Soon after this we get into a country of flat and, if the truth be told, rather dull holes. Of the holes at this end of the course, it may be said that they are good enough when the wind is against, but they never can be very thrilling. Even the quarry and the eel burn, though they help to fix them in the mind, cannot make us love them very passionately; and as for the ninth, when we drive down to the edge of a cross-bunker and then chip over on to the green, that, I vow, is a thoroughly commonplace and uninteresting hole. It has some compensation to offer, in that it is the chosen pitch of a purveyor of ginger beer; it was here that the famous Crawford used to abide, and no hole could be entirely dull with Crawford on the tee.
It is not till we reach the wall that we come to a hole that makes a very strong appeal to the imagination. Here we shall have to play a cunning little pitch in our best North Berwick manner, for the green lies immediately beyond the wall, and we must contrive to stop the ball reasonably dead with our mashie. We can, however, make the shot more or less difficult, according as we drive well or ill. If we can hold the ball well to the left—close, but not too close under the wall—we shall have more room to pitch, and may hope for a putt for three; but a drive pushed far out to the right makes it almost impossible to stop at all near the hole next time.
‘Perfection’ and ‘The Redan’ are two very famous names, and the ‘Redan’ is one of the select holes, the features of which have been more or less faithfully reproduced on the National Golf Course on Long Island, U.S.A. First of the two comes ‘Perfection,’ the fourteenth, a very fine two-shot hole. With the tee-shot we must hug as closely as we dare the side of a big hill on the left, and if we fall into the opposite extreme, we may slice our ball among the rocks of ‘Carl Kemp.’ All being well, we have a reasonably easy second over a bunker; but we cannot see where we are going, and have the uncanny feeling that we are hitting straight into the sea. The ‘Redan’ is a beautiful one-shot hole on the top of a plateau, with a bunker short of the green to the left and another further on to the right, and we must vary our mode of attack according to the wind, playing a shot to come in from the right or making a direct frontal attack.
At the sixteenth we cross the wall once more, and may hope to reach in two shots the ‘Gate’ hole, standing on another plateau—an exceedingly diminutive one, by the way—close to the high road. Now we arrive at that most destructive of holes, ‘Point Garry,’ and even if we do not, like Mr. Balfour, make an unfortunate start, we are very likely to make an unfortunate ending. In our second shot we shall have to decide whether or not to carry a bunker that stretches across our path, and then comes the crucial shot, the approach on to that dreadful green that slopes right away from us to the sea—without the ghost of a charitable back wall. It is so frightening that we are strongly tempted to approach it on the instalment system, and it is really wonderful how many instalments may be necessary, as with limbs palsied with terror, we push and poke the ball over that treacherous and slippery surface. ‘Point Garry’ safely over, the last hole seems absurdly simple, and, if we do not top into the road or pull into Hutchison’s shop, we should end with a four; indeed, our putt for a possible three should not be a very long one. When all is over, we shall almost certainly agree that the best golf at North Berwick is to be found at the beginning and end of the course, but we could hardly bear it if all the holes were as exciting as ‘Point Garry.’ Those flat holes at the far end serve, no doubt, a useful, though unobtrusive, purpose.
So much for the East Lothian courses, but while we are within hail of Edinburgh, we must pay a visit to Musselburgh, the home of the Parks and once the home of the championship, now shorn of its honour, and little more than a name to English golfers. The way to Musselburgh lies for the most part through factory chimneys and slag heaps, nor is the first glimpse of the course much more prepossessing than the surrounding scenery. It looks like an ordinary common on the outskirts of a town, rather flat, and devoid of features, rather hard and rough, not unlike in character that blank stretch of turf at St. Andrews which lies between the club-house and the burn. Yet if, after we have played over the course, we adhere to this our first view, we shall show ourselves to be persons of superficial minds and of little discernment. It is true that there are comparatively few hazards, and that we ought, therefore, not to get into many of them; but, at the same time, it will gradually dawn upon us that nearly every hole has a governing hazard, to which we must pay due regard—one that will direct our policy for us whether we like it or not. We must not let ourselves be lulled into a sense of false security by the fact that we have occasionally a whole parish to drive into. There is a right line and a wrong line, and if we are very fortunate, or very highly honoured, we may have it pointed out to us and our clubs carried for us by Bob Ferguson, who won the championship three times running, and might have won it a fourth time if Willy Fernie had not done the last hole at Musselburgh in two.
‘Mrs. Forman’s’
