IV
The 1st of September is a fine date for the golfer, for it seems to mark for him the beginning of the period of play which is the best of the whole year. The summer heats are cooling, the tints of Nature are turning to beautiful golds and browns and crimsons, and with a little rain the turf begins to yield more to the foot and the club, and play is pleasanter than it was in the dog days. We would have no sorrows to mar the pleasure of such a day; but the golfer need only be braced to skill and worthiness by the reminder that this date has a little black edge round it in his calendar, for on that day there died one who was certainly one of the greatest golfers who ever lived. That was Allan Robertson.
It will always be a difficult matter to compare the golfers of a living generation with those of a dead one, or to estimate the relative quality of the golfers of two different generations, both of them of the long distant past. We have no standards that are carried on from decade to decade and century to century, and while men do not change, their implements do, and the courses on which they play, while, what with the alterations in implements and courses, the methods are much changed, so that it is quite the same game no longer. Therefore it is impossible and futile to make any comparison between the man we have to-day and whom we like to think is the greatest golfer who ever handled a club, and some of the great heroes of the past. That is a question that can never be settled. What we do know, and we can think it for our modern satisfaction, is that there are of necessity many more fine players in these days than ever there were before, and there are dozens for every one that there was in the days of Allan Robertson and young Tom Morris. Therefore it must be much harder to assert supremacy in these days than formerly, and all the greater is the feat of doing it not once, but many times. If some of the old golfers triumphed as often, or nearly, we can say for the men who live in our time, that, in the numerical weight of their conquest at all events, theirs are by far the greater achievements, and they must have that credit.
As in all other matters, it happens that estimates of the merits of things of the past are necessarily indefinite; they vary from time to time. One generation will have it this old-time celebrity was the greatest in his line; while the sons of that generation make hero-worship of another master, and say that he was the best. So it is in golf. One time there will be a feeling that young Tom was incomparably the best of the golfers of the early period of the game. Then by and by a little of this enthusiasm will fade, and it will be agreed that there was no one better than Allan Robertson. Sometimes a wave of feeling will roll over these discussions in favour of good old Tom, and of late years poor Bob Ferguson has been having justice done to the magnificent skill that he displayed when he was in his prime. Now, taking a mental vote from all the authorities one can remember to have spoken or written on these weighty matters, it seems to result in Allan and young Tom coming out at the top. Bob Ferguson is too near our time for his merits to be properly appraised. Our grandchildren may better be able to give his due to the man who won three championships in succession, and tied for a fourth.
But there can be no doubt that Allan was a really great player in every way. Like Bob Ferguson, and like Harry Vardon in our own day, the beauty of his achievement lay largely in the concealment of his effort, and this is the perfection of style. It has been handed down to us as indisputable, that the easiness of his style was its most remarkable feature, and that he never, never seemed to hit hard at the ball. His swing was a long but a gentle one, and his clubs were light. He was the first man to cultivate in its perfection that fine cleek play from long range up to the hole that in our day has been accomplished with such magnificent effect by Vardon. The 79 that he did at St. Andrews in 1858—he was then just turned forty-three years of age, having been born in the year of Waterloo—was then and for a long time later regarded as a most superlative achievement. That time he was out in 40 and home in 39, winding up with a 4 and a 3. That great things could be and were done in those days, even reckoning their merit on the most exacting modern standard, may be realised from the circumstance that, taking the best scores at each hole in all Allan’s rounds on the old course, which he kept, and making up a composite round from them, that round works out to the strange total of 56,—out in 27 and home in 29. In this strong essence of Robertsonian golf the ingredients, in the order of the eighteen, are, 3 3 3 3 4 4 3 1 3 to the turn, and 3 2 3 4 4 3 3 4 3 on the way back.
Allan was a great golfer, and a fine exemplar in every respect, for he was a great-hearted player who never knew when he was beaten, was always cheery and with a smile, and he possessed the very perfection of a golfing temperament, as most, though not all, great players do. That was why everybody found it such a delight to play with him, and why he and old Tom, who had also a fine temperament, were as a foursome pair just as strong and invincible as men could be imagined to be. That lionlike finish of theirs to their historic match with the Dunns deserves all the celebrity it has achieved, and will for ever hold, not so much because it was an exciting thing and a great match, but because it was a triumph of the golf temperament over another that was not quite so good. Allan had the spirit of the game within him; he had the true soul of a golfer, and his most casual utterances constantly indicated how he saw right through to the back side of the game. “It’s aye fechtin’ against ye” was a common observation of his, and there is only too much truth in that simple remark, that the game is hardly ever with you, that it is fighting against you the whole way round. He had no greater admirer than his famous pupil. An “awfu’ good player” was Allan to Tom. “Puir Allan!” soliloquised Tom once, when his old master was no more. “The cunningest bit body o’ a player, I dae think, that iver haun’led cleek an’ putter. An’ a kindly body, tae, as it weel does fit me to say, an’ wi’ a wealth o’ slee pawky fun aboot him.”
“They may toll the bells and shut up their shops at St. Andrews, for their greatest is gone,” somebody said when he died. He had golfed all his life from the time when he first knew that he was alive. His father and grandfather were golfers, and the first things that he played with as a child were golf clubs that were made for him.