I am a bad golfer, but even bad golfers do holes in bogey now and then. In the ordinary way I was pretty certain to halve one of the nine holes with Henry, and so win the match. Both the eleventh and the seventeenth, for instance, are favourites of mine. Had I halved one of those, he would have admitted cheerfully that I had played good golf and beaten him fairly. But as things happened——
What happened, put quite briefly, was this. Bogey for the tenth is four. I hooked my drive off the tee and down a little gully to the left, put a good iron shot into a bunker on the right, and then ran down a hundred-yard putt with a niblick for a three. One of those difficult down-hill putts.
"Luck!" said Henry, as soon as he could speak.
"I've been missing those lately," I said.
"Your match," said Henry; "I can't play against luck like that."
It was true that he had given me ten bisques, but, on the other hand, I could have given him a dozen at the seventh and still have beaten him.
However, I was too magnanimous to point that out. All I said was, "Ten and eight."
And then I added thoughtfully, "I don't think I've ever won by more than that."