They paid not the slightest attention to him, and it was fully half a minute before they ambled leisurely away in the direction of the seventh tee.
I played my pitch shot, with plenty of back-spin on it, and stopped ten or twelve feet short of the hole. Wally played an instant later, a mashie shot intended to clear the trap, but he had been waiting too long and was burning up with impatience. He topped the ball, hit the far edge of the sandtrap and bounced back into a bad lie. Of course I knew why he had been in such a hurry—he wanted to catch the Big Four on the seventh tee. His niblick shot was too strong, but he laid his fifth dead to the hole, giving me two for a win. Just as a matter of record, let me state that I canned a nice rainbow putt for a four. A four on Number Six is rare.
"Nice work!" said Wally. "You're only one down now. Come on, let's get through these miserable old men!"
Watlington was just addressing his ball, the others had already driven. He fussed and he fooled and he waggled his old dreadnaught for fifteen or twenty seconds, and then shot straight into the bunker—a wretchedly topped ball.
"Bless my heart!" said he. "Now why—why do I always miss my drive on this hole?"
Peck started to tell him, being his partner, but Wally interrupted, politely but firmly.
"Gentlemen," said he, "if you have no objection we will go through. We are playing a tournament match. Mr. Curtiss, your honour, I believe."
Well, sir, for all the notice they took of him he might have been speaking to four graven images. Not one of them so much as turned his head. Colonel Peck had the floor.
"I'll tell you, Wat," said he, "I think it's your stance. You're playing the ball too much off your right foot—coming down on it too much. Now if you want it to rise more——" They were moving away now, but very slowly.
"Fore!"