X
When October comes we bid her a very loyal and joyful welcome, for we have come to regard her as the queen of months for golf. No soul so serene as that of the golfer as he tees the ball on a bright October morning. It sometimes seems to us of the links that we are glad of every change in the seasons. When it is spring, we look forward to the coming of summer, and then we sigh for the autumn, and in turn are glad even to sink back to the adventures and trials of the heroic golf that we are called upon to play in the winter-time. And yet it is seldom through discontent that we thus anticipate the changing of the seasons, but rather that we, as golfers, do so highly appreciate the glorious variety which is afforded to us by the system of Nature. Constantly happy in our game, while we are playing it, the season is for the moment forgotten, and it is only in the intervals of holes or rounds that we are roused to the eternal transformation that is proceeding.
“With thee conversing I forget all time;
All seasons and their change, all please alike.”
But there is nothing sweeter than the bright October morning on the links. A fragrant smell of moist earth rises up, and it is as if that very scent is a rare stimulant to the golfer after the heat of summer. There is a fine spring in the turf as we tread upon it, and, quite revelling in it, we find that we must needs go tripping light-heartedly along the links until the problems of the play at a couple of holes have sobered us down. We like even to see the dewdrops lingering on until starting time, taking advantage of the laggard autumnal sun. The film of mist that is hanging a few holes out, and the suspicion of a nip in the air, are fine. And then there are the glorious tints of autumn, the yellows and the crimsons and the browns, blended as only one Artist knows how to blend them, and, amidst the happiness of it all, the pathos of the scene comes in upon us as we listen to the faint crackle of falling leaves. The heart of every golfer is touched by all these changes, for whatever may have been his previous disposition and his tastes in life, each one becomes in time something of a Nature lover, and acquires a knowledge and interest in some of the simpler features of her work. For, of all games, golf is the game which is most closely allied with simple Nature. A little ball, a stick, a small hole, and the open country at her wildest and roughest, and there you have your golf. Then what is deeper than the soul’s content of the golfer when he finishes the afternoon round just as the red sun is dipping away to other lands, and by the time he and his clubs are cleaned, the twilight is already changing into the evening gloom, and the thing that it seems best to do is that which is one of the happiest in the golfer’s day, which is to sit by a bright fire and talk with one’s enemy of the links of all the good and the bad golf that has been played since the morning. Come night, we have had our day, and this talk by the fire, while the white mists gather again upon the links outside, is yet more cheering to the heart of the golfer than all the evenings of summer.