I
When the winds blow and the rains pour down, we discover the true worth of the golfer. The game has no season; it allows no right of control to any weather. It is for all places and for all times, and in the law of the links it is clearly set down that he who is playing by strokes for a prize shall on no account whatsoever delay in the course of his round, nor take any shelter, though Pluvius should pour out upon him from the heavens their entire holding of the most drenching rain. If, in defiance of the stern law of St. Andrews, he does so take shelter, though it be but for a minute under the scanty protection of leafless boughs, he is to be visited with the extreme penalty. Whatever his score, whatever the perfection of his golf, he shall take no prize, his card must be tossed aside as worthless, and he is branded among his fellows as he who was afraid, and as more fitted to putt on the hearthrug by the fireside at home in rivalry with his baby boy or girl, than to take part in this now fierce game of men. What is the law for medal competitions is, in scarcely less measure, the custom and tradition in matches. Once he has begun, the golfer with the great heart must finish his game, and generally he does so. Scotland sometimes turns up its nose at the English golf of the towns; but round about London, among all its “effete civilisation,” there is seen in golf, as in perhaps no other game, that some fine British sporting hearts beat beneath starched linen and silken waistcoats; and it is a thing to think about, that the city man who on ’Change at eleven o’clock in the morning was arrayed most spotlessly and was dealing in his thousands, at three o’clock was driving his little golf ball through wind and blinding rain, drenched to the skin, cold, miserable, despondent with his 8’s and 9’s, but still doing his duty as a golfer to his game.
So the authorities of St. Andrews will in no case countenance the mere fairweather golfer. He must “face the music.” But they do say—they said it when appealed to on one occasion—that the brave player is, after all, entitled to have a hole to putt at, and if the green is under water it is better that there should be no competition. It was the club of St. Duthus that made the appeal, and the experiences of the members of that club on the day concerned were varied and curious. One golfer played his ball on to a “floating green,” and after vainly trying to dodge the sphere along the waters into the neighbourhood of the place where the hole was, he picked it out and claimed the right to play again some other day. But when that same day was far spent and the flood had to some extent subsided, another player came along with his card to that green, and, having worked his ball to within three feet of the place where the hole was, he deftly pitched it up into the air with his mashie and down it came on the water immediately covering the hole, sank for a moment, and came up again floating. Had he holed out? St. Andrews declined to say. They took shelter from this trying problem by observing that that green should not have been played on.
In very similar circumstances a player coaxed his ball to the place where the hole was, and then debated within himself as to how he should hole out. No club that he had would sink the ball, but the law does not prescribe that golf must be played with standard clubs. This resourceful fellow, after due consideration, took his bag from his caddie, held it for a moment above the ball, and then dumped it, end on, down on the floating sphere, sinking it for a second. But was not that a push? And, again, when another man had played on to a floating green he discovered that the wind made a current, and that it—O generous current!—was slowly taking his ball towards the hole. So he waited until it should do so, but it was a slow process, and somebody protested. He claimed that his last stroke was still in progress all the time, and that neither he nor anyone else had any more right to interfere with it than with a ball in flight. However, he was utterly cried down, and his point was not settled.
Thus some curious shots have been played on water; and, have a mind, some great ones too. One of the most classic shots of golf, perhaps the most classic of them all, was that which Fred Tait played in the championship from the water-logged bunker on the far side of the Alps, guarding the seventeenth green at Prestwick. At a moment of crisis he waded in with a forlorn hope, and with a shot that will still be spoken of in a hundred years he saved a point that had seemed gone for ever.
The brave golfer is placed in a difficult position, when his partner is smitten with craven fears of pneumonia and inflammation of the lungs supervening on the soaking that he is getting on the links. What is he to do if in medal competition this fearing one says that he will go no farther, but will hasten back to the clubhouse, with its drying-room and its fire and warm refreshment? The law says that no man shall delay in his round; but how shall the card be marked if the marker goes off for his dry clothes and hot drinks? Ever generous to the brave, St. Andrews has said that he whose heart is thus willing shall not be disqualified, but shall be permitted to scour the links and the clubhouse in search of a new marker, and if haply in the meantime the storm shall have ceased, good luck to him, and may his be the winning card.
But no false excuses. Did you hear of the historic case of the Bury golfers who appealed to St. Andrews for a ruling after one fateful medal day on their rain-swept course? The storm raged, the winds blew, and the rain drove through the players’ garments to the most vulnerable parts of their body. And then one man lost his ball. The other espied a friendly hut and sought shelter there until his unhappy friend should find that which was lost. When it was discovered its owner likewise went to the hut and stayed there for a little while. Why did that golfer seek that hut so? He told St. Andrews that he went there because he had dirtied his face, and his partner had a cloth wherewith it might be wiped! They pleaded for qualification in their competition. “Out upon you for golfers!” said St. Andrews angrily, and so it was decreed.