VIII
One does not see St. Andrews at its best at a time of a championship, or at any other time when there are great crowds in the streets and on the courses, and swarming round about the clubhouse and outside the shops of the clubmakers overlooking the eighteenth green. It is not its natural self then; it is at its worst. I do not like it when the trippers pour in from Glasgow. One cannot resist the suspicion that many of them are not as good golfers as they ought to be, and that they love St. Andrews for what they save by her, being the only course in the world on which a man may play for nothing; with a kindly Corporation and a great club spending large sums of money upon it. To keep those marvellous greens in their fine state they employ a genius among greenkeepers, who is Hugh Hamilton, who is the successor of Tom Morris, who was the successor of Allan Robertson. It may seem strange to some that the play should be made without any charge, but St. Andrews would not be the same, and would lose rather than gain in dignity, if it were not free. The time to see it at its best is in the spring, and it is fine again in the late autumn, when the mere holiday-makers have gone back to their cities and workshops.
The only time when a crowd is bearable at St. Andrews is on the autumn medal day, and then, indeed, it is as if the tradition and the sanctity of the place are intensified. This surely is the great Celebration Day of golf. With its dignity, ceremony, tradition, crowds, and excitement, it is really very much like a Lord Mayor’s Day. Old folks who may have never played, wee bairns who are only just beginning to think they will play when they can walk a little better, are all straining to excitement because it is the club’s medal day, the day of the Royal Medal, and of the captain’s playing himself in, and of the firing of the guns. From north, south, east, and west—many of them from London—the members of the Royal and Ancient Club foregather for the occasion. There is a hushed solemnity overhanging the place. Something is about to be done that used to be done in the days of the grandfathers and the great-grandfathers, and the men on the links on this occasion feel themselves to be the descendants—as often enough they are in blood—of the great golfers of old who made the early chapters of the history of the game.
The playing-in to the captaincy is a great ceremony, for this captaincy of the Royal and Ancient Club is the highest honour to be achieved in the game. No man who is not of the highest character and of the greatest golfing integrity is ever chosen for this high office. To be captain of the club is quite comparable to being Lord Mayor of London. Amateur champions have been captains, but no man may be captain because he has been amateur champion. It is an understanding that the captain shall win the Silver Club, given by the club a century and a half ago, and the Gold Medal, which was presented by Queen Adelaide in 1838, when she expressed the wish that the captain would wear it on all public occasions, as he does at the club meetings; and to make sure of the coincidence of the captaincy and the winning of these trophies it is ordained by custom that the captain-elect shall have no opponents in the round that he is supposed to play; and, furthermore, to make his path to victory as smooth and easy as possible, he is merely called upon to tee up his ball on the first tee in front of the clubhouse, to drive it off, and then he is supposed to have played his round and to have gained his victory.
Thus this simple historic ceremony of teeing up and driving off for the Silver Club and the Royal Adelaide Medal is a great function. Crowds gather to witness it, and a line of men and boys is stretched out along the course from the tee, often giving to the hero of the moment an all too narrow margin for error in his stroke. It is ordained that this ceremony shall be performed at the exact stroke of ten o’clock in the morning, and when the hand of the clock on the clubhouse points to that hour a military person fires a small cannon on the foreshore and—crack!—the captain-elect drives his ball, and he thus advances to the topmost height of honour. The boys rush for the ball, which, being gained by one of them, becomes an heirloom in his family. And then the real competition begins at once, and the new captain may take part in it if he wishes. The prize now is the Gold Medal with the green riband, which was given by King William IV. in 1837. The King himself decreed that it should be challenged and played for annually, and, writing from St. James’s Palace, he expressed “his satisfaction in availing himself of this opportunity to evince his approbation of that ancient institution.” Two by two the great golfers of the time go out to play for it, and excitement is keen as the day wears on. The last couple having holed out on the eighteenth green, the cannon is fired again to indicate that for one more year the Royal Medal has been won and lost, and all is over so far as the outdoor proceedings of the meeting are concerned.
In the evening is the feast, when the new captain achieves the full measure of his dignity. Hoary traditions surround his presidency at all meetings. In days of old, in the century before last, captains were fined pints and magnums of claret for certain delinquencies. At this feast the captain and ex-captains sit at the high table, in red coats, with all the ancient insignia of the club laid out on the table before them. Silver clubs are set there, to one of which each of all the long line of captains has fastened a silver ball, with his name and the date of his captaincy engraved upon it. The winner of the King William IV. Medal is toasted, and he is called up from his place that the captain with solemn ceremony may invest him with the medal, hanging it round his neck. Then, upon occasion, new members of this ancient club have been called up before the captain, who, holding one of the silver clubs before them, calls upon them to kiss it and to swear honour and obedience to the laws and customs of the club and the game. And then great golfers of the old school may sing old ballads, and an evening of happiness goes on, and if there are no trains to be caught in the morning, matches are made to-night. This is St. Andrews.