At Marchester golf was a recognised school game, played on their own links, for the two winter halves, when it did not interfere with cricket, and Frank—it was just like him, so thought David—had become a fine player with really no trouble at all. He had only played for two years, but at school he was a scratch player, and here at Naseby had just won a medal prize, starting from four. He confessed that it had come easy to him (everything seemed to), and to David’s observant eye he did not seem to do anything particular that caused him not to top one drive, and send the next spouting in the air like a geyser. When it came to approaching, it was with the same supple ease that he flicked the ball high with a little fid of turf flying after it. It all appeared so perfectly simple: you merely hit the ball with the middle of the club. At times, if you were playing against him, the thing became almost monotonous.
Whatever could be said about David’s play, it could not be called monotonous. He gave an excellent example of his methods this afternoon at the third hole, slicing far and gorgeously from the tee out on to the sand. There had been no interest in Frank’s drive; it had merely gone straight, and a very long way, and so he came with David to walk up his ball, which was found to be lying fairly well.
“Silly ass,” he said to him as David took out an iron and prepared to play with it. “Take your niblick and make certain of getting back on to grass.”
“But I could get on to the green with an iron, if I hit it,” said David excitedly, “and then I should be there in two, and you can’t get them in less than two, and I’ve got a stroke and should win the hole off you, if I putted my first near it.”
“Right oh,” said Frank. “Never mind the ‘ifs.’ ”
“Not an atom!” said David.
The ball was not lying so very badly, and there was really a certain excuse for David. So he took his iron and hit the ball rather firmly on the head. It went about fifteen yards in an injured manner, and settled itself in the moat of what had been a child’s sand-castle.
“And it’ll take the deuce of a putt to get near the hole from there,” remarked Frank.
David, as always, took his game very seriously, and for a moment felt merely wild with rage, impotent, ineffective rage. Nobody cared.
“Hell——” he began.