Now comes the ‘Sea He’therick’—a charming hole with a charming name, where the ball must be driven for the distance of two very full shots along a sort of gully or channel between the sand and bents on the right, and some rough and hillocky country to the left. There is a narrow little green, with odd corners and angles sticking out and well guarded by hummocks, so that if we do get a four we shall probably have to lay a singularly deft little pitch close to the hole. A drive over the ‘Goose-dubs’ brings us to a fairly ordinary fourteenth hole close to the club, and we turn back to play the last four, the famous loop.
The chief characteristic of the fifteenth is that no two persons are agreed on the best way of playing it. We may lash out for death or glory with a driver, or play short with the pusillanimous iron: we may go out to the right, or away to the left, but wherever we try to go we shall heave a sigh of relief if our ball finishes its agitating career upon a piece of turf. Neither is the second an easy shot, for the green is sloping and treacherous, and there are bunkers to right and left. At the sixteenth—the ‘Cardinal’s Back’—there is an insidious little pot-bunker in the middle of the course, and we must drive either to the right or left of it, or perhaps, wisest of all, aim straight at it in the sure and certain hope of a sufficient measure of inaccuracy.
Now we come to the ‘Alps,’ one of the finest holes anywhere, and the finest blind hole in all the world. The drive must be hit straight and true down a valley between two hills, and then comes the second, over a vast grassy hill, beyond which we know that there is a bunker both wide and deep. The ball may clear the hill and yet meet with a dreadful fate, but there is glorious compensation in the fact that if we do clear the chasm, we should be fairly near the hole, and may possibly be putting for a three. With no wind and a rubber-cored ball there is nothing very tremendous in the achievement, but nevertheless it is of the tremendous order of holes, and it takes a stout-hearted man to get a four there at all square and two to play. With a gutty ball it was really a fine long, slashing carry, and to play short was sometimes the better part of valour. Old Willy Park wrecked his chances of yet another championship here in 1861, owing, to quote the appropriately solemn words of the Ayrshire Express, to “a daring attempt to cross the Alps in two, which brought his ball into one of the worst hazards of the green, and cost him three strokes—by no means the first time he has been seriously punished for similar avarice and temerity.” It was in this bunker also that Mr. Tait played his ever-famous shot out of water, and Mr. Ball followed it with a superb niblick shot out of hard wet sand, which is not half as famous as it ought to be. Truly the ‘Alps’ is a hole with a great history.
After this the last hole is easy enough—a flat hole, just a little too long for the ordinary mortal to reach from the tee, save with a wind behind him. It can be reached, however, with a very fine shot, and I shall never forget the scene at the Open Championship in 1908, when Mr. Robert Andrew nearly holed it in one. It was in the qualifying competition, and Mr. Andrew, a strong local favourite and a truly magnificent player, had to do a two to equal Harry Vardon’s record for the course of 72. He struck a gorgeous blow, and the ball sailed away straight as a die, and finished absolutely stone dead. With one wild yell of joy the crowd broke away from the tee, and raced down the slope for the green, even as the British square dashed down the hill after the flying French guard at Waterloo. It was at once a most thrilling and amusing spectacle.
So ends Prestwick; and what a jolly course it is, to be sure! What a jolly place to play, too, for we shall probably have had it reasonably to ourselves. It shares with Muirfield, among the great Scottish courses, the merit of being the private property of the club, and that is a merit that grows greater every year. It is a beautiful spot, moreover, and we may look at views of Arran and Ailsa Craig and the Heads of Ayr if we can allow our attention to wander so far from the game.
Tradition and romance cluster thickly around Prestwick, for it was here that old Tom Morris came in 1851—a little while after he and Allan Robertson had had a difference of opinion about Tom having played with the gutty ball. Here he stayed fourteen years before returning once and for all to his beloved St. Andrews, and it was here that the immortal Young Tom was born and first swung a precocious club. Prestwick was the home of the championship belt, which was competed for there every year from 1860 to 1870, when it passed into the permanent possession of Young Tom, who had won it three times running. If by some potent magic one could summon up the past at will, there is no golfing picture that I should like to see so much as that of Tommy’s third win; 149 was his score for three rounds of the twelve-hole course, and he finished twelve strokes ahead of the two men who tied for second place. Whenever one is too much inclined to laud the golfers of the present to the detriment of those of the past, it is always a wholesome thing to remember that score of 149 round Prestwick. There must have been at least one very great golfer in those days.
The course at Troon is perhaps a little overshadowed by its more famous neighbour, but it is a very fine course nevertheless, especially since it has been lengthened of late years. It has, moreover, one of the finest short holes to be found anywhere. Here dwells Willy Fernie, and here it was that Braid and Herd went down so memorably before Vardon and Taylor in the great foursome over four greens. The Scottish pair left St. Andrews with a small advantage, but in Ayrshire a terrible thing befell them. Taylor and Vardon won so many holes—the number was well in double figures—that they came to the two English courses, St. Anne’s and Deal, with a lead that nothing but a second miracle could take from them—and such miracles do not happen twice; it was surely one of the most extraordinary day’s play in all the history of big matches. Troon, oddly enough, is one of the last places that one would expect such a collapse to occur. We know that when the greens are fast and fiery and not a little rough, a man who becomes afraid of his putter can lose an unlimited number of holes, but the greens at Troon are smooth and true, and of an almost velvety consistency that encourage us to putt above our form. They are certainly one of the features of the course.
The new short hole