Playing on to the green from ‘Hades’
And now we must positively cease from our reflections and get off that first tee, with a fine raking shot that shall carry us over the insidious and fatal little hollow called the ‘kitchen.’ If we are clear of it, another good shot will take us home over a deep cross-bunker on to the green, big, smooth, and beautiful, as are all the greens at Sandwich. At the second we have a bunker to carry from the tee—it was sometimes a terrible carry for a gutty—and then a pitch on to a plateau green, the sides whereof slope down steeply into hollows on either side. This shot was once a great bone of contention, and in truth success was formerly somewhat a matter of luck, for the ball pitched on a hog’s back and kicked sometimes straight on to the hole and sometimes to the right or left. Now, however, the hog’s back has been smoothed and flattened, and if we play the proper shot we shall get a four to hearten us up for the drive over the Sahara.
When a name clings to a hole we may be sure that there is something in that hole to stir the pulse, and in fact there are few more absolute joys than a perfectly hit shot that carries the heaving waste of sand which confronts us on the third tee. The shot is a blind one, and we have not the supreme felicity of seeing the ball pitch and run down into the valley to nestle by the flag. We see it for a long time, however, soaring and swooping over the desert, and, when it finally disappears, we have a shrewd notion as to its fate. If the wind be fresh against us, we must play away to the right for safety, and the glorious enjoyment of the hole is gone, but even so a good shot will be repaid, and every yard that we can go to the left may make the difference between a difficult and an easy second.
On the very next tee another bunker of terrible aspect lies before us, this time a towering mountain of sand, and the ball is soon out of sight. However, at the second shot we get a good view of the green, away in the distance perched up on a plateau hard up against a fence. There is rough to the right and a bunker almost in the line to the left, but a good shot will carry it, and, after the ball has vanished for a moment, it will reappear, trickling gently along the plateau to the hole side; it is really a grand two-shot hole.
At the fifth the sandhills begin to close in upon us, but a fair straight drive should land the ball safely in the valley; this hole is now in the melting pot, and is being transformed from a three into a four. We will, therefore, avoid a painful controversy and tee our ball before the famous ‘Maiden.’ Few bunkers have a more infamous reputation than this Maiden, but the new-comer to the Sandwich of to-day will think that she has done little to deserve it. There stands the Maiden, steep, sandy, and terrible, with her face scarred and seamed with black timbers, but alas! we have no longer to drive over her crown: we hardly do more than skirt the fringe of her garment. In old days the tee was right beneath the highest pinnacle, and sheer terror made the shot formidable, but the tee-shots to the fifth endangered the lives of those driving to the sixth, and the tee had to be put far away to the right. The present Maiden is but a shadow of its old self, and the splendour of it has in a great measure departed.
My pen has run away with me over the first six holes, as I knew it would, and there still remain twelve more holes to play. ‘Hades’ will, no doubt, deserve its name if we top our tee-shot, though otherwise it is a reasonably easy three, but the ninth is in reality a far more formidable affair. The hole will doubtless be called the ‘Corsets’ for ever, but the second of these two famous bunkers now plays but an inconsiderable part, for the reformers have moved the green far on and away to the left and, it must be admitted, have made a good hole out of a very bad one.