubs Windy was to pick out, and he had selected eight of the same pattern, no good on earth except for digging out of bunkers or popping the ball straight up in the air! Harry Vardon himself can't drive with a mashie niblick!
"What are you beefin' about?" asked Windy. "Eight clubs, you said, and here they are. Play or pay."
"Pay! Why, man alive, it's a catch bet—a cinch bet! It's not being done this year at all! It's like stealing the money!"
"And you thought you could steal mine," was the cool reply. "You thought you had a cinch bet, didn't you? Be honest now. Eight clubs, by the terms of the agreement, and you'll play with 'em or forfeit the fifty."
Cupid looked at the mashie niblicks and then he looked at Windy. I looked at him too and began to understand how he got his money. His face was as hard as granite. "You'd collect that sort of a bet—from a friend?" It was Cupid's last shot.
"Just as quick as you would," said Windy.
"I'll write you a check," and Cupid turned on his heel and started for the office.
Windy tried to turn it into a joke—after he got the check—but nobody seemed to know where to laugh, and following that little incident he found it a bit hard to get games. Whenever Windy was hunting a match the foursomes were full and there was nothing doing. A sensitive man would have suffered tortures, but Windy, with about as much delicacy as a rhinoceros, continued to infest the course morning, noon, and night. When he couldn't find any one weak-minded enough to play with him he played with himself, and somehow managed to make just as much noise as ever with only a caddie to talk to.
This was the state of affairs when Adolphus Kitts returned from the East, barely in time to shoot a 91 in the qualifying round of the Annual Handicap. We had hoped that he would miss this tournament, but no; there he was, large as life—which is pretty large—and ugly as ever. Grim and silent and nasty, he stepped out on No. 1 tee, and Cupid Cutts groaned as he watched him drive off.
"That fellow," said Cupid, "would hang his harp on the walls of the New Jerusalem and come back from the golden shore just to get into a handicap event, where nobody wants him, nobody will speak to him, and every one wishes him an ulcerated tooth! Why didn't he stay in the East?"
There were about four hundred and seventy-six reasons why Adolphus was unpopular with us; a few will suffice. In the first place, he was a cup hunter. He had an unholy passion for silver goblets and trophies with the club emblem on them, and he preferred a small silver vase—worth not to exceed three dollars, wholesale—to the respect and admiration of his fellow golfers. Heaven knows why he wanted trophies! They are never any good unless a man has friends to show them to!
In the second place, Adolphus didn't care how he won a cup, and, as Cupid used to say, the best club in his bag was the book of rules.
If you don't know it already, I must tell you that golf is the most strictly governed game in the world, and also the most ceremonious. It is as full of "thou shalt nots" as the commandments. There are rules for everything and everybody on the course, and the breaking of a rule carries a penalty with it—the loss of a stroke or the loss of a hole, as the case may be. Very few golfers play absolutely to the letter of the law; even those who know the rules incur penalties through carelessness, and in such a case it is not considered sporting to demand the pound of flesh; but there was nothing sporting about Adolphus Kitts.
He knew every obscure rule and insisted on every penalty. Question him, and he fished out the book. That book of rules stiffened his match play tremendously, besides making his opponents want to murder him. It was rather a rotten system, but Kitts hadn't a drop of sporting blood in his whole big body, and the element of sportsmanship didn't enter into his calculations at all. He claimed strokes and holes even when not in competition, and because of this he found it difficult to obtain partners or opponents.
"He's a golf lawyer, that's what he is—a technical lawyer!" said Cupid one day. "And I wouldn't even play the nineteenth hole with him—I wouldn't, on a bet!"
Come to think of it, that is about the bitterest thing you can say of a golfer.