"Think so? Tackle it and see."
He had been persuaded to spend one afternoon at the Country Club. Is there a golfer in all the world who needs to be told what happened to Mr. Robert Coyne? He had hit one long, straight tee shot; he had holed one difficult putt; and the whole course of his serious, methodical existence had been changed. The man who does not learn to play any game until he is thirty years of age is quite capable of going daft over tiddledywinks or dominoes. If he takes up the best and most interesting of all outdoor sports his family may count itself fortunate if he does not become violent.
Never the sort of person who could be content to do anything badly, Bob Coyne had applied himself to the Royal and Ancient Pastime with all the simple earnestness and dogged determination of a silent, self-centred man. He had taken lessons from the professional. He had brought his driver home and practised with it in the back yard. He had read books on the subject. He had studied the methods and styles of the best players. He had formed theories of his own as to stance and swing. He had even talked golf to his wife—which is the last stage of incurable golfitis.
As he stood at the window, turning the rusty mid-iron in his hands, he recalled the first compliment ever paid him by a good player—the more pleasing because he had not been intended to hear it. It came after he had fought himself out of the duffer class and had reached the point where he was too good for the bad ones, but not considered good enough for the topnotchers.
One day Corkrane had invited him into a foursome—Coyne had been the only man in sight—and Corkrane had taken him as a partner against such redoubtable opponents as Millar and Duffy. Coyne had halved four holes and won two, defeating Millar and Duffy on the home green. Nothing had been said at the time; but later on, while polishing himself with a towel in the shower room, Coyne had heard Corkrane's voice:
"Hey, Millar!"
"Well?"
"That fellow Coyne—he's not so bad."
"I believe you, Corky. He won the match for you."
"Thought I'd have to carry him on my back; but he was right there all the way round. Yep; Coyne's a comer, sure as you live!"