VII
When the short days, wet and cold, come on, some golfers speak of the virtues of close seasons for games. There never can be any regularly ordained close season in golf; such is neither needed nor desired. But now and then some men will try the imposition of such a season on themselves.
They oil and put away their clubs, give away their stock of balls, put everything connected with golf away into the box-room, and settle down to a course of winter reading, study, and attention to those domestic and social matters which have for so long been sadly neglected. All goes well for a week, and then they think there will be no harm in getting out an aluminium putter and practising on the hearthrug for five minutes or so in the evening. This is found to be a wonderfully interesting occupation, and presently they unstore the mashie or well-lofted iron in order to practise negotiating stymies—a form of practice which cannot fail to be useful in the forthcoming season. Ten days later they ask themselves what is the use of being strong-minded and miserable, they ring up somebody on the telephone, and they catch the next train down to the course.
In the majority of cases the particular way in which the cold affects the members of the close-season party and crabs their shots, is in reducing their wrists and hands to a state of numbness in which it is certainly difficult for anybody to play the game as it ought to be played. Such people may be recommended to adopt a very simple device, which is in favour among the best and sturdiest players, namely, that of wearing knitted cuffs or mittens over those wrists and coming some way up on the hands. Mr. Hilton carries this idea to the extent of wearing a special kind of thick, warm cuffs made of fur, and the effect is to keep warm those important and much exposed veins in the wrists which feed the hands with blood. The difference is wonderful; but if it is still insufficient to enable the man to do what he considers justice to his game, and if he is still miserable, there is no harm in his imposing a close season upon himself. But he must not talk like the fox who lost his tail, and try to induce others to stop the game as well. It is no use pretending that the game generally would be any the better for it.
But let us take the question as to whether a man’s golf, supposing it is normally good golf, ever can be any better for a more or less lengthy stoppage, and upon it I have taken the opinions of several different authorities, with the result that, though they do not all agree, there is a strong balance in favour of keeping your golf going all the time if you want to improve or even maintain it at its best standard. You will generally find that it is only the amateurs who ever get really stale. The professionals rarely do. Mr. Horace Hutchinson is apparently one of those who do not believe in giving up one’s golf for any length of time. He thinks the results are generally disastrous, and he tells how on one occasion in his earlier days, when he was reading for the Bar, he did not look at a golf club for some months, with the result that when he resumed the game he found that he had forgotten a great deal of it, had to relearn it, and found even then that it was not the same good game that he had been bred up with. He now counsels all who are going anywhere for a long holiday or anything of that kind, on no account to go near a place where there is no golf course, for the result will be that life will never be the same again as regards its golf. “You never play again,” he says, “with the same confidence, the same fearlessness, the same certainty that you can control the ball and make it do what you tell it to do. You may make something of the game afterwards, but I am sure that you will lose immensely. You do not play in the same instinctive way as before.” Men like Braid and Vardon would not say “Thank you” for a month’s holiday in which they could not play golf regularly, despite the fact that they are always playing. One recent winter Harry Vardon was sent to Bournemouth for his health, and they took good care to see that his clubs did not go with him, and solemnly warned him that he must not play there, for he might have been equal to borrowing somebody else’s clubs. Then he would write to London in a most pathetic manner, saying, “They won’t let me have my clubs and play,” as if he were being deprived of food and the necessaries of life.
There are some exceptions to this rule of continual play that may be taken as proving it. There is the case of Andrew Kirkaldy, who, after being second for the Open Championship in 1879, went for to be a soldier, was sent to Egypt, fought at Tel-el-Kebir and other places, came back in 1886, and soon afterwards tied for the Open Championship. Mr. Edward Blackwell had two separate spells of farming in California, each lasting about five years, during which periods he never saw a golf club or ball, but each time he came home he regained his best form almost immediately, and captured Royal and Ancient Club medals. But, after all, in golf every man must be to a large extent a law unto himself; and the fact that he is so is one of the glories of the game.