The fourth and fourteenth greens
On a calm day it may be urged that there are not enough long second shots, and that there are too many holes of rather similar length, which can be reached with a drive and a moderate pitching shot. Certainly, on the very still, warm days that preceded the Amateur Championship of 1909, the golf appeared rather easy, and every self-respecting person was coming in to lunch having done his 75 or 76, but as soon as any breeze sprang up, there was a very different story to tell. For one thing, the tee-shots in a wind impose a continual strain. Sunningdale, Walton Heath, Worplesdon, and other inland courses have their endless avenues of heather and fir trees, but at none of them, I fancy, is the fairway quite so narrow as at Muirfield, and a whole round without a single tee-shot going astray into the rough is something to be proud of. I have heard one of the most accomplished of wooden club players confess that a week at Muirfield had frightened him out of his driving, and only the ampler spaces of North Berwick gave him back his courage.
The rough consists of thick, coarse grass, and there is, of course, a measure of chance in the lies that one may get; one may be able to use a brassey, but a niblick is infinitely the more likely club. When Mr. Herman de Zoete played so finely in the championship of 1903, it was said, mainly as an argument against the rubber ball, that he was never on the course at all, but it must be remembered that he was holing out quite wonderfully well, and he is, moreover, gifted with exceptional powers in the way of moving mountains of long grass. For weaker brethren many excursions into the rough are almost certain to be fatal.
Muirfield is one of the comparatively few courses that begin with a one-shot hole, with the result that the starting of a round is rather a slow business, since there is wood to the left and some alluring bunkers to the right, and the erratic are likely to be an unconscionable time a-playing. Never was there a greater necessity to resist the temptation to pull than there is at the second; instinct keeps calling in our ears for a glorious, long hook, and there is nothing so likely to prove fatal. It is one of those puzzling shots where we drive at a wide angle on to a narrow fairway, whence, if all goes well, a good iron shot will land the ball on to a very well-guarded green, fast in pace and billowy in conformation. It is a capital four-hole, and so is the third, which is really a splendid example of how good a hole of no particular length can be. In the first place, we must hit straight, and we must also be exceedingly careful not to hit too far. If, indeed, we can send the ball flying like an arrow from the bow, we may make for the little narrow neck, where safety lies; but it is far more probable that our ball will trickle gently down hill to the left, where a stream and a surrounding marsh await it. Save, therefore, when with a strong wind behind we may hope to get over all our troubles with one vast blow, we must play prudently from the tee with an iron club, and we shall still be able to reach the green very comfortably in our second. It is a slippery, elusive, and vindictive sort of green, however, full of unexpected quicknesses and slownesses, and it is one thing to be there in two and quite another to be down in four: altogether a very interesting hole to see played by somebody else.
Of the next few holes, the fifth is perhaps the outstanding one, on account of its length: the others are all of them good and all of them, as regards length, much of a muchness. We remember a different feature at each of them—the big carry over the boarded bunker at the sixth, the pond at the seventh, and the tall sandhill, rising rather abruptly in front of the tee, at the ninth—but we generally have the same iron club in our hands for the second shot. At the eleventh, however, we come to a really splendid hole, at which each shot has infinite terrors. The tee-shot has to be played down a narrow spit of land, with thick, rough grass on the right, a bunker encroaching on the left, and a continuation of the same bunker straight ahead of us. Nor must the ubiquitous wall, also on the left, be entirely despised. The very least hook will plunge us into the left-hand end of the bunker, a slice means the long grass, and a very long, straight ball may go too far and meet a sandy fate. The shot is so narrow and frightening that it is no sign of cowardice to take a cleek, but then a very long second shot is necessary, unless the wind is strong behind, in order to get home. This second shot, too, is fraught with almost equal perils, for the wall to the left comes very decidedly into the range of practical politics, and there is a long bunker to the right. It is a hole at which one need never despair, and I wish I could remember accurately the exact number of balls Mr. Harold Hambro hit over the wall in 1903 and yet won the hole from Mr. Edward Blackwell.
The twelfth needs a high carrying second over a deep bunker; and the thirteenth has one of the most terrifying tee-shots that I know along a narrow strath, with bunkers on either side. Moreover, not only is it necessary to hit straight, but it is intensely profitable to hit a long way, for if we can only hit far enough, we may play a running shot on to that sliding, sloping green, whereas if we have to pitch on to the slope over the corner of the right-hand bunker, a five is, to put it mildly, far more likely than a three. The fifteenth, again, is a beautiful drive and pitch hole, with a number of alternative routes, all of which want accurate hitting, and all leading up to a most difficult approach shot. At the sixteenth we play short of a huge cross-bunker in our second, unless we are taking serious risks; and at the seventeenth our second shot is once more a tricky pitch on to a sloping green. I do not think I ever saw a hole better played than Mr. Maxwell played this seventeenth in the final of the championship of 1909, when he stood one down with two to play. The only way in which he was in the least likely to get the three, that he needed so sorely, was to play his pitch along a certain gully that led to the hole. In order to get at that gully, he had to play his tee-shot well away to the left, keeping as close as he dared to the left-hand rough. He played the shot perfectly, ‘pinching’ the rough successfully, and was left with a pitch straight up the gully: played that perfectly too: was left with a putt of some four feet, and holed it. The strokes were so clearly intended, and so bravely played, and in all human probability they made the difference between Mr. Maxwell winning or losing the championship.
Finally, the last hole is a good, honest, two-shot hole straight up to the club-house, with a trench bunker right across the course. In respect to this hole, golfing history gives rather an interesting example of the difference between the gutty and the rubber-core. When Vardon won his first championship, he was left, at this hole, with a four to win and a five to tie with Taylor. He debated long over his second shot, and then played short with his iron, got his five, and made sure of the tie—a tie which, as all the world knows, he won. Nowadays, comparatively modest hitters often get home with iron clubs, and it would need a very stiff wind to deter Vardon from attacking that big bunker with his second. It is rather salutary for us sometimes to be reminded of how much we owe to the rubber-cored ball, and Muirfield is a course that is continually dinning the fact into our ears. There are so many holes there that would be so much harder for the moderate driver if he had to drive a solid ball; he could be dreadfully out of conceit with himself at the end of the round.
It is quite a short drive—not with a club—from Muirfield to North Berwick, but there is none of that resemblance between the courses that one might expect between such near neighbours. Muirfield may be called a narrow course of soft turf; North Berwick an open course of hard turf. Moreover, one may chance to have Muirfield to one’s self and the curlews, whereas at North Berwick are to be found all the advantages or disadvantages of a fashionable watering-place. Whatever may be thought of their respective merits from a strictly golfing point of view, it can hardly be gainsayed that North Berwick has the best of it in point of looks. No golf course could look lovelier than North Berwick on a bright summer’s day, when the Bass rock, the home of many gannets, is shining brilliantly white in the sunshine and only holiday-making man is entirely vile.