The town in the distance
I am writing this chapter, when I am but newly returned from St. Andrews, after having watched all the champions of the earth play round the course for three strenuous days. The weather was perfect; there was scarcely a breath of wind, and violent storms of rain had reduced the glassy greens to a nice easy pace. Scores of under eighty were absurdly plentiful, and, indeed, if someone had come in with a score of under seventy I think the news would have been received without any vast degree of astonishment. Yet, with all this brilliant, record-breaking golf being played over it, the course never looked really easy. The champions certainly got their fours in abundance, but they had to work reasonably hard for most of them. Nor did one suffer from the delusion, as one does when playing the part of a spectator upon simple courses, that one could have done just as many fours oneself. St. Andrews never looks really easy, and never is really easy, for the reason that the bunkers are for the most part so close to the greens. It is possible, of course, to play an approach shot straight on the bee line to the flag, and if we play it to absolute perfection all may go well; but let it only be crooked by so much as a yard, or let the ball, as it often will do, get an unkind kick, and the bunker will infallibly be our portion. Consequently the prudent man will agree with Willy Smith of Mexico, who declared that it was unwise to “tease the bunkers”; he will not attempt to avoid these greedy, lurking enemies by inches or even feet, but he will give them a good wide berth and avoid them by yards. The result of this policy is that the man who is getting his string of fours has to be continually laying the ball dead with his putter from a reasonably long way off, and so St. Andrews is a fine course for him who can do good work at long range with a wooden putter.
Let not the reader hastily assume that his only difficulty at St. Andrews will be to keep out of the clutches of the bunkers lying close to the greens; he will find plenty more stumbling-blocks in his path. There is the matter of length, for instance. The holes, either out or home, do not look very long when Braid is playing them with the wind behind him, but it is an entirely different matter when we have to play them ourselves with the wind in our teeth. Then we shall very often be taking our brasseys through the green, and yet be doing tolerably well if we have nothing higher than a five. There are a great many holes that demand two good shots, as struck by the ordinary mortal; there are three that he cannot reach except with his third, and there are only two that he can reach from the tee, of which one by common consent is the most fiendish short hole in existence. Thus we have two difficulties, that the holes are long, and that there are bunkers close to the greens; now, for a third, those greens are for the most part on beautiful pieces of golfing ground, which by their natural conformation, by their banks and braes and slopes, guard the holes very effectively, even without the aid of the numerous bunkers.
Providence has been very kind in dowering St. Andrews with plateau greens, and they are never easy to approach. A plateau usually demands of the golfer that a shot should be played; it will not allow him merely to toss his ball into the air with a lofting iron and the modest ambition that it may come down somewhere on the green. Again, a plateau never gives any undeserved help to the inaccurate approacher, as do the greens that lie in holes and hollows. Even in a more marked degree than at Hoylake, the ground is never helping us; in its kindest mood it is no more than strictly impartial. Finally, the turf is very hard, and consequently the greens are apt to take on a keenness that is paralyzing in its intensity.
Having by alarming generalizations induced in the unfortunate stranger a suitably humble frame of mind, the time has now arrived to take him over the course in some detail. The first thing to point out to him is the historic fact that there were once upon a time but nine holes, and that the outgoing and incoming players aimed at the self-same hole upon the self-same green. That state of things has necessarily long passed away, but the result is still to be seen in the fact that most of the greens are actually or in effect double greens, and consequently the two processions of golfers outward and inward bound pass close to each other, not without some risk to life and much shouting of ‘Fore!’
With this preliminary observation, we may tee up our ball in front of the Royal and Ancient Club-house for one of the least alarming tee-shots in existence. In front of us stretches a vast flat plain, and unless we slice the ball outrageously on to the sea beach, no harm can befall us. At the same time we had much better hit a good shot, because the Swilcan burn guards the green, and we want to carry it and get a four. It is an inglorious little stream enough: we could easily jump over it were we not afraid of looking foolish if we fell in, and yet it catches an amazing number of balls. It is now a part of golfing history that when Mr. Leslie Balfour-Melville won the amateur championship he beat successively at the nineteenth hole Mr. W. Greig, Mr. Laurence Auchterlonie, and Mr. John Ball, and all three of these redoubtable persons plumped the ball into this apparently paltry little streamlet with their approach shots.
The second is a beautiful hole some four hundred yards in length, and with the most destructive of pot-bunkers close up against the hole. Here is a case in point, when the attempt to shave narrowly past the bunker involves terrible risks, and it is the part of prudence to play well out to the right and trust to the long putt. There are, indeed, those who deem the hole unfairly difficult when it is cut in the left-hand end of the green and quite close to the bunker; I have not sufficient experience or pugnacity to argue with them.