ENTRY NO. XVIII
MR. HARDING'S STRUGGLE
I won my match with Marshall after a contest which went to the twentieth hole. He had me dormie one coming to the eighteenth, but by perfect playing I won it in a five and halved the match. Nothing happened on the first extra hole, but on the following I held a fifteen putt for a three and won a beautifully contested match.
Miss Harding went around with us and was my Mascot. I broke my record for the course, making a medal score of seventy-eight. Miss Harding congratulated me and I was so happy I could have yelled. Dear old Marshall did not take his defeat the least to heart, but he is not playing for the stakes that I am.
I have dreamed twice that if I won the Harding Trophy I should win everything.
Carter beat Boyd handily, and the prize will go to one of us. I must beat him; I shall beat him!
After having declared innumerable times that he would master the secrets of golf without aid from anyone, Harding finally surrendered and took his first lesson this afternoon.
"I take back everything I ever said about this being an easy game to play," he said. "I'm a pretty good 'rule of thumb' civil and mechanical engineer, I know a few things about the laws of resistances and all that sort of thing, I have watched you fellows hit that ball and have tried to imitate you, but it's no use. Now I'm going to do just what Wallace tells me, and if he can teach me to drive I'll pay him more than any professional ever made in the history of the game."
Harding certainly has had a time of it. For weeks he has laboured with a patience worthy of better results, he has purchased every known variety and weight of club. He has a larger collection of drivers, brassies, cleeks, mashies, midirons, jiggers, niblicks, putters and other tools than Billy Moon, and Moon is a specialist in that direction.
The surrounding woods, the ponds, brooks and swamps contain unnumbered balls which Harding has misdriven. He will not waste one minute looking for a ball which gets into difficulty, and since his arrival our orders to the manufacturers have more than doubled.
One of his ambitions has been to drive a ball across the old mill pond.
It is a long carry and beyond probability that he can accomplish it, but
I have seen him drive box after box of balls and give them to the
caddies who have recovered them.
Wallace was on hand at the appointed time to give Harding his first lesson, and we had quite a gallery for our foursome, including Miss Harding and Miss Lawrence. Wallace was to play with Harding against Carter and me, but the chief interest centred in whether Wallace could effect any improvement in the playing of his ponderous pupil.
He told Harding to make several practise swings Harding did so and
Wallace studied them closely.
"A man of your build should play with the left foot advanced," he said. "Bend the left knee but keep the other one more nearly rigid. Keep the weight of your body on your heels or you will fall on your ball when you swing through. Do not curve your back like a letter C. Keep the backbone straight but not rigid. It is the pivot on which your body and shoulders must turn, and how can it turn true if your vertebræ is bent?"
"I had not thought of that," admitted Harding, making a much better stroke.
"Unless the back is straight the right shoulder will drop, and that is fatal," cautioned Wallace. "Grip firmly and evenly with the fingers—not the palms—of both hands, but let the wrists be flexible until the club-head comes to the ball."
Wallace corrected other errors, and after fifteen minutes of instruction
Harding teed a ball and for the first time in his life cleared the lane.
He was as delighted as a boy who unexpectedly comes into possession of
his first gun.
"Wallace," he declared, "if you will stick to me until I get so I can do that well half of the time I'll give you a hundred shares of the L.M. & K. and a job which beats this one all hollow."
"I think you will be able to do even better than that," said Wallace confidently.
As the game progressed Harding's play steadily improved and his face took on an expression of supreme satisfaction delightful to contemplate.
His crowning triumph came on the thirteenth hole, in which he drove the green and found his ball laying within a foot of the cup, from which distance he easily negotiated a two which won the hole, and, as it subsequently developed, the match, Wallace holding the best ball of Carter and myself even.
Harding made the round in 106, which is ten strokes better than any of his previous records. He tried in vain to induce Wallace to take some large sum of money, but this strange young Scotchman positively refused to accept more than the regular rate for a lesson.
LaHume left, bag and baggage, early this morning, and I doubt if Woodvale will see him again. His membership is for sale, and at a special meeting of the board his resignation was accepted. He seems to have been the villain of this diary, but really he is not a bad sort of fellow, save for a strain of tactless selfishness. I presume that his good looks eventually will win for him some unfortunate heiress.
Had he remained here until this evening he would have been treated to another surprise. Wallace took Miss Lawrence's high-powered automobile from the garage, and, after a preliminary run of several miles in which to become familiar with certain new devices, swung it around the club house and up to the landing steps with the easy skill in which he handles a mashie.
As Bishop says, he certainly is "a most remarkable hired man."
Miss Lawrence, Miss Ross and Miss Dangerfield soon appeared and, with Wallace, started on a trip which was to include a call at Bishops, and later a spin down the old post road and back by some circuitous route.
It is only a week from to-day until the meeting of the directors of the N.O. & G. I shall then know whether I am to be comparatively a financial nonentity or a man of affairs. And then I shall know something of vastly more importance!